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2l1opc | why do some cds have a static sound like if it was scratched even though the condition is "new"? | I bought some cds that are new and haven't been opened but they are playing with a static sound. There's no scratches on the cd but it still plays with distorted quality. Any ideas of what might cause this and is there a way to fix it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l1opc/eli5_why_do_some_cds_have_a_static_sound_like_if/ | {
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"text": [
"A scratched CD causes it to skip, not sound like it has static. Static would be caused by problem during the recording - faulty recording equipment, background noise, etc.. This static noise will be present in all copies of the CD.",
"What are you using to play the CDs? A constant static sound is most likely a problem with the equipment being used to play the CD."
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[],
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1gfxso | can somebody please give me a tl;dr on this whole nsa scandal? | First off, I understand *scandal* isn't the best word for it, but it's two in the morning and that's the word I decided to use. Now let me explain.
Ok, so I have a mild understanding about the issue at hand. Basically, we can all be "watched" by the government at any point in time, more or less, and because of that we can all get manipulated (including the government). I also understand that most(?) of the stuff they do is illegal. Everything else I read, however, I can't decide what to think of it.
It seems to me that the things that I've read have been a little biased (sorry /r/restorethefourth, I hope you understand!). Because of this perceived bias, I've devised that part of the speculation towards the NSA that I've read is conspiracy, and the other part legitimate. However, I can't decided which is which or if there is any kind of conspiracy at all! So please, if I could get the least opinionated/most factual, up-front answer, that's what I'm looking for!
Note: To clear things up, the (potential) conspiracy in question is not the NSA, but rather the calling of bullshit towards the NSA. Also, by no means am I trying to pin any of you guys as conspiracy theorists, please take no offense! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gfxso/eli5_can_somebody_please_give_me_a_tldr_on_this/ | {
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"the NSA since 9/11 has been given a purpose to track terrrorists and some of the methods they have done were considered immoral and would of been considered unconstitutional but, It's Not at all illegal.\n\n Phone log database - They are constitutionally allowed if you consider the supreme court's interpretation in to collect data of call sender/receiver and log info without a warrant, wiretapping requires a warrant but call logs aren't.\n_URL_0_\n\n > the Supreme Court of the United States held that the installation and use of the pen register was not a \"search\" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required.\n\n_URL_4_\n > A pen register is an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular telephone line. The term has come to include any device or program that performs similar functions to an original pen register, including programs monitoring Internet communications.\n\n One of their other programs called PRISM collects data from foreign servers routing into american servers, say if a pakistani user submits data to a pakistani website that needs to use an American server first then it would be copied because it went through an american server, however if it was a pakistani user submitting data and didn't reroute into a american server by any chance then it won't get copied.\n\nAnd the other part within regards to American data is that since intelligence agencies aren't allowed to do this tactic, so they have to ask US companies for data (apple,microsoft,google,facebook...etc) Despite misconceptions they are Not hacking into computers but copying data from what people uploaded online and into the products of the following companies. If you take a pic of yourself but you don't upload it to facebook then it won't be copied, but if you do then maybe. It isnt however PRISM copying everything, it collects pieces here and there to get a bigger picture/web of the situation.\n\n\n_URL_3_\n\nHeres a map of data collected, PRISM collects far more data on india then US data.\n\nAny americans who read EULA's(hint: close to none) should of known that corporations can do what it wants with the data you given them. The NSA collected data from third party corporations whose data came from users who willingly user supplied content and data towards their products, The PRISM program wasn't hacking into private computers. But merely collecting what the private corporations already had.\nSo its a moral issue of whether a user willingly supplying content into a product of a third party corporation who was NOT forced to in the first place is considered a violation of privacy when the user for example did not read the EULA's terms.\nHere's facebook data policy\n > _URL_2_\nHow we use the information we receive We use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you and other users like your friends, our partners, the advertisers that purchase ads on the site, and the developers that build the games, applications, and websites you use. For example, in addition to helping people see and find things that you do and share, we may use the information we receive about you.\n > ....\n > We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others, including those described above. Typically, information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted. For certain categories of data, we may also tell you about specific data retention practices.\n\n\nSo what does the NSA do with the data?? they use it to build a database which they then will use algorithms to search for patterns of terrorist activity. Since they can't search through every data, for example its more likely they search through arabic or somali or farsi words for terrorism, some previously used al-qaeda keywords were wedding which was a codeword for a bombing until they dropped it when they realized they were being busted and moved on to other keywords.\n\nThe NSA is legally barred from searching a US citizen's data without a warrant, but the data of foreign nationals do not require so because unless they are in the US, so if abdullah salam is suspected of plotting a attack on americans abroad and at the US, the NSA does not require a warrant, but if he is in the US then they have to get a warrant.\n\nAnd where do these warrants come from?? they come from the FISC court who are a 11 member panel appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who then approve a warrant to investigate only foreign nationals, and with the warrant then the NSA are allowed to look further into the data of the foreign national by using PRISM.\n\nWhat some consider unconstitutional is the NSA copying data with the folks on reddit consider a illegal search, but the supreme court would have to decide on it, since the internet is not protected under the fourth amendment and its going to be tough to convince them that copying data is a search and seizure.\n\nAnd the NSA has legal authority to do these programs, specifically under the Patriot Act, Protect America act of 2007 and the FISA amendments of 2007 under section 702.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > SEC. 702. PROCEDURES FOR TARGETING CERTAIN PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES OTHER THAN UNITED STATES PERSONS.\n\n > ‘(a) Authorization- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon the issuance of an order in accordance with subsection (i)(3) or a determination under subsection (c)(2), the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year from the effective date of the authorization, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.\n‘(b) Limitations- An acquisition authorized under subsection (a)--\n‘(1) may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;\n‘(2) may not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;\n‘(3) may not intentionally target a United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;\n‘(4) may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States; and\n‘(5) shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.\n‘(c) Conduct of Acquisition-\n‘(1) IN GENERAL- An acquisition authorized under subsection (a) shall be conducted only in accordance with--\n‘(A) the targeting and minimization procedures adopted in accordance with subsections (d) and (e); and\n‘(B) upon submission of a certification in accordance with subsection (g), such certification.\n‘(2) DETERMINATION- A determination under this paragraph and for purposes of subsection (a) is a determination by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence that exigent circumstances exist because, without immediate implementation of an authorization under subsection (a), intelligence important to the national security of the United States may be lost or not timely acquired and time does not permit the issuance of an order pursuant to subsection (i)(3) prior to the implementation of such authorization.\n\nSo how the procedures goes is that\n\n1. PRISM finds pattern of terrorist activity and only allowed to use it to find terrorists under the laws of congress and under the supreme courts supervision.\n2. If PRISM finds a pattern among a foreign national, report back to both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence who both then ask for a warrant from the fisc.\n3. FISC (foreign intelligence surveillance court) approves\n4. PRISM then legally and constitutionally allowed to search data of that foreign person and only for that person.\n\nIf a US citizen is linked to a foreign plotter then it also requires a warrant before the person's data can be searched by PRISM. But PRISM cannot directly target US citizens with their algorithms, however if they are linked to a foreign national, then with a warrant they can be. But it also cannot if you read the 702 section, directly target foreign nationals within the US or US citizens abroad.\n\n Its confusing but basically they are searching for data for links to terrorists but they cannot search data of US citizens abroad and domestic or foreign nationals within the US unless they find a link with a foreign national abroad and then with a warrant. And even though foreign nationals abroad are not protected by the fourth amendment, the section 702 requires one anyway\n\n > (5) shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.\n"
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"http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr6304/text",
"https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Boundless-heatmap-large-001.jpg",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_register"
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23y95a | What is the process for doping silicon? | I understand that to make p- and n-type semiconductors materials such as boron, phosphorous, arsenic and what not are added to silicon, but HOW are they added? Like the physical process of making it. And then from this point, how is the material handled and made useful?
Thank you! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23y95a/what_is_the_process_for_doping_silicon/ | {
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"You physically put phosphorous or boron close to silicon and heat it up. The phosphorus or boron will diffuse into the silicon lattice.\n\nSee _URL_0_\nfor a description of the process with photos.",
"/u/ron_leflore mentioned one process called thermal implantation, but a more modern process is [ion implantation](_URL_0_). You use a particle accelerator to shoot a beam of the dopant atoms into the semiconductor lattice. The advantage of this technique is by controlling the implantation energy you can precisely control the implantation depth and profile of the dopants."
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227j0x | How bad was a slave's life in antiquity, truly? | I am not referring to American plantation slaves or anything post enlightenment. I am wondering just how bad a slave's lot in the Roman or Grecian empires was, or any old world states famous for their slaves.
On a side note, it seems to me freeing a lifelong slave would be doing them a unkindness, suddenly they have to make their own way with no resources, a slave always had food to eat, a freed lsave would be little more than a beggar. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/227j0x/how_bad_was_a_slaves_life_in_antiquity_truly/ | {
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"I'm gonna go ahead and pull a chunk of this from one of the [answers I wrote up a little bit ago on this very thing :)](_URL_3_) \n\nSo. Roman slavery. You know how the Civil War was fought over slavery? Well ...in Rome, they were an integral part of society. However....strangely enough as it might seem, \"slave\" was a VERY general term. There was a MASSIVE difference between a \"house slave,\" or even a \"city slave\" and a slave who worked the fields, the mines, or the ships. The former were seen as soft and pampered by the rest, the hard-working, hard-bitten, short-lived slaves. The city slaves lived a relatively cushy life for slaves. They earned money, they could eventually buy their freedom, they were teachers, maids, butlers, messengers, bodyservants, cooks, etc. Essentially...for an analogy and perspective. They were the equivalent to people who are paid minimum wage today. Now, some slaves got more (such as the bodyservants to the aristocracy, the teachers, etc), while some got less (the bath slaves), but they all lived relatively cushy lives. \n\nThese are the examples that people give when they want to convince you that Roman slavery was cushy and that the Romans were wonderful people who wore togas everywhere and were the bestest and most culturedest people. To answer the second part of your question, if/when these people were released, they became the *clients* of their former owner - their former owner would continue to take care of them with money and influence, and they would essentially be a part of that man's extended family. They kept the money that they had earned through their servitude, and often times they would have a pretty good base to go off of. For an example, [here's a picture of the tomb of a particularly successful freedman.](_URL_1_) Freedmen didn't get the rights of ordinary citizens, but their children certainly did - even if the fact that their ancestor was a former slave always stayed with them.\n\n---\n\nWell....THEN you look at the flip side. The other slaves. The ones who **kept fucking revolting for a reason.** \n\nThese were the farm slaves. The slaves in the mines (Perspective on the mines of the Roman world. I say mines, you think....maybe a little mineshaft in the ground, etc? Well you're SEVERELY underestimating the Romans when it came to industry. And when I say severely....their mining projects in Spain (for example) were unbelievable. Here's a quote from Richard Miles' *Carthage Must Be Destroyed*: \n\n > Furthermore, in order to increase efficiency and production, new techniques were brought in from the eastern Mediterranean. Large numbers of slaves, controlled by overseers [Who were also slaves], did the manual labour. Underground rivers were redirected through tunnels and shafts, and new technology was used to pump water out of shafts. The process by which the metal ore was extracted was laborious. First the rock containing the silver ore, usually mixed with lead, was crushed in running water. It was then sieved, before going through the same process twice more. The ore was then put in a kiln so that the silver could be separated out from the stone and lead before being transported, often by river, to the main cities on the coast. [...] in the Roman period from the second century BC to the fifth century AD it was calculated that at any one time some 40,000 slaves toiled in the Spanish mines, producing 25,000 drachmas [*approximately* 107,000 grams of silver] of profit a day. Indeed, the colossal scale of both the Punic and the Roman mining operations can be ascertained by the 6,700,000 tonnes of mainly silver slag found at Rio Tinto that can be dated to those periods.\n\nI used that quote just to give you an idea of exactly *how* extensive that *one* mining operation was. Spain was not the only place that Rome mined, but it was certainly one of the biggest. Those 40,000 slaves that had to work those mines? Yeah, they didn't live long. Here's an ancient writer named Posidonius' take on that:\n\n > Originally any private person without mining experience could come and find a place to work in these mines, and since the silver-bearing seams in the earth were conveniently sited and plentiful, they would go away with great fortunes. But later the Romans gained control of Spain, and now a large number of Italians have taken over the mines and accumulated vast riches as a result of their desire to make profits; what they did was buy a great number of slaves and hand them over to the men in charge of the mining operations...\n\n > The men engaged in these mining operations produce unbelievably large revenues for their masters, but as a result of their underground excavations day and night they become physical wrecks, and because of their extremely bad conditions, the mortality rate is high; they are not allowed to give up working or have a rest, but are forced by the beatings of their supervisors to stay at their places and throw away their wretched lives as a result of these horrible hardships. Some of them survive to endure their misery for a long time because of their physical stamina or sheer will-power; but because of the extent of their suffering, they prefer dying to surviving. \n\nYeeeeeeeeah. Note that the **vast** majority of Roman slaves were not household, or even city slaves. They were mostly field slaves, under conditions like these. Here's one about work in a flour mill - This is from Apuleius' *Metamorphoses*, which is a novel. However, it's also one of our best sources for the \"plebeian life\" of Ancient Rome:\n\n > The men there were indescribable - their entire skin was coloured black and blue with the weals left by whippings, and their scarred backs were shaded rather than covered by tunics which were patched and torn. Some of them wore no more than a tiny covering around their loins, but all were dressed in such a way that you could see through their rags. They had letters branded on their foreheads, their hair had been partially shaved off, and they had fetters on their feet. They were sallow and discoloured, and the smoky and steamy atmosphere had affected their eyelids and inflamed their eyes. Their bodies were a dirty white because of the dusty flour - like athletes who get covered with fine sand when they fight. \n\nMasters could essentially do whatever they wanted to slaves - some were more lenient (Seneca has writings on this in particular), while some (obviously) were more brutal. Interestingly enough, a middle ground would be the slaves who we find most interesting today...the infamous Roman gladiator. Like all other slaves, they were...well...slaves. They were subject to their master's whims, they could...well...this piece of graffiti from the time period says it all:\n\n > Take hold of your servant girl whenever you want to; it’s your right.\n\n^ That. Know what that means? Yeah, you can fuck your slave whenever you want - they're a slave, it's what slaves are for. Whether you were a male or female slave, if your owner wanted you, you were his, and you had no legal recourse. Having sex with slaves was extremely common in the era, so common as to be unremarkable. It's assumed that most Roman aristocrats lost their virginity to a slave they took a particular liking to. \n\nGladiators were used just like all the other slaves - except their use was also a blood sport. They (like other slaves) weren't allowed to get married, however they kept the winnings from their fights. They were relatively pampered (fame and fortune - think sports superstars combined with Hollywood icons), however they were forced to fight for the entertainment of the Roman citizenry. The man sitting across from them over supper could be the man who killed them the next day. (NOTE: One misconception that I see ALLLL the time. [See this bullshit?](_URL_0_) This would NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. [Rather, this one would be what you would see.](_URL_2_) And you know what the thumbs up means? It means **death for the loser.** MINE = BLOOOOWN. Back to the story.) Also - the gladiators were housed in what amounted to prison complexes. They were detached from cities, walled, with guard towers, walls, you name it. They were schools in a sense - but they were a huge symbol that one of the greatest fears of the Roman people was what would happen if the slaves rose up against them in a co-ordinated revolt. Hence why Spartacus' war caused so much terror amongst the populace, and one reason that it was dealt with so brutally. \n\nOne thing to remember about the gladiators - the fights rarely ended with one of the gladiators dying. We've got plenty of records of gladiators who lost multiple battles, and it would be too ridiculously expensive to replace a well-trained gladiator who just so happened to get killed. Accidents happened, of course, but the fights were there primarily for entertainment - while it was a blood sport, and while there certainly were fatalities, those fatalities are incredibly skewed by Hollywood and modern depictions of a gladiatorial contest.\n\nIf you've got any more questions, please feel free to ask them! :)"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jwu1g/what_was_the_life_of_a_slave_in_ancient_rome_like/cbjcpbj"
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5lxn0e | Does Jupiter's orbit impact the average global temperature of Earth? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lxn0e/does_jupiters_orbit_impact_the_average_global/ | {
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"On timescales on the order of 50-100 thousand years or more, the answer is yes, probably, to some extent. \n\nAs the planets revolve around the Sun, their gravitational fields are also constantly tugging a bit on one another, with Jupiter's \"tug\" being strongest by far. Over yearly timescales these forces vary in strength (as distance between the planet vary) and direction (as planetary positions vary). Over millenial timescales these forces cause slow cyclical changes to the shape of Earth's orbit around the Sun.\n\nThese changes, combined with cyclical variations in the Earth rotation axis (not caused by Jupiter), give rise to \n[Milankovitch cycles](_URL_0_) which describe the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate.\n\nHowever, as stated in the linked article, *\"Because the observed periodicities of climate fit so well with the orbital periods, the orbital theory has overwhelming support. Nonetheless, there are several difficulties in reconciling theory with observations.\"*\n\nSo the connection is by no means certain.\n\n"
]
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3sj3lk | why is it that when you lay down and lay as still as possible, you can hear a pillow compressing no matter how still you lay? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sj3lk/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_lay_down_and_lay_as/ | {
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"I'm no scientist, but I would assume it's because there are hundreds of thousands of little fibers in a pillow and even though a human thinks they are laying perfectly still, they are still constantly moving (breathing, cardiovascular processes, etc.), which in return causes the fibers to constantly be moving in response i.e. making noise. \n\nTl;dr: In the big picture the human might be still, but in the small picture we are constantly moving and shifting. ",
"I've studied soil compaction which may or may not be relevant, but basically there are different stages of compaction. When you put your head down on the pillow it causes an initial flattening. As you lay still, your head is still on the pillow (applying a constant load) so there is secondary compaction. \n\nBasically think of jumping in thick mud, at first you drop in pretty deep. Then you'll slowly sink even though you haven't got any heavier. "
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11n1du | Would it be possible for a planet wide EMP to occur? | With the Earth being round, wouldn't there be a dead zone?
Also, what would be the most likely candidate for causing such an impressive force? Would there be any chance of humanity surviving whatever caused said EMP? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11n1du/would_it_be_possible_for_a_planet_wide_emp_to/ | {
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"text": [
"If sufficient nuclear devices were detonated simultaneously while in LEO (low earth orbit), and properly positioned it could be possible.\n"
]
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|
1lapq7 | what's it like for astronauts who have been in space to be back on earth with gravity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lapq7/whats_it_like_for_astronauts_who_have_been_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Guess the astronauts are too occupied in space to answer this question",
"I know they lose bone mass of .5-1% per month they are there. But I want to know if they are like dropping things and such, forgetting they don't float on Earth. _URL_0_",
"In interviews I've heard and articles I've read concerning returning astronauts, not much if you just spent a few days on the space shuttle. But if you spend a few months on the Space Station, quite a bit happens. You begin to develop 'space reflexes'. You think nothing of letting go of your pen and then grabbing it back out of the air a few seconds later. It becomes normal to sit on the 'ceiling' while working on your laptop. \n \nBack on Earth, it may take awhile to adjust and strengthen the body to get it used to gravity again, but 'Earth reflexes' kick back in right away. After all, that is the true normal, something you never forget, like riding a bike. I remember an interview with an American who had spent a long time on MIR, that what he looked forward to most back on earth was a hot shower. When he finally got to take one, his initial reaction was, \"Oh god, I'm going to drown...\" because that is what would happen if there was a water leak on the space station. Once he got past the fear, the water from the showerhead felt like pin pricks, as though holding your hand out a car window when it's raining. He gave up and took a sponge bath. ",
"They'll feel restricted, as they can't do 1080 degree somersaults in the air anymore. ",
"I often wonder what its like when they lie in bed too. After you've been on a boat all day, you get in bed and can still feel the rocking of the waves. I wonder what they'd feel. "
]
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awcfp5 | Actually GOOD textbooks? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awcfp5/actually_good_textbooks/ | {
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"text": [
"As a history major constantly looking for substantive resources for citation, I’d say a great textbook chock full of primary sources is Sources for America’s History by James Henretta. There are two volumes for every edition which cover U.S. history up until, and since, 1877. The books are organized not only chronologically, but based on topics ranging from the role of women in society to presidential politics and foreign relations. The books are published by Macmillan, but there are plenty of other resources that can help with a broad base of topics if you know where to look. For example, William Herndon, a former law partner of Abraham Lincoln, compiled the testimonies of those who knew Lincoln best to create a well-rounded and accurate picture of the man himself. It was not widely accepted amongst historians until the 1980s, but since then, Herndon’s Lincoln has become a definitive source for presidential and Civil War historians alike. Hope this helps!!",
"I very curious regarding your opinion on the poor quality of textbooks. Can you give me examples of what you mean? Interpretations you disagree with? Facts wrong? Important subjects left out?"
]
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[],
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|
5hg9id | how is momentum realated to mass and velocity?is momentum different than power? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hg9id/eli5how_is_momentum_realated_to_mass_and/ | {
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"You know how an object in motion tends to stay in motion? Now let's forget friction altogether and assume zero resistance to motion, the law of conservation of energy alone says that if I push you, you will keep moving forever, but how hard do I need to push you to move you? Depends on how heavy you are, and how far will you go before you stop? Depends on how fast I make u go, right? Combine both, mass and speed, and you got momentum, the ability of your body to stay in motion due to its weight and acquired velocity, get it?",
"Momentum is mass * velocity. All that matters is the mass and how fast it's traveling.\n\nPower is work performed per time. AKA, how much energy being delivered/expended per second. "
]
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||
dvgt9p | why is the zipper merge faster? | I watched this [video](_URL_0_) on why zipper merging when driving is better than merging early. I understand the first 3 reasons they lay out for why early merging is bad:
1. Early merging opens up space for a dbag to just fly through (ironically zipper merging is asking for everybody to be that dbag, hence nobody is a dbag).
2. Early merging can create a traffic gum up well before the merge for people who would be otherwise unaffected.
3. Early merging creates more traffic accidents.
What I don't understand is the 4th reason--that it is slower. In the video it says "when you force a bunch of cars to basically come to a stop in one lane, it gets everybody through the bottleneck slower." When I studied operations (only one class to be fair) in school, we were taught that the bottleneck is really the only thing that matters. Speeding things up before the bottleneck doesn't impact flow time. So why is the zipper merge faster? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvgt9p/eli5_why_is_the_zipper_merge_faster/ | {
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"You already stated the answer- not zipper merging forces everyone in one of the lanes to come to a complete stop. If everyone zipper merged properly, neither lane would ever have to fully stop.\n\nBy not fully stopping, everyone is able to continue through the obstruction at a constant speed safely.\n\n\nStopping right before the obstruction means there will be gaps where people have to accelerate and brake as they pass through it.",
"The fourth point relies on a little bit of knowledge about traffic jams.\n\nTraffic jams occur when one person slows down for some reason. We'll call him \"1\". When 1 slows down, the person behind him (2) has to slow down slightly more than 1, because 2 doesn't have psychic knowledge of exactly how slow 1 is going to go. The person behind 2 (3) now has to slow down even more than 2, for the same reason. This goes all the way back down the road until suddenly some unlucky fellow (A) has to come to a complete stop. This is a traffic jam.\n\nWhen A is able to move again, he does so slowly, because the person in front of him is moving slowly as well. This causes a whole bunch of starting, stopping, creeping, and stopping again, which translates to more backed up traffic far behind them. \n\nThe zipper method offers a solution that keeps cars moving, which is the ultimate method of preventing traffic jams. If everyone moves at a constant, albeit slow, pace, then there is no traffic jam. The method only has the one drawback; everyone has to be on board with the zipper. If even one person tries to skip ahead and jam in, he's gonna cause a lot of issues down the line.",
"On ramps in Arizona have stop lights to prevent lines of cars from streaming into the freeway. Seemed to work in a lot of spots."
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d0ufly | How widespread were Sea Shanties spread? And are there any example of different regional variations of the same song? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d0ufly/how_widespread_were_sea_shanties_spread_and_are/ | {
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"Let’s first try and narrow this down and clarify / define some items. On a side note: this is a fantastic question which touches on the exciting areas of transnational history, identity, and globalisation. Before anything I am going to talk solely within the Anglo world- this itself will be shown to be far less limiting that maybe expected. First, the term sea shanty is referring to a very specific period, about 4-5 decades between c.1840-1880. This is not to say that \"sea songs\" are only that old. These were specifically composed shanties for work or expression of the “mood” of the crew. Essential all the shanties we have today and you can find recordings of are from a number of compilers who carried out their task prior to the first world war. As our study of shanties rely on these collectors a very brief overview of some issues should be raised and hopefully you and others will find interesting. The collecting occurred during a period of changes and movements of identity within England and wider notions of what may be an idea of Britishness. The collectors were seeking out what they believed to be authentic shanties based on their own perceptions of the countries seafaring culture, history, personal identity, and assumptions of the maritime character of the English.(1) This shaped what songs they saw ‘“fit” to be recorded. As such, songs found in print, by some, were deemed to have been ‘contaminated.’ (2) Thus, what should be concluded from this is that beyond the complications of collecting oral tradition as it’s dying out from a population which is highly mobile and spread across the globe, is that what we do have, carries a potent bias to any study.\n\nNow, this is where it gets fun,and hopefully to the core of your question. I want to give a moment of background information. First, Sailors, and Merchant ships, throughout the age of sail and into the 19th century were markedly global communities. Anglo-Sphere ships were crewed by West-Indians, Africans, African-Americans, Continental European, and South-American. Ships had a high turnover rate with only small parts of a crew staying on for more than one voyage.(3) Second, Shantites changed and morphed quickly due to these changes, mostly likely faster than those found on land. Finally, musicscape, and folk music studies, along with those working with oral traditions, have shown the influence songs have upon local communities for identity. These local identities, which are markedly different from modern political-nation-state identities have strong geographical markers to them.\n\n**Shanties**\n\nShanties themselves, as stated, are for specific tasks aboard a ship that required hard labour. Regional various did exist to a certain extent, and small changes within songs did occur as will be outlined below. However, what is important is that the core of the shanty was to remain understandable to every member of the crew- this under the ever changing cultural and personal make up of the crews. They were sung by two groups: the Shantyman and the Crew. The Shantyman knew the song, and “led” the crew in the shanty. The Shantyman could pick and change the lyrics as needed, and were pulled from a personal repertoire. Their choice of words were chosen based on the knowledge of the crew, where verses could be adapted to ‘mak\\[e\\] up little rhymes which would fit’ with the current crew. (4) Other small changes as well could occur. Specific verses were said to be changed out to target individual officers, or actions of officers thus, changing the lyrics of some verses but maintaining the core point of the song as a form of release and form of expression by the crew to officers. (5) Now to try and address your specific point of region variations. This would have appeared but again, these would be slight changes to the songs lyrics. I’ll give two examples\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_) (Norwegian)\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_2_) (South Australia)\n\nWhat is shown above are the slight changes that occur in a shanty to match the crew make up, or the port of all. The song itself keeps the core of a return to port,however changes are found in name (miss Nancy Blair) as well as rounding Cape Horn.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis is a very small change, and others were seen in the popular song “The Liverpool Judies” which could interchange different ports (Liverpool for Newyork or San Francisco) but the core of the song about being shanghaied would be kept even if markers of the outgoing port changed. However greater changes could occur giving better representation to the oceans and ports where the ship was sailing. The last example of change, and sadly not regional, is of “re-purposing” a shanty. Songs about sweethearts who were off fighting Napoleon saw lyrics which marked places, events, etc, change in order to adapt to sailing around Cape Horn to California. (6) What I want to try and capture in this, while giving examples which touch of change and variation as per your question, is that there was no real established canon of lyrics. Thus, with the turn over of crews, and the immense cultural diversity of crews, Shanties saw great change and variation within just the Anglo seafaring world. Shanties were noted by original collectors and current scholarship for the influences specifically from African/west-Indian, and African-American music but also from Continental European. This matches the crew makeup and demonstrates that shantites were highly mutable.\n\nI want to make two conclusions here. First, Sea shanties did have regional variations, but more exemplar of the shanty would be to say that the regional variation was one based on the changes, always in movement, and mutability of the oceans and the effects of this space upon those who plied a trade upon it. Studying the human interface with the ocean, how we have been shaped by our interactions and how these interactions of turned around to shape out perception of the ocean. For Shanties, the regional variations were thus based on ports of call, the composition of, for all intents and purposes the geographical, political, cultural, land which was the ship, that the present crew lived within. Second, and off topic a bit from your question but tied directly to it is the question of identity. During this very same period English travelers who wrote about maritime communities commented about the similarities they saw among those across the British isles, France, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. While land based folksongs, had far less, and slower change, Shanties were always in motion. Contemporaries would not have understood a specific canon of “folk music” as sailors, but of a series of core songs and rhymes which could be found on every ship and song by crew members from around the globe. While the words varied, the locations rooted to the songs change (this being markedly different from land), there was a shared knowledge and identity through the meanings of the songs based on a shared and globe experience of life at sea. James Carpenter in 1931, commenting about the strangest and the cosmopolitanism found what he was looking for “British” shanties said: ‘But the chanteys arose, not from an integral race with common ideals a background, shut in by accommodatingly stationary mountains and seas, but from the sons of Cain, bounded by the ever-shifting walls of the forecastle.’(7)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n1. Peter Mandler, ‘Against Englishness: English Culture and the Limits to Rural Nostalgia’; Robert Colls, *Identity of England* (Oxford, 2002).\n2. Davud Atkinson, ‘Folk Songs in Print: Text and Tradition’\n3. See, Eric Sager *Seafaring Labour: The Merchant Marine of Atlantic Canada*; Paul Van Royen etc, al. *Those Emblems of Hell? European Sailors and the Maritime Labour Market, 1570-1870*.\n4. Harry E. Piggott, ‘Sailors’ Chanties’ *Journal of the Folk SOng Society* 5,20 (1916) 306-15.\n5. R.A Fletcher, *In the Days of the Tall Ships*, 326-8.\n6. See, Bullen, *Songs of Sea Labour*, xiii.\n7. James Carpenter, ‘Life Before the Mast: A Chantey Log’ *New York Times Magazine* 19 July 1931, 14-15.\n\nOther\n\n\\-Arthur Knevett, ‘Cultural and Political Origins of the Folk-Song Society and the Irish Dimension’, *Folk Music Journal* 10,5 (2015)\n\n\\-Stan Hugill, *Shanties From the Seven Seas* (London, 1961(\n\n\\* -Kelby Rose, ‘Nostalgia and Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Sea Shanties’ *Mariner’s Mirror*, 98 (2013)\n\n\\-Frank T Bullen, *Songs of Sea Labour* (London, 1914)\n\n\\-W.B Whall, *Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties* (Glasgow, 1910)\n\n\\-Graeme Milne, 'Collecting the Sea Shanty: British Maritime Identity and Atlantic Musical Cultures in the Early Twentieth Century' *IJMH* 29,2 2017"
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2klsp7 | why we care that companies track our web browsing to create targeted ads for us? | I understand that some people claim it's a violation of privacy, but I have to say that I've found several good things through targeted ads (related to sites I had recently viewed.)
Why all the outrage regarding privacy when in it helps us see ads that we might actually care about? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2klsp7/eli5_why_we_care_that_companies_track_our_web/ | {
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"It's because people find their privacy being protected more important than seeing ads they might care about. Think of it as a person coming into your house unwanted and looking at all your belongings, ignoring you when you tell them to go away.\n\nWhen he says \"hey, I see you like to collect nutcrackers, here's the address of a store that sells them!\" does that make the unwanted invasion of your home okay?"
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b243uq | why does wearing heels appear to enhance female appearance and appeal? is it cultural or biological or psychological? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b243uq/eli5_why_does_wearing_heels_appear_to_enhance/ | {
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"Guess: I'd say cultural because heels were used by men (I'm thinking of Louis XIV)",
"Makes the butt stick up and out",
"Makes their butt stick out more and tenses up the calves making their legs look nicer",
"It's cultural. They do change the way a woman looks but the response (\"that specific look is better than when she doesn't wear heels\") is cultural. That's why you hear stories about other cultures or time periods having different ideals of beauty (eg pale skin or extra weight are signs of prosperity and are therefore attractive). Heels and the cultural views of them and beauty are so widespread that it seems universal but its new and its not. ",
"Depends on when and where you live, actually.\n\nHigh heels as we know it - enhancing female appearance - only got popular after WWII with the rise of pin-up girls. Previously it's non-existent and it's not considered as sexy or whatever.\n\nIn fact, Louis XIV wore a pair of high heels. The shoes weren't considered to be sexy, it's even considered impractical. However it was expensive because it's difficult to made, as such it's considered high status.\n\nSo no, it's not biological. Far from it."
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7a9rqj | does getting hit on the head have to do with losing your taste buds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7a9rqj/eli5_does_getting_hit_on_the_head_have_to_do_with/ | {
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"Your tongue has many taste buds which send small signals to your brain whenever it tastes different things. When you hit your head just right, you can make it hard for those taste buds to communicate effectively. This can mean you lose one of your senses. Personally, I'd hate to never be able to taste chocolate again! "
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1525cz | [Physics] Since LCDs rotate polarized light, why is the light not circularly polarized? | LCDs rotate the plane of polarization by 90 degrees. For some reason, rotating the plane of polarization is not the same as circular polarization. Can someone explain why? - regarding circular polarization in particular (I think I know a bit about plane polarization). | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1525cz/physics_since_lcds_rotate_polarized_light_why_is/ | {
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"I think you are confused by the definition of circular polarization. Circular polarization is a description on the relative orientation of the E and B fields in the electromagnetic wave, which is plane independent. ",
"Linear polarization is when the electric field is pointing in one direction. Circular polarization is when there are two electric field components orthogonal to each other and 90 degrees out of phase. Think odd it like a 3D coordinate system. If it is traveling in the 'Z' direction then the electric fields are in the 'X' and 'Y' directions. Because of the phase difference, the resulting vector will appear as an E-field with a constant strength rotating along the direction it is traveling. \n\nIn the case of the LCD, it is physically changing the direction of the linearly polarized E-field. The circularly polarized electrically changes the direction of the resulting vector between two E-fields."
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3llmzw | if color is the wavelength then what exactly is brightness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3llmzw/eli5_if_color_is_the_wavelength_then_what_exactly/ | {
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"It's the wave intensity.\n\nWavelength is the distance between each wave's peak whereas the intensity is the \"height\" of each wave.",
"Two things are at play here. One is the actual physical properties of light. The other is the way we *perceive* those qualities.\n\nPhotons do have a wavelength. We perceive an individual wavelength as a particular color -- even though we don't actually sense each individual wavelength. Instead, we have three types of receptors in our eye that have [peak sensitivity](_URL_0_) at different wavelengths. Our brains use the information from each of the three types to figure out the wavelength (color) of the light we're seeing.\n\nHOWEVER... our eyes can't really tell us much of anything from a single photon. Instead, we're bombarded by a BUNCH (technical term) of photons. We use the information from a bunch of photons striking a bunch of receptors in a particular area of our retina to determine color.\n\nBrightness is NOT a fundamental property of a photon. A photon of a particular wavelength has a predictable energy. What creates \"brightness\" is the NUMBER OF PHOTONS entering our eye. Lots of photons = bright. Few photons = dim."
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9hddud | why does the letter "s" always stand out slightly from other letters in conversation? | If I'm down the hall from people having a conversation, and I can just barely make it out, everything sounds hazy but I always hear the S's clearly. Turn on a TV or any media with dialogue and it has the same effect at this distance. During performances or speeches using mic's, S's echo longer and louder than the other letters. What causes the S to be so distinguished like this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hddud/eli5_why_does_the_letter_s_always_stand_out/ | {
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"S is a sibilant, which means it is made up of high pitched noises. Since most other letters use lower pitches of sounds, the S stands out when it is spoken.\n\nTo compare, S is usually made of noise around 7,000 Hz high, but pretty much all other sounds don't use anything higher than 5,000 Hz. In fact, over the telephone, you won't hear anything over about 3,500 Hz because most sounds don't need that range to be heard. That's why sibilants are so unusual and stand out so much."
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3p1s5x | Does the terminal velocity of a fluid depend on its viscosity? | So a question that stems from that: if I dropped a drop of water and a drop of maple syrup out of an airplane, which hits the ground first? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3p1s5x/does_the_terminal_velocity_of_a_fluid_depend_on/ | {
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"No. You can even drop *solids* and they still fall at pretty much the same rate. Although something with less viscosity is likely to break into smaller pieces, which would slow it down, or something like that.\n\nWhat does matter is the viscosity of the fluid you drop it through. If you dropped a rock in water and maple syrup, it will fall faster through the water."
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sdsv0 | the arguments for 9/11 being an 'inside job' | Title.
EDIT: What I wanted was an (unbiased) account of some of the actual arguments used. Like evidence and such. I didn't want just people saying that arguments did exist and people's motives for having them.
EDIT 2: My inbox hates you guys. :D | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sdsv0/eli5_the_arguments_for_911_being_an_inside_job/ | {
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"~~Check out the documentary [Loose Change](_URL_0_)~~.\n\nIts a 2 hour documentary about various conspiracy theories regarding 9/11\n\nI know this isn't an ELI5 answer, but just thought I'd share the video; if you're interested in conspiracies and stuff.\n\nEDIT: Ok, seems Loose Change isn't such a good documentary for this ELI5. (I don't know too much about this stuff)",
"Some demolition experts were claiming that the buildings fell too perfectly, like the whole building was wired with explosives. Sounds absurd to me.",
"Essentially they think it was staged to give us an exuse to go to a \"War on Terror\"",
"I don't think this is a very good topic for ELI5, but here's my quick attempt:\n\nA lot of things happened on 9/11 that have never happened in the history of America. Because of this, many people don't understand some of the more specific moments of that day. Everyone knows what the big picture is, but the argument is in the details.\n\nThink of it like a puzzle with some pieces missing. We can put most of the puzzle back together and it's starting to look like a barn. But there are people who believe that those missing puzzle pieces are important enough that if we found them, we'd realize that the barn is really a drug dealer's house.",
"There are hundreds of different arguments for it -- human nature to try to make things fit.\n\nBut to answer what I think is your actual question: Some people don't like/trust the government so they suspect they are behind 9/11. Arguments follow as soon as you can think of some.\n\nEdit: Every damn time. I don't believe in 9/11 conspiracies or any crap like that, I'm attempting to answer the OP's question.",
"Some of the main points as I understand them (as well as my own criticisms of them):\n\n- The towers could not have fallen as perfectly as they did without it being a controlled demolition. The problem with this is that to set up a controlled demolition for any building takes a long time, even when workers have free reign of the abandoned structure. To successfully set up a controlled demolition of two of the tallest buildings in the world while successfully keeping the process a secret from the thousands of people who visited every day would probably take longer than those buildings have even existed.\n\n- The jet fuel would not have burned hot enough to melt the steel support structures of the building. The problem with this is that it assumes steel would maintain 100% structural integrity until it reached its melting point.\n\n- The wings of the plane that supposedly hit the pentagon left no holes in the walls, so clearly the pentagon must have been hit by something like a missile. Aside from the fact that this assumes the hijackers would be able to perfectly fly the planes into the building without ever hitting the ground at an angle (which would almost certainly shear the wings off), it basically assumes [something like this](_URL_1_) is scientifically accurate.\n\n- There are no photos of plane wreckage at the Pentagon. [This is just bullshit.](_URL_0_)",
"A few things:\n\n* The Pentagon. The crash at the Pentagon is deceptively small. It is thus suspected that a missile or smaller aircraft than we thought hit the Pentagon. Simply, this theory does not take into account the reinforcement of the Pentagon, for a start. [Link](_URL_3_)\n\n* WTC, Building 7: People hear of another building collapsing besides the twin towers and assume something must be rotten in the state of Denmark. Indeed, building 7, near the twin towers, was destroyed by a **mysterious** fire. [Also, debris, but no one mentions that.](_URL_1_)\n\n* The towers themselves: People suppose that planes could not hit the towers hard enough nor could their fuel burn hot enough to destroy the towers. Many theorists point confidently towards [free fall](_URL_2_) as proof that something is fishy. Simply, there was [nothing fishy](_URL_0_), as usual.\n\n* Bush: 9/11 made for an excellent call to arms. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. We wouldn't care the least about any of that if not for 9/11. ~~Some people may point to the fact that we technically armed al-Quaeda during the Vietnam war (AFAIK, we did)~~ see Bombardiers' comment. A few things to note about this: there is no actual evidence, merely conjecture based on flimsy cloak-and-dagger BS; the assertion that Bush is competent is not one I take quickly to, I am unconvinced; there is no shadow government, there is some cloak and dagger, but nothing of the scale that would be required to silently, successfully pull of 9/11.",
"Well, I guess the main argument is that people who got profit/beneficial positions due to 9/11 are inside USA.\n\n * It justified \"defense\" spending, wars and stuff. Defense contractors, private security firms and so on got huge payments from government, at expense of public.\n\n * 9/11 enabled Patriot Act which give government more control on citizens.\n\n * Republican think tanks called for 9/11-like event:\n\n > Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled \"Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force\", includes the sentence: \"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor\" (51).\n\nThis comes from _Project for the New American Century (PNAC)_. It was written in 2000, before attack. \"The PNAC exerted influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and affected the Bush Administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.\"\n\nSo here's what we got so far: neocons wanted war to push their agenda, pretty much openly. Then soon after neocon president got in power, there is a huge terrorist attack. Response to sttack itself is less than stellar (Bush ignored memos which mentioned potential attack, hid during attack and so on), but then there is a huge and expensive retaliation war. At the same time they create Patriot Act and grab control.\n\nThis could be a coincidence, of course, but some people don't think so. (Note that Osama and his buddies didn't get anything cool out of it, unlike neocons.)\n\nThere are also some theories that 9/11 attack happened in a different way, like it was controlled demolition or something. If it was, indeed, that would reinforce arguments above, but it's not strictly necessary.\n\nBuildings collapsed in a rather complex way during 9/11 and people think that there's something unusual which suggests it was controlled demolition. But it's not like people know for sure how such large buildings _should_ collapse when they were hit by planes.",
"You want a ELI5 answer?\n\nPeople will believe whatever they want to believe. They will make up evidence or make connections in certain random events as a greater conspiracy. The logic becomes circular that everything leads back to a conspiracy and or lack of evidence in certain things is being hidden by the same conspiracy.\n\nIf you want to know why it is to make themselves feel important. A lot people live boring lives and want to romanticize certain events in a Hollywood fashion to make them appear more important and devious. As a result people who believe in conspiracies become heroes holding beacons of truth in a world blinded by ignorance because of the government. The reality is they are crazy and people who run \"9/11 truth sites\" and other conspiracy sites turn a profit on people like them who want to believe with a sort of cult like indoctrination into the fold \n\n",
"I am not american and don't live in the US so I can have a more objective look at just the facts. Sorry if it sounds callous or arrogant to americans, I certainly don't mean to.\n\nSince you are asking for an explanation, is not a list of arguements but an arbitrary summary of events with emphasis on why some people think 9/11 was an inside job.\n\n- **Immediately** after 9/11 people sought to rationalize the terrible events. Most blamed terrorists. A few fringe groups and conspiracy nuts claimed it was an inside job because that's what these groups do. There was no evidence of anything, just an outburst of emotions. Most people were panicked, griefing, or just bewildered.\n\n- **During the following months** people have been analyzing every detail of the extremely complex event, and they couldn't explain everything perfectly. This gave rise to the layperson 'youtube reporters' (Loose Change etc) who popularized the conspiracy theory through sensationalist half-facts. \n\n Arguements supporting the theory were mostly technical. How the towers collapsed was the major issue (ELI5: they collapsed in a strange way never before seen in similar - but not identical - accidents and extremely similar to controlled demolitions) that eventually reached an incredible level of analysis, down to the physical properties of the materials used. A similar debate was going on for the Pentagon crash and even Flight 93.\n\nThen there were details of how the planes reached their targets, what the reactions were, who was on the towers on that day, leaked memos and warnings that were seemingly ignored, etc. Everything was taken apart and analyzed, but little was analyzed by experts or even unbiased researchers, so doubt kept spreading.\n\nIn short, people got loads of information that were nowhere near enough to confirm any theories but sufficient to generate doubt about the official explanation of the events.\n\n- **During the following years** people calmed down and went about their daily lives. The big picture however, was not any more reassuring. In the years following 9/11 the US government - and to some extent the UK and the rest of Europe - played out a series of events that in retrospect began to look like every single major power play of history: cause or allow a catastrophy to happen, then instead of helping your own people launch a witch hunt within your own country while waging the war you always wanted on the outside. This has happened literally thousands of times before, it is quite literally one of the oldest tricks in the book, so it isn't really a stretch to imagine.\n\n**tl;dr:** \n\n- People, especially laypersons, can't grasp all the extremely complicated facts so they make up their own.\n- The towers collapsed in an unusual way, the government behaved unusually before, during and after the events.\n- In hindsight, [the Duck test](_URL_0_).",
"Good luck having an unbiased answer (toward one side or the other).",
"Although the [5 min summary](_URL_0_) mentioned before is decent, none of the previous comments fairly describe the evidence being claimed by the truth movement. Short of reading a book like David Ray Griffin's definitive [Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory](_URL_7_), I offer the following.\n\nThe strongest 9/11 truth arguments are related to the complete demolition of both towers and the nearby 47 story building 7, by two airplanes. Although these arguments are best presented by the [videos at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth](_URL_1_), where over 1,600 professional architects and engineers have put their entire professional careers on the line for the sake of this evidence, I will try to summarize a few salient points.\n\nThe speed of the collapse of each tower approximated free fall, and in the case of building 7, was admitted as free fall by the NIST. In response, Truthers have asked the valid question: how is it possible for a steel structured building to fall through itself at that rate? What is the physical explanation for every connection in an undamaged section of a building failing at once? To this day the NIST and others such as Popular Mechanics have not provided a scientifically satisfactory explanation. Most people don't even know the pancake theory was abandoned. I would love to get into details, but to summarize, those reports work like a Hollywood set, they were written to give people a reason to believe, not to apply science and generate a hypotheses based on evidence. For example, did you know the NIST didn't even analyze the behavior of the building post collapse initiation, stating that [what happened next was clear from the video?](_URL_3_) \n\nThat ain't science folks. Really, watch that video. It truly angers me when people say our arguments have no evidentiary basis. The evidence is extremely strong and it's been their tact to distort and hide the evidence, not ours.\n\nTo continue, there's only one method for bringing a heavily fortified steel structured building down in it's footprint at free fall speed: demolition. So the Truthers have also asked the valid question: was there any evidence of demolition. And the answer is yes many times over. First, there was molten steel in the rubble lasting for days (jet fuel is basically kerosene, doesn't get hot enough and doesn't burn for days). But again this fact was brazenly denied in full by the NIST [despite tons of evidence to the contrary](_URL_3_). Further, independent labs studying steel and dust from the towers have found [unexploded red nanothermite chips](_URL_4_). And the list goes on, from explosions in the basement prior to airplane impact, to explosions seen below the damaged area of the building, to thermite that can be seen [pouring out of the building](_URL_6_). \n\nReally there's too much evidence to list here. And worse, the blatant lies proffered as explanations can be found in every strand of the fantastical official story. For example did you know that in order to accept NORADS current explanation for why scrambled jets never reached the hijacked planes you have to accept that they were lying for years previously? Or that the hijackers were staying with intelligence assets prior to the events? \n\nIt's also worth mentioning that all those claiming \"too many people had to be in on it\" are painfully naive about [how the world works](_URL_2_) in our era. Go ahead, try and yell the truth from the mountaintops. See what happens. \n\nTL;DR On 9/11 [both the upper building sections pictured here](_URL_5_) fell at the same speed. Based on physics that is impossible without explosives, evidence for which was everywhere. \n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"[Loose change is bullshit.](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"I think this argument of why it's suspicious and worth investigating is unbiased: Due to the way that building 7 fell it's extremely hard to not call it suspicious and worthy of an serious investigation and there was not. This was very huge and very public structural failure and rather than investigate it thoroughly and have a bulletproof explanation of why there was failure that the engineering community as a whole could accept they scrapped the steel very quickly effectively destroying the \"crime scene\" as it were. \n\nIgnoring completely who orchestrated the whole debacle, the way building 7 fell IS consistent with demolition. Not to say it was for sure, but it would be worth a thorough investigation to find out why a building that was structurally over-designed (if I remember correctly) imploded because of a fire. \n\nThere are enough Engineers, Architects and other building professionals that are on both sides of the issue that I believe it shows that there should have been some kind of independent forensic inquiry, which I don't believe happened. \n\nNot the best analogy but the point is there: If 5 doctors were certain my headaches were caused by tumors and 10 were equally certain it was caused by excessive jell-o consumption, I'd let those boys and girls have another gander at the old noodle just to be so we could cross a few things off the list if nothing else.",
"Well, basically the main reason why so many people believe it was an \"inside job\" is that so many things from that day do not add up. Bear in mind, also, that there is a whole spectrum of folks who range from those who have some unanswered questions (which should be everyone, really), those that doubt key areas of the official account, those that believe the US Government was complicit, right through to fruitcake-ville, where some folks don't even think there were planes and that the whole thing was CGI. I've tried to look at all of the evidence available and to keep an open mind. This is an immensely complicated topic and I believe it's not possible to distill everything for ELI5, at least in one dose, but I will try to go over the basic arguments.\n\nFirstly, you need to go right back to basics. War, oil, money, and the military industrial complex. After the Cold War was waning, the MIC was languishing. You also had a group of people called the neoconservatives (neocons) rising to power in the White House. It was a [well-known and documented part of the neocon agenda](_URL_0_) to engage in theatre warfare in the middle-east. They didn't hide this fact, they wanted it. They also argued that it would be [difficult to achieve their agenda without garnering support of the American public](_URL_0_#.22New_Pearl_Harbor.22). They stated in September 2000 that an *event* was needed like a new Pearl Harbor.\n\nWell, by lucky \"coincidence\" (for the neocons), they received their new Pearl Harbor one year later. 9/11 provided the public outrage necessary to justify invasion of the middle-east. By declaring a \"War on Terror\", a war which by it's very definition *can never be won or completed*, the neocons realised their agenda and achieved not only war in the middle-east, but a Cold War-esque state of \"perpetual war\" that continually siphons money to the military industrial complex, *with no clear end in sight*. Nowadays, war is a money-making racket for elites, no more, no less.\n\nLet's look at 9/11 itself a little closer. The term \"conspiracy theory\" is thrown around all too often these days in the same realm as bigfoot and UFOs: only kooks believe in them. But let's remind ourselves, that the official account of 9/11, is by definition, *a conspiracy theory*: the theory that a bunch of muslims conspired to hijack planes and crash them into key US targets. It's still a theory, because much of the evidence linking the hijackers, Bin Laden, and \"al Qaeda\" is tenuous at best. For example, the FBI never listed 9/11 on Bin Laden's Most Wanted page because they did not have enough evidence to link him to it.\n\nIt's a conspiracy theory, but if you follow the official account, it's also a \"coincidence theory\", because there are so many coincidences occurring on that day, so many things all simultaneously going wrong, or out of the ordinary, that it enters the realm of extreme coincidence:\n\n* you have not one but four jet airliners off-course with transponders disabled, with fighter intercepts occurring over 120 times the previous year for errant aircraft within minutes, yet no intercepts occurred this day;\n\n* there is a military exercise taking place on 9/11 with fake radar inputs and bogus targets, causing massive confusion on the ground, not to mention the relocation of many fighters to other parts of the US;\n\n* intact passports found on the ground close to crash sites for the alleged hijackers (2 in Penn, 1 in NY), surviving fireballs of intense heat and a crash site in Penn where the plane was obliterated, leaving virtually no wreckage (IIRC one foreign guy's passport was left in Atta's bag but he was allowed to board without it);\n\n* a $2.3 trillion dollar hole in the Pentagon's budget - that's right, $2,300,000,000,000 dollars - was missing, as announced by Rummy on 9/10, with the plane impact the next day obliterating the accounting office at the Pentagon where information was held pertaining to this;\n\n* unusual airline stock trading in the days leading up to 9/11 - put options used to \"bet\" that United and AA's stock would dramatically fall, up to almost 300 times the regular average amount - this appears to indicate prior knowledge;\n\n* PATRIOT Act released within days of 9/11; this document was lying in wait for an event to occur where it could be unleashed;\n\nIf you are interested in learning more and trying to avoid kook-ville, try reading some books by David Ray Griffin. He's probably one of the most scholarly and well-respected authors on the subject, and raises probably some of the most well-researched and documented arguments against the official account. Webster Griffin Tarpley also has some good books, but I found his works to be less credible.",
"The Pentagon was **massively damaged** by the impact of flight 77.\n\nThe problem, I think, that people have with it is imagining the aircraft approaching the building laterally, in the same way that the Twin Towers were hit. But striking the pentagon laterally, i.e horizontally, coming in over the carpark, is impossible.\n\nThat is not how Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. The building is not a skyscraper. To hit the target, the a/c dived from above, maybe more than 45 degrees angle of attack, with it's port-side wingtip down (I like to imagine that the passengers were right in their fucking faces at that stage, the cunts). They nearly missed.\n\nIt is this trailing wingtip which sliced the gash into the outside of the building. The rest of the a/c plunged into the depths of the inner rings and caused massive damage. A lot of people survived intimate proximity with the impact due to the fact that the walls were massive constructs, designed to withstand a nuclear blast. that's why the pentagon death toll was so low. \n\nThe vast destruction is more obvious from aerial shots of the Pentagon.\n\nGo USA.\n\n**EDITED to correct the spelling of 'proximity'**",
"There are none since you ask for evidence. There are only wild suppositions and flights of fancy.",
"Please note: Many people asking questions about 9-11 are victims families, people in the services and expert engineers and demolishers in the industry. \n\nI can't answer this fairly because I am biased (haven researched it for a number of years). \n\n[This is a link](_URL_0_) to an expert scrutiny of the evidence around 9-11. It is objective, fact driven and highly detailed. It concludes that there are a great deal of discrepancies with the official report. A strong case is put forward suggesting the use of explosives. \n\n",
"*knock knock*\n\n\"Who's there?\"\n\n*9/11*\n\n\"9/11 who?\"\n\n*You said you'd never forget!*",
"The way i understand that theory is that the War on Terror was very unpopular to the general population. Upon 9/11, everyone was disgusted by the terrorist and the reaction towards the war changed, it changed particularly in the way that the government wanted so therefore we could continue both wars with the support of (in general) the american population",
"\"The great masses of the people . . .will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.\" -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf\n\n\"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.\" -- J. Edgar Hoover, former FBI director\n\n\"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.\" -- Marshall McLuhan",
"I think it might be far fetched to say 9/11 was a complete inside job. There are so many holes in what happened, and to me it just seems like the current government at the time might have found a way to kind of let it happen. This is under the assumption it was a terrorist act, but we kind of let it happen.",
"So, we think a bunch of guys with box cutters got on some planes and killed the pilot and crew with kung fu, then flew the planes into buildings and stuff. Lots of people got killed and it was like a R rated movie. \n\nThey blamed this guy named Osama who lived in a cave in Afghanistan. \n\nBut I think it was like this time that I didn't want to eat my broccoli so I put in the vase next to the table. My Mom found it and she was like, who did this, and I didn't want to get in trouble so I was like, my brother Tom did it. Besides Tom punched me in the nuts the week before. My sister Marion didn't like Tom so she vouched for me. So Tom had to do dishes for a week. Only with Osama, they got lots of people to vouch, and instead of dishes for a week they just shot him.",
"I dont understand why it is so difficult to accept that terrorists hijacked a series of planes and used them to strike targets in the US?\n\nMeans, motive, opportunity. Its not a stretch at all. They had done similar attacks and even targetted the WTC earlier.",
"[Popular mechanic , an independent science based magazine did a great analysis of it ](_URL_0_)\n\ngo down they take all issues point by point.",
"[Operation Northwoods](_URL_0_):\n > Operation Northwoods was a series of false-flag proposals that originated in 1962 within the United States government, and which the Kennedy administration rejected. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere. These acts of terrorism were to be blamed on Cuba in order to create public support for a war against that nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro.\n\nAnd especially this:\n > One of the most fascinating aspects of Operation Northwoods involved the proposed hijacking of an American passenger plane. The JCS proposed that a real plane containing American passengers would be hijacked by friendly forces disguised as Cuban agents. The plane would drop down off the radar screen and be replaced by a pilotless aircraft, which would crash, purportedly killing all the passengers. Under the plan, the real passenger plane would be secretly flown back to the United States.",
"The way that the 3 buildings fell appears like a demolition.\n\nThe Bush administration didn't act on warnings beforehand.\n\nThe Bush administration profited immensely from the war.\n\nOsama Bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks initially and only a week or two later did an old grainy video surface that had him (or someone that looked like him) vaguely talking about attacking the west.\n\nThere is no video of a plane hitting the pentagon and there wasn't much debris at the scene. It looks like a missile hit it. It happened to hit an area of the pentagon that was closed for repairs.\n\nThe U.S. has considered staging attacks in the past to get support behind war. Germany did something similar during WWII. [1](_URL_1_), [2](_URL_0_)\n\nThat's all that comes off of the top of my head at the moment. The wikipedia articles have lots of info.\n\nI don't know what happened, but there is plenty that seems like it just doesn't fit. If Bush & Co. did orchestrate this, it certainly paid off. The war has been used to funnel billions of dollars into the hands of military contractors and weapons manufacturers. Israel can maintain it's victim status in the middle east so they can pretend that everyone is out to get them and continue to get billions of dollars in support from the U.S.",
"There are so many, I won't give you a proper explanation, I'll just put together a timeline.\n\n* Military Industrial Complex wasn't doing to well.\n* Neocons wrote a document called \"The Project for a New American Century\" which has quite accurately described what has happened over the last 10 years.\n* Document said they wouldn't be able to achieve their goals without some 'catalysmic or catalysing even, like a new Pearl Harbour'\n* One year later September 11th happened.\n* There were drills taking place that very same day, for the very same scenario, which clouded/prevented a proper response.\n* The towers fell at *near* free fall speed. Scientific investigation (not some armchair warriors) demonstrated that this was, to all intents and purposes, impossible.\n* The towers did not fall towards the path of least resistance and instead collapsed right through themselves. They should have toppled over, something which has been demonstrated in earthquakes all over. Failing buildings fall over, not through themselves. (think about a structure, if it is going to fall over, does it fall towards where there is failing support, or does it fall absolutely right through itself?)\n* The buildings were designed to be hit by MULTIPLE 737's.\n* WTC7 - a 47 story building - also fell down that day. It also fell 'through' itself, rather than falling over (assuming it was significantly damaged to justify it's fall) Building experts looking at footage of WTC7's collapse WITHOUT knowing the source of the video all agreed it was a controlled demoliton.\n* Because of the near impossibility of the way the towers fell, there seemed to be a hole in the data. A theory that explosives were inside the building was originally put forward by Professor Steven E. Jones in 2004.\n* The theory gathered momentum, and eventually, it was a very carefully crafted hypotheisis for \"why the towers fell\" and it proposed that Thermite/Thermate was used to \"cut\" vital structural components at the same time so that the building fell uniformly into its own footprint.\n* This hypothesis has been demonstrated very well through careful replication, thermite CAN be used to cut through steel without making an 'explosion' sound.\n* Many eyewitnesses and video accounts show images that are consistent with the high grade reaction of thermite. Just google them and you'll see.\n* There are countless witnesses (which were ignored by the official investigation) that heard/saw explosions in the building BEFORE the first plane even hit.\n* There were explosions on the base of WTC1 and WTC2 which destroyed HUGE areas of the building - this is consistent with the controlled demolition hypothesis. Demolition experts BLOW OUT the basement of the building prior to demolition so the debris can 'fall into it'\n* Tests on WTC dust have shown traces of thermite in them - consistent with the hypothesis that thermite was used to help bring the towers down.\n* The final rubble of the collapse got white hot, and it remained white hot for weeks. NIST has entirely ignored this data. Hydrocarbon fires (as in fire that burns from kerosene, or furniture, or other low grade fuels) CANNOT get anywhere near hot enough to melt steel, and yet molten steel was seen by EVERYONE on the site, there is NASA satelite imagery that shows there was molten steel, there are pictures of it, and there is physical evidence of it. How did it get molten? Thermite can burn hot enough to create molten steel.\n* Two weeks prior to the collapse of the towers, work was being conducted by a strange firm. This was witnessed by a british man who was head of IT of both buildings. He saw them laying what he assumed was network cables, but he thought it strange because he was not told and he was IT manager. There were entire floors of WTC which were empty for weeks at a time, and it was here that these men were seen conducting their work.\n\n\nThat's literally about 2-3% of the evidence. I've tried to stick to the key stuff which I learned about doing my dissertation. There are HUNDREDS of supporting documents for all of my assertions. I highly recommend David Ray Griffin, Steven E Jones, and the work of scholars and engineers for 9/11 truth.",
"I still say the most compelling argument is the pictures of debris directly after the attacks that show several main support columns cut at a perfect 45deg angle with slag showing that is identical to making a cut with an acetylene torch.",
"Other people have already said more than enough on the subject, but I'm going to point out if you want more of an explanation on why the government would want to attack it's own city, I recommend checking out the pilot episode of the X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunman, which according to [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) \"...involves a US government conspiracy to hijack an airliner, fly it into the World Trade Center and blame it on terrorists, thereby gaining support for a new profit-making war.\"\n\n\nOh, and that episode aired six months *before* September 11th. I'm not much of a conspiracy nut, but that little coincidence always makes me contemplate making a tinfoil hat.",
"William Cooper on June 28, 2001 PREDICTED 9/11 WOULD HAPPEN! This broadcast alone should make everyone do 2 things: 1. Start to question 911 (if they havent already) 2. Start your education and start listening to the hour of the time (bill cooper's radio station).\n\nThe \"conspiracy\" happens when you read that bill cooper was shot and killed in Nov. 2001 (after 911). He was gunned down by a sherrifs office.\n\n[PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS IF YOU LISTEN TO ANYTHING!](_URL_0_)_",
"[The 9/11 Conspiracy Theory in under five minutes](_URL_0_).",
"Ever heard of the \"[Illuminati Card Game](_URL_0_)\"?\n\nOut in 1995...",
"**A Scientific Theory of the WTC 7 Collapse by Michael Fullerton February 14, 2011**\n\nThe best alternative to NIST’s WTC 7 theory is the controlled demolition theory. This theory states that additional sources of energy other than fire and gravity were used to bring down WTC 7. The strongest theories contend that these alternate energy sources included explosives and incendiaries. It is common knowledge that shaped charges can cut through steel support columns.\n\n_URL_5_\n\n**Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe**\n\nSources:\n\nDepartment of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark\n\nDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA\n\nS & J Scientific Co., Provo, UT, 84606, USA\n\n9/11 Working Group of Bloomington, Bloomington, IN 47401, USA\n\nLogical Systems Consulting, Perth, Western Australia\n\nArchitects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA\n\nInternational Center for 9/11 Studies, Dallas, TX 75231, USA\n\n_URL_9_\n\n**Former Chief Economist under President Bush, Morgan Reynolds (Ph.D)**: “If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the WTC on 9/11, then the case of an ‘inside job’ and a government attack on America would be compelling.” -- _URL_2_\n\n**Assistant Secretary of Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Roberts**: “I know many qualified engineers and scientists have said the WTC collapsed from explosives. In fact, if you look at the manner in which it fell, you have to give their conclusions credibility.” - _URL_0_\n\n**Robert M. Bowman, Head of Advanced Space Programs for the DOD **– “…Others go further. They are absolutely sure Cheney and company actually planned and carried out the attack. What is so disturbing is that their arguments are quite convincing. If an enormous cloud of suspicion is not to be permanently over the head of our government, the Bush Administration must come clean releasing information thus far withheld from the American people. - _URL_1_\n\n**Michael Meacher UK Minister of Environment (1997-2003)**: The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. - _URL_6_\n\n**U.S. Senator Mark Dayton**: said NORAD officials “lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission to create a false impression of competence, communication and protection of the American people. -\n_URL_3_\n\n**U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney**: led a Capitol Hill hearing Friday July 22n2005 on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “What we are doing is asked the unanswered questions of the 9/11 families.” - _URL_8_\n\n**Professor David Ray Griffin Renowned Theologian in LA Times**: The fact that Building 7 collapsed when it had not been hit by an airplane, and collapsed in seven or eight seconds, that’s a smoking gun. - _URL_4_\n\n**Catherine Austin Fitts, Ass. Sect. of Housing for President Bush**: _URL_7_\n\nTL:DR - **Nano-thermite was not prepared in a cave in Afghanistan...**"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie0qr60NJiU"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.google.com/search?q=plane+remains+at+pentagon&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=sBSNT5W_DoaiiQKEyv3ZCA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAQ&biw=1214&bih=629",
"http://cdn.videogum.com/files/2010/10/DVD-PlayerScreenSnapz022.jpg"
],
[
"http://www.debunking911.com/freefall.htm",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center#9.2F11_and_collapse",
"http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/wtc7/speed.html",
"http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagon/index.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test"
],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98&feature=youtu.be",
"http://ae911truth.org/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community",
"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501",
"http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html",
"http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6245466/same_speed.jpeg",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmuzyWC60eE&feature=player_embedded",
"http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X"
],
[
"http://youtu.be/CoUAaWv1L0U"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#.22New_Pearl_Harbor.22"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=isTGuaaln9A&list=PL621A4B03C1169C78"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen_%28TV_series%29"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTjPGy2k_U"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfyiao80I9c"
],
[
"http://www.cuttingedge.org/News/n1753.cfm"
],
[
"http://www.wanttoknow.info/050908insidejob911#roberts",
"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6900065571556128674",
"http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8180123292618944278",
"http://web.archive.org/web/20040811061345/http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/4904237.html",
"http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/0801-911Press.html",
"http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/02/14/a-scientific-theory-of-the-wtc-7-collapse/",
"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8274552561914055825",
"http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041101130426916",
"http://www.wanttoknow.info/050317wargames911",
"http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf"
]
] |
|
fw132 | I regret not learning more about physics while in college. Can r/askscience recommend a book(s) to bring me up to speed on as wide a variety of physics topics as is feasible? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fw132/i_regret_not_learning_more_about_physics_while_in/ | {
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"text": [
"*The Road to Reality* by Penrose.",
"Physics for future presidents _URL_1_\n\nA textbook that's used in this great class. _URL_0_",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is an excellent thread from /r/physics that I found really useful.",
"This was the most riveting and inspiring book that I have read on physics in quite awhile. The author writes it in a way that nearly anyone could understand it. In fact often times he says \"skip to this page if you already understand the basics of ______.\"\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=095393D5B42B2266",
"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691135045/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=1278548962&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0393066274&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0A90FRPZ2A4NR84AHVSZ"
],
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/fnhld/learning_theoretical_physics/"
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"http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-mc2-Should-Care/dp/B004LQ0ICE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299102838&sr=8-1"
]
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||
7a46e2 | how were integrals, derivatives, limits, and other calculus concepts originally discovered and applied? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7a46e2/eli5_how_were_integrals_derivatives_limits_and/ | {
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"They were discovered thousands of years ago, but the methods for that were super complex. Someone ssked Newton how he knew that earth had an elliptical orbit and not circular. So he went home and invented Calculus to explain his reasoning. ",
"An extremely brief summary would be like this:\n\nIf you look at the parabola y=x^2 +1 plotted on a graph, you'll notice that its not a straight line. \n\nAt first we looked at the average rate of change, e.g. if you look at the average rate of change between (0,1) and (10,101), we average a change of 10 units in y per unit change in x.\n\nthe formula for this was (f(x+h) - f(x))/((x+h)-x) where above, x = 0, h = 10. If we choose a smaller h, or a negative h, we can still determine this value. However, if we choose h = 0, we get 0/0, which does not equal zero, but we don't know what it is since we divide by zero. \n\nSo what if we choose something infinitely small for h, which is basically zero, what is that rate of change. What is the rate of change at that instant, or the instantaneous rate of change for x.\n\nSo if we plug that formula in with y= x^2 + 1, we find that it equals 2x. So the instantaneous rate of change at x is 2x for any point on that parabola. This is the basic premise for all derivatives is calculating the instantaneous rate of change for all points. \n\nSo there, we had to use limits to get around dividing by zero by dividing by almost zero, and we found derivatives. \n\nTo come up with integrals, we used process similar to the following. If we traveled with velocity of 5m/s for 10 seconds, how far did we travel. Well if we graph velocity, and look at the area under that constant line of 5, we find 50 m/s*s or 50m which we know is correct. But what if we were not travelling at a constant velocity. well the logic still holds that its the area under the curve of velocity.\n\nSo if we use rectangles, one unit wide, each at the height of the velocity at the start of the rectange, we can approximate the distance. By using smaller rectangles, we can get a better guess. But what if we use Infinity rectangles, our guess would be perfect. So an integral is shorthand for the limit as we take an inifinite number of rectangles up to the curve from one point to another point, which happens to yield antiderivatives.\n\n\n",
"Math is like a toolbox. Trying to describe parts of nature without math is like building a house with your bare hands. It can be done, but will take a very long time. \n\nFor both integrals and differentials it has historically been a matter of making calculations smarter, the same way tools have become smarter over time.\n\n**Integrals:**\n\nSay you're an ancient egyptian and want to build a house, and that particular house needs a curved gable. Naturally you want to know how much material you'll need for this gable. \n\nAn initial guess could be that you take the height of the gable, multiply by the width and divide by 2 to get the amount of material (similar to a triangular gable). But you quickly realize that this is not a very good approximation. \n\nYou then get the idea that you could divide each side of the triangle into very small parts, in the process getting closer to the shape of the gable by essentially \"rounding\" it. If you keep doing this you get to point where each part of your approximation of the gable is infinitely small. This is integration in a nut shell. \n\nSay your gable can be described by the formula: f(x) = -x^2 + 2x.\n\nThen the initial guess would give Area = (1*2)/2 = 1\n\nUsing integrals you get Area = ∫ (0 to 2) -x^2 + 2x = -8/3 + 4 ≈ 1,33\n\nThis is a simple example, but this could very well be how integrals first was applied in Ancient Egypt. No one knows for certain who first came up with the idea of trying to use infinitely small parts to calculate an area.\n\n**Differentials:**\n\nLike integrals, differentials are, simply put, a way of doing things smarter. \n\nDifferentials come from the idea that you want to measure the slope of something. \n\nAt first you might consider subtracting end and beginning to get the difference. But if you don't work with something that is a straight line, this will not tell you what the slope is at any point. To do this you have to divide that something into many parts, and now you can subtract two parts next to each other to get the slope there. The more parts you use the more precise it gets. \n\n**Limits:**\n\nLimits in the context of integrals and differentials are the concept of using smaller and smaller parts until you get to parts that infinitely close to each other. \n\nInfinitely here just means as small as is necessary. If you for instance have the triangular shaped gable mentioned in **Integrals** it wouldn't make any sense to make parts smaller than each upper side of the triangle. ",
"Interestingly, limits were used by Newton for calculus purposes without knowing for sure that what he was doing was valid. Mathematicians didn't fully understand them for 150ish years when Weierstrass and Bolzano (see _URL_0_) put them on solid footing. Newton got them right, but he was using them on \"easy\" functions so nothing strange came up.\n\nSame thing happened when Euler discovered e^{\\pi i} +1=0. Without justification, he used power series expansions of sine and cosine with complex numbers. The formula just popped out. Too good to not be true!"
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(%CE%B5,_%CE%B4)-definition_of_limit"
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||
2edy3c | why are speed cameras always accompanied by big signs that let motorists know they're there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2edy3c/eli5why_are_speed_cameras_always_accompanied_by/ | {
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"Because they are there to make you slow down, not to catch you speeding.",
"If there is a sign they slow down, if they don't know about the camera they just keep on driving too fast. It's about preventing an accident, not about punishing speeders",
"In most places it's a legal requirement to show that there is in fact photo radar in the area. The constant reminder that you're being watched slows people down to the exact speed. That is... those who would normally drive 5-10 kmph over the speed limit. The people who were driving 20-30 kmph over the speed limit still speed... and pay."
]
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[],
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||
98cj9b | If the earth rotated at the same speed but in the opposite direction, how long would a day be? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/98cj9b/if_the_earth_rotated_at_the_same_speed_but_in_the/ | {
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"Since a day is commonly defined at noon to noon (or midnight to midnight), the actual time it takes to rotate once (1436 minutes) must be added to the change in the position of the sun relative to the earth (4 minutes), since the earth rotates in the same direction as it revolves around the sun.\n\nIf it rotated in the opposite direction, this 4-minute difference would be subtracted instead of added. Therefore, a day (noon to noon) would be about 23 hours and 52 minutes.",
"/u/wwarnout gave you some numbers but here is a slightly more in depth answer of where all the numbers come from.\n\nOne 'day' is not equal to one rotation of the earth. A day is the time from a given Noon to the following Noon.\n\nIn that time, the earth has moved ~ 1/365th of the distance around the sun. So it had to make 1 full rotation and an additional 1/365th of a rotation, to be facing the sun again. And it is this 1 + 1/365th rotations that we break into 24 hours.\n\nEarths circumference is 40,075 kilometers. So in 24 hours the earth rotates 40,075 * 366/365 == 40185 km\n\nIf the earth switched directions but rotated the exact same speed, the earth would complete one 'day' sooner with only 364/365th of a rotation. Now we would have defined this shorter length of time as our '24 hours' so we would still call it the same label of time and be ignorant it could have been different. But we still know the earth only rotated 40075 * 364/365 == 39965 km.\n\nTo calculate 'reverse earths' day we know it takes 24 hours times the ratio of the two day lengths. So 24 * 39965/40185 == 23.868 hours or 23hrs and 52 minutes."
]
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[],
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||
zof6j | What are some good books to read for an introduction to neurochemistry? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zof6j/what_are_some_good_books_to_read_for_an/ | {
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"text": [
"Any basic Neuroscience textbook, such as Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Bears, Connors and Paradiso have a basic overview. This was my textbook for my first year of my Neuroscience degree and I still find it useful."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
33fyww | why does my laptop say i have an hour of battery left but then runs out within 15-20 minutes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33fyww/eli5_why_does_my_laptop_say_i_have_an_hour_of/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a rough estimate, the computer cannot tell which programs or websites or programs you will use in the future. All programs take up a certain amount of power for example, games and high resolution videos can take up more power than writing an essay, or reading a story. ",
"The time is only a rough estimate. It's a lot better if it's been on for a while. What happens is that the battery has a circuit that can tell how much charge it has (it needs to so it can prevent overcharging, as well as keep the charge even between the multiple cells), and the OS can see how long it has taken to drop X percent, and extrapolate that out to determine an approximation of how long it would take to drain completely.\n\nBasically, what's happening in your case is that your tank is X full, and the OS is anticipating Y drain, so it's saying X should last Za. The drain hasn't been fully calculated though and the OS doesn't see it moving faster than it was, so it doesn't tell you that Za is really closer to Zb."
]
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[],
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||
4ganhz | Do the lungs, rather the bronchii and alveoli inside them fill from top to bottom, or vice versa? | I'm just a man interested in knowing things. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ganhz/do_the_lungs_rather_the_bronchii_and_alveoli/ | {
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"text": [
"Air moving into the lungs is caused by a negative pressure gradient \"drawing\" air into the lungs. It's not like pouring water into a lung shaped vase, so all the terminal bronchioles and alveoli should \"fill up\" at roughly the same time. ",
"The lungs have mass, and as such the bases are slightly denser than the apices due to the weight of the organ. Air is drawn into the lungs via the negative pressure generated by contraction of the diaphragm. Air flows in down the trachea and enters the lungs when the trachea reaches the carina and splits into the two main pulmonary bronchi. These are located in the middle of the lungs and quickly split off into secondary and tertiary bronchioles. Air technically enters the middle of the lungs first. Now, back to the density gradient of the lungs. Since the bases are denser, they tend to fill with slightly less air. The apices being less dense fill with a bit more."
]
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[],
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98ook3 | why do our feet get cold whenever we're scared/nervous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98ook3/eli5_why_do_our_feet_get_cold_whenever_were/ | {
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"text": [
"Not sure, but my guess would be blood being diverted to more critical areas (brain,heart, lungs etc) as part of the fight or flight response"
]
} | [] | [] | [
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||
1daiok | What would happen if when you get a shot or something injected to your body, there was an air bubble in it. | You know when the doctor prepares a shot, he puts it right side up and squirts it so there air comes out? What would happen if there was still air in it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1daiok/what_would_happen_if_when_you_get_a_shot_or/ | {
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"text": [
"It could cause an [air embolism](_URL_0_). \n\nHowever, it takes quite a bit of air ( > 100mL) to actually cause a problem, so it's mostly to err on the side of caution.",
"From William S. Burroughs \"If air bubbles could kill you, there wouldn't be a junky alive.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_embolism"
],
[]
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|
1zbozf | why do different countries measure their shoes differently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zbozf/eli5_why_do_different_countries_measure_their/ | {
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"text": [
"When they started measuring, we didn't have cheap, quick world trade. We didn't have giant factories in China churning out everything. Shoes were generally made locally.\n\nLocal customs determined shoe sizing & there was no need to standardize because the odds of a pair of American shoes being sold in the UK or Japan was minimal.\n\nNow that we *do* have world trade, shoe sizing is ingrained in societies. There's no reason to bother changing when you can just print 3 or 4 different sizes on a box.\n\n",
"It happens when you don't standardize everything."
]
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[],
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||
24enno | Can a photon be redshifted to 0 Hz/nonexistence in finite time? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/24enno/can_a_photon_be_redshifted_to_0_hznonexistence_in/ | {
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"text": [
"In the [Big Rip](_URL_0_) scenario, yes - the redshift/scale factor could grow to infinite size in finite time. There will most likely not be a Big Rip (or a Big Crunch) in our universe though. The scale factor of our universe will increase indefinitely, but will not become infinite in finite time.\n\nHowever, once the redshift grows so big that the wavelength of the photon is larger than the size of the observable universe, there will no longer be any practical way to detect it, since you would need an antenna bigger than the observable universe to catch it!\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_rip"
]
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||
c5xuzg | What is the hottest manmade temperature ever recorded on Earth, and how was it created? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c5xuzg/what_is_the_hottest_manmade_temperature_ever/ | {
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"text": [
"Reportedly it's quark-gluon plasma, produced by very high energy collisions of heavy nuclei. The LHC holds the current record, and the RHIC can also do it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The hottest temperature ever recorded on earth was about 5 trillion Kelvin in a quark-gluon plasma produced in the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. It was created by accelerating lead ions to incredibly high speeds, 99.9999% the speed of light, so when they collided there was enough energy for quarks and gluons to have asymptotic freedom, as opposed to always being confined in hadrons as they are at normal temperatures.",
"Appreciate the responses, I new Reddit would give me a well thought out answer as always."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/hot-stuff-cern-physicists-create-record-breaking-subatomic-soup.html"
],
[],
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||
24bcp0 | My sailor uncle wonders: Why are equinox tides more intense? | He writes: As a sailor and life-long student of the ocean, I've learned about the 400-plus astronomical cycles that influence the tides. The one cycle mentioned in most tide science books but never explained is the exceptional tides produced around the equinoxes. Why would this be so? Why would a full or new moon during equinox produce a larger tide than during new or full moon, say, during the solstice?
I look forwards to hearing the responses. As I mentioned, this question stumps most the scientists I know, including several who are considered world authorities on the subject. They know the phenomena, but not why. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/24bcp0/my_sailor_uncle_wonders_why_are_equinox_tides/ | {
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"text": [
"During the equinox, the Moon is overhead at the equator. As the Earth rotates over the course of a day, the tidal bulge is going to (more or less) track the Moon as it moves across the sky. Thus the tidal bulge will rotate around the equator. Now, remember that along with a tidal bulge, there is a tidal minimum offset from the bulge by 90 degrees. So at the equinox, an observer at the equator will see the bulge pass, and later will see the minimum pass.\n\nNow what happens during a solstice? Well, to make it easier to visualize, suppose that the Earth's axis of rotation was offset by 90 degrees instead of 23. This would mean that at the solstice the Moon would be directly overhead at the north pole, so there would be a tidal bulge at the north pole and a tidal minimum at the equator. But because nothing changes when the Earth spins around, the tidal bulge will stay right where it is! There will be no change in the tide at all!\n\nSo that's what happens if the Earth was tilted at 90 degrees. But what's happening in the real universe where the Earth is tilted at 23 degrees? Well, remember that at the solstice, the Moon is overhead for an observer at latitude 23 degrees. This means that the maximum of the tidal bulge will be at 23 degrees. But the tidal minimum will still be at the equator! So as the Earth rotates around its axis, the tidal bulge will remain at 23 degrees and the tidal minimum will remain at the equator. So an observer at 23 degrees latitude will see a lower tide 90 degrees away from the tidal bulge, but *not* the full tidal minimum. So the tides experienced at solstice will be weaker than the tides experienced at equinox because only at equinox will the tidal maximum and the tidal minimum be at the same latitude."
]
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|
5y7vgj | how can founder of a company (like steve jobs) be voted off it? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y7vgj/eli5_how_can_founder_of_a_company_like_steve_jobs/ | {
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"text": [
"Because a company belongs to the owners, not the founder. If Steve Jobs didn't want to be voted out he shouldn't have sold his controlling interest in the company.",
"When a company is founded the owners are the initial founders. However they often need money to grow and pay out their salaries. To do this they need more investors. The new investors take part of the ownership of the company. This means they get a place on the board. The board is composed of the different owners of the company and its job is mainly to hire or fire the CEO. If the company have gone though a few rounds of selling off to investors the original founders might only own 10% of the company and such only have 10% of the votes (simplifying here). So if the board gets together they can vote to fire the CEO which usually is one of the founder of the company. This is not unique to the US. To prevent this from happening to your company you have to make sure to retain more then 50% of the ownership over the company. However this may be crippling to your company as it means you can not take on more investors to fund your expansions and you are much more likely to get bankrupt.",
"It can get super complicated, but when you have a company that is publicly traded, you create a corporation. You start it, but by process of creating this coporation you have board members that are appointed to look out for best interest in the company. You can have it created in such a way that you cannot be voted out, or over ruled, except when it comes to share holders. Almost all board members do, and should have shares in the company. If they have majority of shares, 51% then they are the majority share holder and can vote you out, regardless of any contracts, or agreements. Some company holder have this happen do to stock splits, where they had majority themselves, but when the stocks split the board members bought up majority before the owner could. Now, there is a method to protect that, but that gets more complicated. \n\nSo, to not be bumped from your own hypothetical company, make sure you agreements protect you, and have majority stock. "
]
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49lpp8 | there is a 1 lightyear long pole. you are holding one end of this pole, you turn that end. would a person on the other end of the pole take 1 year to see the pole turn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49lpp8/eli5_there_is_a_1_lightyear_long_pole_you_are/ | {
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"It would take longer than a year. The pole would move at the speed of sound for the material that the pole is made of, which will be substantially slower than light. ",
"The \"push\" would travel at the speed of sound through the object, so it depends on what this hypothetical pole is made of. And yes, the object would compress during this."
]
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b8xfvf | what animals with eyes on the sides of their head see exactly? can they see both their sides at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8xfvf/eli5_what_animals_with_eyes_on_the_sides_of_their/ | {
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"Animals with eyes on the side of their head are usually herbivores and need to be wary of predators sneaking up on them so have virtually 360 degree vision with the eyes on the side of their head. Animals with forward facing eyes tend to be carnivores and the binocular vision enables them to judge distances better with the overlap from the forward facing eyes - _URL_0_",
"Chameleon (as far as we know it) have similar vision to us. Their lens are concave while their cornea is more convex shaped giving them more 'pinhole/tunnel vision'. Yes, often one eye is kept on watching predators and prey near them while the opposite eye will continue to scan its surroundings for other dangers",
"Hold your finger in front of your face and slowly move it around your head. Follow it with your eyes keeping your head facing forward and try to note the position at which you can no longer see it. You may find that if you wiggle your finger when you can no longer see it then you can sense the movement (sort of like a T Rex), and that the point at which this happens is slightly behind you. This allows you to be alerted to movement slightly behind you and turn your head to focus on it more clearly and make sure it's not dangerous. What's weird is how instinctively we use it, so much so that we don't even know it. It's hard enough to fully understand how we perceive our own vision without even trying to understand other creatures.\n\nWe are primarily a predator species, but with eyes slightly further apart than something like an eagle, allowing us to focus on prey in front of us, but also be aware of dangers to our sides without turning our heads.\n\nFor prey species like deer, having eyes on the side of their head allows them to look even further behind them than we can to give them a better chance of spotting predators. They don't need to focus on their prey because grass doesn't run away.\n\nIt's been pointed out that I got sidetracked and off the point I was originally steering towards. What I think I was trying to get at is that you mostly perceive your vision to be continuous, but you have blind spots, and spots that can only sense movement. Things like the finger experiment I mentioned above expose your own vision's shortcomings.\n\nAnimals like deer likely perceive their own vision to be continuous, but the part of their vision that's directly in front of their face would act like yours does at the side. Imagine having a blind spot directly in the forefront of your vision. Sort of like how most of the time you don't see your nose until you think about it. Like you are right now. Sorry.\n\n\n\n\n*edit* didn't realise this was going to be a gold-worthy response but thank you kind stranger. Never had one before so I don't quite know what to do with it. Maybe I'll build a school for grasses that can't run good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too.",
"I read somewhere that when they're eating, horses see everything around them but don't see what they're eating. \n\nCan anyone confirm this or is this straight bs?",
"Yes they can, but they usually have a blind spot immediately in front of them (which is why, for example, you always approach a horse from the side, where it can see you approaching). ",
"Hold something pretty close to your face, for example your phone. \n\nClose one eye, look at the phone with the other eye.\n\nNow do the same but with the other eye.\n\nYou'll notice you'll see an entirely different picture for each eye,when you do that.\n\nNow open both eyes. It takes some getting used to, but eventually you'll again see a whole picture, with both eyes. While each eye sees something different than the other eye, somehow, our brain succeeds in merging those two pictures into one coherent picture.\n\nThat's most likely how these animals see: a very wide picture, but somehow it still is one single picture.\n\n",
"How about a Hammerhead Shark?",
"Veterinary student here. If you look up a picture of a horse flight zone, it will show you an approximation of what they see. As other replies have mentioned, they can see nearly 360 degrees due to the sideways placement of their eyes. ",
"It depends on the species.\n\nMost animals with eyes on either side of their head will have about a 200 degree field of vision each side of the body. They generally have a blind spot directly behind them and in front of their snouts/noses until the field of vision crosses over.\n\nWhilst they have good vision on their sides because there is only one eye they generally have problems with depth perception on the sides. Directly in front of them the can have good binoculars vision if their fields of view cross over.\n\nThis [link](_URL_0_) is an article specifically about hammerhead sharks but has good illustrations to demonstrate what they can see.",
"What about alligators? They have their eyes on the sides",
"You have the same kind of vision that the animals have: they are creating a representation of \"the world\" and using their eyes. We do that too. \n\nYou have areas of your vision that you see with one eye only. Like, the extreme left side of your view is seen only by the left eye. You don't notice that you are only seeing that part of the world with one eye. Why would animals be any different. They just have much less overlap. \n\nThey see the non-overlapping part in the same way we do. It just spans more area. It's not as \"3-D\" because they only see that part with a single eye, and 3-D (stereoscopic) vision needs 2 eyes. But there are lots of cues about depth and 3-D that aren't stereoscopic. ",
"Woodcocks can! These birds have eyes directly on the sides of their heads and see 360 degrees. I was taught they have binocular vision both directly in front and behind them, simultaneously. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"Horses have eyes on the sides of their heads which gives them close to a 360 degree field of vision. They do have a small blind spots directly in front and behind them but they can cover these by moving their head around. I have read that these blind spots are about 3 feet wide directly in front and 6 feet wide directly behind them. From my own personal experience I have no reason to doubt it. \n\nThey can use both eyes together, in what is called binocular vision. This gives them depth perception allowing them to judge distances. They can also move each eye independently and watch two different objects at the same time, even if one's in front and the other is behind. Being able to see in front and behind at the same time gives them the advantage of watching where they're going while keeping an eye on a predator behind at the same time. There's been many a time where I've tried to catch a horse that didn't want to be caught and watched him walking away with his head turned to the side, with one eye on me and one looking ahead. I have seen horses running at a full gallop through the woods and underbrush with their heads turned to the side to monitor my whereabouts and not miss a step. \n\nIf something moves suddenly into a horse's blind spots it can startle the animal causing it to shy, kick or bolt away. You can walk in front of a horse a dozen times and it will remain standing in in place, relaxed and content. But, if you raise your arm and stick it out in front of you while you are passing directly in front of the animal you can spook it and cause it to pull away. The horse knows you are there and is expecting you to show up on the other side . It can not see you lift your arm in its blind spot though, so your hand becomes an unexpected object appearing suddenly which frightens it. You could be standing directly in front of a quiet, relaxed and contented horse, and have it quickly jerk away when you reach out straight ahead to pet it. Because of its blind spot, the horse is unable to see your hand moving toward it until it magically appears out of nowhere, next to its head or eye. The horse will do what it does naturally and spook. For this reason it is always best to talk to a horse before you pet it, giving it time to move it's head and see where you're standing first. \n\nWe had a horse that we originally named Midnight as a colt because it was jet black with no markings. We used him as a pack horse to carry our supplies inside packboxes tied on his sides. By the time he was 5 years old his name had been changed to Sleepyhead. The horse would be moving along down a trail and walk head first into a tree, over and over again. As he was walking along he would spend more time watching the horses behind him than the trail ahead. When the trail made a jog around a tree, the tree would end up in his blind spot and he wouldn't see it in time to avoid it. \n\nI have found that keeping a tight rein on a horse may cause it to trip or stumble. There are times when riding a green or rank horse you don't trust it enough to let it have a free rein. A horse can not buck unless it can lower it's head so by keeping a close rein on it I can prevent it from lowering it's head and start bucking. But by holding it's head tight and high I am also hindering it's ability to see what's in front and below it. When I first started breaking horses it took me quite a while to learn it wasn't the horses fault for stumbling, it was mine. I originally believed that the horse was deliberately doing it to annoy me or dump me. So with the erroneous belief that it would try to unseat me if I wasn't cautious I would exacerbate the problem by holding it's head in tighter. After about three months of doing this I was griping about one particular horse to my dad, who quickly told me why it was me causing the problem. \n\nIf you are walking behind a horse it may have one eye looking ahead and the other one looking back. If the eye looking back is toward the direction you're traveling it will appear to the animal that you have appeared out of the blue and spook it. Many people have been kicked because of this. The rule of thumb I have always followed is to talk to a horse I am behind and stay either as close to it as I can or far enough away that it can't kick me. By staying close I run the risk of getting kicked but am close enough that the foot doesn't have momentum, so it pushes me away instead of giving me a painful whallop. It is always best when walking around a horse to place a hand on its back and keep it there as you circle around. Once again this is because though the horse knows you are there it may not be expecting you to suddenly appear on its other side, causing the horse to jump, spook or kick. \n\n\nMy father's business depended on horses for transportation and we could only reach our home by horses or airplane when I was growing up. We kept a herd of 100 or so head of horses and rode them, packed them and put them in harness almost every day for seven or so months of the year. I kept and used my own string of 12 horses until about ten years ago, though I still have a few of my old favorites living a good life, pensioned off at a friend's farm. \n\n",
"Pretty much, yes. [This](_URL_0_) is a diagram of a rabbit's field of view. The binocular area is the area where both eyes can see, and a monocular area is where only one eye can see. (They have more vertical range than we do too, so they can see further up in their 'peripheral')\n\nSo as you'd imagine, this means rabbits and such have depth perception ranging from poor to none. This is because they don't actually need to know how far away a thing like a predator is, only what direction it is in, and if it is facing them, and then they can run away until they either feel safe or can't run anymore. (Whereas predators need to know ranges so they can pounce and know when to exert that last little burst of energy to catch the prey).\n\nAs for what it would *actually* look like, that is a harder ask, bc their brains will most certainly process that information in a way we can't really imagine (since we have no experience of it). The best representation would be a [360 field of view image](_URL_2_) That is basically how a rabbit or such would see. If you play Doom or Quake at all, you can mod those (and other games I imagine) to have 360 FOV, which would be the closest you can get to what 360 vision feels like. Like in [this image](_URL_1_) the walls that look like they are to the left and right, are actually behind the player.",
"I went to a small city zoo that had an attraction to test this. You'd look through one end and mirrors showed you the vision on either side. Our brains aren't wired to process that type of information, so it is disorienting, but you get an idea of how they see the world.",
"I was told something useful by my biology teacher. Eyes to the front likes to hunt, eyes to the side likes to hide. Just a random fact",
"Hold your hand up against your nose, flat so it divides your vision. Do you still have peripheral vision on both sides? I bet it’s like that.",
"Late to this, but [this](_URL_0_) will answer your question far better than any explanation will. \n\nBasically front facing vision (like humans, dogs, owls, etc) see a wider range of in focus view (binocular vision), with a narrower range of peripheral (monocular vision), whereas side eyes (most birds, fish, etc) see a narrower binocular field of view but can see periphery almost 360º, allowing for them to see motion coming at them at nearly all angles. \n\nTypically predators have front facing eyes and prey have side facing eyes. Also, binocular vision, where the two eyes overlap in the field of vision, is in focus whereas monocular vision, the periphery, is out of focus but used for motion detection. This is why side-eyed animals can turn their necks more, to get their binocular vision to focus on what theyre looking at -- since their binocular field of view is narrow, their neck have to turn their heads far more. ",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere is a visual representation of the vision of a carnivor with 2 forward eyes and a herbavor with 2 side eyes",
"In case you're interested. Animals with eyes on the side of the head are prey (so they can see their surroundings) and animals with eyes on the front of the head are predators (so they can prey)"
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lhj2d | How does the body adapt itself to
increasing physical activity? | For example - in the gym, on day 1, I could barely walk a kilometer without breaking into profuse sweat and being short of breath. After about 15 days now, I can easily walk that much distance in half the time with barely any sweating. How does this happen? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lhj2d/how_does_the_body_adapt_itself_to_increasing/ | {
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"Exercise causes damage to your muscle, as part of repair your muscles start developing new blood vessels. Frequent running increases vessel density, which allows the muscles to get more oxygen and nutrients > less stress-induced catabolism.",
"Exercise causes damage to your muscle, as part of repair your muscles start developing new blood vessels. Frequent running increases vessel density, which allows the muscles to get more oxygen and nutrients > less stress-induced catabolism."
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4o2xl0 | Any good films that depict the Crusades? | One of my all-time favourite movies is Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, I know, it ain't historically accurate. Still loved it though.
Anyways, that film really has me energized. I wanna learn more about the Crusades. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4o2xl0/any_good_films_that_depict_the_crusades/ | {
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"Do you want films *about* the crusades or do you want films that *teach* about the crusades?"
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mz42k | Is there a definitive answer to the Aspartame toxicity issue? | So my mom has been a huge advocate of the artificial sweeteners causing cancers and what not. I initially thought this had some truth to it with some research and others' opinions, but my senior year in high school, my biology teacher, who is quite possibly the most intelligent person I've ever met, said that it was completely a myth.
Now I'm not asking if drinking small amounts of diet coke can lead to this, as I am a believer in the "Aspartame Kills" theory and I occasionally drink some, but if someone were to consistently drink diet sodas for years, could something detrimental happen to their bodies? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mz42k/is_there_a_definitive_answer_to_the_aspartame/ | {
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"[this is probably some of the best research on the material](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: I agree with [ren5311](_URL_0_) that this is *not* the best possible answer. I wanted to initially provide a broad supplemental to what I expected to be expert answers.\n\n**As always, anecdote (personal experience stories) is not a valid answer to this question, so please stop.**",
"A related question: I have heard that saccharine is the *actual* toxic sweetener. Can anyone weigh in on this?",
"Going to link some stuff from science based medicine website:\n\n_URL_3_\n\nScientific Studies\nAspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by the regulatory agencies of more than ninety countries worldwide, with FDA officials describing aspartame as “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved” and its safety as “clear cut.”\n\nWhen the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food evaluated aspartame, (_URL_1_) they found over 500 papers on aspartame published between 1988 and 2001. It has been studied in animals, in various human populations including infants, children, women, obese adults, diabetics, and lactating women. Numerous studies have ruled out any association with headaches, seizures, behavior, cognition, mood, allergic reactions, and other conditions. It has been evaluated far more extensively than any other food additive.\n\nWhen new rat studies by the Ramazzini Foundation in Italy (_URL_2_) appeared to show an association with tumors, the European Food Safety Authority examined Ramazzini’s raw data and found errors that made them discredit the studies. Their updated opinion based on all the data available in 2009 said there was no indication of any genotoxic or carcinogenic potential of aspartame and that there was no reason to revise their previously established ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) for aspartame of 40 mg/kg/day. Studies have shown that actual consumption is well below that limit.\n\nPeople who are absolutely convinced they get adverse effects from aspartame have been proven wrong. For instance, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study (_URL_0_) of people who reported having headaches repeatedly after consuming aspartame. When they knew what they were consuming, 100% of them had headaches. In a double blind crossover trial, when they didn’t know what they were getting, 35% had headaches after aspartame, and 45% had headaches after placebo.",
"Don't forget to ask the right question. The question is not whether drinking aspartame every day is safe, but rather whether it's **as safe as** drinking tons of sugar every day.\n\nEven if aspartame caused cancer, it might be way better for you than being morbidly obese from drinking liters of soda everyday.",
"YouTube user and all-around science communicator C0nc0rdance has a good [video on artificial sweeteners](_URL_0_). I'll defer to experts here, but I think he presents the available fairly well for lay-people.",
"Might not be exactly what you're looking for but:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPlus, all with the exception of Stevia taste like shit.\n\n\"Sugar-free!\" \"Non-fat!\" \"Low-carb!\"\n\nIn another vein: _URL_1_",
"Would anyone be able to shed any light on Stevia?\nIt seems to be a good median, though there's still talk of cancer and impotence...and I like my balls, more than sweetener.",
"All aspartame is is two aminoacids, phenylalanine and aspartate,bound together in a way in which our body cannot use there energy. Hence, 0 calories. The only people who should be concerned about this are people with PKU. Thats it.",
"Great thread! I always wondered about its safety... So now I feel ok injesting it without fear of long term health effects, but what about short term effects? \n\nIs there any truth to the belief that eating no calorie/lower calorie food can lead to obesity? ie: you're eating something that tastes like sugar, so your body expects those calories, and when you don't get them - the body craves more food? \n\n",
"THERE IS NO TOXICITY ISSUE\n\n* Aspartame is only toxic if you have Phenylketonuria, IE, your body can not process excess phenylalanine. \n\n* Aspartame is a methoxylated tripeptide. When digested, it does release a teeny amount of methanol. Aspartame is 200x sweeter than sugar, so very little is needed to sweeten goods. Also, fruits, fruit juices, and some vegtable juices release more methanol upon ingestion than Aspartame. Is methanol toxic? In large doses, yes. But you are exposed to more methanol every day in your regular diet than you would get from ingesting aspartame. Methoxylates occur in a wide variety of organic compounds, especially those that make fruits and vegetables smell and taste like fruits and vegetables. Once the methoxylate is cleaved by digestive acid, the remaining tripeptide from aspartame is like any other amino acid chain that would be produced from digesting food. Frankly, I trust it more than Splenda.",
"[this is probably some of the best research on the material](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: I agree with [ren5311](_URL_0_) that this is *not* the best possible answer. I wanted to initially provide a broad supplemental to what I expected to be expert answers.\n\n**As always, anecdote (personal experience stories) is not a valid answer to this question, so please stop.**",
"A related question: I have heard that saccharine is the *actual* toxic sweetener. Can anyone weigh in on this?",
"Going to link some stuff from science based medicine website:\n\n_URL_3_\n\nScientific Studies\nAspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by the regulatory agencies of more than ninety countries worldwide, with FDA officials describing aspartame as “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved” and its safety as “clear cut.”\n\nWhen the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food evaluated aspartame, (_URL_1_) they found over 500 papers on aspartame published between 1988 and 2001. It has been studied in animals, in various human populations including infants, children, women, obese adults, diabetics, and lactating women. Numerous studies have ruled out any association with headaches, seizures, behavior, cognition, mood, allergic reactions, and other conditions. It has been evaluated far more extensively than any other food additive.\n\nWhen new rat studies by the Ramazzini Foundation in Italy (_URL_2_) appeared to show an association with tumors, the European Food Safety Authority examined Ramazzini’s raw data and found errors that made them discredit the studies. Their updated opinion based on all the data available in 2009 said there was no indication of any genotoxic or carcinogenic potential of aspartame and that there was no reason to revise their previously established ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) for aspartame of 40 mg/kg/day. Studies have shown that actual consumption is well below that limit.\n\nPeople who are absolutely convinced they get adverse effects from aspartame have been proven wrong. For instance, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study (_URL_0_) of people who reported having headaches repeatedly after consuming aspartame. When they knew what they were consuming, 100% of them had headaches. In a double blind crossover trial, when they didn’t know what they were getting, 35% had headaches after aspartame, and 45% had headaches after placebo.",
"Don't forget to ask the right question. The question is not whether drinking aspartame every day is safe, but rather whether it's **as safe as** drinking tons of sugar every day.\n\nEven if aspartame caused cancer, it might be way better for you than being morbidly obese from drinking liters of soda everyday.",
"YouTube user and all-around science communicator C0nc0rdance has a good [video on artificial sweeteners](_URL_0_). I'll defer to experts here, but I think he presents the available fairly well for lay-people.",
"Might not be exactly what you're looking for but:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPlus, all with the exception of Stevia taste like shit.\n\n\"Sugar-free!\" \"Non-fat!\" \"Low-carb!\"\n\nIn another vein: _URL_1_",
"Would anyone be able to shed any light on Stevia?\nIt seems to be a good median, though there's still talk of cancer and impotence...and I like my balls, more than sweetener.",
"All aspartame is is two aminoacids, phenylalanine and aspartate,bound together in a way in which our body cannot use there energy. Hence, 0 calories. The only people who should be concerned about this are people with PKU. Thats it.",
"Great thread! I always wondered about its safety... So now I feel ok injesting it without fear of long term health effects, but what about short term effects? \n\nIs there any truth to the belief that eating no calorie/lower calorie food can lead to obesity? ie: you're eating something that tastes like sugar, so your body expects those calories, and when you don't get them - the body craves more food? \n\n",
"THERE IS NO TOXICITY ISSUE\n\n* Aspartame is only toxic if you have Phenylketonuria, IE, your body can not process excess phenylalanine. \n\n* Aspartame is a methoxylated tripeptide. When digested, it does release a teeny amount of methanol. Aspartame is 200x sweeter than sugar, so very little is needed to sweeten goods. Also, fruits, fruit juices, and some vegtable juices release more methanol upon ingestion than Aspartame. Is methanol toxic? In large doses, yes. But you are exposed to more methanol every day in your regular diet than you would get from ingesting aspartame. Methoxylates occur in a wide variety of organic compounds, especially those that make fruits and vegetables smell and taste like fruits and vegetables. Once the methoxylate is cleaved by digestive acid, the remaining tripeptide from aspartame is like any other amino acid chain that would be produced from digesting food. Frankly, I trust it more than Splenda."
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2vzfu4 | Does a magnetic field affect water molecules? | As water molecules have a small magnetic moment | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2vzfu4/does_a_magnetic_field_affect_water_molecules/ | {
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"Water is diamagnetic, so when exposed to an external magnetic field, it will magnetize in the direction opposing the external field.",
"There is a really cool experiment on youtube that I once saw with 4 coils cross connected with 2 shower heads flowing water inside the 2 pairs of coils that would charge one another at a time, bending the streams and then discharging with a spark. I gonna try to find it.\n\nedit: found it! [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"On the PHYS-L forum I heard that a powerful neo magnet, if submerged with one pole about 5mm from the water surface, will deflect the water above it. It forms a slight concavity. Do this in a bowl placed in a kitchen sunbeam, so the water it reflects a spot of light on the ceiling. Yep, works great. But neo magnets are easily destroyed by water leaking through pores in their nickel plating. Better put a couple coats of epoxy on yours first. Or just a sealed sandwich bag.\n\nIf you have a neo magnet, then hang a long ice cube (popsicle) horizontally from a single hair. Or do the same with a pair of grapes. The magnet can push the water object tangentially and make it start rotating, but without the magnet ever touching it.\n"
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3d6viq | when my credit/debit card does not read for being too scratched, why does the reader then accept it after folding receipt paper around it and sliding it again? | Paper seems like would hinder the magnetic strip when swiped, though it works every time.
Edit: Plastic bags work, carboard works, almost anything smooth will work assuming it isn't magnetic itself. r/theskepticalheretic
Edit again : This is best... Use clear box tape r/time2fly2124 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d6viq/eli5_when_my_creditdebit_card_does_not_read_for/ | {
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"text": [
"The magnetic strip is magnetic but the head of the reader is prone to error if the surface it slides against is not smooth. So if you put a smooth outer layer on the card, the head now glides smoothly along the mag strip and reads the encoded numbers appropriately."
]
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22i2l4 | What were the differences between the "field hospitals" and the "evacuation hospitals" during WW2? | Researching info on my Gramps. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22i2l4/what_were_the_differences_between_the_field/ | {
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"text": [
"A field hospital was a hospital near the frontline, usually maintained by the division the patients belonged to. Evacuation hospitals were for long-term patients, usually located \"at home\". "
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|
2dquad | why do luxury car company's with websites often never show the price of their vehicles? | I was looking at a bunch of luxury car company websites such as land rover, bentley, etc. and they never really show the price of their cars. Is it there a reason to this or am I just trippin' balls right now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dquad/eli5why_do_luxury_car_companys_with_websites/ | {
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"text": [
"Because if you have to ask...you can't afford it.",
"...maybe you're looking at wrong site. i'm on landrover's page and i see prices on every model. range rover Standard Wheelbase\nFrom $84,225* Long Wheelbase From $106,225* LR4 from 50k, LR2 from $37k",
"Low competition and pricing power for dealers. If they felt like they were losing sales by not listing the price, then they would start.",
"I bought my wife a Nissan Murano for $3000 less at a dealership out of town.\n\nThe relationship between manufacturers and their dealers is super sketchy.",
"Is so you have to ask via mail, phone and they can get your information as a potential customer.\n\nIf the price was posted right there, they wouldn't be aware how many people are evaluating buying the car.\n\nAlso, not only luzury car companies do this.",
"Sales tactic, maybe? People buy things based on emotion, so when a customer gets super pumped about a product before even having seen the price--it's easier to rationalize why it's a good purchase/worth the cost. It's also easier for the sales person to guide them into the purchase.\n\nThat's my theory anyway lol"
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6k9ugk | Why did the Japanese agree to the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty? | The Washington Naval Treaty appears to set in place a large number of limitations on the expansion of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The IJN has just come off a pair of successful wars, it is being funded by a militaristic, nationalistic, government, and has been expanding pretty rapidly.
Why would they agree to the limitations set forth, especially at this time? It seems like the Treaty upset a large portion of the Japanese military establishment as well, was there something else going on behind the scenes? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6k9ugk/why_did_the_japanese_agree_to_the_terms_of_the/ | {
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"At the end of the Great War, only three naval powers remained in the world; The United States, The United Kingdom, and the Empire of Japan. Historically (circa 1900) Japanese naval doctrine was to keep a force of what could be classified as capital ships equal to 70% of the United States. Their theory was that if any war broke out between the IJN and USN, then two separate engagements would occur, in which the US Navy's Pacific Fleet, and later Atlantic Fleet would be crushed decisively. \n\nThe Japanese delegation to the Washington Naval Conference was of two separate mindsets. The former was of the 70% doctrine, while the second was well aware of American production capability compared to the Japanese Empire. For comparison, the average GDP of Japan in 1920 was only 18% of the United States, and the IJN held only 55% as many capital ships as the USN. The WNT came with a prohibition of all fortifications built in the Pacific, perhaps seen as a windfall by the Japanese, already feeling threatened by British fortifications in Burma, Hong Kong, and Oceania, as well as a large US presence in the Philippines. \n\nThe Japanese were very wary of the WNT, but ultimately accepted in favor of building a cruiser rich naval doctrine, shown in the battles off the Solomon Island chain, as well as smaller engagements around the Philippines in early 1942. The WNT remained a controversial topic in the IJN, as well as the Japanese Government until open hostilities in 1941.\n\nSOURCES\nStephen Howarth's \"The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun\"\n\nText of the WNT _URL_0_\n\nEDIT: Formatting",
"Everything fellow redditors have mentioned is correct, I only have to add that you have to take the WNT in the context of US' 1910s plans for Navy development which the Japanese were well aware of via naval attaches in Washington:\n\nThe Wilson administration's plan for Naval rearmament from 1916 and its expansion in 1919 included a ludicrous amount of over **50 first line battleships**, in order to surpass Royal Navy's number of 42 front line battleships. This was an insane number that Japan's Eight-eight plan for construction of 8 BBs and 8 battlecruisers, which was already seen as a huge industrial endavour simply couldn't match. This plan however, provoked the political aspects of the Royal Navy even more than it had ones in the IJN.\n\nAfter Wilson left the office, the succedding Harding administration realized the plan was ludicrous and set out to a diplomatic solution - however, the genie was left out of the bottle and the threat of USN focusing its industral effort on creating a huge invasion fleet was hanging over Japanese heads.\n\n**Kato Tomosaburo**, Navy Minister at the time, while in the first being a stark proponnent of the eight-eight plan and exponential naval armament, eventually realized an armament race would be a situation in which Japan would be the first one to drop out. However, Kato Tomosaburo's viewpoint was not shared by the majority of the IJN staff; most unexperienced young officers saw the arms race as a display of national prestige and the signing of the WNT was seen as something paramount to treason. The loudest proponent of this was **Kato Kanji**, a young officer who argued that US's industrial capacity is the exact reason why Japan shouldn't sign the WNT - since in the case of a war, USN will just be able to build the extra ships in matters of months, whereas IJN would be stuck with its feeble fleet which couldn't be expanded as quickly.\n\nAt the signing of the treaty, both Kanji and Tomosaburo were present in the Japanese delegation - whereas Tomosaburo accepted all US requests, Kanji threw a huge tantrum and the delegation almost came to the point of rupture; eventually Tomosaburo managed to contain the delegation, mostly due to the help of higher political factors from back home in Japan that reminded Kanji of his place as Tomosaburo's subordinate\n.\nHowever, this didn't mean Kanji stayed quiet afterwards and due to this incident, the IJN quickly \"split\" into the anti and pro Treaty factions, which eventually calmed down, but resurged again in 1930 as the London Naval Treaty appeared as an extension of the WNT.\n\nSources:\n\n*Evans & Peattie: Kaigun, p 191-198*\n\n*Buckley: The United states and the Washington conference*"
]
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kyvh0 | why are all nfl punters white? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kyvh0/eli5_why_are_all_nfl_punters_white/ | {
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"Give it time.",
"Normally, I would call out blatant stereotyping, but....all of them really ARE white!",
"Because he died a few years ago\n\nReggie Roby\n_URL_0_",
"Not enough black people don't make the soccer team in high school.",
"Because being a punter isn't cool, so young blacks, even if they are proficient at punting or kicking, move to other positions so they aren't held in disdain from their peers.",
"Give it time.",
"Normally, I would call out blatant stereotyping, but....all of them really ARE white!",
"Because he died a few years ago\n\nReggie Roby\n_URL_0_",
"Not enough black people don't make the soccer team in high school.",
"Because being a punter isn't cool, so young blacks, even if they are proficient at punting or kicking, move to other positions so they aren't held in disdain from their peers."
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2kw2a9 | How was the French nuclear deterrence perceived by the USSR? The US? | As a French, I've been exposed since childhood to the official propaganda about how our "Force de Frappe" protected us from the Warsaw pact.
I'll be curious to know if our nuclear arsenal was taken seriously by the USSR, and how it was perceived by the US.
Were we effectively capable to inflict sufficient damage to the USSR to have an impact on their plans regarding western Europe?
I'll be interested about official/public reactions at the time and more confidential reports made public after the fall of the USSR. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kw2a9/how_was_the_french_nuclear_deterrence_perceived/ | {
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"The French and British weapons in large part existed and continue to exist to increase national standing in the world. Being a nuclear power is a fairly exclusive club and the members of this club have a bigger stick when dealing on the world stage.\n\nFrance's strategy was in large part to act as a trigger for US weapons. France during the 50's was not convinced of US dedication to defense of Western Europe. This was only exacerbated by the Suez crises in 1956 and again increased through the 60's and 70's as France withdrew from NATO and Soviet technology increased allowing the Soviet Union to strike US cities with nuclear weapons. France wanted to ensure that if The Soviet Union invaded Western Europe the US would be forced to intervene.\n\nDuring the 1960's the French strategy was that if an invasion of French territory was imminent French Bombers would perform a Nuclear strike against all cities they could reach (Khrushchev was Ukrainian and most cities in the Soviet Union were beyond the reach of French bombers so Ukrainian cities were a major target) The Soviet Union would be forced to retaliate against France or accept huge losses with no response (in Soviet Doctrine this would signal they were unwilling to retaliate and would result in the US launching a preemptive strike.) The Soviet use of nuclear weapons would trigger the US to use nuclear weapons. Basically France found a way to put their own finger on the trigger of US nuclear weapons.\n\nBoth the US and the USSR knew that France had the ability to trigger mutually assured destruction. So absolutely the French Nuclear ability was taken very seriously. For a fraction of the cost of US and Soviet arsenals France had an effective nuclear deterrent.\n\n[1981 paper about nuclear proliferation](_URL_0_)\n\n[paper regarding French nuclear strategy](_URL_2_) PDF\n\n[a comparison of US UK and France Nuclear Strategy](_URL_1_) PDF"
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"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CE4QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencespo.fr%2Fceri%2Fsites%2Fsciencespo.fr.ceri%2Ffiles%2Fart_bt.pdf&ei=zblTVNWcOI23yATkhIHQAQ&usg=AFQjCNFk712YEdAaV0ko9XebLtYRVf3vDg&sig2=ZWptCuuy3KaC_KZ5nim6og",
"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CFcQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkms2.isn.ethz.ch%2Fserviceengine%2FFiles%2FESDP%2F94832%2Fichaptersection_singledocument%2F5650b3af-20af-43d1-b139-5646dccba4d5%2Fen%2FChapter%2B7.pdf&ei=zblTVNWcOI23yATkhIHQAQ&usg=AFQjCNHGZefbKuZ39iUSjOAyMp1KfsFs9w&sig2=hd_XSsGLcYz0RN3UVA6FvQ"
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9ncjqv | why is a two-party system the stable result of first-past-the-post voting? what keeps it from collapsing into a single party system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ncjqv/eli5_why_is_a_twoparty_system_the_stable_result/ | {
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"Because the two parties are free to change their positions. If a certain position makes one of the parties widely unpopular, they'll change it to win those voters back. The other party is doing that at the same time.\n\nThis constant tug-of-war leads to an equilibrium where either party has roughly the same number of supporters. "
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2furc1 | How was warfare conducted between 1836-1914? | Reading up on conflicts such as the American Civil War, the Crimean War, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War I'm kind of left with an open gap as how they fought battles? What happened when two armies met each other on the open field?
Did they still line up in rank and file and unload volley after volley into each other like the Napoleonic Wars? When did we begin to see the tactics we see today like the 'find cover' and 'suppressive fire'?
Thanks!
P.S
How about as something as late as the Boxer Rebellion? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2furc1/how_was_warfare_conducted_between_18361914/ | {
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"**Preface:** American Civil War and \"the rest\" (Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian primarily are two separate entities. They were two entirely different methods of waging war and need to be treated as separate cases. The Americans had a Jominian (a Napoleonic military theorist) understanding of warfare and thus attempted to replicate Napoleonic methods tactically. It failed horrendously. The rest of the West, basically, Europe, would have a style of war which swung much more in the WWI-side of the spectrum in their respective Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars.\n\nYou're asking a lot of questions here so I'm not even going to really try and give some kind of definitive answer. When did men begin to \"find cover\" and do something reminiscent of \"suppressive fire\"? About the same time men were still \"in rank and fire\" and \"unloading volley after volley\". Light infantry became a \"thing\" in the mid 1700's and would be an integral part of European warfare in the Napoleonic Era where a light infantry body would win or lose battles at time. Wellington would at times make 1/3rd of his force skirmisher/light infantry forces which would decimate enemy formations; all which would be 'taking cover' and the like. Further, and this is just pre-post pettiness, Napoleonic warfare was more than just two sides lining up in an open field and unloading on each other until one side gave up. This is very important to know because having a strong understanding of Napoleon's tactics are necessary to understand America's in the Civil War, and, most importantly, why it didn't work and why it was faux-Napoleonic. In short, Napoleons tactics were to use combined arms to force the enemy to dedicate his reserves to the flank and thus engage the entire enemy force. He would then use his own reserves to smash into the enemy weak spot with massive columns in a final bayonet charge to crush the enemy with overwhelming numbers. \n\nLet me make this clear as it's important: **It was the cooperation between the infantry, cavalry, and artillery that locked the enemy in place through a delicate dance of maneuver and the reserves that decided the battle.** The American Civil War was absolutely nothing like this but it attempted to, and now we get to what an American Civil War battle looked like. Whereas in a Napoleonic battle you'd have a mass of columns approaching the enemy and forming a line or staying in a column respective to the situation with cavalry advancing with the infantry and artillery batteries suppressing the enemy while skirmisher formations screen the enemy and pick them off, the Americans had just one of these components: the infantry bit. Their artillery was present but hardly as decisive as Napoleon (or his contemporaries) would use them. The Union never really had anything resembling real light infantry battalions and the CSA, while using them in small number, never really put them to use in mass as his European contemporaries were and as they were used in the Napoleonic Wars. \n\nFurther, and perhaps most deadly of all, rifled muskets along with advances made cavalry nearly useless. This is only compounded by the fact that America had *no* cavalry tradition whatsoever and thus what little cavalry they did have were dragoons (mounted infantry, essentially) and scouts. They had next to nothing to 'crash' into the enemy and be that decisive factor and what little they did had was useless in the face of rifled muskets which were accurate up to 350 yards and effective to 500. Last but certainly not least the Americans on either side were not keen on keeping reserves which, again, was completely against the entire principle of the tactics they were trying to apply.\n\nWhat we get, in result, is an absolute bloodbath that we now know as the American Civil War and notable battles like Gettysburg. Pickett's Charge would have, with Napoleon, been accompanied with cavalry to add a decisive shock factor and to draw out the enemy reserves. Instead it was a colossal failure. In fact Pickett's Charge is a microcosm of ACW tactics as a whole. Justus Scheibert, a Prussian observer to the ACW, commented on his experience with witnessing a battle:\n\n > *\"The nearer to the enemy, the more faulty the lines and the more ragged the first (line) until it crumbled and mixed with the skirmishers. Forward went this muddle leading the wavy rest. Finally the mass obtruded upon the point of attack. In a sustained, stubborn clash, even the third would join the melee. Meanwhile the usually weak reserve tried to be useful on the flanks, or stiffened places that faltered, or plugged holes. In sum it had been a division neatly drawn up. Now its units, anything but neat, vaguely coherent, resembled a swarm of skirmishers.\"*^[1]\n\nThis is really what ACW battles came down to. They were entirely indecisive as they lacked a deciding factor. Even infantry can be that factor with the right weapons but they just didn't have them. So the answer to what a American Civil War battle looked like was two massive blobs of infantry with 5-6 men packed into a square meter elbow to elbow and using modern, rifled muskets. They would meet, fire off volleys at each other and try to act with a column attack that was entirely unsupported by cavalry and only marginally so by artillery and without any skirmishing body to weaken the enemy. It would have been an absolute bloodbath and a chaotic mess. With totally amateur officers on all levels of command compounding this men just could not engage with the enemy. There are too many cases of a battalion attempting a charge and just stopping short and breaking down formation into just, as Scheibert calls it, a loose collection of line infantry who are now \"skirmishers\" who just charged the enemy and are now, short of them, just dissolving into random and uncontrolled fire. In response to this by the end of the war bloody campaigns of attrition like the Petersburg and Overland campaigns.\n\nReally one of the biggest issues with the Americans was their insistence on using, at first, the Regiment (1500) as the smallest tactical unit and later the Battalion (800). One officer would lead these men and if he died the entire thing went to crap. There was no backup plan -- the entire regiment or battalion operates as one. It fights as one and dies as one. This was an incredibly Napoleonic way of doing things while, as our friend Scheibert will again observe, Europeans were already on the path out of:\n\n > *\"Prussian tactics freed (officers) to use their own minds... Liberated battalion and even company commanders could be the heads of tactical units, their own, and make them fight as right-thinking officers saw fit and as well-trained troops best could. The flexible line at the forward edge resembles a chain , then with detachable links under independent guidance. At crisis they can dismember into smaller and even the smallest units without disfunction... Our Prussian tactics thus gave our line officers energy, elasticity, and speed - to the entire army's benefit... Furthermore, diligent peacetime training provided our troops an abundance of formations, something to fit any circumstance.\"^[2]*\n\nThis is a nice transition into the European style of warfare; something which is looking as I said more in the WWI side of the pendulum than the Napoleonic. What Sheibert just described is what is commonly referred to as an \"infantry chain\", that is, the gradual breaking down of infantry bodies into smaller tactically independent units. It doesn't matter too much if your Battalion Commander gets popped because your lieutenant or your colonel or whatever can just break off on his own and make his own decisions.This is the beginnings of squad based warfare that will be so prevalent in WW2 and contemporary warfare. Rather than operating in groups of 800 or god forbid 1500 you would see Company's and Platoons with men as little as 80-100 operating independent from the rest of the body. \n\n"
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684pvo | the science/biology/chemistry behind capsicain and hot peppers such as ghost pepper and carolina reaper and how the body reacts | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/684pvo/eli5_the_sciencebiologychemistry_behind_capsicain/ | {
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"Capsaicin binds to a receptor in nerves responsible for signalling heat, activating those nerves. Those nerves then send the signal to your brain that they are detecting heat, which causes the burning sensation in your mouth. More capsaicin means more of those heat-sensing nerves get activated, making your mouth feel even more on fire. Very hot peppers like ghost peppers and Carolina reaper have been selectively bred to produce very high concentrations of capsaicin.\n\nCapsaicin is thought to have been evolved to discourage mammals from eating the fruits of the plants. Birds are not sensitive to capsaicin, so they can eat the fruits and distribute the seeds by pooping them out later. Mammals have grinding molars that would grind up and destroy the seeds instead of distributing them."
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1fzk2u | What are some lesser-known or unusual ways the Jews hid from the Nazis? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fzk2u/what_are_some_lesserknown_or_unusual_ways_the/ | {
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"Well, first, what exactly do you consider to be the \"usual\" ways?"
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89j8jk | why does co2 make a drink like coke feel 'fizzy' while nitrogen gas makes a drink like beer/ale feel smother? | Is it to do with the slight difference in charge between the C and Os or something about the kinds of receptors that are stimulated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89j8jk/eli5_why_does_co2_make_a_drink_like_coke_feel/ | {
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"Bubble size. imagine bubble wrap for mailing packages - it comes in different sizes, some with lots of little bubbles and then some with fewer but bigger bubbles. \n\nIn beer, N2 makes lots of little bubbles while CO2 makes fewer big bubbles. And just like how fine silt feels smoother than rough sand in your fingers, finer bubbles feel smoother in your mouth.",
"CO2 in water makes carbonic acid which makes the fizzy sensation. While nitrogen can dissolve in water, it doesn't form a new compound. ",
"Nitrogen doesn’t stay in solution very well, it’s takes high pressures to get it to dissolve in a beer. When you pour a nitro beer the nitrogen comes out of solution and knocks the CO2 out of solution with it, essentially making the beer flat but with a nice creamy head.\n\nIn addition, soft drinks often have two or more times the amount of CO2 dissolved in solution compared to beer.",
"The fizzy taste is not from bubbles. That’s just how your brain interprets the taste of CO2. Nitrogen bubbles don’t taste the same.\n\nSome of your taste buds respond to sour tastes, and those taste buds have an enzyme on them that responds to carbon dioxide. That enzyme is carbonic anhydrase 4. When people take a carbon anhydrase inhibitor, like acetazolamide, they report that soda and sparking water and champagne tastes flat. Beer tastes normal.\n",
"There are a few reasons. \n\nFor one, N2 doesn't really have good solubility in water, and tends to escape faster once the pressure is decreased. Therefore, your nitro beer is just a foamy beer with nitrogen bubbles. \n\nOn the contrary, CO2 tends to supersaturate very well (think a can of cola that you leave open, and an hour later it's still slowly bubbling) and bubbles come out slowly over time, unless there's a nucleation site (and/or salivary enzymes such as carbonic anhydrase in your saliva that converts carbonic acid to CO2 and water) that encourage it to bubble out. Therefore, once you drink a liquid supersaturated with CO2, bubbles form in all your nooks and crannies in your mouth (nucleation sites), and physically make that stinging sensation.\n\nOf course, this is amplified by the fact that CO2 dissolves in water to a slightly acidic solution of carbonic acid, so your tongue also feels the acidity as the liquid hits your mouth. N2, being inert and neutral, does not give the same taste.",
"Bubble size and nitrogen dissolution is only part of it! \nNitrogen, when dissolved in water, partially blocks the mechanism that causes certain molecules to activate bitter taste in the tongue. This is why Guinness tastes smooth and creamy despite using bitter roasted malted grain. \nAlso, nitro infused cold brew coffee is beginning to take off for the same reason. \n\nSource: am beverage consultant.\n\nEdit: phrasing",
"It’s because when CO2 dissolves in water, it forms bicarbonate and carbonic acid. Both are weak acids and lower the pH, giving your drink that characteristic bite.\n\nNitrogen is inert and doesn’t react. It also doesn’t dissolve into solution nearly as well, hence the widget delivery system. Nitrogen essentially just adds texture to your brew.",
"Lots of good comments ITT but one thing to add: The CO2 & N2 mixture is also used at a much higher pressure than normal CO2 because of the partial pressure keeping the Nitrogen in solution. Usually these beers are served through a tap with a restrictor plate which has a bunch of tiny holes in it. The high pressure (~40psi vs ~10psi with CO2) forces it through the plate, which slows down the pour and forms tiny bubbles. If you pour a nitro beer at full pressure with a normal tap it will come out like a firehose!",
"N2 is typically an illusion. Most breweries just carb their beer to a lower level of Dissolved Volumes of CO2, and push with beer gas. Most tanks can't withstand the pressure it takes to get N2 into solution. ",
"The stout faucet also plays an important role. There’s a restriction plate in there that forces the beer to create that creamy head. \n\nJust putting a beer on nitrogen alone doesn’t really do anything, in fact, many bars use nitrogen to push already carbonated beer through normal faucets for the very reason that it isn’t readily liquid soluble. \n\nFrankly, this thread is full of misconceptions. ",
"Could I pressurize a drink with something other than these two gases without dying? Say, like neon or kypton? Would the effects be any different from nitrogen?",
"CO2 + H2O = carbonic acid \n\nIt's the acid that bites, tingles, etc. and stimulates sour taste buds\n\nN2 + H2O = nitrogen bubbles\n\nIt's NOT acid so all you have is texture.",
"This isn't really being addressed, although one comment started in, but a lot more carbon dioxide can be dissolved in water than nitrogen can. Of course this issue isn't necessarily about how much can be dissolved at equilibrium, instead about how much can be dissolved at higher pressures, and in what form it will outgas once the liquid is returned to a normal air pressure, the size and amount of bubbles, relating to mouthfeel. I just wrote about this as one possible explanation for why microwaved water doesn't work well for tea, relating to air becoming supersaturated due to more dissolving at room temperature than at boiling point (the opposite of solids in a solution), which doesn't happen using a pan or kettle for a few different reasons. I'm no expert on this subject, just kind of strange when it comes to going too far with ideas, and I am an engineer. I'll cite some links for further reading:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_",
"CO2 is very soluble in water whereas N2 is much less.\n\nThe biggest reason is CO2 forms H2CO3 acid when dissolved whereas N2 is does not form any acid (it's neutral) when dissolved in water.",
"Here's my take:\n\nCO2 is very special. The gas dissolves in water, and acidifies the water. We humans seem to have the ability to not only sense the sourness of carbonated soda with our sour taste-receptors (like any other acid), but also sense the dissolved CO2 gas through special proteins also associated with our sour taste receptors (Chandrashekar et al. 2009). Nitrogen doesn't acidify the water and doesn't interact with our senses chemically.\n\nIt has also been shown that when bubbles are suppressed by drinking carbonated soda in a hyperbaric chamber, the soda still has a \"bite\" to it. So it was concluded that it is in fact the carbonic acid that plays a dominant part in the sensation of \"fizzyness\", although bubbles are a second component that can influence the sensation (Wise et al. 2013).\n\nFrom this I'd say bubbles and their sizes are a very minor component.\n\n\nChandrashekar et al. (2009). The Taste of Carbonation. _URL_0_\n\nWise et al. (2013). The Influence of Bubbles on the Perception Carbonation Bite. _URL_1_\n",
"Question about n2o in case anyone sees this. I have a whipped cream dispenser so I ordered n2o cartridges to experiment with some nitro cold brew coffee.\n\n\n\nIs it normal for nitrous oxide to make plain black coffee taste sweet? Are the chargers somehow sweetened or am I just making shit up? I swear it's almost sweetened now and it's delicious but I want to understand why. ",
"I haven't seen yet addressed much the effect of saliva.\n\nSaliva contains a catalyst called carbonic anhydrase. What it does is very quickly degas the dissolved carbon dioxide in the soda and speed up the reaction that turns it into carbonic acid. \n\nThis is why the cola stays gassed up in the bottle but isn't really gassy in your stomach as it has been converted from a dissolved gas to an acid. The carbonic acid is interpreted as fizzy by your taste buds.\n\nIf you take a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor like topimirate, it slows down this reaction so you get less carbonic acid and soda tastes bitter and flat and you burp after drinking it.\n\nNitrogen gas doesn't create carbonic acid so does not taste fizzy.",
"To add on to the bubble discussion CO2 in general will add a sharp or acidic taste to a drink. Coke is essentially sugar water with flavorings and carbonation. The carbonation will cut the sweet flavor to make it slightly more bearable. It does the same thing with beer. I home brew and I've tasted soda and beer at various stages in the process. Sweet drinks tend to feel silky and smooth on the tongue. When you add CO2 to them they become sharp, bitter and hard. ",
"The taste and sensation of fizz is actually almost completely due to the taste of carbonic acid and not the feeling of the bubbles. They did a study where people drank carbonated drinks in a pressurized room (enough to prevent the CO2 coming out of solution and bubbling) and people still tasted the carbonation as fizzy. Even though no bubbles were forming in the drink or on their tongue, they still tasted the fizz. "
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"http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-to-not-microwave-water-for-brewing.html",
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-solubility-water-d_639.html"
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6ununx | how do you chug beer? like how do you get it to just slide down in one gulp? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ununx/eli5_how_do_you_chug_beer_like_how_do_you_get_it/ | {
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"Try opening your throat. Sounds like I'm being facetious, but I saw a guy once who had to neck a pint as him and his mates had to go get on a flight, and he just kinda knocked it back like a pelican. Just kinda constantly swallow"
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1rlfca | Why is it that people of most of South American and African colonies adopted the religion of their colonial masters but peoples of countries of Asia (India, Indonesia for sure) retained their original religious beliefs? | I was travelling in South America when I noticed that after colonization, the people adopted Christianity, the religion of their colonial masters. They did this even when they had a reasonably established religion and social structure of their own (especially the Incas). This happened in Africa too. It aligns with my understanding that usually a populace follows the religion of their political masters.
However, seems like this did not happen in India and Indonesia. While both the countries were colonized by Christian rulers for a fairly long period, Christianity was not widely adopted there and people yet retained their pre-colonial religious beliefs.
Why was this so? What happened differently? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rlfca/why_is_it_that_people_of_most_of_south_american/ | {
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"I am not an expert on this at all, but the \"original\" religious beliefs in both India and Indonesia were to varying degrees displaced by Islam before Europeans arrived. India (according to Wikipedia) is 13.4% Muslim, which actually gives it the 3rd largest Muslim population in the world, and the percentage would have been much higher under British rule, when Pakistan and Bangledesh were part of India as well.\n\nIndonesia is actually the largest Muslim nation, and is 87.2% Muslim (again, according to Wikipedia).",
"I'm afraid I can only speak for African colonies, not for South American and Asian colonies which to my understanding will be very different in this regard. This is a generalization too, the specifics of certain states are very different.\n\nSo a lot of the colonization efforts in Africa were preceded by explores and (key to this questions) Missionaries. These missionaries came from all over the world (I've read journals from Americans, British, French missionaries) but were generally aiming to convert people to their denomination of Christianity. These people were very paternalistic and patronizing to the Africans but generally seemed to want to \"help\" (the degree to which they were actually helping is debatable).\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThat's an extract from the journal of a missionary who set up a school in Luebo (in what is now the DRC). With Christianity generally came literacy. In order to read the bible and worship god, the Africans needed at least a small community of literate readers to propagate the message.\n\nSo when the Scramble for Africa proper began after the Berlin conference (1884-5) there was already a precedent for missions to Africa to attempt to convert the peoples and teach basic reading a writing skills. Most of the colonies in Africa were not settler colonies but based around extraction and acquisition of resources. So due to the colonial powers not having many boots on the ground so to speak, a native presence was required. This administrative Africans needed to be able to read and speak the language of the colonists for obvious reasons. The already fledgling missionary schooling system was integral to this, naturally these church schools were not secular in their teachings.\n\nSo fast forward to the post colonial period and the majority of Africans who were educated and in positions of power, were Africans who had gone through the church schooling system. These Africans would generally be Christians. So as the transition from colony to state began, these were the men (mostly men at this point) who were to take the reins so to speak.\n\nThat's not to say traditional religions were eliminated entirely. Many traditional religions survive to this day. There are also christian sects that combined traditional religions with Christianity. Often the gods, spirits and ancestors of the old religion would become Angels or Demons of the Christian religion. On a larger scale, African churches began to appear, as Africans became more educated, that rejected the white supremacy of European Protestantism and Catholicism. \n\nI apologize that I can't answer the second half of your question, but hopefully this explains why Africans did adopt European religions. Hopefully I also get across that religion was not a passive thing. Africans (from all walks of life) adapted the religions to suit their own needs. I think it would be wrong to says the populace follows the religion of their political masters. Literacy and power lead the adoption of Christianity rather than zealotry.",
"Well it *may* have to do with the fact that the colonial rulers of South America were Catholic vs the Protestantism that characterized British rule of North America and India. More to this point, the Phillipines which is firmly in Asia is staunchly Catholic to this day, and that is because it was ruled by the Spanish before the war agaisnt USA.\n\nCatholic orders like the Jesuits and Franciscans made aggressive conversion campaigns in SA, and one of their main objectives was exactly that. Not to mention the fact that Spanish administrators also took their part in breaking up their old belief systems: many Catholic churches in Mexico are built directly above Mayan or Aztec temples.\n\nAlso population-wise, a large porcentage of the native South American population was wiped out by the Old World diseases and the hard conditions of labour imposed by the Europeans. As these populations dwindled they would be more \"vulnerable\" to conversion attempts.\n\nEDIT: I did a little bit of more research, and although it is not definitive proof, compare these two images: [Catholics](_URL_1_) [Christians](_URL_0_). In the colonies (South and Central America, Africa and Asia), *most* of the Christians that are in those place are Catholic, i.e. Protestants were not as effective (or willing) as Catholics at converting the local populations.",
"Okay, to give you a quick TL;DR right off the bat, I'd argue that you're massively underselling and simplifying what happened to both the eradication of the Inca state religion when the Spanish showed up, and the conversion of the natives to Christianity.\n\nOne of the Spanish motives for conquering the New World - and much of their moral support for the endeavor - came from the papal dispensation that allowed Spain to conquer so long as the natives were brought into the fold of Christianity, as they had souls and could thus join Team Jesus (yes, the notion of New World civilians having souls was a topic of debate and discussion). In practice this was often exerted rather forcefully - for instance, conquistadors presented groups they met with the Requirement, which basically boils down to \"Join Christianity, or we have *casus belli* against you\". As was somewhat famously recounted in several chroniclers' accounts, Atahualpa, victorious Inca of a brutal fraternal civil war, was presented with a Bible and told of Christianity. Asking the man who is considered by his people to be an aspect of the Sun to up and change teams is presumptuous, wouldn't you say? It is said he threw the Bible on the ground and the conquistadors promptly sprung into action. (Always a fun story, the capture of Atahualpa - ask me again sometime and I'll expand on it.)\n\nAnother way the Spanish usurped Inca state religion was through the \"extirpation of idolatry\". Keeping, worshipping, secreting, or otherwise maintaining idols and shrines was a severe offense, and these objects and places were vigorously sought out and destroyed. The white rock Yurak-Rumi outside Vitcos (a holdout of the independent Inca state after the Rebellions) was one such *huaca*, or sacred place/object. The shrine of Chuquipalta containing it was burned to the ground - the rock is still present and Brian Bauer found evidence of the burning in excavations there. At every point the Inca pantheons, or their local analogues, maintained by the people of Andean civilization were replaced with saints and ceremonies respecting them.\n\nThe result, however, is a Christian religion completely unlike any other in the world, and markedly different from the Roman Catholicism initially presented to the people of the Andes. For example, the thunder and storms here in the Cuzco Valley of Peru is called \"San Pedro\". What does Saint Peter have to do with lightning? Well, Inti, the Sun, had an aspect known as Illapa, the Thunder. Inti got replaced more or less with the Christ figure, and Saint Peter took the place of Illapa in the pantheon.\n\nAnother example: there's a painting of a virgin at one of the sites I've worked at here. This *virgencita* garners pilgrims from the towns in the valley, and occasionally the surrounding areas - folks from the city of Cuzco occasionally even visit. The *virgencita* basically replaced the *huaca* of Andean society - a deeply-seated cosmological concept of sacred space and spirit that inhabits the earth, water and sky of our world. The Virgin is responsible for good or bad weather in the valley - if you fall into sickness it may be because you hadn't respected the Virgin or given her a *pago* offering of late. This mentality survived from well before the Inca (so far as it can be discerned) straight into the present day - save for a different name.\n\nI can't speak for how Asian cultures \"resisted\" Christian advances, but for Andeans, \"adaptation\" is a much more proper term than \"conversion\"."
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5i4mpb | Could someone explain the ethnicities in the British Isles? (Saxons, Celtics etc.) | As i'm not from Central Europe i do not really know what was going on with European Ethnicities. And as my nation is kind of "unique", if you could say (I mean that we do not fall under a specific category as Germanic/Latin etc.), it's a bit weird to have all these different tribes in Europe.
So first of all that's what i know which MAY (100%) be WRONG:
Celtic people: First inhabitants of British Isles - (You could call them as the home grone british that also lived in that little part of France)
Anglosaxons: North Germanic tribe that moved to southern England but did not really have an effect on the population - But a big effect on the language.
Nordic - Vikings - Normands (Call them what ever you want): Vikings that wanted to conquer Britain but didn't have a big impact as well.
Romans - Italians - "Latins?": Mainly language effect as the romans didnt really populate other areas except for Romania.
So is any of this correct or am I completely wrong? (Please do not start saying each name of the native british tribes, as they should have small cultural differences) Thanks :D
PS: Please do not be offended, this is a sub-reddit in order to learn history properly. I'm not implying any racial dominace any other nation/race. Also sorry for my English. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5i4mpb/could_someone_explain_the_ethnicities_in_the/ | {
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"I can answer the aspect of the question referring to the Anglo-Saxons, and can touch on the Celts and Vikings in relation to that. I did want to primarily focus on the Celts, but that would require explaining the differences between Gaelic, Brittonic and Pictish culture which is so complicated and so debated its not even worth it. \n\nFirstly, I'm afraid that they were West Germanic rather than North Germanic, at least in terms of language. This might seem trivial, but it places the Anglo-Saxons in the contexts of the Frisians and the Franks (modern Dutch and French (and the Germans partially)) rather than of Scandinavia, and the Anglo-Saxons were to have far more diplomatic, cultural and trade links with the Continent than with Scandinavia, especially in the Carolingian period, after the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been more or less established. In regards to continental links during the Carolingian period, for a more diplomatic focus I'd recommend the Patrick Wormald's chapter on Offa, Alcuin and Charlemagne in Campbell's \"The Anglo-Saxons\" (Note: it was published in 1982 so some things that he states as fact have since been disputed) and for a more political history I'd recommend the chapter on Offa and Charlemagne in Wallace-Hadrill's \"Early Germanic Kingship\"\n\nSecondly, you quite correctly draw the distinction between population and language in your question, and it is key that this distinction is recognised. While in 19th and early 20th century the general narrative was \"the Anglo-Saxons arrive, beat up the Welsh and steal their land\" the lack of Archaeological evidence for this has been used to dispute it, such as by Fleming in \"Britain after Rome\". Sometimes I feel like this argument gets a bit silly and goes too far: we must always be cautious using \"negative evidence\" (or \"lack of evidence\") to prove something. It seems likely that the plague of Justinian may have reached Britain, and we lack any archaeological evidence for damage caused by that; so it might also simply be the case that all the mass graves of the British who were slaughtered by the Anglo-Saxons have since vanished. Yet it seems to me that the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was not one purely of conquest, but one of gradual cultural conversion by a new warrior class.\n\n The withdrawal of the Roman army and power structure in the late 4th and early 5th centuries necessitated the development of some other form of government, which in this case was the various warlords or \"tyrants\" that Gildas refers to. While in the heavily militarised \"highland\" areas of Wales and Northern England, into which Roman style villa-based agriculture had not spread, a residual Brittonic (i.e. British Celtic) tribal structure persisted and eventually formed the much debated kingdoms of Rheged, Gododdin and (disputedly) Bryneich and so could effectively govern and repel Germanic and Gaelic raiding. The Hadrian's Wall garrisons by this point appear to have been isolated from the rest of the Roman World and were largely self-sufficient. It's not simply that they \"went native\", as Neil Faulkner [points out](_URL_0_) that there was a gradual shift in the army in Britain to a more British identity, even as that same identity became more Roman. But it appears that the Roman local military forces in the North and West integrated into the subsequent tribal structures that formed, and gave them military strength. As such, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira in the North found expansion inland from their coastal bases very difficult.\n\n The same cannot be said of the very civilian and agrarian South, whose rulers governed in a Roman style but likely had a lack of troops to fight off invaders. Now the legend of Hengest, Horsa and Vortigern, in which Vortigern gives land to H & H in return for military service, after which he is betrayed by H & H and they conquer England, is much ridiculed, but I think that it might be a mythic version of a phenomenon during the 4th and 5th centuries in which local Romano-British rulers used Anglo-Saxons as soldiers to rule securely and to fight rival warlords. There is precedent for this in the Roman World in the extensive hiring of Germanic \"Foederati\", most infamously in the Visigoths. Bryan Ward-Perkins argues in \"Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?\" that a fairly small number of Anglo-Saxons actually made the journey to Britain, but that they must have occupied a position in society that gave them immense influence, and allowed them to essentially convert the culture of their British neighbours. Additionally, it seems that Old English has a complete absense of any Celtic words, suggesting there was no intermingling and cultural exchange between the two groups. I don't believe that this was a relationship of subjugation, as English culture and language survived a Norman rule of centuries where British culture and language didnt survive in this regard.\n\n Instead, it might be hypothesised that the Anglo-Saxon warrior-aristocracy seemed very attractive to the British, and the adoption of Anglo-Saxon customs may have been a tool of social advancement. Furthermore, the legal system which these emergent states had put in place by at least the 8th century, by which point they were thoroughly Germanic in nature, can only be described as apartheid; in terms of the \"wergild\" (the amount of money someone was worth in a legal sense) a British subject was worth *half* as much as an Anglo-Saxon subject according to Ine's Law Code in Wessex. I'd say that doubling your legal value is a pretty good incentive to abandon your British identity and Christian religion. As such, it seems to me that the Anglo-Saxons and their kingdoms actually had firmly British roots.\n\nI'm aware this post has ballooned out of control, but I'd actually like to reserve the last paragraph for slagging off the Vikings. In my view, the impact of the Vikings on England is often overestimated. While the additions of their North Germanic language into our West Germanic language have made English fiendishly difficult to learn today, they are also often credited with the modern cultural divide between the North and South of England, as they established the \"Danelaw\" in the North. However, I previously argued that there was a distinct difference in the style of Roman governance between the North and South, and that the formation of Kingdoms differed in these two areas. So while the Vikings certainly influenced this divide, they hardly created it. The Vikings did not really influence ethnicity in Britain on their own, but they did have an immense impact upon the formation of other ethnicities, or \"ethnogenesis\". For example, Alfred's wars against the Vikings changed his kingdom from one of the \"West Saxons\" into one of the \"Anglo-Saxons\": the exterior pressure of the Vikings meant that the Anglo-Saxons were forced to change. Alfred's grandson completed (albeit temporarily) the reconquest of England, and by the time he did so it really was \"England\": in 927, Aethelstan changed his royal style from \"King of the Anglo-Saxons\" to \"King of the English\". The term \"England\" itself was also a result of the Vikings, as the first King of the \"land of the English\" rather than simply of \"the English\" was Cnut, a great King of Denmark who conquered England in the 11th century. And this impact was not limited to the Anglo-Saxons. In Woolf's \"From Pictland to Alba\", he makes it clear that before the arrival of the Vikings Scotland was divided between the Gaelic Kingdom of Dalriata and the Pictish kingdom of Pictavia: after the Vikings were driven out, these kingdoms had been replaced by Alba, which would become Scotland. So while the Vikings were themselves unimportant ethnically, they spurred \"ethnogenesis\" throughout Britain. "
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8i84pn | why hotdogs called “hotdogs”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i84pn/eli5_why_hotdogs_called_hotdogs/ | {
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"These immigrants brought not only sausages to America, but dachshund dogs. The name most likely began as a joke about the Germans' small, long, thin dogs. In fact, even Germans called the frankfurter a \"little-dog\" or \"dachshund\" sausage, thus linking the word \"dog\" to their popular concoction.\n\nHot Dog History | NHDSC\n\n"
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jtxjs | Why is it that politicians seem to be convinced that we don't have enough science graduates? Even though many people have graduated this year unable to find positions in industry/research/teaching courses | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jtxjs/why_is_it_that_politicians_seem_to_be_convinced/ | {
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"As someone who graduated with a degree in physics and is working in retail, I agree. You can create all the science graduates you want, but you don't get a whole hell of a lot of science done at a cash register. ",
"For what it's worth, my dad sees the other side of the coin when he tries to hire people--almost 100% of thee qualified applicants are Chinese.",
"I'm sure politicians are pushing for the agenda of spending money on college and general higher education. They don't tend to update their information either, once they say we need more scientists, they will stay to that opinion even if were overflowing in the rafters with graduates. Anything else is denied because it goes against their agenda. So basically politicians are not good at thinking, but good at repeating and wind-bagging. (yeah, its a verb now)",
"Well science graduate is a very broad term, could it be that we need more microfluid physicists but only get whale biologists? I was just recently reading about the situation in Germany where biologists overall were doing rather poorly on the job market, but as soon as you split them up into more defined groups you see ornithologists not finding a job and bioinformaticians getting run over with job offers.\n\nMaybe angry birds is the solution to this problem...",
"Deoends on what kind of science jobs we are talking here. There are plenty of biomedical science jobs out there, but an inorganic chemist is going to have a tough time finding a job.\n\nBottom line, dont do science for just the paycheck, make sure you enjoy it. ",
"As someone who graduated with a degree in physics and is working in retail, I agree. You can create all the science graduates you want, but you don't get a whole hell of a lot of science done at a cash register. ",
"For what it's worth, my dad sees the other side of the coin when he tries to hire people--almost 100% of thee qualified applicants are Chinese.",
"I'm sure politicians are pushing for the agenda of spending money on college and general higher education. They don't tend to update their information either, once they say we need more scientists, they will stay to that opinion even if were overflowing in the rafters with graduates. Anything else is denied because it goes against their agenda. So basically politicians are not good at thinking, but good at repeating and wind-bagging. (yeah, its a verb now)",
"Well science graduate is a very broad term, could it be that we need more microfluid physicists but only get whale biologists? I was just recently reading about the situation in Germany where biologists overall were doing rather poorly on the job market, but as soon as you split them up into more defined groups you see ornithologists not finding a job and bioinformaticians getting run over with job offers.\n\nMaybe angry birds is the solution to this problem...",
"Deoends on what kind of science jobs we are talking here. There are plenty of biomedical science jobs out there, but an inorganic chemist is going to have a tough time finding a job.\n\nBottom line, dont do science for just the paycheck, make sure you enjoy it. "
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5fghym | Why do some minerals crystallize into cubes while others form hexagons? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5fghym/why_do_some_minerals_crystallize_into_cubes_while/ | {
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"There are several things that influence the shape of a large crystal: thermodynamics and kinetics. For this though, I am going to focus on the thermodynamics for the larger crystals you find in nature.\n\nLike everything in materials science and crystallography, the reason why anything happens is because the system can lower its energy. What is interesting about these larger crystals and minerals that are found in nature is that they are in thermodynamic equilibrium, or very close to it, since many times they form during a slow cooling process or are given enough time for sufficient diffusion/growth to occur.\n\nSome knowledge of interface thermodynamics is required in order to properly grasp exactly why it occurs, but the gist is that the facets on a single crystal have the lowest solid-vapor interface energy. In other words, the equilibrium shape of a crystal minimizes the number of broken bonds to its surroundings.\n\nThe larger the facet of the crystal, the lower the interfacial energy per unit area. The types of shapes seen depend highly on the crystal structure of the material. \n\nIf we know the crystal structure and the bonding energies of a system, we can actually calculate the equilibrium crystal shape from a Wulff Construction: _URL_0_\n\nBasically you take a theoretical crystal and calculate the interfacial energy as a function of angle. Certain planes will inherently have lower interfacial energy (local minima), and they may become a facet of a large crystal. If you plot the interfacial energy as your 'radius' vs the angle and then draw lines tangent to every point (or at least the local minima), the equilibrium, large-scale crystal shape will be revealed. \n\nHere is a good example of a Wulff Construction in two dimensions: _URL_2_\n\nThe first one states that the {11} planes (diagonals) have half the interfacial energy of the {01} planes (vertical and horizontal directions). The shaded portion in the middle shows what the equilibrium crystal shape will be- in this case a square with the {11} family of planes being the facets\n\nThe second on states that the {11} and {01} planes are equal, and this yields a octagonal shape with all {11} and {01} planes becoming facets\n\nThe third states that the {11} planes have 1.5 times the interfacial energy of the {01} planes, which again yields a square, but this time only the {01} planes become facets. \n\n\nIn three dimensions, this may become more complex since you have to deal with more than one Wulff construction, but it is possible to theoretically deduce what the equilibrium crystal shape will be using first order approximations and basic knowledge of crystals. It's not trivial, but it is possible.\n\n**tl;dr Things like to lower energy. The facets of crytals that you see in nature are the crystallographic planes with the lowest solid-vapor interfacial energy**\n\nDo note that this does not apply to salt in your salt shaker, because what you see there is a product of cubic crystal cleavage. It also does not apply to diamonds in your jewelery, since those are professionally cut. This applies to things like [pyrite](_URL_1_) that you can find in nature.\n\n"
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"http://nptel.ac.in/courses/113101003/downloads/partII/module4.pdf",
"http://agetrail.com/imgs/a/a/n/h/z/1___iron_pyrite_fools_gold_gemstone_crystal_cluster_with_sphalerite_specimen_3_lgw.jpg",
"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Santi_Prestipino/publication/235681139/figure/fig1/AS:306535415730191@1450095146202/Two-dimensional-Wulff-construction-for-the-s-model-at-Eq-D9-with-M-1-Left-Wulff.png"
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||
26jf60 | Why has fascism in Italy been more present than in for example Spain or Portugal, countries with a similar history of fascism? | As a European, the recent elections have shown that there are many political parties with fascist tendencies growing at the moment. In many countries this influx of nationalist ideas are fairly new. With Italy as an exception. Why has fascism been a constant in the italian political landscape?
Thank you all contributors for making this sub excellent! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26jf60/why_has_fascism_in_italy_been_more_present_than/ | {
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"Be careful describing Francoist Spain as 'fascist.' The Falange--the Spanish fascist party--got less than 0.01% of the vote in the [1936 election that preceded the Spanish Civil War](_URL_0_). That's less than 7,000 votes. There were facist aspects of Franco's regime: Falange membership swelled after the outbreak of hostilities the Falange was incorporated into Franco's 'movement,' and both Germany and Italy provided men and equipment to the Nationalists during the war. However, Franco was never a committed fascist. Like every other group he subsumed to his own cause (the Nationalists, the Army, the Catholic Church, industrialists, large landowners, the middle class, the Alfonsists, and the Carlists), he used the Falange to further his real program: himself. Everything else came a distant third.\n\nSo, I can't speak to why nations have had varying amounts of fascists at various times, but one must be careful in attributing that label to Franco's regime."
]
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|
71qp3e | What is the highest resolution a screen can have, at least in theory. And when would the pixel size become so small that it doesn't matter to the eyes anymore? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/71qp3e/what_is_the_highest_resolution_a_screen_can_have/ | {
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"The amount of pixels on a screen is unbounded; one can always build a bigger screen with more pixels. However, the usefulness of a massively huge screen is limited, which takes us to the second part of your question.\n\nCurrent high-resolution (“retina”) screens are already at the point where the unaided human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels anymore. It's unlikely that resolution (in the sense of pixels per square cm) will get significantly increased in the foreseeable future.\n\nTo take it to an extreme though, what's the smallest pixels you could make in theory? One pixel per atom/molecule, surely. As long as you can find a material in which you can excite the electrons of specific individual atoms in such a way that they give off the desired wavelength of light (= color), you're golden. For human consumption however, that would be massive overkill.",
"There's also the side road that pixel density is increasingly important to technologies that utilise lenses and focus on FOV and pixels per degree as a more important measure of pixel density like AR and VR. \n\nIn that field we need smaller more dense displays linked to lense design."
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3ixj6o | what would it take for americans to stop having guns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ixj6o/eli5_what_would_it_take_for_americans_to_stop/ | {
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"Nothing. And as an American we don't give a fuck what you Brits think. Keep to your side of the ocean and maybe do something about that deeply fucked up surveillance state of yours before you worry about other people's problems, hmm?",
"There are a lot of Americans who don't understand this deep-seated obsession with guns either. I honestly don't know how many senseless gun deaths it will take for the people who can effect change to say \"uh, yeah, maybe we need to do something about this...\"",
"Prohibition of anything that is ingrained in ones society and cultural norms has proven time and time again that it doesnt work. Weve seen it the last 50 years from the drug war, we saw it in the 20s during alcohol prohibition. It creates a lucrative black market that does nothing but foster more crime. \n\nThere is peace of mind that I have the tools necessary to defend myself and my family tucked away in a safe in my closet. I lean left on almost every issue imaginable socially except firearms. Theres a lot of us \"liberal\" gun owners out there. We usually keep our mouth shut so were not lumped in with your stereotypical bible-thumping-right-wing-yahoo most people picture in their head when they think of American gun owners.\n\n\n\n\n"
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2u711e | why do some males find glasses attractive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u711e/eli5_why_do_some_males_find_glasses_attractive/ | {
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"Because the girl can look over them at you, tilting their head down. This mimics a slightly submissive posture and shows the whites of the eye around the bottom, and widening of the eyes is an unconscious sign of arousal. The resulting \"sultry stare\" ties into instinctive cues of attraction, and small reading glasses tend to encourage or at least act as a prop for such displays (just giving the look with a little lip bite or clamping teeth on a fingernail is quite overt, sort of the string thong to the librarian glasses miniskirt)."
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||
3y5td0 | Are extra spatial dimensions something we can accurately perceive with a trained mind? | On that note, it seems the only way to begin to perceive these dimensions is by seeing wireframe shapes in constant rotation. I feel that there is a way to perceive these in our mind with extra mental senses, maybe artificial senses of time/space and seemingly impossibly connected points in space (like how worm holes are theorized in sci Fi movies) that we could conjure in our imaginations with enough focus and mental exercises.
Is that how you high level physicists are trained to understand quantum physics and string theory? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3y5td0/are_extra_spatial_dimensions_something_we_can/ | {
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"Yes, a trained mind can perceive spatial dimensions of any dimension! You just have to train yourself to look at these spaces through the lens of equations, rather than trying to perceive it with the mind's eye. \n\nThe mind's eye is not good enough to really understand 3 dimensions, so adding more will just increase the inaccuracy. But we can look at them using equations and functions, and this lens is powerful enough to even understand infinite dimensional spaces and highly contorted, very noneuclidean spaces that couldn't even exist in our universe.\n\n[Linear Algebra](_URL_1_) is the mathematical field where you learn to abandon the crutch of visualization and gain the ability to use the seemingly unlimited power of equations to understand very large spaces. But this only works with flat spaces. Once you no longer are burdened by the restrictions of visualization, you're free to use equation and functions to explore spaces impossible to visualize using [Differential Geometry](_URL_0_). It is with Differential Geometry, far removed from primitive visualizations, that people study and think about String Theory etc.\n\nLearning to intuitively understand geometric objects using only equations is like going Super Sayan. It unlocks so much more mathematical power and flexibility than anyone who is trying to picture things.",
"I entirely agree with /u/functor7 that the best option is to turn to equations and other more abstract representations that scale better with increasing dimension. However...\n\nThere are other visualizations of higher-dimensional objects than just wireframes that are good to know, but most stop being good after 4-5D or so. For example, surfaces and curves in 4D can be more easily visualized when the fourth dimension is represented as *color* or shading. An \"intersection\" where the points are different colors isn't really a 4D intersection at all, so it becomes easier to see how an extra dimension lets you move parts around each other. For example, you can undo any knot in 4D. There are also various forms of simplified diagrams that can tell you qualitative information about how a higher-dimensional object is glued together out of simpler pieces.\n\nWe can also \"suppress\" some dimensions if they're unimportant. The basic logic of a wormhole can be treated with 2D surfaces: if it's spherically symmetric then we can just make one dimension radial, another dimension time, and suppress the angular directions because they don't change anything. Then we get a 2D visual of most of the important features of a 4D object. In a similar vein we can try to represent the extension of concepts from 2D to 3D and then repeat it from 3D to 4D. This is good for analyzing higher dimensional analogues: how to build up hypercubes, hyperspheres, simplices, n-tori, etc.\n\nYou can also imagine high-dimensional spaces as *state spaces* of some physical system. A double pendulum traces has a torus as its state space, since it's parametrized by two independent angles. More complicated robotic arms, particle configurations, probabilistic setups, etc. can be equivalently phrased as some form of motion in a complicated high-dimensional geometry. We can work that analogy the other way to understand the geometry in terms of the familiar systems.\n\nWhile equations are really the meat of our descriptions, and often necessary to even figure out visualization methods in the first place, it's still helpful to have various \"coping mechanisms\" like these that you can switch between as desired, to get intuition for different parts of the setup even if you can't visualize the coherent whole.\n\nFor resources on this stuff there's\n\n1. G. Francis' *A Topological Picturebook*\n\n2. pretty much any of J. Scott Carter's and Masahico Sato's books and papers (mostly on 4D surface knots, the papers are obviously technical but often have good visuals). I really recommend *Surfaces in 4-space* and *How Surfaces Intersect in Space: an Introduction to Topology*.\n\n3. the beautiful 4D puzzle game [*Miegakure*](_URL_0_).\n\n4. the [dimensions](_URL_3_) youtube series (*IGNORE* the \"imagining the 10th dimension\" video you'll probably stumble across, it's entirely nonsense)\n\n5. The comic [Here's Looking at Euclid](_URL_2_). Very light walk through curved geometry. Not directly about higher dimensions, but goes into the differences between the interior and exterior views of a shape, which is important.\n\n6. The contents of this [MathOverflow thread](_URL_1_).",
"As has already been stated in the other great answers, the [equation](_URL_3_) is the ultimate way to dive into hyperobjects. That being said, not everyone has the background or aptitude for the math part of it. Some people need a visual method first (like me), which can then lead to the equations. This part can be hard, since we have no visual palette in the beginning, to imagine new things in 4,5,6D, etc. \n\nBut, the intuition can be built and acquired (gradually), through [visualizing 3D objects as seen in only 2D](_URL_2_). The trick here is to try to imagine how the 3D object is being positioned, and moved around, while stuck in the 2D plane.\n\n By knowing the '3D-ness' of the shape ahead of time, it's much easier to indirectly perceive the rest of the 3D object, and the specific way the 2D slice will transform, by moving around in the third dimension. What we end up doing, is filling in the missing details of its third dimensional extent, by adding back in the rest of the whole body, as it protrudes away from the slice.\n\nOnce you get the jist of how this works, the next step is to move on to 3D slices of 4D objects. Note how this representation is a dimension-losing *slice*, instead of a *projection*, which removes information about the whole body of the object. A projection removes the dimension, but preserves the info, where we can still see the whole body.\n\nLuckily, there are simple-enough 4D objects that have a similar relative to a 3D object. We can switch back and forth between the slices of the two, and see a somewhat identical visual morphing pattern, when moving around in higher dimensions. \n\nThe grand connection comes when you keep reminding yourself that the 3D object is only a slice of the 4D object, where the rest of the body extends outside the 3D plane. Simply put, it 'bulges' into that extra, perpendicular axis of space. We have to imagine the rest of it, as sticking off, or *bulging* , away from the 3D slice, by a finite amount.\n\n This is not easily done the first few (tens of) times. Mental perspiration will be required here. Usually, it requires some bit of memorizing these visual morphing effects. I've read somewhere how one's ability to picture and rotate a 3D object in the mind is quite rare. So, committing this to memory is good practice, no matter who you are. As /u/functor7 points, this is part of that mental training.\n\nAnd, that's where these gif galleries come into play:\n\n[4D Donuts](_URL_1_)\n\n[4D Hypercylinder, Sphere x Line](_URL_4_)\n\n[4D Cube/Tesseract](_URL_0_)\n\n[4D Hypercone, Spherical Pyramid](_URL_5_)\n\n[4D Triangle x Circle Prism, another type of cylinder](_URL_6_)"
]
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"http://miegakure.com/",
"http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-for-higher-dimensional-thinking",
"http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/English/HERE_S_LOOKING_AT_EUCLID.pdf",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cpTEPT5i0A"
],
[
"http://imgur.com/a/Frqrj",
"http://imgur.com/a/asnRZ",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/hypershape/comments/2wi3zq/exploring_shapes_in_2d/",
"http://imgur.com/a/jaZqW",
"http://imgur.com/a/ORY5G",
"http://imgur.com/a/vv7fG",
"http://imgur.com/a/DvMEj"
]
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|
3m8hrp | Does the perceived size of the moon actually increase as it moves from the horizon to overhead? Or is it just an optical illusion? | I'm in a bit of a bet with my wife. She swears the moon is bigger in the sky when it's near the horizon and gets smaller as it gets higher. I've told her it's the same size, but only looks bigger because of the difference in perspective. Once it is higher up, there is more empty sky surrounding it which makes it seem smaller, but if you held a ruler at arms length during both phases, it would occupy the same diameter. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3m8hrp/does_the_perceived_size_of_the_moon_actually/ | {
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"You win the bet. The moon does *seem* larger to the eye near the horizon, but it's an illusion. Images like [this one](_URL_0_) allow a direct comparison of the apparent size of the moon at different points above the horizon and show that it's constant. ",
"The Moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the Moon to appear larger near thehorizon than it does higher up in the sky. This optical illusion also occurs with the Sun andstar constellations.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Although I probably shouldn't explain it, since two other comments have, I just want to feel like I've contributed. So here we go.\n\nOkay, so you've noticed how the apparent size of clouds changes because of its distance from you and to the cloud. The distance is the factor that causes the apparent size of the clouds to change, nothing more than that. For the Moon, though, *its apparent size depends both on distance and the angle of which it is viewed from.*\n\nIf you start from a flat plain on the Earth and looked at the Moon on the horizon, it looks big due to the apparent sizes of whatever else is on the horizon (including the plain itself). However, **the Moon stays a roughly constant distance** (since the Moon is still moving to a degree, albeit negligibly) **away from the Earth**. As the Earth rotates and the Moon rises above the horizon, your view of other objects (such as clouds and buildings and whatnot) changes as your field of view focuses on the objects closer to yourself. Thus, the comparison is drawn between the now closer and larger apparent sizes and the Moon's apparent size than before, which were smaller apparent sizes on the horizon and the Moon's.\n\n**tl;dr** The apparent size of the Moon never changes (to a certain degree), rather it changes because you compare its size with other objects on the Earth whose sizes change more drastically.\n\n^(I really do like explaining this question, though. It's one of the best examples of how the human mind processes and perceives information.)"
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1s0r5d | Can the bacteria in your mouth utilize artificial sweetener? In other words, can artificial sweeteners give you cavities? | So, when I went in for a filling I asked the dentist if artificial sweeteners could cause cavities. He didn't know, but said that his best guess would be that they did not.
Artificial sweeteners are basically things that taste sweet, but are not bioavailable to the human body. But are they as equally so for the bacteria in our mouth? Since the breakdown in our teeth (AFAIK) is caused by the byproduct of bacterial digestion of foods that get left in our mouths, typically the sugars, if they could utilize splenda, aspartame, xylitol, stevia, whatever - they would possibly create the same acidic environment.
So.... all that being said, can bacteria (particularly that which resides in our mouth) consume the artifical sweeteners that are commonly used? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1s0r5d/can_the_bacteria_in_your_mouth_utilize_artificial/ | {
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"Artificial sweeteners aren't sugar, but most of them can be metabolized by bacteria. For example, aspartame is a peptide. \n\nBut they aren't frementable, so when they are metabolized, they don't generate the acids that wreck your enamel. I don't know about Splenda....it may be fermentable. I doubt it, but it may be."
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85o5p1 | How did Chechnya fall into radical Islamism while Bosnia & Herzegovina, despite being under even more direct support by Islamists and Jihadists than Chechnya, stayed a secular state? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/85o5p1/how_did_chechnya_fall_into_radical_islamism_while/ | {
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"Chechen resistance to Russia had historic ties to radical Islam. Imam Shamil, probably the most notable Chechen resistance leader of the 19th century (when Russia first tried to conquer Chechnya), was obviously a religious figure (hence the \"Imam\"), and followed Sheikh Mansur in that regard. Both were followers of Sufism, a ~~radical~~ spiritual branch of Sunni Islam, specifically the Naqshbandi sect (apologies if I'm messing up terminology, Islamic studies are not my strong point). It was a defining feature of the Chechen people, in that it differentiated them from not just from the Russians (Orthodox Christian), but also the Persians (Shia Muslim) and other local ethnic groups in the Caucasus (who were everything in between; I think some Dagestani groups were Sufi though). This religious identity maintained itself throughout the Chechen resistance: it didn't just come back up in the 1990s, but was there during the Russian Revolution era (1917-21) when there was an attempt at a North Caucasus state (including Chechnya), and through Chechen revolts in the Soviet era: Shamil's name in particular was used as a rallying cry, and with it the religious aspects, which were even more prominent in the officially atheist Soviet Union.\n\nThis at least is why Chechnya has kept up its Islamic traditions; I can't speak for the lack of such traditions in Bosnia.",
"**part 1**\n\n/u/kaisermatias is probably best for explaining the situation in Chechnya but aside the specifics of religiosity in Bosnia (which I'll get to) one of the major reasons for a very different outcome is that the political structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is the outcome of Dayton Agreement, also known as the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Brokered by the international community with representatives from the US, France, Germany, the European Union and so forth present, the aim of the Dayton Agreement was and still remains to preserve a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, secular political structure in BiH by instituting a highly complex political structure in BiH and giving the international community in form of the office of the High Representative immense political power.\n\nWith the NATO bombing campaign against the Republika Srpska and the success of Croatian Operation Storm in the summer of 1995, the Republika Srpska (the Serbian part of BiH) signaled their willingness to negotiate peace and through brokerage of the international community, the accords were signed at Dayton, Ohio in November 1995. With it, BiH's status as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and secular state were established by imposing the internal political division that is present in BiH to this day.\n\nAnd here is where it gets complicated: The state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina is technically speaking the Federal parliamentary Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH for short, which I'll continue to use throughout this post). So, according to Dayton and some further agreements, BiH has a president elected directly by the people (we'll get to some specifics), a government formed under a prime minister from a federal parliament with two chambers, a fairly usual judiciary with a Constitutional Court but also with a special Human Rights Chamber operating until 2003, and the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a special office created by Dayton (we'll come to him too soon).\n\nBut that is not all. BiH is constitutionally comprised of two seperate state-like entities that form the country as a whole: The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which – unsurprisingly is a federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – and the already mentioned Republika Srpska (RS). The Federation represents the Bosnian Muslims and Croat Bosnian parts of the population and according to the Dayton agreement controls 51% of the countries territory and the RS controls the remaining 49%. The Federation itself is – like BiH – a federation comprised of 10 autonomous cantons. While since 2005 BiH has its own army – before that the Federation and the RS had their own set of armed forces – in pretty much everything else the Federation and the RS are separate: Each have their own government, parliament, supreme court, flag and coat of arms, police force, customs, and postal system.\n\nI already mentioned the Cantons in the Federation but it is important that while these follow a \"classical\" federal structure more closely related to a form that we are related with, they too have their own governments, prime ministers, agencies, and so forth. These Cantons are further divided in municipalities. The RS is directly divided into municipalities without any further cantons.\n\nAlso, speaking of the president of BiH, that isn't just one person. Rather it's three. During the four year term the chair of presidency rotates among the three members (a Bosniak, a Serb, and a Croat) every 8 months. These members are elected directly (the Bosniak and the Croat from the Federation, the Serb from the RS) and they serve as a collective head of state with their most important functions being proposing a budget and being actively involved in foreign policy.\n\nSo, to recap, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is a country with a three members collective presidency, a two chamber parliament, and one federal constitutional court. This country is at the same time comprised of two political entities (\"entities\" being the exact terminology used in the Dayton agreement as to not imply they are states): The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska, each of them with their own parliament, their own prime minister, and supreme court and corresponding internal administrative and political structure. In addition to that, the Federation is also comprised of 10 Cantons, each of which also has its own government and prime minister. So, you have a country with 3 million inhabitants and a bit smaller than West Virginia that has a three person presidency, three supreme courts, 13 parliaments – one of which with two chambers with proportional representation – and 13 prime ministers.\n\nAnd this is where the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina resp. the High Representative comes into place. Because if the above sounds to you like a recipe for girdlock, that's because it is. And the Western powers who hammered out Dayton agreed on that. So not only did they created the High Representative as a position to oversee the implementation of Dayton, they also granted the position powers that can best be described (and have been various times) as dictatorial. The High Representative can adopt binding legal decisions if he feels that local parties are unwilling to act and he can remove from office public officials who violate legal commitments or, in general, the Dayton Agreement. And the High Representative also uses these powers, having until 2004 dismissed a total of 139 officials, including judges, ministers, civil servants and members of parliaments, sometimes freezing their bank account in the process.\n\nThe High Representative's decisions can not be appealed and he is also not elected by the people of BiH but rather is only responsible to the Peace Implementation Council, an international body with steering members from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, the Presidency of the European Union, European Commission, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is represented by Turkey. Past high representatives in chronological order were Carl Bildt, former first conservative prime minister of Sweden; Carlos Westendorp, Spanish Diplomat; Wolfgang Petritsch, Austrian diplomat; Paddy Ashdown, British Lib Dem politician; Christian Schwarz-Schilling, German conservative politician; Miroslav Lajčák, Social Democrat Slovak foreign minister; and currently Valentin Inzko, Austrian diplomat.\n\nCritics of the Dayton agreement, especially from within BiH, have contended that Dayton might have helped end the war in Bosnia but has essentially turned the country into an international protectorate that for all its complicated internal political structure is essentially ruled by the international community.\n\nAnd while that criticism is certainly valid to an extent, the deeper running problem, especially with Dayton now approaching almost a quarter century of being in effect is the issue that the way the state of BiH was set-up cements the categorization of nationalities that intially played such a huge role in the conflict. In essence, the specific structure that is based upon national categories like Croatians, Bosniaks, and Serbs prevents the inhabitants of BiH to develop any sort of civic nationalism or positive relationship with the central state because the only group that at this point can claim as their \"own\" but not wholly is the Bosniaks while Croatians and Serbians constantly look to Croatia and Serbia for their interests too: Dayton is the conflict not resolved but frozen in place.\n\nAt the same time, it has also prevented extremists of anyone side gaining an upper hand, including those who'd have supported some sort of jihadist policies. It is however important to emphasize here that for all intents and purposes, mujahideen and international jihadists never had an overly massive presence in Bosnia during the war and that Bosnian Muslim religious practice has a very different tradition from other Muslim areas of the world.\n\nEstimates of the number of Islamist volunteers in Bosnia during the war of the 90s vary widely, as widely as 500-5000, though most serious studies such as those of the International Crisis Group and the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the number somewhere in between 1000-2000. ARBiH did establish a detachment of foreign fighters during the war, El Mudžahid, which was attached to ARBiH's 7th Muslim Brigade under Mahmut Karalić. However, as the ICTY found during its case against Enver Hadžihasanović, the chief of staff or ARBiH, the relationship was not so much one of subordination but rather, almost outright hostility. According to witnesses, the only way to control El Mudžahid was to threaten them with attack rather than order them anything.\n\nAnd this wasn't exactly the only way relationships between the foreign volunteers and the Bosniak natives were fraught. Radical extresmists such as Al-Queda, which sent some of their people to join the El Mudžahid would often clash with Bosniaks over their lax(er) interpretation of Muslim practices. While Muslim religion especially during the war became an important part of Bosniak identity, to this day 54% of Bosniaks identify as \"non-denomiational Muslim\" and many religious practices common in other countries, from Hijabs to the prohibition of alcohol, are not observed or only observed by a comparatively small part of the community.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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272yt2 | What type of people became explorers an colonists? Was there a common background or profession? | > Those vessels sailing out into the unknown, they weren't carrying noblemen or aristocrats, artists or merchants. They were crewed by people living on the edge of life: the madmen, orphans, ex-convicts, outcasts like myself. As a felon, I'm an unlikely candidate for most things. But perhaps not for this. Perhaps I am the most likely.
How much truth is there to this quote? Were the majority of people living in colonies and attached to explorations from society's underbelly, or were they well-adjusted, ambitious, go-getters? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/272yt2/what_type_of_people_became_explorers_an_colonists/ | {
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"I don't have a general answer, but I have some specific examples of those who had a choice to go exploring and did: Edmond Halley, who was exploring the oceans in the 17th century, Joseph Banks, who traveled on James Cook's first voyage in the 18th century, and Charles Darwin, who traveled on the Beagle in the 19th. All three were gentlemen--adventurous, certainly very curious, perhaps a little out of the ordinary (they would have to be) but sane gentlemen. \n\nEdmond Halley, from a wealthy manufacturing background, undertook sea voyages to carry out scientific and astronomical work (his first being in 1676, when he was 20). He even captained (by many accounts poorly) his own ship in order to carry out research into compass variations in the Atlantic ocean. He did these things as part of his career in England, not inspite of it.\n\nJoseph Banks, voyaging in the later half of the 18th century, was also a young, wealthy and in his case landed gentleman (22) when, since he had nothing else to do and an urge for adventure, booked himself on a scientific trip to Newfoundland and Labrador. Four years later, he was appointed botanist on James Cook's first voyage--one which famously took in what Tahiti had to offer. The trip was definitively off the map, going to places completely or almost completely unreached by European explorers. But it was still heavily populated by gentlemen who had scientific interests. Later, his own travelling days done, Banks founded the early Kew collection of exotic plants, receiving samples from other naturalists around the world sent purposely to find samples of possible use. \n\nCharles Darwin famously was not the naturalist on FitzRoy's Beagle, but his assignment to the expedition was not unlike Banks'. Both were young at the time, and both were extraordinary in their natural interests, and both did not quite fit a leisurely or mundane life. However, like Banks, Darwin was level-headed and sane enough to be allowed along as FitzRoy's companion on a ship where gentlemanly company would be somewhat otherwise limited.\n\nAll three of these men went off sane and came back perhaps slightly less sane. All of them were not accidents or outliers, but examples of the heavy scientific and completely level-headed exploratory impulse among polite society. After all, expeditions like this take money. You don't fund an expedition which has an increased chance of failing because the people associated with it are known to be unbalanced. You fund an expedition which has at its head a great leadership team who can deal with incredibly poor conditions, unexpected occurrances and diplomatic disasters, and still bring back useful information whether it be something tradeable, or something growable, or something that can be invaded. \n\nMy answer? I can't speak for who the sailors were, but I think the vessels sailing into the unknown were led by people who if they weren't precisely entirely well-adjusted (there is a reason they went, after all) had something important to offer and were trusted or otherwise recommended to deliver on an incredibly difficult enterprise.\n\nSources:\n\nRichard Holmes' The Age of Wonder, and my own general knowledge of Halley and Darwin from earlier research and reading. Darwin Slept Here is a very interesting easy-reading book into Darwin's time in South America."
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1ouy4b | Why does sound move so slowly in a Bose-Einstein condensate? | Sound in a BEC moves at 0.0022 meters per second. _URL_0_
Sound in air moves 331 meters per second.
_URL_1_
Also, what happens when you resonate a shockwave inside a BEC? Will it explode like glass? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ouy4b/why_does_sound_move_so_slowly_in_a_boseeinstein/ | {
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"So the unique quality of the BEC is that they occupy the same quantum state, right? For all intents and purposes, it makes sense to look at a BEC of sodium (as your linked paper uses), as a single sodium cluster. \n\nThe speed of sound in a material depends on the propagation of the energy and the deformation under shear stress modulus in the case of a solid. On the molecular/atomic level, this takes the form of the elastic ability of atom/molecule to deform in the presence of an accelerating force. \n\nLong story short, sound in the BEC moves at .0022 meters per second, which is the exact vibrational frequency of a normal sodium cluster! This makes sense given the nature of the BEC, and the fact that without a significantly large atomic lattice for the sound to propagate through, \"sound\" energy can take the form of vibrational energy on the atomic/molecular level. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n"
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1qpegr | How does digestion work when you're upside-down? If hung upside-down, would you eventually starve, even if you had food? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qpegr/how_does_digestion_work_when_youre_upsidedown_if/ | {
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"No, the smooth muscles in your esophagus will push the food down into your stomach independent of gravity. This is why you can take a gulp of water upside down.\n\nAs for the stomach and intestines, they also have layers of smooth muscle called tunica muscularis that maintain peristalsis in order to keep the food going in the right direction.",
"Your digestive system works by peristalsis not gravity. Peristalsis is the process which causes your muscles in your digestive system to contract and relax, in doing this it can push food throughout your digestive system.",
"You can actually do some self-experimentation with this. Stand on your head (lean against a wall if you have to), and bite into an apple. Chew and swallow. You'll feel the bolus of food rise up toward your feet."
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9pfgdl | What did a college level world history textbook look like in 1900? | Specifically, I am curious about what was being taught to students that would go on to become major players - as adults - in the events that led to World War 1. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pfgdl/what_did_a_college_level_world_history_textbook/ | {
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"It really would not have existed, at least not really until after WW2.\n\nWorld History as a field is still pretty new-- as our courses in World History at most universities. Prior to that, the most common history class that any college educated individual would attend was Western Civilization (which still exists on plenty of campuses in the US). The ideal of the Western Civilization course was to tell a common history of Western Europe and its colonial progeny that took for a starting point Rome/Greece. This history was fairly novel at the end of the 19th century as it ran pretty counter to the nationalistic (or nation based) histories which had become vogue. Histories that for instance spoke to the antiquity of the French Nation or German Nation and celebrated its uniqueness or special position in Europe/the World. Western Civ courses stressed common ancestry and common destiny.\n\nIn this same vein we might track the emergence of New History led by James Harvey Robinson, who took the bedrock of Western Civ and built upon it a deeply progressive narrative of history that could explain how man (or western man) rose up from his primitive state to modern. This movement saw professional historians as antiquarians, whose work was too academic and remote from contemporary life. New History also known as Social Studies combines history, politics, geography and civics together. It's unlikely leaders would be familiar with this sort of history as Robinson really begins his project around 1913.\n\nAfter World War One, there is a greater movement towards World History, though its still very much on the margins and seen as an amateurish thing to do by much of the academy. Leaders in this regard would be Spengler and Toynbee who formed new versions of world history out of a new civilization approach in order to range across space and time. Their attempt to create an all encompassing, cosmic-universality of mankind history was dismissed as imagination, philosophy, or rubbish. What Spengler in particular really wanted to do was explain why World War One happened-- and to him, the easy answer was that Europe had reached the precipice and was beginning its civilizational slide into oblivion.\n\nRecognizable World History bubbles up perhaps most recognizably in the 1950s in the writing of Leften Stavrianos who believed that we should be taking “a view from the moon,” a higher unifying vision of the whole of human past. He argued that istorians should transcend the Eurocentrism of their discipline and the progressive narrative that ranges from Greece to Rome to Modernity and leaves societies like Egypt and China to the side as exhausted dead ends. The problem with Western Civ he believed was that it gave no global context to human history and left students with only a triumphalist narrative in which European Civilization comes to dominate the globe, which was certainly less of European Evolution while all other societies seemed static, frozen in time.\n\n* Allardyce, Gilbert. \"The Rise and Fall of the Western Civilization Course.\" The American Historical Review 87, no. 3 (1982): 695-725.\n\n* Allardyce, Gilbert. \"Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming of the World History Course.\" Journal of World History 1, no. 1 (1990): 23-76.\n\n"
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6ht3v0 | how come plenty of deities in different ancient polytheist civilisations had more than one association? | For example, Zeus was known as the sky god and the god of lightning but Athena was the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, war strategy, craftsmanship and so on.
Same other ancient civilisations such as Ra was the Egyptian god of the sun while Seth was the god of chaos, violence, confusion, anarchy, war and so on.
Since ancient civilisations shared similar ideologies *(like different city-states in ancient Greece shared a similar belief of the Olympian Pantheon)*, how come did they did not manage to come together what gods associated with what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ht3v0/eli5_how_come_plenty_of_deities_in_different/ | {
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" > ancient civilisations shared similar ideologies\n\nThey didn't. And you need to understand the timescales involved: the Ancient Egyptian civilisation goes back to long before the 30th century BC, while the Ancient Greek civilisation didn't get going until the 12th century BC. We today are closer to Ancient Greece than Ancient Greece was to Ancient Egypt. During the thousands and thousands of years these civilisations existed, their ideologies and religions changed and evolved radically.\n\nAs for your original question, you usually find that the different associations are actually very closely related. Athena represented wisdom and learning, and so became associated with weaving and then all crafts as they require skill and knowledge; and while her brother Ares was the god of warfare and bloodlust, she tempered that violence with wisdom -- specifically, the wisdom to know when and how to attack, and also when not to attack -- and so also became associated with war strategy. That is, Ares wants to rush in all guns blazing, Athena is the one who holds him back and says, \"Hold on, let's think about this.\""
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4ri6zo | how is a global recession possible? doesn't the reduction of money from one economy doing poorly have to go into another economy doing well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ri6zo/eli5_how_is_a_global_recession_possible_doesnt/ | {
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"If you have a factory making things, and then it shuts down, does the production of that factory go somewhere? No, it just disappears.\n\nGDP isn't about money, it's about how much valuable stuff is produced by an economy, and that can go up or down independent of what's going on elsewhere in the world. A global recession is when the production of most or all economies goes down.",
" > Doesn't the reduction of money from one economy doing poorly have to go into another economy doing well?\n\nSo, when there is a recession/depression/economic downturn, it's not useful to think of it as \"a reduction of money,\" even though it appears that everyone has less money. These events cause a decrease in *economic output*, or put another way, *value*.\n\nTo put it in easier to understand terms, lets think of houses. If your house gains value (goes up in price), it's not absorbing value (money) from some other house somewhere. It gains value generally because the area it's in has become more desirable and/or there is higher demand than supply. Consequently, if your house loses value (goes down in price), there isn't some house somewhere that the value gets transferred to.\n\n > So if the UK's GDP decreases wouldn't another country's GDP increase?\n\nThe opposite, mostly. If the UK goes into recession, the countries they trade with will be impacted. If the UK's GDP decreases, that means consumers and businesses alike will be buying less, which means the countries that produce products that are sold in the UK or that UK tourists visit will earn less money.",
"No because the money you're thinking of as not going into the UK GDP doesn't _have_ to go into another countries. It can stay in the bank of whoever was buying the goods from the UK.\n\nImagine you want to buy an apple. \n\nThe UK and France will both sell you an apple for one dollar.\n\nNews breaks that Boris Johnson is going to personally spit polish every apple on his pants before export. \n\nThis frightens you. \n\nYou cancel your UK apple order. \n\nBut instead of buying a French apple you have become so turned off apples you don't buy the French apple either. \n\nYou keep your money in your piggy bank and sob quietly. \n\nNow the UK can't afford to pay it's farm bills, Boris can't afford his pants bills.\nBut also the French farmers can't pay their bills.\nEach bad dept leading to others, more and more people not paying debts and being more careful of luxuries. ",
"No. Money becomes static. Rich people put it under the bed and don't spend it, everyone else suffers. The same money is still there but it isn't changing hands.",
"Imagine everyone in your town sells goods in one big market in the center of town, that all the townspeople participate in. Those stores, while usually competing, are also intricately connected. The sandwich maker depends on the baker for her bread, the baker depends the farmer stand for wheat, the farmer depends on the hardware store for farming tools, and so on and so forth.\n\nBut one day, the baker decides to quit, and puts new owner in charge that plans to jack up the prices on everything they sell, but he refuses to specify how much the prices will go up, only saying that he'll figure out the exact amounts over the next two years.\n\nThe sandwich shop, freaking out because the price of bread will go up, increases their prices out of fear that the bread will be so expensive that they can't make money. The farmer, assuming that the increased prices at the baker will lower overall sales and demand for bread, decides to make less wheat next season. All three companies will probably make less money over the next few years then they had under the old bakery management.\n\nNow, you might be thinking this is great for the other food vendors in the market, our competitors are shooting themselves in the foot and now we can make way more money, but there unintended consequences at play. For one, the bakery is beloved by the townsfolk, many would come to the marketplace just to have great bread. Oftentimes while in the marketplace to buy bread, they'd stop by other shops and buy things.\n\nSo overall foot traffic in the market goes down. Even if the other vendors make a higher percentage of the markets overall revenue, they end up making less money overall from losing the people who came just for the bread. \n\nAdditionally, now the baker, the sandwich shop, and the farmer will need fewer workers because the increased prices will lower demand and sales. Each of them lay off a couple of workers, who then have less money to spend in the marketplace, further exacerbating the problem.\n\nThe baker in this story is the UK. The Sandwich shop and farmer are the EU. All the other stores in the market are other countries. Fear and uncertainty over Brexit has lead global investors to hold onto their money, or push money into stable goods like commodities, rather than investing in growing companies.\n\nThis has created a global downturn because nobody knows what is going to happen in the next two years, so they'd rather wait and see, than continue to pour money into global markets. This lack of investment will lead to a recession, which leads to layoffs, which causes consumers to spend less money, making the recession even worse. ",
"You and 100 people share pennies.\n\nI own 10,000 of them and you each own 10 pennies. You use these pennies to build a business to make more pennies and to pay people.\n\nBut it takes to long to get pennies.\n\nI loan them to you at interest.\n\nNow I have less pennies but you owe them to me so I'm ok.\n\nSince you have more pennies you get a bigger business. To make some pennies you loan some out to someone else while still holding penny debt (why pay it back at once if you can still put it off to make more pennies).\n\nMultiply this by 100x.\n\nThen people start to default and can't pay pennies back. People close down and no jobs, no jobs = no spending so more business fail and more people have no jobs.\n\nRinse and repeat globally. \n\n",
"Economies are partially based on how fast people and companies make money and on how fast they spend the money they make. When people and companies are worried then they won't spend their money as quickly, which means that money won't go to other people or companies, so they won't be able to spend it, etc.\n\nThe term I remember was \"velocity of money\".",
"A recession is the slowing down of an economy... if every economy slows, then there can be a global recession. Slowing down is literally a slowing of how quickly money changes hands among citizens -- you get a paycheck from your company and buy groceries. The grocery store employee buys clothing. The fashion designer buys a car. The car salesman pays an accountant to do his taxes, etc. The same amount of money spends more time in people's pockets/savings accounts in a recession than when the economy is growing. Certain areas of the economy are less harmed (agriculture, since people need to eat) while others are hurt more since they are discretionary (electronics, automobiles). Just because people buy fewer cars in one country doesn't mean they buy more in another -- it just means that fewer cars are manufactured and GDP falls as a result. \n\n",
"It is all about money FLOW. \n\nWhen people get scared they save more and don't invest or spend. \n\nWhen people all over the world reduce their spending at the same time, the flow of funds around the world is reduced, *and* we get a global recession.\n\nIf just one country experiences lowering money flows it can impact their currency. For example Venezuela is currently crashing _URL_0_\n\n",
"Think also about expansion of the credit system. During booms we take out more credit and then during recessions we pay down debt and deleverage and that money is taken out of the economy ",
"I'd watch the video on _URL_0_. It's a video explaining the business/economic by Ray Dalio, founder of one of the most successful hedge funds. Quite simplified but very informative",
"Economy's are not Zero sum games where if someone wins someone loses, this means that they can grow and shrink. If anything then other country's economy's would shrink because their would be less imports and exports from Britain.",
"Most of the money lost in a global recession isn't actually lost from bank accounts, or from factories, or from people hoarding money, at least initially. When you hear \"$12 trillion lost in the global economy in one day\", that's all fake money lost from the devaluation of stock and securities. Basically, when people hold stock in their accounts, the value of that stock isn't actually based on the value of the company it represents, or anything concrete (although that may factor into it). The value of a share of stock is *only* what people are willing to pay for it. If people are willing to pay a lot for a stock, it's worth a lot. That's it.\n\nWell, when something like the Brexit happens, no one is willing to buy *anything*. So, because of that, everyone just kind of decides that shares of stock are worth less; because no one wants to buy, you have to lower your asking price for the stock in your accounts if you want to sell them and expect anyone to buy. \n\nWhen this happens en masse, a lot of people's accounts are valued at a lot less at the same time. So, we say that money was lost, even though it was never money in the first place: it was all just bullshit account value, from accounts filled not with money, but with stock. So, when a global recession starts due to something like a Brexit and a ton of \"value\" evaporating from the world markets, the money doesn't \"go\" to another country or economy because it never really existed in the first place. \n\nSource: Series 7 and Series 63 FINRA licenses",
"There is no conservation of money as there is conservation of mass or energy. Money can be generated (e.g. planting and harvesting) or lost (house burns down).",
"Your confusion is caused by the fact that you're thinking about economies like lakes, when they're actually more like rivers.\n\nThe \"lake theory\" of an economy says, \"economies are strong when everyone has a bunch of money. So much money that it could fill up an entire lake.\"\n\nThe \"river theory\" of an economy says, \"it doesn't matter how much money an economy has. It only matters how quickly money flows through that economy.\"\n\nWhen you spend $100 to buy groceries, it doesn't go into a pile in the store room of the supermarket. It pays for employees' salaries, for new goods, and for building fees. In a well-functioning economy, the money is immediately paid forward in some way. **Every time the money changes hands, something useful happens.**\n\nWhen there's a recession going on, people aren't confident in the state of the economy, and so they're more likely to want to keep cash on hand. So they don't immediately reuse the money they get. The money-river becomes a money-lake. There's just as much money, but it isn't going anywhere, so it doesn't do anything.",
" > Is the total amount of money in the world always the same, and it's always there it is just redistributed across different countries as their economies do well or poorly? Or can the total amount of money in the world take a hit in a recession?\n\nYes, the total amount of money out there can fall. Sometimes the money was an illusion. This happened during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis: There were trillions of dollars' worth of assets out there on bank and company balance sheets - they *thought* they had this money - but those assets (mortgage-backed securities) turned out to be worth way, way less than everyone thought. *POOF*, all of a sudden your company has billions of dollars less than you thought. ",
"When economy began the amount of money was zero. \n\nIt was created out of thin air an arbitrarily went to some number. \nAs various countries joined and disappeared the number changed \n\nThere is nothing that says that total sum of money should be balanced across countries \n\nJust as it was created out of thin air, it can disappear too into thin air (due to expectations of people and supply and demand etc. ).\n\nMeaning money was never balanced across countries to be a neat balance sheet and hence entire global economy can go up or entire can go down as well. ",
"One thing that you need to understand is that the money supply is not constant. It expands and contracts. This is because the money supply expands when banks make loans, and contracts when people repay those loans. This has an exponential effect as pretty much ALL of the money in an economy is money that was created through the issuance of loans. The fact that we have a debt-based money supply, with interest charged on all of that money, pretty much guarantees endless cycles of expansion and contraction of the money supply. This is linked with what happens in the real productive economy. There's no way I can explain this in a satisfactory way in this post. I suggest you look up \"fractional reserve banking\" on YouTube.",
"It can also be thought about as a measure of confidence in the economy and the frequency that transactions occur. Recessions are a self fulfilling prophecy, people expect to have less money to spend, so they start being more careful, by spending less. Demand decreases, number of transactions decrease, so production decreases.",
"There are many factors. One is that wealth can disappear. The value of a stock is based on perception and as you know can vary from day to day. In a market crash, stock values go down... that's not wealth moving to a different place, that is wealth vanishing into nothing.\n\nAside from investors now having less wealth on paper, these kinds of value losses severely handicap the traded business's ability to meet bills because those stock prices are the basis of their credit with banks.",
"This is a huge point of discussion in economics. It sounds like you are in the camp that would agree with the general equilibrium theory.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI personally agree with what you are saying, I believe all booms/busts are relative to the global economy as a whole.",
"Also of note and implied in your question is the false assumption that the amount or level of \"money\" in the economy is constant. It's not. There is something called the money multiplier.\n\nSay you have $100 and you put it in the bank. The back reserves $10 of your dollars and loans out $90 to another guy. That guy takes his $90 and deposits it into the bank. Together, Yours and his account balance is now $190 even though there was only $100 in cash when we started. Who actually has money. The answer is everyone, you, the other guy and the bank. Now imagine this happening continuously and constantly. That is called the money multiplier and it's how central banks control inflation; By asking banks to reserve more or less of the cash deposited.\n\nThere is also another factor occurring here. It is the velocity of money. It's sees how fast you can get to the bank to deposit your $100 and have it turned into $190. Or how fast you can give it to your pub for beer and they put it into their bank. The faster the money moves, the more money it seems is out there. \n\nWhere people hoard money, the velocity of money is lowered and the money multiplier is not effective and it seems as if the economy is in a rut. It's society having the confidence to put money out there in the system instead of their wallets or \"mattresses\" that makes the world go round. This works this way regardless if the money is cash, gold or fur pelts.\n\nEdit: multiplier not multiplayer",
"I think the key issue here is that wealth is not a conserved quantity.\n\nA conserved quantity in physics is like mass or energy (or mass-energy in relativity)--theres a fixed amount that can never be created or destroyed, it just gets moved around from one place to another.\n\nWealth is *not* a conserved quantity. It just doesn't work that way. Wealth can be created out of nothing (e.g. if a farmer converts an unused field to grow crops) or destroyed (e.g. if your house burns down). These things don't require transfer from one person to another, they just come out of nowhere (and make everyone better off on average) or they disappear (and make everyone worse off, on average.) \n\nIndividually, it looks like money is never created, but actually the government creates money every year, and besides that economic \"growth\" means just that : the total amount of wealth (not just the number of dollars) is increasing.\n\nThe tacit assumption you're making here is that if one person is losing out, then somebody else _must_ be winning, and that's not the case. It's possible for _everyone_ to lose.",
"The best explanation of a recession I've ever seen, and which works at the ELI5 level, is the [parable of the capitol hill baby-sitting co-op](_URL_0_).\n\nAs a bonus it also explains monetary policy, the federal reserve, and interest rates.",
"You are an investor. You invest 5 money in Britain and expect to get 7 money out of it. Britain starts to look like it will not give that 7 money to you so you take your 5 money back. Britain already expected to spend/spent your 5 money though, so it paid you with 5 borrowed money since it didn't have 5 money for you. Other investors see that Britain has 5 money in debt and avoid investing in Britain/remove their money from Britain before Britain can't afford to pay them. Now Britain has a lot of money in debt and nobody wants to invest in it, so the economy grinds to a halt. \n\nOther nations depend on Britain for specific things as do certain industries. Lets say Britain sells 100 tea for 100 money to 100 nations. Those 100 nations still want their 100 tea after Britain's economy crashes but now they can't buy their tea for 1 money, they have to go to China for 2 money. So China gets those nations 2 money but each nation now has a larger trade debt. This means investors see that these nations are not doing as well and begin pulling out their money from those nations. Now 100 nations are in the same spot as Britain.\n\nNow the investors start looking around and see the global recession. They notice China is doing well but mostly they notice that everybody is doing bad and know it is only a matter of time before China starts doing bad as well. So they all start pulling out their money before they lose it. The self fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled, China's economy crashes like the rest, and the investors who \"called it\" feel satisfied they are smart. Others follow their example for any holdout nations because the smart people were right about China and are saying the same thing about every other nation.\n\nAfter the global economy grinds to a halt, industry starts to grow on actual value rather than investor value. Commodities (food, oil, ect) begins to boom as people need it and it is the only thing people spend on. Investors begin investing on these things and these industries become strong. Other industry grows around commodities and the global economy builds up again until investors get spooked.",
"At its heart, economics is about negotiation and trade. \n\nMoney is just something that we happen to use in most negotiations and trades, because it makes discussing the value of a certain deal or trade much easier and more universal. \n\nSince, typically (and bitcoin would be an exception) currency is backed by governments (this is called fiat currency), the relative value of a currency vs other currencies can fluctuate based on the value of the trades and deals that currency's issuing government makes.\n\nSo when governments get into a big disagreement (Brexit), which usually are over trade, trade relationships can break down for a period of time, as the people and businesses in those countries must now expend extra energy on adapting to the new situation, whereas before maybe they could have focused that energy on production for the trade pipelines already in place. When these relationships break down for one government, trades are less likely to take place and the pipeline of international trade can shrink temporarily. This will be reflected in the relative value of the currencies involved.\n\nHopefully that clears things up a little.\n\n\n"
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3srqpx | What knowledge did the Incas have of the Amazon Rainforest and the people who lived there? How much Inca influence was there in the area? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3srqpx/what_knowledge_did_the_incas_have_of_the_amazon/ | {
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"The people of the Amazon were semi-nomadic, which made the Inca style of conquest and cultural integration difficult. Furthermore they were known to be violent. This was their best defense against conquest by both the ruling Andean powers and the Spanish/Portuguese. They had little to offer and and everyone else had too much to lose. \n\nThere is evidence of economic and cultural trade represented in Andean art. Flora and fauna found only in the rainforest is shown in Andean motifs and goods. Feathers in particular were traded from the forests to the more established civilizations. \n\nEdit: a more direct answer- Yes, the Inca had a pretty good knowledge of the rainforest and the people there. Inca influence came in the form of goods: textiles, ceramics, and food/alcohol. These were in exchange for taxes and allegiance. Because the semi-nomadic people did not deal in goods and currency, nor were they in large enough groups to threaten or aid the Inca, they were relatively left alone. ",
"The Inca Empire and preceding Andean cultures traded with but did not politically control Amazonian peoples. Huertas Castillo writes that Inca people obtained feathers and animal skins from Amazonian peoples such as the Ese Eja and Harakmbut, in exchange for items such as bronze axes ([26](_URL_0_))."
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27jtlc | Why did Julius Caesar fear prosecution when his term as governor of Cisalpine/Transalpine Gaul? | I've read a few times that one of the reasons Julius Caesar marched into Rome with his legions was because he feared if he disbanded his army and returned to Rome as he was supposed to, that he would be "prosecuted" for some reason.
I've never managed to get to the bottom of what he was to be prosecuted for, could anyone help me out? Furthermore if he WAS guilty of whatever the offenses were, why did Rome wait until he had amassed all that power and money in his Gallic campaigns before trying to bring him to justice?
EDIT: Sorry the title should have the word "finished" on the end | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27jtlc/why_did_julius_caesar_fear_prosecution_when_his/ | {
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"There were three things that Caesar was undoubtedly guilty of, and would have been roasted alive in any court in Rome for.\n\nFirst, his entire political career had been defined by bribery. To gain political office in Rome meant spending lavishly on your clients, and the grey area between gifts and bribes was as unclear then as it is for politicians today. And Caesar did spend ever so lavishly. Starting with his run for Pontifex Maximus, he basically assured his own election for all the important offices he held (including his pro-consulships) through hefty bribes.\n\nSecond, he also was guilty of serious offenses against the state and the gods by his **actions** as both consul and then pro-consul. For the first, it was his actions towards his fellow consul, Marcus Bibulus, that caused the trouble. Not only was Caesar complicit in the violation of his sacrosanctity, he also ignored the fact that Bibulus had declared that every day of that consulship year was a religious holiday, meaning that technically speaking, all of the laws that Caesar passed during his consulship (including his appointment as pro-consul) through the Assemblies was invalid, since no public business was to be conducted on such days (this was, as an aside, one of the ingenious but ultimately failed attempts to block Caesar). These actions alone could easily have been used to prosecute him. However, his actions as pro-consul didn't do him any favours either. He went well beyond his mandate when he began his invasions, and while he became popular in Rome through his dispatches and distribution of largess, he also could be said to be participating in an illegal war. \n\nNow, this would all be a moot point if the alliance between him, Crassus, and Pompey was still alive, since the money of the former and influence of the later could have trumped any charges as easily as they had gotten themselves and Caesar elected repeatedly. However, with the death of Crassus and the turning of Pompey to the Senate, Caesar's only protection at this point (legally speaking) was his continued immunity from prosecution via his pro-consulship.",
"Fantastic question! It's been a while since I've answered one, so you just made my day here. Let's get into the whirlpool that's 1st century BCE Roman politics, shall we? :) **The first posts will be background to help you understand the last post. If you just want a quickie, scroll down a bit to the third post. If not, enjoy!**\n\nFirst thing you have to remember is that Rome in the last century BCE was confusing as *hell.* Power was constantly shifting, and traditions were being overridden left and right. In the early years, Roman armies had marched on Rome for the first time - and then there were the actual civil wars. One of the few traditions that was still left was the eternal tradition of politics. Every man wanted more power - and in that regard, it was every man for himself. **There were no political parties, but there *were* political \"ideals.\"** You could appeal to the people for your power - these people were disparagingly called the \"populares\" by the other side. The other side was traditional and focused on looking as \"Roman\" as possible - they called themselves the \"optimates\" or the \"best men.\" Many pop history folks (looking at you, Dan Carlin) like to portray these two sides as the \"Democrats and Republicans\" of the ancient world, but that's absolutely not the case. Every man was for himself - and that was the greatest check on the system. While you made temporary alliances with others, you would only help that other person out so long as it was convenient for you. Backstabbing was hugely prevalent, and it was also the greatest check on any one man having too much power. Men rose and fell with incredible rapidity - Caius Marius, for example, was a paragon in 101 BCE. In 100 BCE, he was panned and forced to retire from his 6th consulship in (relative) disgrace due to the Saturninas affair, which sparked a whole new set of SNAFUs. But that's another story, and this is just for the addition of context. \n\nNow for just a bit more context. This might seem random, but bear with me - I'll tie it together in just a bit. **In 60 BCE, there was a rather defined political battle between a few of the biggest names in Rome.**\n\n* The first, possibly the most common, name was **Cato Minor**, more commonly known as Cato the Younger. Cato was one of the most outspoken men of the Senate; he never held the consulship (Rome's highest office), but he certainly did command quite a bit of *auctoritas* and *dignitas*. When he spoke, people listened - and he was famed for not budging from his firm ideals on what a Roman SHOULD do. That didn't really work out in his favour, other than being the most famously outspoken man in the Senate at that point, but his reputation garnered him one crucial advantage; people were *afraid* to speak against Cato. Cato was the staunch defender of Roman ideals! Obviously, if you speak against Cato, you're speaking against Rome herself! You're not a true Roman! You get the idea. Cato's famous for holding the first recorded filibusters (I believe), and he was nothing if not diligent at curbing people's power. Needless to say, this policy didn't go over terribly well with those who were seeking that power, which leads us to the first person who Cato royally pissed off!\n\n---\n\n* **Pompey Magnus.** In 60 BCE, Pompey was the most decorated Roman general alive. He had been one of Sulla's understudies, earning his title of \"Magnus\" in the **Marian civil wars.** After that mess, he spent a few years getting his ass handed to him by Sertorius in **Spain** (which is generally glossed over rather conveniently), for which he was granted a triumph. From there, he headed to Italy, where he took credit for crushing **Spartacus' revolt**, then took command of the Mediterranean to conduct what was possibly **the greatest anti-piracy campaign in history.** Within 40 days, the entire Mediterranean was cleared of piracy - which is a bigger deal than it sounded. Rome's population was incredible, and the city was absolutely reliant on constant imports of grain from her provinces - something that the pirates were interrupting, on top of ransacking other trading ships and even raiding the coastline from Gibraltar to Egypt to Italy and Greece. Putting it in perspective....clearing that entire area in 40 days? Today, it would be considered to be a nearly impossible task. It's one of the achievements of Pompey that shows that he truly was an organizational genius. Immediately afterwards, he conducted **the Third Mithridatic War,** which culminated in the Pontic king's suicide and the subjugation of the [Eastern Provinces](_URL_0_). \n\n When Pompey returned to Rome, he received another triumph for his success, and he was again the golden boy of the people. He expected all of that love and adoration to translate into political success, but he failed to reckon with Cato's....Cato-ness. When he returned to Rome, Pompey had two objectives: **He wanted to give land to all of his veterans** (a reasonable request, which had become tradition over the past half century), and **he wanted to confirm his Eastern Settlement** (the laws and regulations that he had established over in those aforementioned provinces). Cato cockblocked both with the help of his allies. Pompey, feeling rather stung by this, began searching for allies of his own. The only man who held as much power as him, however, was one of his own greatest enemies - a man who he couldn't *stand.* In 60 BCE, however, they both had a common enemy in Cato. And as they say, an enemy of my enemy...\n\n---\n\n* **Marcus Licinius Crassus** - he's well known as the wealthiest man in Rome for a reason, and that's what he's most famous for. What people *don't* think of is what he did with all of that money. Especially in the First Century, **a bid for political office required a vast sum of wealth; and most of the people running were running so they could *achieve* that vast sum of wealth.** Well, they were really running for the power and prestige. The wealth was just a nice side effect - but they still didn't have the money on hand to campaign. They had to get it from somewhere, and the best place to get the money? From people who had the money on hand. Crassus was the most famous of these, and he bankrolled HUGE numbers of aspiring politicians. As a result, he had an enormous amount of sway in the Roman political system - **all he was lacking was a military command.** He tried to achieve military glory in the Spartacus War, but, as it was a slave revolt, that didn't do much for him (coupled with Pompey's glory-hogging tendencies). Well, in 60 BCE, Crassus was having similar issues to Pompey; **Cato was being a nuisance.** Crassus was hugely involved with the *publicani* - who were made famous in the Bible as the \"publicans,\" or the \"tax collectors\" - and **the *publicani* had a problem.** They weren't able to collect as much money as they'd promised in the war-ravaged East (what a shocker). **So, being businessmen and not wishing to make a loss, they tried to renegotiate their contract.** Some of the Senate (such as Cicero), saw the demand as completely outrageous - but were in favour of it to placate the business class and to keep them mollified. Some, like Crassus, were businessmen themselves, and were wholly in favour of the idea. But then, in comes Cato and his cadre.\n\n[Cicero, always being the purveyor of wonderful descriptions of daily politics, commented thusly:](_URL_1_)\n\n > The fact remains that with all his patriotism and integrity he is sometimes a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as though he were living in Plato's Republic rather than Romulus' cesspool. What could be fairer than jurors who take bribes should themselves be brought to trial? Cato moved accordingly, and the Senate agreed. Result, the Knights declare war against the House - not upon me, for I was against it. Could anything be more shameful than tax-farmers repudiating their contract? All the same, the loss was worth standing to keep the Order on our side.\n\n"
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av2gi8 | what actually happens inside of a meat when its marinaded that gives it the flavor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/av2gi8/eli5_what_actually_happens_inside_of_a_meat_when/ | {
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"Depends a bit on the type of marinade you're using but generally three things:\n* adds salt (which helps a lot with general flavor perception)\n* allows more moisture to be absorbed so the meat is juicier\n* adds the flavors in the marinate itself to the meat",
"Also the citrus or vinegar in the marinade will start to break down the muscle tissue, allowing the flavor to absorb more completely. ",
"A marinade has 3 main components: an acid, a medium, herbs/spices. The flavor comes from all three elements. \n\nThe acid is things like lemon juice or vinegar. This breaks down the structure of the meat making it more tender and making it easier for the other elements to travel into the center of the meat. \n\nThe medium is something like olive oil or other cooking oil. This gives some flavor but also serves to bind everything together. \n\nFinally there are the herbs and spices like salt and pepper, oregano, garlic, etc. You can taste these things directly. By adding this to a marinade the flavor is carried into the body of the meat and binds with it. "
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15oypi | Does a mug of coffee retain it's temperature for longer while sitting on a table or while held by hands? | Science is an interest of mine but not my forte, for that reason I will be adding **(pc)** next to the assumptions I make, standing for please confirm, I would be grateful if they can be verified.
Let's take the average room temperature at 21°c. Average temperature of the male hand is 32°c (pc), the outside of a mug can be assumed at around 60°c (pc), is this reasonable?). Ventilation can assumed to be minimal, average, airflow in a room. Also we'll assume one entire hand is wrapped around the mug (and the other holding the handle is that matters).
What is more likely, that the coffee will stay at a higher average temperature for longer by being held or sitting on a table.
Thank you for you time. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15oypi/does_a_mug_of_coffee_retain_its_temperature_for/ | {
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"Sitting on the table would loose less heat. Harder to lose heat to the air than your hand. \n\nImagine it like this. When you hold the mug feel how warm your hands are. Thats heat you are taking away fom the jug. Then feel the air right next to the mug. Not as warm right? The reason is its harder to transfer heat to the air vs your hand. "
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ckmxex | How is the lithosphere affected by global warming? | Global warming affects the entire planet in numerous ways. It affects the atmosphere by having higher concentrations of CO2, it affects the biosphere because living things need oxygen to survive. It affects the hydrosphere with ocean temperatures increasing each year. It affects the cryosphere with mass ice sheet loss.
However, I cannot understand how the lithosphere is affected (for a science assignment). Any ideas? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ckmxex/how_is_the_lithosphere_affected_by_global_warming/ | {
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"Well the lithosphere does include surface sediments, and the types of sediments deposited depends on local climate--and sea level, near the coasts--so that's a pretty straightforward example. Global erosion should also increase due to higher temperatures, and in particular erosion of calcium-bearing minerals and deposition of carbonates can be expected to increase thanks to increasing amounts of carbonic acid. Over many thousands of years this will draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, stabilizing the climate.\n\nThere *might* be some long-term increase volcanism due to the subduction of these increased layers of carbonate minerals on the sea floor, but at best it's a very subtle effect.\n\nRemoving large glaciers will also cause isostatic rebound near polar regions, such that the land in those areas rises--not enough to outpace sea level rise in the long run, but it could slightly mitigate it in those specific areas."
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xjb17 | Does the body forgo its fat storage and consume muscle while you're on a Caloric deficit? | I have a couple questions leading up to the title question as well.
1.)
Let's say your normal Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is 2k calories/day. But, over the course of major dieting, you cut down to 1.5k calories/day, so you're functioning at a 500 Calorie deficit.
I'm under the assumption that BMR decreases under starvation situations, but how rapidly does this occur? If you take the above scenario of the 500 Calorie deficit into account, how long would it take for a person's BMR to stabilize towards the new BMR of 1500 Calories/day? Would it ever drop that low? To what (average/normalized) limit can a body adjust to a continued Caloric deficit?
2.)
Again, assume someone's on a 500 Calorie deficit. The body will use remaining stores of energy to make up for that deficit so the body can function normally. In the fitness world, people are often told that building muscle whilst on a deficit makes it almost impossible to increase strength because your body doesn't divert any energy towards repairing muscle. But you also hear that the body will consume muscle as well to make up for the deficit.
So, the main question here is, does the body forgo using its fat storage and end up consuming muscle to close a Caloric deficit? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xjb17/does_the_body_forgo_its_fat_storage_and_consume/ | {
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"Here is a wall of text, forgive me.\n\n\nQuestion 1: It is possible that there is research out there to figure that out, but the only way to truly test that hypothesis (at least that I can think of) would be to have otherwise healthy people lay in bed (with little to no movement - even getting up to go to the bathroom would increase the measured metabolic rate) all day at a 500 calorie deficit for multiple days. Logistically speaking, very hard to do. \n\nHowever, we know that one of the things the body does best is adapt to changes in homeostasis. If you restrict caloric intake, the body will adapt by bringing the BMR down, thus coming to a new homeostatic start point. I really don't know how fast it occurs, except that it does.\n\n\n\nQuestion 2: \nSimply put, if the body is in a caloric deficit, the body will choose the path of least resistance to get the energy and macronutrients it needs. If it is glucose that your body needs, it will go straight to liver and muscle glycogen stores. If it needs amino acids (keep in mind there is a HUGE amount of protein turnover every day everywhere in the body), the body will go for a relatively non-essential (and very large) source of amino acids, AKA muscle. If glycogen stores are running dry, there is a process called gluconeogenesis that allows for amino acids to help with some of the glucose needs of the body. For normal beta-oxidation (the normal process by which fat stores are used) to occur, there does have to be some glucose available (AKA \"fat burns in a carbohydrate flame\"). Finally, there is ketosis, which is a state the body can get into where fats are eventually broken down into ketone bodies in place of glucose. Yes, some diets try to get to this state, but it really isn't good for your body.\n\nHopefully I've outlined the fact that it is not just about calorie in, calorie out. There are very specific macronutrients needs that must be met so as not to create a situation where your body is grinding through muscle mass. \n\nI can highlight these needs best in the time after exercise (since during and after exercise is a point where arguably the largest amount of protein catabolism can take place in a healthy person). After exercise (especially resistance training) there is a TON of protein catabolism that is occurring. If you take in glucose, you can pretty much stop the exercise-induced protein turnover. By taking amino acids (a complete protein is best) you can ramp up protein synthesis (muscle building). If you take in both carbs and protein immediately after exercise, you cause a huge slowdown of muscle catabolism and a huge increase in anabolism. Taking in carbs and protein after exercise is important for EVERYONE to do, regardless of your goal because of this. You just adjust the amounts and ratios of the two nutrients based on the goal. Now, if you don't eat anything after exercise, you are just letting your body eat up your hard earned muscle.\n\nSo where is fat burning in all of this? You burn fat at rest - in between sets, in between intervals, and after exercise. During exercise rest periods, you will burn fat based on the intensity, duration and density (how much work you get in a given amount of time). After exercise, you will burn fat largely based on the work you did during the exercise session. You will burn throughout the process of recovering from the exercise session.\n\nSo, the moral of the story is: if you are going to diet, pay really close attention to WHAT you eat, especially around exercise. The specific nutrients you take in will heavily influence whether it is fat or muscle you are burning. The common mantra regarding body composition is largely true - it is hard to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. However, the macronutrients you take in (and when you take them in) can make a big difference in how much muscle you lose when dieting and/or how much fat you gain when bulking.\n\nTLDR; Watch what you eat, not just how much. Calories are only part of the picture."
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1elthj | Why is the climate of extreme South America so different from the corresponding North American latitudes? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1elthj/why_is_the_climate_of_extreme_south_america_so/ | {
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"Climate is an incredibly complex system. I can't answer your question but I can give you this 2006 study about how one part of the Sahara has a large effect on the Amazon\n\n_URL_0_",
"Tierra del Fuego is pretty much like the Aleutian Islands, so I'm not really sure what you mean here.",
"I guess you mean why areas that are equal distance from the equator tend to be different in regards to climate. And the answer I have for that is that climate is affected by other factors, not just distance from equator. Wind patterns have a huge impact on them as well as seasonal things (El Nino for example)"
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ebxzh2 | why does deleting things clear storage even though the pc only can’t find it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebxzh2/eli5_why_does_deleting_things_clear_storage_even/ | {
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"Like, I heard that the pc doesn’t delete stuff, if you click on delete, but rather just doesn’t where it is. Why does it clear storage?",
"The PC \"remembers\" which parts of the hard drive are \"empty\" and can be used to store new information.",
"When you delete a file the file system marks that file for deletion and deletes any references to that files location on disk. \n\nAs far as the OS is concerned, this space is now clear and that's reflected through the GUI. The files are still on the disk in the same place, the OS just sees that space as \"Oh hey I can store stuff in those blocks of space now\". \n\nThe OS doesn't read a disk and say \"How many blocks read 0?\", but rather \"How many blocks can I write to?\", a deleted file is marked as blocks the OS can write to.",
"To actually delete the data, you would have to overwrite the section of the harddrive. \n\nThink of your harddrive like a whiteboard. You can write all over it and then decide to get rid of something. Deleting it would be like crossing out the bit you don't want. The data is still there.\n\nBut then you have another idea, and you write it over the bit where you crossed something out. You've now replaced the information.",
"Deleting a file hides the file from you, however your computer can still find the data as it knows exactly where it is. But it marks the space as available. So when there is a need to find storage space on your hard drive, either because you want to store more data on it or just to tidy up the existing data to make it easier to access, the computer might pick the storage that contains the data for the deleted file. It is first at this point that the data will get deleted as it is overwritten with the new data.",
"This is sometimes different between operating systems. However, generally the deleted stuff is marked as \"this stuff can be overwritten\". When the PC then calculates free storage, it counts both \"unwritten\" and \"rewritable\" stuff.",
"It’s like you run a big neighborhood and you have an address book with all the people who live there in it. One day one of your neighbors calls up and says “hey I’m moving. Take my name out your book.” So you do that. You don’t erase the address, just the name, and you don’t go to their house and clean it for them. \n\nThen a few days later someone comes up to you and says “Hey I’m looking to move into a new place. Are there any open houses in your neighborhood?” And you look through your address book and sure enough, there’s a space without a name. You and your friend drive up to the house and all the neighbor’s old stuff is still there, so you clean it out and help your new friend move in. Then you put his name in the book at that address so you know where he lives.",
"Filesystems work like libraries. \n\nWhen you want to find a book you look up the location in a catalog and then go get it. \n\nDeleting just removes the entry from the catalog so you can't find it. But the book is still on the shelf somewhere (until it has been replaced by another book). \n\nThis is why you can still recover deleted files...you just ignore the catalog and walk through the library and catalog everything yourself. \n\nTo truely delete something you must not only delete the catalog entry but you must also replace the book on the shelf by overwriting the old data with garbage."
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18qrfm | Why is the oxygen produced by the Amazon forest mostly consumed within the forest itself? | Although the Amazon forest produces about 20% percent of the worlds oxygen most of it is consumed by the forest itself - how? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18qrfm/why_is_the_oxygen_produced_by_the_amazon_forest/ | {
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"Plant cells still respire, so they need oxygen to stay alive.",
"Plants produce O2 via photosynthesis in a 1:1 ratio with C incorporated into the plant body. Therefore, for a net transport of O2 out of the system, there needs to be a net addition of sequestered C. One can consider the Amazon system to be in quasi-steady state, no significant growth versus death and decay. That is to say, the decomposition of forest (consuming O2) is roughly equal to the O2 produced.\n\nThe ocean is the most significant source of O2 to the atmosphere because some of the C produced by phytoplankton is removed; it sinks and is buried in sediments before it can degrade. You must sequester reduced (usually organic) C to produce free O2.",
"A good way to think about this is in terms of biomass, i.e. the organic chemicals consisting mostly of hydrogen and carbon which make up living things. Photosynthesis produces oxygen and biomass, and if the biomass is used up for energy by a living creature (such as the plant that photosynthesized it, or an animal that ate that plant, or a fungus that consumed the corpse of the animal that ate that plant), then exactly the same amount of oxygen that was originally given off is consumed. Similarly if the biomass is burnt, you get back to where you started. \n\nThis means that for a forest, say, to give off net oxygen, there must be an accumulation of biomass. But biomass can't just keep accumulating in a fixed space, and the Amazon, like most natural environments, has reached a more or less steady state. All the oxygen and biomass that is created by photosynthesis is cancelled out by the biomass and oxygen consumed for energy by the plants, animals, fungi and microbes in the ecosystem (or sometimes burnt). However there is a lot of biomass locked up in the Amazon, so every bit that is cleared results in a lot of oxygen and biomass turning into carbon dioxide and water.\n\nA plantation will give off oxygen while it is growing and accumulating biomass, but that is cancelled out when the paper or timber produced eventually rots or burns. Farmland gives off net oxygen, but that is cancelled by the oxygen used by us after eating the food from that farmland. Converting grassland into forest, say, will provide net oxygen that is not taken back, but only until the forest is mature. \n\nNature does have one way around this though. Sometimes biomass gets trapped in the ground or at the bottom of the sea without oxygen to decompose it, and if buried deep enough may end up as hydrocarbons or carbonates. The amount of biomass buried this way has always been much smaller than the the amount returned to carbon dioxide and water, but over long time periods these processes have led to major changes to the atmosphere."
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1vptj9 | why does nascar not like drafting? | Couldn't they just have different drafting rules per race or would that require a differently built car every race? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vptj9/eli5_why_does_nascar_not_like_drafting/ | {
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"Its more or less the track conditions than the car from my experience. Example you goto a high bank track like Texas motor speedway and start drafting, real drafting bumpers within a couple inches if not kissing, speeds will increase above what is expected. While at a more flat track... I believe California is fairly flat when it comes to the banks in the corner. On top of that you take a car which can knock out 200mph all day have it draft increase the speed.. This would already cause worries and a since of caution in NASCAR and track owners.. \n\nAlso the fences that go around the tracks, each track is different so each fence is different, are only tested to what they could see happening speed wise at that track. Example: Daytona 2013 where the fence failed.\n\nIf your on the highway driving,if you haven't done this don't do it unless your comfortable, but get up behind a 18 wheeler that's going round 70 or so once you get close enough good judge to know if your close enough to experience drafting is if you can't see his mirrors , THIS MEANS HE CANT SEE YOU!!!, So be careful, slightly move your wheel left to right, your car becomes completely different in feel and control.\n\nSource: I raced modified dirt track cars and NASCAR/Indy is my dream."
]
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7haelo | what makes some names feminine and some names masculine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7haelo/eli5_what_makes_some_names_feminine_and_some/ | {
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"To answer that question well, we need to know if you are talking about names in English or in another language. English is kinda funny with the gender of it's words. Other languages, like French or Spanish, make every single word either feminine or masculine. In Spanish, for example, an o or an a at the end will determine it for a lot of names : Julio is masculine, Julia is feminine, and that is so because o and a determine the gender of a lot of words. French uses a lot of names ending in e, and that blurs the gender divide, as there are both feminine and masculine nouns ending in e. For example, Dominique can apply to both a man and a woman, so would frédérique. The definite answer to your question is quite complicated as it relates to the gender of words, which origins vary from a language to another and can also be sort of random or arbitrary."
]
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2hbygz | What were the benefits of the Ulster Plantations in Northern Ireland? | I feel I always hear of the negative consquences of the plantations, but what did they provide for the Crown? What were the arguments at the time? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2hbygz/what_were_the_benefits_of_the_ulster_plantations/ | {
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"OK, long time lurker here with his niche topic finally being mentioned :)\n\nThe main benefits to the crown at the time included firstly a huge protestant and loyalist/unionist majority for centuries to come (starting to become the minority at the present time). This gave them a number of benefits mainly including the increased taxes from another relatively prosperous province. The population of their native countries where relatively happy as they had a new source of land that was not in the Americas. This meant that Ulster was quite popular due tot he fact that it only would take a day or even a few hours to cross to in comparison to other English possessions such as Virginia or Massachusetts.\n\nAnother large part of the benefit was the fact that the monarchy was perpetually worried about a foreign, probably Roman Catholic power (primarily Spain at this time) using Ireland as a 'stepping stone' for the main invasion of Britain. This proved to be a good idea as both the Spanish monarchy and Napoleon later considered this plan.Ireland had to be swept into the arms of England/Britain essentially to keep the latter nation safe. This policy can be traced back to 1169 when King Henry II of England mounted his first invasion of Ireland. Neither Henry nor his successors succeeded in gaining control of all of the island.\n\nIt was also a popular policy for the nobility, large scale merchants and guild members as they were all given large plots of land after the plantation. The London guilds were notably given land in the north west a county still known (rather contentiously due to the English connotation) as London-Derry. A number of both small and large scale castles were built and inherited from the previous residents, notably Enniskillen castle once a stronghold of house Maguire and the newly constructed castles in Crom, south Fermanagh.\n\nSources: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212682112000297"
]
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|
49hc0f | what happens to your sense of smell after being hit in the nose? | When ever I get hit in the nose, my sense of smell changes for a few seconds and I smell a very metallic smell and can't smell anything else other than that for a few seconds. What's happening in your olfactory system that's 1: shutting out other smells and 2: producing the metallic smell? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49hc0f/eli5_what_happens_to_your_sense_of_smell_after/ | {
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"Blood smells metallic to a lot of people. Depending on how hard you've been booped, you'll get a metallic smell, if not a coppery taste too, particularly if you've had a particularly deep conversation with someone else's knuckles.\n\nAlso being schmacked in the schnozz can loosen up the crusties up in your air hole, releasing odors that might have been trapped in there. So if you were working in a metal-shop where someone was welding and got some ozone or smoke trapped into your snot, getting popped in your proboscis can cause the release of some of those agents later on. \n\nAn alternate explanation could be 'you're just weird' as I've not heard of anyone else experiencing this, but then again it's not like I've gone around and asked people."
]
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aklg0c | I’ve read previously that Australian troops were the first in WW2 to fully stop the Germans on land, in Tobruk, and the first to stop the Japanese on land, in New Guinea. How did axis troops/leaders view Australian troops in general? | I’ve read quotes from German POWs and officers that attest to Aussie fighting prowess, my favorite being from Rommel: “if I was to invade hell, I would use Australians to take it, and New Zealanders to hold it.”
Are their Japanese accounts? Or Italian? I know Douglas Mcarthur was less than flattering. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aklg0c/ive_read_previously_that_australian_troops_were/ | {
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"Some gentle clarification: by the time Australia and Japan went to war against each other, the latter had already suffered a number of relatively minor but symbolically significant defeats in China (contemporary observers saw these as challenges to the myth of Japanese invincibility), most notably at Taierzhuang and Changsha. \n\nMark Johnston's *Fighting the Enemy: Australian Soldiers and their Adversaries in World War II* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) deals directly with your question and seems to confirm that the Germans held the Australians in high regard. To quote some passages from the chapter \"The Germans: Mutual Respect\":\n\n > An Australian in another battalion reported that German prisoner he met in July 1942 claimed that the Australians had gone home, but that English troopers were continuing to '*dress up as Australians to frighten us*'. (52f.)\n\n > Early in the siege [of Tobruk], the German commander, Rommel, described Australians as 'fighting magnificently' and showing 'remarkable tenacity'. In a well-known passage he described a group of fifty or sixty Australian prisoners as 'immensely big and powerful men, who without question represented an élite formation of the British Empire, a fact that was also evident in battle'. (53)\n\n > A German infantry major described the Australians at Tobruk as 'extraordinarily tough fighters', superior to the Germans in their use of camouflage and individual weapons, particularly as snipers. German accounts of the desert campaigns describe the Australians at Tobruk as 'crack shots', delivering 'incredibly accurate' fire. A mortally wounded German infantryman ... said, as he smoked a cigarette, 'Thank you, you very good fighters'. Another German captured at Tobruk in vicious hand-to-hand fighting during the first German attacks on the 2/17th Battalion, told one of his wounded captors, 'Australian soldiers are very brave', to which an Australian in the party replied 'My bloody oath'. (54)\n\n > Early in October 1942, a German intelligence summary concluded that the Australians were, in attack, the best British troops on the Alamein front. At about the same time, General Stumme, the acting commander of the German-Italian *Panzerarmee*, told a conference of commanders that Australians were the enemy's 'best troops'. Similarly, in 1983 a German writer claimed that the General Staff of *Panzerarmee Afrika* had considered Australian soldiers 'the best we found in Africa'. (56)\n\nThe Japanese, on the other hand, appear to have had much more ambivalent views on the Australians, and Johnston notes that this likely began with Japanese propaganda, which emphasized the inferiority of non-Japanese. Concerning the Australians' military performance, I again quote from Johnston:\n\n > ... a Japanese wartime account of fighting at Ayer Bemban, in Malaya, said that despite continued Japanese attacks, 'the [Australian] warriors continued suicidal resistance like wounded boars'. It described an Australian counterattack, which won them a brief respite before retreating: 'the enemy, defying death, strangely and impudently counter-attacked with bayonets along the whole line'. Similarly, a propagandistic Japanese article about the Japanese capture of Ambon said that the 'desperate resistance of the Australians after the breakthrough was not to be despised'. (124)\n\n > The instructions [to Japanese forces in Papua in 1942] depended on information based on clashes which had occurred earlier at Rabaul and Kokoda, and included the assertion that 'The fighting spirit of the Australian infantry soldier is strong'. This spirit was said to be superior to that of the American troops in the area. The instructions highlighted Australian marksmanship, and the skilful Australian use of cover and grenades. On 11 August, a Japanese lieutenant on the Kokoda Track conceded: 'Although the Australians are our enemies, their bravery must be admired'. (125)\n\n > A Japanese intelligence summary written in November, possibly in reference to the Milne Bay operations, said that the Australian soldier's 'will to resist is strong and though we attack him, he resists further'. It also told of Australian skill in the use of hand grenades, and a diary written at about the same time at Gona said 'Their firing is very accurate'. A Japanese diary entry, written at this desperate point, admitted: '27th November- Strength of Australian soldier is superior to that of Nippon soldier'. (125)\n\n > ... a comment appeared twice in a Japanese report on fighting on the Huon Peninsula that 'Sniping at the enemy is easy and gives substantial results'. In an echo of the Australian assertions that Japanese did not like 'cold steel', Japanese soldiers were told after the Milne Bay battle: 'Enemy lacks fighting spirit in hand to hand combat'. A pamphlet captured the following year said that 'The enemy cannot stand up to hand-to-hand fighting or charges'. Not only could they not face charges, according to the official line, they also could not make them... These criticisms of Australian courage were directed towards the conclusion that the Australians, with their 'materialistic civilisation', were spiritually weaker than the Japanese. (125f.)\n\nIn addition, Japanese reports and recollections frequently emphasized the superior firepower available to the Australians and Americans, which the Japanese would need to overcome through their \"spiritual superiority.\" This complements the views of one veteran, Ogawa Masatsugu, who \"drew a contrast between conditions in China, where the dead fell in man-to-man conflict with a 'real enemy', and New Guinea, where 'we didn't know what was killing us'.\" (127) He seems to have had a low opinion of the Australians overall. To quote Johnston again:\n\n > Masatsugu was rather scathing about Australian infantry, saying of the early success in the counterattack of October 1943: 'I was amazed how weak the Australian soldiers seemed'. Australians supposedly ran when attacked, and returned to mop up only after artillery, aircraft and exhaustion had robbed the Japanese of their ability to resist. (127)\n\nAs an odd footnote to all this, after the war the famous Japanese officer Masanobu Tsuji offered his personal assessment (\"the subjective view of just myself\") of the fighting prowess of the enemy soldiers that he faced. The Australians here ranked fifth in a list of twelve, at least under hypothetical measures (*Masanobu Tsuji's 'Underground Escape': From Siam after the Japanese Surrender*, ed. Nigel Brailey [Leiden: Brill, 2012], 235):\n\n > If we were to assume that we could give the same equipment and the same training and assume that a fight is waged on the same battlefield, on the basis of actual combat experience in eight years of front-line fighting, I would place the fighting strength of the soldiers of various nations that I fought against in the following order (Japanese soldiers excepted):\n\n > 1. Chinese\n\n > 2. Soviet\n\n > 3. Indian-Gurkhas\n\n > 4. American\n\n > 5. Australians\n\n > 6. Other India\n\n > 7. English\n\n > 8. Filipino\n\n > 9. Burmese\n\n > 10. Thai\n\n > 11. Annamese\n\n > 12. French\n\nI highly recommend Johnston's work if you want a fuller picture of the complexities of this subject. I simply repeated the material that related directly to your question. :)\n\nEDIT: I forgot to include the Italians, whom Johnston does briefly discuss. It seems, in general, that the Italians feared the Australians, due in part to misinformation (apparently spread by Italian commanders) that the Australians behaved like \"barbarians\" and \"took no prisoners.\" (22f.) At Alamein, the Italians also attributed the Australians' successes to inebriation. Per one Italian division commander: \"The enemy generally attacks with very well-trained troops ... These special units, generally Australians and New Zealanders, attack with decision and brutality generally rendered bestial and brutal by drunkeness.\" And according to another officer: \"Hand-to-hand fighting is going on. The Australians, *roaring drunk on whisky*, are like madmen ... The wounded, both German and Italian, have horrifying tales to tell.\" (23). Johnston dismisses these claims as explanations or excuses for impending Italian defeats."
]
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3h5t2m | During the Cold War, East Germans were prohibited from escaping to the west, but if they did, was it a crime in West Germany to have escaped? | I just think these escape attempts, if successful, could mean some free passive propaganda to the West. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h5t2m/during_the_cold_war_east_germans_were_prohibited/ | {
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"No, it wasn't a crime. About 3.5 million GDR citizens fled, 3 million of those to West Germany ([Source](_URL_0_)). There were state run refugee camps in the west where refugees got first orientation. A lot of people also had relatives in the west and could use them as a first station.\n\nRegarding the question of whether those refugees faced legal problems in the west, they didn't. West Germany treated GDR citizens as own citizens. (Source: [von Münch, Die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit, de Gruyter](_URL_1_), unfortunately in German)\n\nSo, they were citizens of West Germany. As such they had no legal problems whatsoever.\n\nOn a tangent, there was also the so-called \"Alleinvertretungsanspruch\", a legal doctrine upheld by the west until 1969 which stated that there was only one rightful German state in German territory and that the GDR was an unlawful military occupation. This was then changed slightly and delicately during Willy Brandt's chancellory and his new \"Ostpolitik\" where West Germany recognised the existence of the GDR for the first time, but without conceding points like automatic citizenship for GDR citizens."
]
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"http://www.chronikderwende.de/english/term_jsp/key=e_gdr+refugees.html",
"https://books.google.de/books?id=U0BVt0eewacC&pg=PA105#v=onepage&q&f=false"
]
] |
|
7twgie | Why do we find marine and land organisms buried together? | I've been wondering this as I've heard this claim from numerous sources and I just wanted to know, why do we see this? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7twgie/why_do_we_find_marine_and_land_organisms_buried/ | {
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"Primarily due to rising and falling sea levels. When the tectonic plates move they push up landmasses that were once underwater. The same way mountain ranges form over great spans of time. If you begin with a body of water (even part of an ocean) that contains organisms, then 20 millions years later that same area that was underwater gets pushed above sea level and is now habitable by land animals. We notice that both marine and terrestrial life was present there in the fossil record, because both types of life lived in the same place, just at a different time in history. This is also a way we can track exactly where there were once oceans on our planet, although this is primarily done by geology rather than the fossils themselves. \n\nHopefully that makes sense, it's kind of hard to explain in words alone. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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aa8jrk | if the individual acts involved are already illegal, why did they make a recent law making lynching a crime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aa8jrk/eli5_if_the_individual_acts_involved_are_already/ | {
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"[The lynch law](_URL_0_) is federal. While things have improved over the last fifty years, many states have demonstrated a sympathetic reluctance to prosecute the perpetrators of mob violence. If justice appears to be miscarrying the feds can step in, and help investigate if the state needs it (similar to federal kidnapping law) or prosecute if the state drops the ball:\n > IN GENERAL.—No prosecution of any offense described in this section may be undertaken by the United States, except under the certification in writing of the Attorney General, or a designee, that \n(A) the State does not have jurisdiction; \n(B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction; \n(C) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or \n(D) a prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.\n\nThe law applies to any mob violence resulting in \"bodily injury\", for \"two or more people\" definition of \"mob\". It outlaws all such\n > OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN\n\nbased on the 14th amendment, and \n > OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY, OR DISABILITY.\n\nwhere permitted by the commerce clause.\n\n\n"
]
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[
"https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3178/text"
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||
7h8sna | Can anybody recommend a recent biography of Wu Zetian ancient china’s female emperor? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7h8sna/can_anybody_recommend_a_recent_biography_of_wu/ | {
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"The answer will depend on your interest in Wu and your language skills, but in all cases the basic problem remains the same; the sources we have are very restricted and for the most part treat the empress as an example for future rulers to learn from, rather than as someone whose thoughts and deeds and character should be set down and analysed as objectively as possible. Moreover, for someone as unique and as well-remembered as Wu is, there's a surprising dearth of detailed biographical studies.\n\nThe most recent popular biography in English is Jonathan Clements' *Wu: the Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become A Living God* (2007), which, as the title indicates, is not averse to retelling some of the more scurrilous gossip about its subject. Two more scholarly studies that place Wu in her context are Richard Guisso, *Wu Tse-T’ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T’ang China* (1978) and Dora Shu-Fang Dien, *Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China* (2003).\n\nI wrote about Wu and her reputation in an essay for the Smithsonian which [can be accessed via my blog site here](_URL_0_). This essay offers a brief intro to the main problems of writing about the empress and to the historiography of the reign, if that's of any interest."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://mikedashhistory.com/2012/08/11/the-demonization-of-empress-wu/"
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||
64wbml | How did the hebrew god Yahweh evolve?. Is he really an offshoot of El, and was it polytheistic in its origins? | I've been wondering this for a while but so far have only picked up bits and pieces.
_URL_0_
Above is the best answer I can find to this question.Please ignore the religous convictions and focus on the logical argument and evidence presented. Please, I'm asking for pure evidence here, not religious convictions. What exactly do historians understand about the evolution of ancient Judaism when it comes to yahweh. How did he evolve? In the above thread it mentions that the dead sea scrolls contains references to a polytheistic tabernacle of gods.
Thanks for any responses ahead of time!!! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/64wbml/how_did_the_hebrew_god_yahweh_evolve_is_he_really/ | {
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"This is a very interesting topic. The natural place to start is of course the Old Testament itself. First, we have to clear some things up. \"Yahweh\" or \"Yahu\" and \"El\" were two distinct gods in the Caananite pantheon. This is actually reflected in the Hebrew text itself; if you read the early books of the Pentateuch, especially Genesis and Exodus, you will frequently find repetitions of passages, only slightly different. The most obvious example is the first two verses of Genesis; read them side-by-side, make a list of the order in which God creates things, and try to reconcile them. It's not possible, except with some extremely contrived arguments.\n\nNow another thing is obvious even in translation - in Gensis 1 and the first three verses of Genesis 2, God is consistently referred to as \"God\". If you read Genesis 2:4 and onward, however, you will instead find the epithet \"the LORD God\". When \"LORD\" is written with capital letters, that means the Hebrew text says \"YHWH\". This name was considered so holy by the ancient Hebrews that one read \"Adonai\", meaning \"Lord\" or \"Master\", in its place. This was indicated by marking the vowels of \"adonai\" around YHWH, whence we get the mistranslation \"Jehovah\". Anyway, this practice was reflected in translation - we get Kyrios in Greek, Dominus in Latin, and LORD in English, all with similar meanings.\n\nWhy does this matter? Well, in many of the places where we have two apparently conflicting narratives, we find that one of the narratives frequently uses \"YHWH\" in one way or another, whereas the other sticks to \"El\" (translated God) or \"Elohim\" (translated God, but it's the plural form of God with the rest of the clause in singular, which is a way of emphasizing his importance or exaltation). Indeed in Exodus 6:2 - 3 we are told \"I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai [usually translated God Almighty], but was not known to them by my name, Yahweh.\" The verses predominantly using \"Yahweh\" and \"Elohim\" respectively are conventionally thought to be part of two ancient literary or oral traditions, that of the Yahwist (J) and the Elohimist (E), dating back to approximately the 800's BC. The other two predominant traditions are \"P\" (\"Priestly source\"), sometimes thought to be the editor or compiler of the first two sources, typically dated to around 500 BC; and D (Deuteronomist), a separate tradition and the author of Deuteronomy and some of the later books, dated to around 600 BC. The dates are all quite rough and much debate surrounds them. Collectively, this is known as the Documentary Hypothesis, and it explains many features of the Bible.\n\nAs you see, the history of the Hebrew Bible is not very straightforward, and it consists of many different traditions that would later be unified. As for polytheistic origins, the link you provide brings up one of the best examples, Psalm 82:1, which can be roughly translated as \"The most exalted El has taken his place in the divine assembly, he judges among the gods.\" Here \"Elohim\" is used both to refer to \"God\", and gods in plural. Many attempts have been made to translate this psalm to sound more in line with orthodox Christian thought, and often \"gods\" is placed within quotation marks or translated as \"angels\", but the Hebrew is really quite unambiguous. God is exalted above other gods, a king or judge of sorts, but he is one of several gods. Other examples, more or less obvious, exist. There is for example one passage where the Israelites flee because of a sacrifice made to Molech, but for some reason I can't find it at the moment...\n\nHints as to the identity of Yahweh can be found throughout the Bible. Isaiah 27 describes an apocalyptic scenario in Yahweh will slay Leviathan. Psalm 74:14 says that \"It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert\". These parellel the slaying of the sea monster Lotan, servant of the sea god Yammu, by a storm god Ba'al in the Ugaritic texts of Canaanite mythology. If we look at Job 38, it begins \"And Yahweh answered Job out of the whirlwind.\" In Exodus 14:21, Yahweh parts the red sea by summoning a strong wind from the east. These are just off the top of my head - but they illustrate the likelihood that Yahweh was originally a storm god of some sort. \n\nEl, unlike Yahweh, appears in other Canaanite pantheons, and the word El, as indicated above, is also used to mean \"God\" (e.g., \"Yahweh El\"). In the Ugaritic texts El had a consort called Asherah, was symbolized by a bull, and was the supreme deity and father of other gods, and in the early 2nd century AD, the Greek writer Philo of Byblos identified him with the Greek titan Cronus. Indeed, up until the mid-6th century BC idols of Asherah appear to have been common in Israel.\n\nWhat happened then, in the 6th century BC? Well, at the start of the century, Israel lost a war with Babylon, resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem, and the capture of many Israelites. This period is known as the Exile or Babylonian Captivity. During or after this period, the Israelites appear to have turned to exclusive worship of Yahweh, as the one and only god, as later writings are more clearly monotheistic.\n\nThe Babylonian exile was ended when the Persian king Cyrus (Kourosh) the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BC - we can confirm this date precisely thanks to an inscribed cylinder found in Babylon. Now, the Persians very likely (although it is in fact not known with full certainty) practiced Zoroastrianism, practiced in Iran up until the Islamic conquests in the 7th century. It is still practiced today, mainly by the Parsi, a minority of Iranian heritage in western India. Zoroastrianism was founded by Zoroaster (or Zartosht in modern Persian, actually Zarathustra in the original Avestan), likely around 1000-1100 BC based on linguistic analysis, give or take a few hundred years. Zoroaster was a reformer of Iranian religion, and preached worship of the Wise Lord or \"Ahura Mazda\", the one, unitary creator deity and the personification of all things good and moral. Other features that might sound somewhat familiar are angelic beings created by Ahura Mazda known as \"Benevolent Spirits\" (Spenta Mainyu), personifying virtues, and Angra Mainyu, the \"destructive spirit\" personifying all evil (and indeed, a controversy in Zoroastrianism has been whether Ahura Mazda directly created Angra Mainyu or not.)\n\nIn the latter parts of the book of Isaiah (Verse 40 onwards) we find an after-the-fact prophecy of Cyrus' conquest of Babylon, and praise of him as the \"anointed one\" or \"Messiah\", who delivered Israel from Babylon. Cyrus forged a covenant with Israel (in the name of Yahweh), incorporating it into his empire but tolerating local culture and religion. Indeed, here we also find the first explicit statement of monotheism, in Isaiah 44:6: \"This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:\nI am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.\" (translation from NIV). These become common later on, in texts also signified and easily dated by the use of Persian loanwords, and Yahweh is portrayed increasingly as the God most of us imagine today.\n\nTo sum it up: The God of the older parts in the Bible is an amalgam of the gods Yahweh and El. During a period of great hardship in the 6th century BC, the Israelites seem to have abandoned idolatry and turned to exclusive worship of Yahweh as the God of Israel. Following influence from Persian religion, Yahweh morphed into an increasingly exalted, universal, exclusive personification of Good. Later editors of the Hebrew Bible probably tried to scrub this fact from the older traditions, but they were not entirely successful. (EDIT: Of course, the practice of not pronouncing Yahweh was a consequence of his exaltation. Vowel marks were only introduced after the transitioining to monotheism.)\n\nI hope this gives some insight. This is of course a vast topic with many angles - linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and literary, and opinions on the exact causes and influences that caused the transition are not uniform. However, the general idea of transitioning from polytheism to henotheism (worship of one deity in a pantheon) to monotheism around the period of the Exile, is not in serious dispute."
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[]
] |
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1en76n | If a comet is traveling through space, a vacuum, then why does it leave a 'trail' at all? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1en76n/if_a_comet_is_traveling_through_space_a_vacuum/ | {
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"The Sun vaporizes parts of it as it approaches, and the solar wind shapes the tail.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Comets only have visible tails when they are near the sun. The sun heats up their surface and some gases and dust boil off - that's the tail. It actually points away from the sun. [Like this](_URL_0_), not out behind like you may expect.",
"It isn't leaving a trail in the usual terrestrial sense.\n\nAs the comet approaches the Sun, it heats up and the various gasses and ions inside it erupt from the surface. These escape the comet and form the coma, the cloud encircling the actual comet nucleus. Some of the ejected debris is lightweight enough to be pushed significantly by solar wind; these get pushed out to form the tail. The tail of a comet always faces away from the Sun, even on the outbound trip. The particulates aren't really \"leaving a trail\" in space, as they continue to approximately follow the comet's orbit long after. \n\nIn 1986, one of the probes sent to intercept Halley's Comet got a [great shot](_URL_0_) of the nucleus. The jets of gas and dust are clearly visible. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_tail#Tail_formation"
],
[
"http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/tails-of-wonder/comet_diagram.en.gif"
],
[
"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NJJ2r7VIs9Y/ULN27-XSr-I/AAAAAAAALyQ/zSmZxJIJjJA/s1600/Comet+Halley+close+up.jpg"
]
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||
2ciyao | why is my printer always fiddling with itself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ciyao/eli5_why_is_my_printer_always_fiddling_with_itself/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjfx9cz"
],
"score": [
10
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"text": [
"It's \"cleaning\" itself so the ink doesn't get jammed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bm8azh | molten salt nuclear reactors | How do they work, and on what principles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bm8azh/eli5_molten_salt_nuclear_reactors/ | {
"a_id": [
"emuyvh0"
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"Well, no one has answered yet... So I'll try to explain it: To put it simply. An MSR uses salt instead of water to transfer thermal energy. However, instead of having fuel rods like in traditional nuclear reactors, the uranium fuel is mixed in with the salt. This creates an inherently stable reactor, as when the heat increases, the salt expands and pushes into cooling tubes. Even if the reactor gets too hot, it cannot go into meltdown, since the materials are already molten.\n\nEdit: Water is still used to generate steam to run turbines, it's just that salt is used to directly extract the heat energy from the uranium fuel.\n\nHopefully someone else who knows more about MSR's will find this post. But this is the basics of what I know about them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5vmuc4 | Lombards and Langobards? | So I know that in italian langobard is used to refer to the Germans that conquered most of italy.
Are the people in medieval history called Lombards the descendants of these Langobards or are they a native Latin people who adopted the name because the region they lived in was now called Lombardia? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vmuc4/lombards_and_langobards/ | {
"a_id": [
"de3eg1b"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"They're two names - or, rather, variations on a name - for the same people."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2m70ib | how does an automated telephone assistant know which numbers you dial? | I.E. "if you know your extension, please dial it now"
How does it know which numbers you input?
I assume each number has a slightly different tone, and it detects them somehow... if so, is it just a computer program that analyzes the tone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m70ib/eli5_how_does_an_automated_telephone_assistant/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes. It's actually two tones overlaid on top of each other. One tone indicates which row contains the button you pressed, and the other indicates which column. A computer can easily pick out the two tones, and work out which button they represent.",
"Most phones that interface with the traditional \"dial tone\" public phone network (called \"PSTN\" - Public Switched Telephone Network) use an analog (in this case, sound-based) signalling method called \"DTMF\" or Dual-Tone Multiple Frequency. This means that when you press a button on the phone keypad, the phone transmits 2 tones at once down the line at specific frequencies. This signal is then received by the system at the other end to which is listening specifically for specific sets of tones. They're designed specifically so that one set cannot get confused with another due to poor line quality given they're traditionally sent over voice quality phone lines, not digital quality lines. \n\nTraditionally phone networks themselves even used DTMF to perform signalling to dial or set the call to long distance or other features within the phone network itself, but mostly these days it's used for backwards compatibility as the core of most phone networks is exclusively digital. Cell phones for instance natively do not need to transmit DTMF signals unless they are leaving the cell network to communicate with older/PSTN systems. VoIP is the same."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
bpyjkz | Is there a way to identify the Rate Determining Step in a mechanism? | Can one pinpoint which step is rate determining without any specific information besides the steps themselves? If so, how is this done? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bpyjkz/is_there_a_way_to_identify_the_rate_determining/ | {
"a_id": [
"eo0wg8d",
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"text": [
"Depends how good your knowledge of reaction mechanisms is. You can make a very educated guess based on what you know about intermediates’ energies (ie carbocations are unstable and take longer to form) but without kinetic data you can’t know for sure.",
"You cannot be absolutely certain until you carry out an experiment.\n\nBut often the rate determining step is very obvious once you have worked out a reasonable mechanism proposal. Typically in chemistry we look at either breaking the most stable bond to be rate-limiting, or we look at some kind of high energy conformation change that is required for the reaction.\n\nIn \"lab chemistry\" (something like combining nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide into nitrogen monoxide and carbon dioxide) it is often the \"strongest bond\" that is rate limiting.\n\nIn a lot of biochemistry or fairly involved organic chemistry (something involving much larger molecules) the rate limiting step can often involve a shape change to a more high energy state.\n\nAll in all, it's just about experience and a touch of common sense/ chemistry fundamentals"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1p772z | how is the money distributed when you donate to research cancer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p772z/eli5_how_is_the_money_distributed_when_you_donate/ | {
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"I'm on the board of a charity that essentially donates to other charities and it can be a confusing issue. A good idea is to make sure any organization you donate to is an accredited 501(c)3 charity and look for an administrative percentage on their website. Some charities carry a larger overhead than others which means a percentage of the money you donate would be going to keep the charity running/ pay salaries rather than to the cause you are donating to. ",
"Some organizations will tell you exactly which research projects are funded with their donations.\n\nOne I appreciate is [Pedal the Cause](_URL_0_), a great St. Louis-based cancer charity ride that gives 100% of their donations to local cancer research.",
"Also, make sure the charity is for cancer *research* not all that cancer *awareness*.",
"In the case of Susan G. Komen it's distributed directly to the CEO.",
"I am a committee member for my local Relay for Life and I can speak on some of this a little. About 72% of the money spent goes directly into services provided and about 28% is used Administrative overhead. The 72% is divided into a couple of sub categories including Support, Research, Treatment, and Prevention. \n\nPatient support is the largest chunk of the pie which includes thinks like helping with wigs, support groups, and other programs to help ease the burden for the person fighting cancer and their family. Research is money given to educational groups for studying and finding ways to combat the disease. Research gets the smallest chunk of the pie (around 20% I think), but details on why I can't provided. I would assume that there is only so many places you can throw money to get things done. Treatment is help with detection and programs related to actual treatment of people who have cancer. Prevention doesn't get the biggest cut but is pretty important. This deals with education, early detection, and other programs to raise awareness. One of the most effective ways to beat cancer is to detect it early. Obviously this isn't always possible, but it is easier to treat a small mass that hasn't spread than it is too treat cancer that has metastasised to a couple of major organs. \n\nThe overhead carries a number of things including salaries and cost of fund raising. By having a mesh of representatives across the country they can expand fund raising efforts and maintain goals and financially secure the organization. Much like a business, it is cheaper to have 4 people in one building, but having 10000 people at 50 locations returns a lot more money. As for fund raisers there is a cost to do an event such as a Relay. You have to pay for the park, the signs, and prizes for some events. Businesses that donate want to see their name on a sign, which we have to pay for. Teams get T-Shirts and some opt to get the prizes awarded for collecting certain amounts of money. \n\nI am sure there are people in the organization that are bastards and take advantage of the system. I know there are people who sacrifice a lot who work for the American Cancer Society. Personally I have done a lot of good and helped with a number of things. Make sure when you donate you are donating to a 501 c 3. All records are available for how money is spent and if a 501 c 3 does do something, someone will eventually find it and they will get hit. ",
"ITT: Answers about how the money does *not* go to cancer research.",
"There's a site called [Consano](_URL_0_) that uses crowd-funding for medical research (basically like Kickstarter.) Look at a list of projects, donate any amount to the one you want, and all of your money goes directly to that project. The researchers are required to send updates to their donors at least quarterly.",
"I plugged it before, but...\n\nIf you would like to have your money go to a good use, consider an organization like the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. 100%, yes all of it, goes to supporting research, _URL_1_, more info _URL_0_. It supports young talented scientists in a crucial part of his or her career, postdoctoral research, where one is generally expected to work long hours and provide his or her own funding, receiving very little pay. Obtaining a private fellowship alleviates some of the burden allowing young scientists to contribute novel ideas to the field. Thanks, cancer will only be cured through research.\n",
"Depends entirely on which charity you donate to.",
"It depends entirely on the charity. I work for a UK cancer research charity.\n\nHere in the UK, Cancer Research UK is one of the biggest cancer research charities. Off the top of my head, their money will go on:\n\n* Administrative spending: paying fundraisers, administrators, legal staff, IT, and so on. Don't forget pensions, some large charities may still be running their own pension fund for employees.\n* Infrastructure: building rent if not owned, maintenance, utilities, support staff (cleaners, maintenance staff, site management, security etc.). This will be for both their administrative buildings and their research buildings. It can be a huge cost. The electricity costs for the building I work in are huge because of all the scientific equipment packed in it.\n* In-house research: CRUK has its own research institutes. Here they have groups working on various aspects of cancer research from the basic science to patient diagnosis and treatment. The costs of research include all the staff costs (cheap, if you ask the scientists), equipment costs, and laboratory consumables. Consumable costs can be huge, and you have no idea how many plastic tubes, pipettes, resins, gels and whatever a lab can get through in a week until you see it happening.\n* Outside research: CRUK award grants to external researchers (in places such as the one I work in). There's a tough peer-reviewed application process to get this money, which has got even tougher in the current climate. The grant will usually be a fixed sum, with a proportion for staff costs, equipment costs, recurring costs and consumable costs. It may specify the number and type of staff that can be employed. It will usually be for something like 3 or 5 years. There is usually an annual or mid-point review. Smaller grants are for one-off goals. Bigger grants can be for a programme of research and may well be renewed several times as the programme progresses.\n* Future plans: they probably have a legal duty to have a financial reserve of some size invested. They may be saving to build new buildings or refurbish or start up labs in existing institutions.\n\nA good charity will publish its financial reports in some detail and highlight administrative costs.\n\nLow non-research spending is not always a good thing. One of the charities that funds work in our building has its charity charter written in a way that severely limits the money it can spend on stuff like infrastructure and utilities. They have to do complicated deals to piggy-back their research into existing groups because they can't pay for something as simple as lab space - institutions don't like people paying for research but not helping with the electricity bill, especially if they are themselves charities.\n\nTL;DR: It goes on a surprisingly complex list of different things, and although low administrative costs are good, somebody has got to pay for the electricity.",
"I'm gonna jump in here because I spent several years working in the \"not for profit\" sector and during that time I did a lot of research into this type of question (more generally, where does your dollar go). There is no straight answer to your question because every charity is different.\n\nThe best piece of advice I can give you is to research the charity itself. Look at their financials, their projects and even more so...how have their projects/ funding helped in easing/ solving the problem(s) they are addressing. There are a lot of charities that don't do well in any of these areas and that is unfortunate for those that do because it erodes the public's trust.\n\nOne of the most prolific cancer research campaigns is the Pink Ribbon. I once heard a quote from an authority in this subject that went along the lines of \"Do you not believe that with all the money that has been donated to this campaign, over all these years, if it went directly to research a cure that we would not have one by now?\" I am no authority in medical research but this point does raise some questions in my mind. Check out [this](_URL_0_) to help understand another perspective.\n\nI too sit on a Board of a local youth organization and we run a lean operation. I do know that in this case our staff are paid reasonably and we solicit everywhere we can so that we can survive and provide programs to our community. No extravagance here. \n\nedit- grammar and stuff",
"Mostly to the CEO's pocket."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://stlouis.pedalthecause.org/beneficiaries_research.jsp"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.consano.org/home/index"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon_Cancer_Research_Foundation",
"http://www.damonrunyon.org/donate/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://youtu.be/JQNTP0XyDG0"
],
[]
] |
||
2jf03s | How successful was colonial America in keeping a separation between church and state? | Before during and after the bill of rights. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jf03s/how_successful_was_colonial_america_in_keeping_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"clbdw2t"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"One thing to bear in mind is that the meaning of the First Amendment was still being debated in the early years of the Republic. No-one flipped a switch and *boom* all traditions of state religion were extinguished. I wrote a comment on a similar subject [here](_URL_0_); for example, though some early presidents balked at invoking God in their official capacity (Jefferson), others did not. \n\nAnd, laws against blasphemy, which would seemingly be inconsistent with church/state separation *and* with free speech, survived into the 1950s. *See [Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson](_URL_1_)*, 343 US 495 (1952) (blasphemy law unconstitutional on *free speech* grounds).\n\nI wouldn't want to dissuade others from answering more in depth. These are just examples showing that 1789 was not a line-in-the-sand on the matter. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gqzw0/to_what_extent_did_thomas_jeffersons_writing/ckltomx",
"http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5628256980652867975&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"
]
] |
|
f94p2b | how do fat reduction procesures work? | Lately, people at work and at the gym are in this craze for these procedures (cryosculpting, laser lipo, etc) and they've been sending me Groupon links left and right.
I was under the impression that fat cells can't be removed, just drained or emptied.
Do any of these things actually remove fat cells? How do they work?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f94p2b/eli5_how_do_fat_reduction_procesures_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"fipg2wu",
"fipm42y"
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"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Oh yes, fat cells can certainly be removed. Liposuction physically removes the adipose tissue from the body.\n\nThese are just temporary solutions though, your body can simply create more fat cells over time or have the current ones increase in size to store more fat.",
"Liposuction is using suction to remove the fat cells. Cryolipolysis is freezing the fat cells so that they die. Once you reach adulthood the amount of fat cells you have are set. Your body will not make more but you can still make your current fat cells larger."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
54150f | Aside from the Lend Lease, why didn't the allies send military support to the Soviet Union during WW2? | Specifically, why didn't they send ground forces to assist the Soviets and instead focus on the invasion of Europe from the sea/Africa?
Were the western allies already anticipating friction with the Soviet Union post war? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54150f/aside_from_the_lend_lease_why_didnt_the_allies/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7yhc1a"
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"text": [
"The Allies were in no position to send any amount of ground forces to assist the Soviets on the Eastern Front. Not only was the British Army preoccupied with operations in North Africa and the Mediterranean at large (and later the Pacific theatre), but the American military had not sufficiently \"geared up\" to provide actual boots on the ground in a way that would benefit the war effort in the East. To put it bluntly, \"in 1941, there was no chance of a Second Front [...] Britain and the United States could only hope for Russia's survival while they calculated how best they could together distract Hitler from his campaign of conquest in the east and weaken the Wehrmacht at the periphery of the German empire\". Thus, the British intervention in Greece, Norway, the North African campaigns, the need to protect Egypt and the Suez, and eventually the (contentious) decision to strike into the \"soft underbelly\" of occupied Europe via the Italian peninsula is what resulted. By the time major ground forces were available to the Western Allies, there was no strategic need, ability, nor desire to deploy them to the Eastern Front.\n\nThere are more factors at play here, including the tension between Anglo-Soviet relations in 1941-42, the questionable benefit (if there is any) of sending a handful of Anglo-American divisions to the Eastern Front, the difficulty in supplying those home divisions in the context of a foreign war in a foreign nation, and the likelihood that Stalin, while \"desperate for the sort of supplies only Western industry could supply\", almost *certainly* did not want American or British ground troops on Soviet soil.\n\nIt's safe to say that whatever ground forces could have been mustered and somehow transported to the Soviets would have been relatively pointless in the context of the Eastern Front; Stalin didn't need a handful of British blokes from Liverpool or ten divisions of eager American boys, he needed British and American trucks, aluminum, foodstuffs, and dozens of other industrial resources that the Soviets could not produce due to the loss of the western parts of Russia and Ukraine, some of the most productive land in the entire USSR, or simply lacked the advanced industry to do so in the context of a war where the Soviets had quite literally dismantled hundreds of factories and shipped them east. \n\nIn July of 1942, the Allies agreed that the \"opening of the 'Second Front' had been definitively postponed from 1942 to 1943\". North Africa and Italy were useful battlegrounds in chipping away at the edges of Germany's empire, but the true Second Front wouldn't come till later. While the invasion of France would eventually be postponed until 1944, it is important to note here that Stalin desperately wanted the opening of a Second Front because, strategically, he needed to pull at least some German divisions, men, and resources away from the Eastern Front. While its possible that, if the United States had been able to focus solely on Germany, there may \"have been less delay in opening a Second Front directly against the Atlantic Wall\", it's hard to imagine the Anglo-American forces launching any major land offensives in continental Europe until 1943 at the earliest. At this time, of course, the tide in the East had turned against the Germans (you can pick your specific turning point, be it Moscow in '41 and Jan. of '42, Stalingrad, the failure of Case Blue, Kursk, god knows how many books have been written on it) and any \"need\", if there ever was one, for western ground troops to assist the Soviets on their home turf ceased to exist.\n\nAll that said, the Soviets did make use of Polish soldiers in the form of communist puppet organizations and I do believe a fair number (not sure how many) Poles fought for the Soviets, but I don't have numbers on hand and it's debatable if you want to count them as \"Allied ground forces\" in the context of the question you're asking.\n\nSources: Keegan, The Second World War"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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