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57g0md
|
What is the highest a mountain can be? Is there a limit to it?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/57g0md/what_is_the_highest_a_mountain_can_be_is_there_a/
|
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"**Short answer:** In general, the maximum size of a mountain on a planet will be limited by surface gravity. The greater the surface gravity, the smaller the biggest mountain can be. On earth, it works out that Everest is probably pretty close to this limit. \n\n**Long answer:** As a mountain gets taller, it gets more massive. As it gets more massive, the pressure on the rock at its base increases. Eventually, this pressure would exceed the breaking strength of the rock. \n\nThat pressure could be written\n\n P = rho g h\n\nwhere *P* is the pressure on the base, *rho* is the density of the rock, *g* is the surface gravity of the planet, and *h* is the height of the mountain. If *P* is the breaking strength of the rock, you'll find a cool relation:\n\n h g = P/rho\n\nSince *P/rho* is just a constant, this relation tells us that **as the surface gravity of the planet in question increases, the maximum size of a mountain it can support decreases.**\n\nThis also tells us *h g* must also be a equal to a constant, which lets us relate the maximum height of mountains on planets of similar compositions but with different masses:\n\n h_1 g_1 = h_2 g_2\n\nYou can do something *really cool* with this. If you take Mt Everest to be the tallest mountain that can be supported on earth, and if you know that Mars surface gravity is 2/5th of earth surface gravity, you can actually calculate the height of Olympus Mons, which is the tallest mountain on Mars, if you write \n\n h_everest g_earth / g_mars = h_olympusmons\n\n 5/2 h_everest = h_olympusmons\n\nWhich is actually really close to the true value! This is even cooler because it argues that *both* Earth and Mars have mountains near the maximum possible height for the planet. Of course, a geologist may not like any of what I just said above. Mountains and tectonic plates and mantles are complicated beasts - this was just a first order approximation.\n\nBut, as one last fun fact, you can do something else with this approximation. [We can predict the 'potato radius' - the maximum size a 'potato shaped' asteroid can be before its gravity becomes strong enough to pull it into a sphere.](_URL_0_) This is done by modeling the potato asteroid as a sphere with a *huge* mountain on it that must shrink as the asteroid grows in mass, until the mountain is smaller than the radius of the asteroid. ",
"The height of the crust (i.e., mountain plus the solid rock below; a solid) is compensated for by the thickness of the underlying mantle (a fluid), such that the whole of the earths surface (crust plus mantle; solid plus fluid) seeks to be in equilibrium (what geologists called \"isostatic equilibrium\"). Isostatic equilibrium can take thousands or even millions of years to occur, yet the mountain building processes can happen more quickly than equilibrium (in some cases) and so, in a sense, the mountain belts are always delayed by some timeframe from being in equilibrium. I'd have to dig up my old global tectonics, geophysics, or structural geology texts but in essence the height of Everest is related to several factors including the thickness of the crust under it (in this case, very thick), the density of the crust, the density of the mantle and thickness of the mantle, the timeframe for equilibrium, and of course erosion plays a huge part too that changes the thickness of the crust on a rapid timeframe. Here's a version of the basic equation that governs the relationship:\n\nSum of (Density*gravity*thickness) for one vertical profile through the earth = sum of (density*gravity*thickness) of another vertical profile through the earth",
"I don't see this posted in other comments but minuteearth did a video on it a little while ago. _URL_0_",
"My opinion as an astronomer and physicist that likes rigorous definitions:\n\nIf a rock/asteroid is larger than about 600km in diameter, gravity will cause it to collapse into a spherical object. \n\nA lot of asteroids have all kind of different shapes up to that size.\n\nSo, if a mountain exists on a round planet, its size is severely limited by gravity. This scenario is well described by others in this thread. On a small rock with corresponding low gravity, however, the limit is basically the entire rock up to about 600km.\n\nSo, unless you have a limiting definition of what a mountain is, the best answer will be 600km\n\n",
"At the base of the mountain, the stress due to all the rock material on the top should be less than the shearing strain at which the rock begins to flow. The correspondibg strain can be estimated as follows: \nSuppose, the height of a mountain is h and the density of its rock is rho. Then the force per unit area at the base due to the weight of the mountain is h.rho.g. The material at the base expiriences this force per unit area in the vertical direction, but the sides of the mountain are free. Hence the mountain suffers a shearing strain approximately of the order of h.rho.g. \nNow the elastic limit of a typical rock is 3×10^8 Nm^-2 and the density is about 3×10^3 kg m^-3. Therefore, \n h(max).rho.g = 3×10^8 Nm^-2 \n h(max) = 3×10^8 Nm^-2 ÷ 3×10^3 kgm^-3 × 9.8 N kg^-1 \nWhich is nearly 10^4 m\nIt is nearly the height of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world."
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[] |
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"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jIWhzYq16Ro"
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8kt2tr
|
what happens to a splinter/glass shard/metal fiber/etc that's been in your foot so long that it stops hurting eventually?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kt2tr/eli5_what_happens_to_a_splinterglass_shardmetal/
|
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"When a foreign entity enters your body in this manner, the body will attempt to \"wall\" it off. As a side note, wood splinters tend to have oil on them which may intefere with this process and has an increased chance of infection. You should always remove wooden splinters when you can. Had a splinter in my hand for almost 5 months before I noticed it there (estimate of when it was possible to have gotten it), and I was lucky that it did not get infected.\n\nBiological entities may be slowly broken down, although it will still take a long time. If the entity is encased enough that it does not agitate it's surroundings, it should not cause pain."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[]
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||
5kacw7
|
How do cuckoo chicks know to remove host eggs after just hatching from their egg?
|
Are there any other species that take on such tasks at 'an early age'?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5kacw7/how_do_cuckoo_chicks_know_to_remove_host_eggs/
|
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"well, this question arises a lot, for all kinds of animals. how do turtles know to crawl to the sea as fast as possible when they hatch? how do we know that we have to breathe when we're born? instinct, it's more fundamental than thinking and i don't think there's many thoughts involved, but thoughts are developed after instincts are developed, evolutionwise. \n\nif they wouldn't do it, they wouldn't be around these days. look at it that way. "
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[]
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|
1x1f23
|
what is the difference between hardees and carl's jr?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x1f23/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_hardees_and/
|
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"There is no difference. It's the same company, just different names.",
"Carl's Jr operates out West. Hardee's operates in the East.\n\nA lot of time local/regional companies will merge but keep multiple store names. People grow up with a particular brand & they have a certain attachment to & trust in it. The business can combine the behind-the-scenese bits like distribution and menu planning, while letting everyone keep eating the cheeseburgers they grew up with.\n\nFor an extreme example, look at the list of [grocery stores operated by Kroger](_URL_0_). It's one giant company running all the stores pretty much the same but people like to think of their food as coming from a local store with roots in the community.\n\nBakeries are often the same way - a giant company will buy out the operations of a local company & keep using their name.",
"Carl's Jr. is supposedly based on a western tradition of hamburgers while Hardees is based on a southern tradition. Hardees also totally sucks. ",
"[Hardees](_URL_0_) and [Carl's Jr](_URL_1_) has the same ingredients but different menu items. \n\nYou want The Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger at Hardees? Tough shit, they don't have it. But what you can do is order a side of onion rings and a side of BBQ sauce and make your own out of a cheese burger. Tastes the exact same.\n\nSouce: I travel back and forth from the west coast to mid west and have tried both.\n\nedit: AFAIK, Hardees has very limited offerings.",
"I asked myself the same question when I moved from Florida to California. Just like what is Breakstone's in Florida (East) is called Knudsen's (West). Also, Edy's ice cream is called Dreyer's in California. Same packaging and everything.",
"Hardees is Carl's Jr.'s dad"
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2uh8l1
|
What was animal conservation like in the past?
|
Conserving endangered animals is a hot topic today. I'm wondering what it was like in the past. I emboldened the interesting part of my question for if you don't want to read about Maldova.
I was reading about Maldova (a little landlocked country that I had never heard of until tonight), and the origin of the name stems from some myth about a dog named Maldova who chased an aurochs until it drowned in a river. The dog's handler named the river after his dog. So I read about aurochs, and **this is the interesting part.**
> "The aurochs ... is an extinct type of large wild cattle that inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa. It is the ancestor of domestic cattle. The species survived in Europe until the last recorded aurochs died in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland in 1627.
This is a quote from the Wikipedia article about aurochs. I know that Japan took extensive measures to protect their forests in the past. What was animal conservation like in the past?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uh8l1/what_was_animal_conservation_like_in_the_past/
|
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"I'm no historian, but my general understanding is that although there was various laws regarding wildlife protection, real measures were started in earnest (at least in the US, I can't speak to elsewhere) in the late 1800s and early 1900s, primarily regarding the protection of birds. Around this time, the fashion of the day relied heavily on plumage from exotic birds. The demand was staggering: \n > A single 1892 order of feathers by a London dealer (either a plumassier or a milliner) included 6,000 bird of paradise, 40,000 hummingbird and 360,000 various East Indian bird feathers. In 1902 an auction in London sold 1,608 30 ounce packages of heron (including the great heron and egret varieties) plumes. Each ounce of plume required the use of four herons, therefore each package used the plumes of 120 herons, for a grand total of 192, 960 herons killed.\n\nAlarmed by the growing near and total extinction of many species of birds, the Society for the Protection of Birds was founded in 1889 in Europe. They worked heavily to discourage the consumption and demand for plumage, but also worked to get laws in place. In the US, the newly created Audubon Society pushed The Lacey Act, which was passed in 1900 and prohibited \" interstate commerce in wildlife protected by state statute.\" (By this time several states already had laws in place to protect birds, so this law stopped people from transporting plumage to states that had no such laws). The Act ended most of the commercial plume trade in Native American birds. In 1903, Roosevelt created the first wildlife refuge in the nation, Pelican Island National Park, in an effort to protect egrets and other birds. \n\n[Source.](_URL_0_)"
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[] |
[] |
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|
8al9wl
|
what is a covariance matrix
|
OK, it is a matrix.
BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8al9wl/eli5what_is_a_covariance_matrix/
|
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"The curves of equal probability density for a 2D Gaussian distribution are ellipses, as shown in your images. The diagonal elements of the covariance matrix give the widths of the ellipse (related to the major and minor axes), and the off-diagonal elements give the correlations between the variables."
]
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[] |
[
"https://imgur.com/a/9Enkg"
] |
[
[]
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1sfzl9
|
the debate over shakespeare's existence.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sfzl9/eli5_the_debate_over_shakespeares_existence/
|
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"It's hard for people to imagine that someone could be so prolific in writing a huge number of stories in western canon without being so utterly brilliant as to be noticed in all sorts of fields (everyone can imagine a Newton or Bacon type intellect writing them but not someone who entirely escaped notice in other fields it's much easier to imagine a group writing them). "
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[] |
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22tnqu
|
If we can let √(-1) equal to "i" to do more more complex mathematics, why cant we do the same for (1/0).?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22tnqu/if_we_can_let_1_equal_to_i_to_do_more_more/
|
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"Because 0 is a special number. It is the additive identity and multiplicative zero. Division by zero isn't very useful.\n\nIt basically comes down to how we use language. A word is 'meaningful' only if there are inappropriate contexts for it. That is, if I can literally point at anything and say \"that's a grobla\", then 'grobla' doesn't mean anything. I would be better off saying nothing at all, as I already implicitly say nothing at everything.\n\nSimilarly, with mathematics, we require our ideas to have inappropriate contexts. If 1/0=x, by the definition of division, there is no inappropriate choice of x. There is no x you can put there that you can say \"Oh, but that x doesn't work, you have to use a different value.\" And since you can't do that, it makes x meaningless, and thus 1/0 is meaningless.\n\nYou have to be able to write down \"1+1=3\" and have someone be able to tell you that you're wrong. Otherwise, everything you write becomes correct, and there is no way to do anything useful. You can't make decisions in a world where every decision is correct.",
"The way that we have defined zero, it doesn't make sense to.\n\nZero is a special number. It's such that zero added to anything has no effect, and multiplied by anything equals zero. This second definition is where we run into problems. Suppose we have x and y, where x=/=y. Then observe that x * 0 = y * 0 = 1 * 0 = 0 (zero is the only number that this holds). Then dividing by zero all the way through gives us x=y=1, a contradiction, since we already stated that x=/=y.\n\nIn other words, we don't define 1/0 to be anything because if we did, that number would have some crazy properties that we don't want, such as making inequal numbers be equal. These kinds of problems don't happen with i. If we let i be the number that i^(2)=-1, then it doesn't really have any consequences that are undesirable. In fact, it makes a lot of things really easy!",
"Let 1/0 = x , then 1 = 0x , but a consequence of distributivity of multiplication over addition is that 0x = 0 for all x, so then we have 1 = 0, from which it follows that 1k = 0k or k = 0 for all k.\n\nTldr: If we allow division by zero, it follows that every number is the same. Which is not useful.\n\n",
"We can make a mathematical system that allows for 1/0. But nobody has done anything of particular interest with such a system. Complex numbers have applications and complexities that are interesting and useful, but I have not seen the same thing done for a formalization of dividing by zero.\n\nYou are welcome to formulate the system, and if you have success that is great, but so far, I'm not aware of anyone who has done so.",
"There are fields in math where division by zero is okay. But you have to be careful of the context. If you think of division as an algebraic manipulation on numbers, then it doesn't make sense and you easily end up with contradictions like 1=0. However you can view things in a geometric way and get neat results.\n\nFirstly, what you have to do is add what is called a \"Point at Infinity\" to the real line. You do this by taking the real line, wrapping it up into a hoop with a tiny gap at the ends and then adding an extra point to close off the hoop into a complete circle. You lose a lot of arithmetical properties when you do this, but gain a lot of geometric ones. What you then do is declare that 1/0=infinity. \n\nThe important thing that this does is that now functions on the real line become ways of taking this circle and manipulating it in some way. You can then look at a function like f(x)=1/x and instead of being undefined at x=0, it becomes infinity. This then makes f(x) an operation on that circle and that operation flips it over, sending infinity to zero and zero to infinity. In fact, the leftmost and rightmost points on the circle that we get correspond to -1 and +1 respectively and the function f(x)=1/x flips the circle over about this equator. Other rational functions like f(x)=(x^2 -2)/(x^2 -1) no longer have asymptotes, it's just that now points get sent to infinity. \n\nThis is part of the field of Projective Geometry. You can do the same thing to the complex plane and get what is called the [Riemann Sphere](_URL_0_) which is a very useful tool in math.",
"The definition of division, say some integer a divides another integer b, means that there exists some integer k such that b=a*k\n\nWhen we say 3 divides 6 (6/3), that means there exists some integer, k, such that 6=3*k, so in this case k=2.\n\nTo say that 5 divides 0 (0/5) means there exists some integer, k, such that 0=5k. This means that k=0/5, or 0.\n\nHowever to say that 0 divides 5 (5/0) is to say that there exists some integer, k, such that 5=0*k. Obviously this is impossible, because there is no number that can be multiplied by zero to get a non-zero number.\n\nIt's not as simple as just defining it to equal something without breaking the definition of what division means, and subsequently breaking the rule of zero multiplication. Therefore, we have to leave division by zero as undefined.",
"I think the fundamental misunderstanding here, is that substituting *i* for √-1 doesn't let us do anything we couldn't do before--it's just a handy notation that makes it easier to write and read. It's exactly like using an ampersand ( & ) instead of the word 'and'--the meaning of the sentence doesn't change regardless of how you write it, but one is easier to write (and sometimes easier to read).\n\nIn the same vein, you could come up with a symbol for 1/0 (lets say, and upside-down Y, '⅄') and you could use it anywhere this ratio shows up. However, this doesn't change the fact that '⅄' is still undefined and so there are things that you *can't* do with it like *i*: 0⅄ does not equal 0, because the ⅄ part of the equation is still undefined.\n\nSo, using a new symbol for 0/1, although might make it a bit easier to write, actually hides a lot of important mathematical properties, whereas *i* doesn't.",
"There are a lot of speculative and incorrect answers in here. The truth is that you CAN define 1/0, in fact there are circumstances in which it is common to do so, such as when you're on a Reimann Sphere. In general, however, defining 1/0 doesn't do anything useful and in fact breaks a lot of the \"nice\" properties you want a space to have, such as the uniqueness of multiplicative inverses.",
"Division by zero is unique because multiplication by zero is unique.\n\nConsider the following series: y = 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. If you graph it with the x-axis value steadily incrementing for each point and then join the dots, you get a sawtooth pattern.\n\nIf you multiply by 0.1 you get y = 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4... same sawtooth pattern. Divide by 0.1 and you restore the original data.\n\nIf you multiply by 10 you get y = 10 20 30 40 10 20 30 40... same sawtooth pattern. Divide by 10 and you restore the original data.\n\nNow multiply by 0 instead. You get y = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0... a flatline. You can't restore the original data by dividing by zero, because all of the information in the data has been destroyed."
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29y6ki
|
Was the diaspora of Jews from Arab countries critical to the successful establishment of a Zionist state?
|
From what I understand, Jews in Arab countries were persecuted after the first Arab/Israeli war.
Could Zionists have predicted the backlash that Jews in Arab countries would have faced? Could it have been an additional reason why the ideal place for the state was "Palestine"?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29y6ki/was_the_diaspora_of_jews_from_arab_countries/
|
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"Was it critical to the success? Not really, though in some ways it definitely could be said to have helped.\n\nThe population demographic at the end of the Arab-Israeli war left the Jews with a sizable majority over the Muslims and Christians, which was essentially all that was necessary in many Zionist's eyes for leading Israel forward successfully. Many of the Jews coming from Arab countries were what are called \"Sephardic\" Jews, who would be discriminated against. They were different from the \"Ashkenazi\" European Jews, who often got the best jobs and government control, leading some Sephardic Jews to feel discriminated against in Israel. The Sephardic Jews weren't the only ones coming in, of course: some of the largest influxes of Jews came from Romania, Bulgaria, and Holocaust refugee camps, but the rest of the Jews came from areas like Tunisia, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Turkey.\n\nBut back to the point: Israel was more than happy to accept even more Jews, but that's not to say it was critical. These refugees, housed mostly on Arab land that was taken by the state following the war, still constituted a huge struggle for the new state. They came with very few, if any, possessions. They struggled to find adequate housing, income, and more. Golda Meir would go to appeal to American Jews for help, to try and raise funds to help these refugees. These funds were intended to provide what she told listeners here:\n\n > What we want to do is to give each family a luxurious apartment of one room; one room which we will build out of concrete blocks, We won't even plaster the walls. We will make roofs, but no ceilings. What we hope is that since these people will be learning a trade as they build their houses, they will finish them, and eventually, one day, add on another room. In the meantime, we will be happy, and they will be happy, even though it means putting a family of two, three, four, or five\ninto one room, But this is better than putting two or three families in a\nsingle tent...\n\nTo this end, the goal was to make around 30,000 homes, but as you can see the work wouldn't have stopped there. Even so, this was a tall order. American Jews contributed, and generously at that, and the US government even helped by providing a $100 million bank loan for the absorption of new immigrants. The forthcoming funds from world Jewry alone, however, were only enough to get 1/3 of the housing units (10,000, essentially) built by October 1950. Israel was faced with, over the few years following its independence, absorbing a group of refugees almost its size already into its borders. The influx was huge: between May 15, 1947 and December 31, 1951, the population of Israel doubled, with 686,000 Jews arriving in Israel.\n\nWas this predictable? Yes, this is likely. Arab hostility was well-noted towards Jews, and the influxes didn't wait until persecution to begin: fear of persecution set in motion some refugees already. Iraqi Jews, the largest group of the above influx, numbered some 123,000. Those Jews had been treated poorly before the creation of Israel in Iraqi society by some accounts (or at least felt like second-class citizens), but Iraq didn't expect so many to want to leave. In fact, the Iraqi government estimated that after they established a law permitting Iraqi Jews to leave for Israel, only some 8,000 Jews would want to give up their homes and livelihoods for Israel, of Iraq's roughly 130,000 Jews. They'd even have to leave behind their gold, jewelry, and valuables, after all. That didn't seem like something anyone would want to do.\n\nOn the first day following passage of the law, 3,400 registered already to leave. The next day, another 5,700 registered. The next 5 weeks, 50,000 registered to leave Iraq. By the end of three months, 90,000 Jews had declared their intent to leave Iraq for Israel, or had already left.\n\nWas this a reason for the state being in that area? Not really, that I've heard of. The idea of Palestine being the best place was mostly centered around a few things:\n\n1) It held a nice amount of attachment for the Jewish people, which meant that Jews would go there if the state was established. Sure, Jews wouldn't mind going to a place like Kenya (the famous \"Uganda\" plan), but would they be willing to uproot their lives to move to Kenya when it held no religious or cultural significance? Jerusalem and Palestine held a special place in Jewish hearts, and it was estimated that the only viable place Jews would actually congregate and choose to move to was Palestine.\n\n2) Less importantly, some of the considerations were due to religion. Some Jews, and Christians, believed that the gathering of the Jews in Israel would satisfy one of the conditions for the arrival of the Jewish messiah (or the return of Christ, or the end of days, depending on who you asked). Though less prominent, this was an idea that spurred some American evangelical groups to give to Israel, and continue to do so, and it contributed to some policies that followed (like Begin's insistence on keeping the West Bank, for example, because of their religious significance to the Jews).\n\n3) More importantly than 2), there was also the idea of cultural attachment in general. It was believed by some (such as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, prominent Religious Zionist) that the Jewish people would lose their way, and had lost their way, and would need to reconnect with their Jewish roots in order to continue prospering. As Kook put it:\n\n > Jewish original creativity, whether in the realm of ideas or in the arena of daily life and action, is impossible except in Eretz Israel. On the other hand, whatever the Jewish people creates in Eretz Israel assimilates the universal into characteristic and unique Jewish form, to the great benefit of the Jewish people and of the world...A Jew cannot be as devoted and true to his own ideas, sentiments, and imagination in the Diaspora as he can in Eretz Israel.\n\nWas there any real consideration as far as geopolitics? Not really, that I've understood. Nor was it all that important to the Jews coming from, for example, Iraq. They would fly in, not travel over land, in such large amounts that the rabbis of Israel actually authorized flights on the Sabbath as non-heretical (the day of rest). The problem was, especially in Iraq but also in Yemen for example, getting the Jews to Israel without the government giving them trouble. The Iraqis, for example, were (as one author describes it) pretty much bribed to let the Jews go:\n\n > After secret negotiations in Baghdad with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Tawfiq al-Suwaidi, Shlomo Hillel [Iraqi-born Jew] and Mordechai Ben-Porat [Iraqi-born prominent Zionist] succeeded [after travelling from Israel to Baghdad], on the basis of a substantial cash payment, in securing a law allowing Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel. The Bill to this effect was introduced to the Iraqi parliament on 2 March 1950.\n\nEven so, there were acts of violence against Jews leaving, but surprisingly they were carried out by Israeli agents hoping to encourage Jews to leave for Israel. Some of the culprits were caught and hanged, while other emissaries were arrested, in an episode that was to echo the Lavon Affair to some degree that would follow only a few years later.\n\nTransporting Jews out of Yemen was even harder. In Yemen, following Israeli independence, there were anti-Jewish riots leading to deaths. Jews were suddenly on the move, out of their ancient communities in Yemen. They moved to collection points organized by \"The Joint\" (The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), and the Jews were organized and prepared by doctors and nurses for the journey to come. See, the Jews couldn't go by sea: the Egyptians had closed the Suez to all Israeli shipping, and the normal way by sea was blocked, so an *airlift* was organized. 45,640 Jews were flown out of Yemen in transport planes that were emptied out and filled with seats (rows upon rows, like a bus), that carried 500 to 600 at a time. A further 3,275 were flown out from Aden. The Operation was dubbed \"Magic Carpet\", and was replicated to some degree by Operation Solomon, which was larger in scale and more intense in timeline (some 14,000+ Ethiopians airlifted to Israel within 36 hours on nonstop flights).\n\nWas any of this critical to Israel being established? Not really. Was it helpful in the long run, in providing a larger workforce and Jewish population to keep the demographics even more tilted towards Jews, and give them manpower to fight later battles? Probably, but it's hard to say. Was it predicted? I can't recall firsthand accounts (though I feel I've seen some, it'd just be hard to find in my library at the moment), but even so I can't imagine that a group which saw the Arab invasion from a month away didn't expect to some degree that Jews would face backlash in Arab nations when they had already argued that Jews were discriminated against. Was this a reason for it being in Palestine? No, not by any account I've read!\n\nHope that helps :)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6qni3u
|
when flying on a plane the pressure can cause the volume of my music/headphones to be reduced. if i turn it up to a "normal" volume, am i causing higher than normal damage to my ears or is the pressure actually blocking sound and reducing the impact to my eardrums?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qni3u/eli5_when_flying_on_a_plane_the_pressure_can/
|
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"Passenger aircraft are usually pressurized to about 8000' equivalent altitude. Three things can be happening here. The first is that the slightly reduced pressure causes your eardrums to flex outward, and if you have a blocked eustachian tube or otherwise do not fully equalize your middle ear space, the increased tension on the eardrum will reduce its sensitivity. Secondly, sound attenuates with distance to a greater extent when the air pressure is lower. This is probably not an issue with headphones, but could be if you were trying to speak to someone at the far end of the cabin. Finally, the noise floor on a plane is significant, with engine, wind and cabin noises all contributing. As the apparent loudness of your program material is the difference between the signal level and the noise floor, it will seem less loud than if you were listening in a quiet room.\n",
"Probably ear damage. As previously mentioned, if your eardrums are pushed out due to the pressure, then hypothetically no. But you probably equalized the pressure without thinking about it, and your \"normal\" volume is relative to a quiet room, so there is a good chance you're just going louder. For me, I either use Etymotic MC5's or Shure 215's which both have amazing noise isolation so I don't have to crank up the volume. But if you use Apple earbuds that don't make a seal, normal volume relative to the plane is just extra loud.",
"When air pressure is reduced, sounds lose their intensity more quickly as they travel through air (this is due to the air molecules being further apart). The amount the volume is reduced by this effect depends on the distance between the source and your ear, as well as the pressure.\n\nIn your case of an airline passenger wearing headphones, the pressure difference is not extreme and the distance between your headphones and your ear drums is very small. The effect of the pressure difference is barely, if at all, noticeable. \n\nThe reason your music seems quieter is that the plane's engines are very loud. Turning up your music to be heard over the plane's engines is in fact likely to cause hearing damage, especially if you listen at that volume for extended periods of time.",
"Good question, I was wondering the same during my last flight. However I own a pair of Bose qc35 with noise cancelling, would the waves to cancel noise damage my ears as much as louder music?",
"As everybody is saying, there's a lot of reasons, and pressure is definitely huge- but it's more the pressure in your ear making your eardrums flex less. IDK if this is at all useful for me, but they make special earplugs you can wear during ascent that allows the air pressure inside your ear to change much more slowly, making it a lot easier to pop your ears. I've found it eliminates that pressure issue and I can listen to my earbuds at a more normal volume since the pressure isn't straining my eardrums. They're called earplanes or something- if you struggle with popping your ears, they've been a lifesaver for me."
]
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|
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[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
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||
7umetq
|
How come the Greeks to settle so much across the Mediterranean coast with the Phoenician already worldwide sea power?
|
For example, the Greeks settling along the coast of the zones we know today as Valencia or Catalonia or Marseilles. How come the Phoenicians weren't a power established there already? Or were they expelled by the Greek settlers? Sardinia had a confrontation between them besides the natives, I think, but Marseilles specifically is so well situated in the trade route that I cannot fathom why the Phoenicians were there before and if they were, how could not they fortify it so as to never be lost such a trade point.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7umetq/how_come_the_greeks_to_settle_so_much_across_the/
|
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"(I have read much more extensively about Phoenician expansion into the western Mediterranean, so someone else would probably have more insight into the internal Greek dynamics which led them to colonize outside of *Hellas*.)\n\nBut to quote Maria Eugenia Aubet from her book *The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade*: \"The Greek enterprise seems to have derived from colonialist ideas, and the Phoenician enterprise to have been content with founding trading establishments close to indigenous communities.\" In short, they had different motivations for setting up colonies, and thus experienced different outcomes. And while their are some obvious similarities in the earliest colonial expansions by both civilizations - establishing trading posts to find raw materials - their colonies developed in far different ways.\n\nThe Phoenician expansion, led by Tyre, has to be seen through the lens of their delicate role as intermediaries between Great Powers (chiefly Assyria, also but Egypt and Persia), their relationships with neighbors like Israel, and role in the burgeoning economies of the western Mediterranean societies (Tyre's trading partners in Spain, Portugal, Italy and N. Africa). Tyre, a mercantile power, had a long-term strategy to make themselves, or more specifically, their kings, priests and councils, irreplaceable: they had a powerful a monopoly supplying raw metal ore to Assyria (and Egypt, Persia, and the Canaanite states), and in the production of certain manufactured goods. In exchange, the Punic city-states received hundreds of years of peace and preferential treatment by the Assyrians (Assyria at one point forcing one of Tyre's upstart vassals in Cyprus into resuming paying tribute) and a reliable flow of agricultural foodstuffs (Israel had plenty of grain to trade, and no one could supply its kings with fine pottery, linens, lumber and ore quite like Tyrians).\n\nThe lure of metal - silver and gold for coinage, copper, tin and iron for tools - is paramount. The earliest Phoenician colonies, Kytion and Carthage (Carthage is the Latinization of Punic *Qart Hadasht*, or \"New City, *City* referring in both Cypriot and African Carthage to their mother city Tyre) in Cyprus and Gadiz in Andalusia, were established to monopolize metal sources. The Phoenicians not only trades raw metals, but operated factories and refineries to shape those metals- the western Mediterranean had it's own indigenous economy, fueled by Phoenician ships and advanced Phoenician smelting/metalworking; carbon-dating reveals a plethora of Greek and Italian goods found their way to Andalusia far before those societies themselves began to expand. These metal-centric settlements were also the first to expand, doing so out of the resource surpluses. Gadiz, modern day Cadiz, was the trading partner and refining center for the Iron-Age Kingdom of Tartessos in southern Spain, which was itself founded on the Rio Tinto mining complex; after the Phoenicians introduced their more advanced metallurgical techniques, the complex' production exploded, and the quantities of gold, silver, copper and iron overwhelmed the Tyre-Gadiz trade route, allowing Gadiz itself to create new satellites to trade its excess metal for both *different* metals and agricultural goods. All these colonies, you may note, are dependent on shipping routes for survival - the vast Phoenician trade hub was it's own unique organism.\n\nMetal was a powerful magnet magnet for the Greeks as well, but moreso than Tyre and its sisters, the Greeks also founded *agricultural* colonies to immediately relieve mainland overpopulation and create new sources of food. Tyre also dealt with overpopulation and food crises - it was the premier Mediterranean city, with its metropolitan area stuck on a small island, and it's hinterland constrained to suburbs and farmland not much larger - but for whatever reasons, found the solution in Asia instead of its Mediterranean colonies: Tyre expended a great deal of energy and resources founding settlements near the Tigris, intimidating its Canaanite neighbors and in turns negotiating/warring with Israel for both agricultural products and access to its hinterlands for settlement. Greece, without agriculturally productive neighbors of its own to trade or war with, instead relieved their demand for food with a sea-borne colonial enterprise. It is unclear just how united or disunited the cities of the Canaanite coast really were on the whole; it seems that Tyre's hegemony came at the expense of Byblos and Sidon, and that Tyre did little to protect its siblings from predatory states.\n\nI mention this disunity because the simple fact that Tyre alone was the chief Punic colonizing power means simply that there were fewer colonists (Carthage's dominance only came about after the sacking of Tyre by Alexander the Great around 330BCE, when a flood of refugees brought their wealth and manufacturing expertise to the city), and because the lack of a united identity contrasts with the emergence of Greek identity, culture and the conception of the *polis*. \n\nThe Greeks incorporated their overseas colonies into their conception of Greater Hellas, and those trading centers lucky enough to both tap into trade routes and overlook fertile land became *polis'* of their own - city-states whose Greek-speaking citizens were awarded recognition and rights. And while many Greek mother-cities were exploitive towards their colonies, they were nowhere near so much as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. For the Phoenician city-states, colonies existed only as an aspect of of the trading network, vital as they may have been. Those differing conceptions of the colonies would, however, conversely affect their relationships with the indigenous populations. \n\nWhile Carthage would later develop \n aggressive land-grabbing policies in Africa and Spain, the initial Phoenician traders had almost universally peaceful interactions with their neighbors. To risk disrupting trade would risk upsetting the delicate balance of their political organism. The presence of Greeks, however, accompanied the eradication of nearby natives in mainland Italy, Sardinia and Sicily (then called *Magna Graeca* due to its large Greek population and powerful city-states); the polis had a both ideological and strategic interest in self-sufficiency, even if it came at the expense of the previous tenants of their farmland. While Greeks *did* also transmit their culture through peaceful means (Marseille was peacefully settled, and their Celtic neighbors in southern France were ravenous for Greek cultural products), they, unlike the Phoenicians, appear to have had a stronger appetite for ethnic conflict stemming from their binary conception of the world and its moral order: Greek v. Non-Greek, and unlike the Phoenicians, carried their martial traditions to their colonies.\n\nIn the late second half of the 1st millennium BCE, Tyre's exposure to violence and conquest at the hands of Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Macedonia would wreak havoc on its mercantile empire; Greece was spared conquest by all these save for Alexander, who, fortunately for them, was also ideologically invested in preserving Greek culture at home and evangelizing it abroad. A disastrous war in Sicily would result in the expulsion of Phoenicians from the Hellenistic sphere, and the infamous Punic Wars would remove the inheritor to their empire, the Carthaginians, from Spain and Africa and utterly erase the most powerful Phoenician city-state since Tyre."
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[] |
[
[]
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a8j56y
|
“gulag archipelago” question. what was the reason they imprisoned a huge amount of people in russia 1920s-1950s?
|
I’m halfway through Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and have a pretty good understanding of everything so far except the reason so people were imprisoned. Alexandr wrote the blue caps were even given “quotas” of imprisonments they needed to reach. It was chaos and they were even grabbing randoms.
What was the reason for the desire to imprison the huge amount of people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8j56y/eli5_gulag_archipelago_question_what_was_the/
|
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"The gulags were slave labor camps that actually produced things of value that were sold into the economy much like Hitlers concentration camps\n\nThe Soviet system was corrupt and quotas of people were required to maintain production of material out of these camps whether it was timber or a mined material.\n\nMost camps were in Siberia and other inhospitable areas where it was difficult to get voluntary labor.\n\nThe money produced from the camps went into many others pockets apart from the State",
"The Gulag system started in its earliest days as \"merely\" a prison system for perceived enemies of the USSR and \"true\" criminals. The \"enemies\" was even from the beginning very wide-ranging category, but especially after the extremely brutal Russian Civil War, questions of loyalty, especially class loyalty (e.g., do you identify more as a Soviet citizen or do you identify more as, say, a member of a religion, a member of a profession, a member of a national or ethnic group, and so on?) became paramount. But it was not as arbitrary as it would become by the 1930s.\n\nAs it expanded however two things occurred:\n\n1. Stalin began demanding the purges expand under a quota system. If the \"organs\" weren't working hard enough, maybe they themselves were suspicious? This became a self-driving system under Stalin: every quota you met meant the quota was raised. This was a problem in general in the USSR's quota system — there was no end to it. If you failed your quota, you were a failure/saboteur. If you just met your quota, you were showing that you had inadequate zeal. If you beat your quota, you were showing the quota was set too low in the first place, and so you could expand the quota even more next time. The consequences of this kind of system, where failure could mean imprisonment itself, meant that in every sector there was rampant fraud, including the NKVD's arrest system. (If the Soviet economy did not have large oil reserves to fall back on, this totally counterproductive approach would have failed early on. As it was, it faltered at the first attempt at realistic reform, in the 1980s.)\n\n2. They started to realize that the economic labor they could extract from prisoners was quite high. So instead of just having them stand around (as in a \"concentration camp\") waiting to live or die, they started using them to dig canals, cut lumber, expand railways, mine minerals, and so on. The idea of using Gulag labor for economic purposes was known from the beginning (they could be a \"free\" labor pool for tasks that would otherwise be cost prohibitive or difficult), but the true extent of that expanded over time. The White Sea Canal was the first of the true Gulag megaprojects (1931-1933); Solzhenitsyn describes it well in Book III.\n\nThe combinations of these two factors meant that the criteria for being put into the Gulag dropped to practically nothing (you just needed someone to say your name to the wrong person, and they may be forced to just name many names anyway under torture or threat of death; sometimes it was literally random, e.g., \"go grab someone from this apartment block\"), and that the Soviet state itself became heavily invested in the endless expansion of the Gulag. "
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[] |
[] |
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[],
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|
iyuzd
|
How do wild deer get enough protein?
|
We're up in the Rockies, watching lovely svelte deer grazing by the house, and we were wondering; how do wild deer get enough protein in their diet to survive? I'm sure there are human-influenced dietary supplements, but what about in places with little to no human contact? Grass doesn't seem like it would cut it.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iyuzd/how_do_wild_deer_get_enough_protein/
|
{
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"They eat baby birds! [Seriously!](_URL_0_)",
"They are [ruminants](_URL_0_), like cows. They are essentially big bacterial fermenters. Bacteria are little biochemical marvels; they can make protein & amino acids from non-protein nitrogen sources. \n\nDeer eat grass, which feeds the bacteria that live in their reticulorumen, and the deer essentially eat the stuff the bugs make and absorb it in their \"true\" stomach. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/news/press/ontape.htm"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant"
]
] |
|
34fwdw
|
At What Point in History did "Culinary Arts" become a thing?
|
Did creating combinations of food develop from a time of surplus when there are varieties of food or was it developed to make what little food there is bearable (creating dressings for an otherwise tasteless salad). Did it happen for civilizations at different times or was it brought about by one nation that spread culinary methods through travel and trade?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34fwdw/at_what_point_in_history_did_culinary_arts_become/
|
{
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"text": [
"Your question might be better answered in /r/anthropology? According to Sidney Mintz (Sweetness and Power, 1985) almost all premodern cultures combined foods according to a system of a primary starch and a supplemental flavouring food to make the starch, as you say, bearable. \n\nElaborate combinations of ingredients and dishes were always the prerogative of elites and royalty. In terms of the early modern West, major cuisines, like French and Italian, come out of cucina povera traditions, though adapted and codified by elite chefs working for elites. A major aspect of this was the publication of cookbooks--e.g. for France, much traditional cuisine is difficult for historians to reconstruct until a major wave of cookbook publication in the 17th century, by elites and for elites, which also disseminated both elite and poor cuisines across social classes and started to create the possibility of a unified, national cuisine. \n\nAlso one needs to distinguish between the culinary arts (which have problems of definition--does the art emerge through oral, familial traditions or in more formalized, text-based contexts such as cooking academies?) and gastronomy, particularly gastronomical writing, which, in the West, only emerges in the early 19th century with Grimod de La Reynière and Brillat-Savarin.\n\nPascal Ory, Le discours gastronomique français, des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1999)\n\nFood : a culinary history from antiquity to the present, Flandrin and Massimo Montanari , eds., (NY, 1999)\n\nJean Louis Flandrin, Arranging the Meal, (Berkeley, 2007)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
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|
1s6vgi
|
Why Nitrite is still used as a conservative in all processed meats if it's a known carcinogen ?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1s6vgi/why_nitrite_is_still_used_as_a_conservative_in/
|
{
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"Not _all_ processed meats. But anyway: There are known carcinogens in almost all food. There is no 'zero-tolerance' policy here, it's no so much a matter of whether it's a carcinogen or not but a matter of whether it creates a statistically-significant increase in cancer rates in the concentrations that it occurs in food.\n\nNitrate in themselves aren't the danger here as much as the nitrosamines they produce. But nitrosamines are also [produced endogenously](_URL_0_) in your body to some extent as well. Also, ascorbic acid/vitamin C is also added these days, which helps [inhibit nitrosamine formation](_URL_3_). \n\nIt's used as a preservative in specific products (cured meats, cheeses), with set limits, mainly to [inhibit the growth](_URL_1_) of [C. Botulinum](_URL_2_), which causes botulism. In the big picture that has been considered a larger danger than the cancer risk.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8688158",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC380811/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2507690"
]
] |
||
ywjgm
|
why is the consumption of alcohol so widespread(historically and geographically)?
|
The consumption of alcohol basically damages your body. Why have people throughout history and all around the world in different cultures etc always ended up consuming alcohol?
It seems like other drugs aren't as widespread and/or readily accepted into communities and cultures throughout the world/history
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ywjgm/eli5_why_is_the_consumption_of_alcohol_so/
|
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"A few reasons. You see, alcohol is fairly easy to make, so it can be invented in many different areas all over the world, unlike complicated designs or techniques which did not leave their area of origin in the ancient world. In the ancient world there were very few effective water purification systems like we have today. Because of this water would sometimes have lots of bad stuff in it that would make the person who drinks it get very sick and sometimes die. So before people could drink the water, they needed to kill the bad stuff in the water, and the easiest way they knew how to do that was by mixing it with alcohol, thus making alcohol a very popular drink despite not being very healthy. So while alcohol did cause lots of problems such as liver disease and others, it was much safer compared to the dirty water.\nThe reason drugs aren't as widespress is because unlike alcohol, drugs require specific environments in order to grow them, thus limiting their availability in the ancient world.",
"In recent years, medical and microbiological understanding has allowed humans to live relatively disease free. Historically, humans would die of diseases. These were often waterborne diseases, like diphtheria and cholera. \n\nBrewing alcoholic beverages allowed drinking water to be safely stored and helped limit the possibility of getting sick. It allowed humans to travel long distances by ship or dry land. It also meant larger populations could be sustained in a dense area and towns could develop. \n\nEvery man, woman and child would drink ale, stout, wines etc. The damage caused by a lifetime of drinking would not be so significant since life expectancy was much lower. Compared to loosing 5 liters a day of fluid from cholera, and quickly dying, the effects of excessive drinking are quite acceptable. \n\nBBC Horizon did a great documentary on how brewing led to the advance of or species, but I can't remember the name at all.",
"You might find this \"documentary\" called [\"How Beer Saved the World\"](_URL_0_) pretty interesting. Take the whole saved the world part with a grain of salt, but it's got some interesting and fun history in there.",
"There's been evidence of beer and wine drinking dating back thousands and thousands of years, if I remember right alcoholic drinks predate any other drink (besides water). It's something that just stuck with culture/civilization as it expanded. It's also super easy to make, it's just yeast (which not only exists in the wild, but can also be saved from previous batches), sugar and water. How you get the sugar into the mixture determines what kind of alcohol it is, but you can use anything from barley, oats, rice, grapes, corn, wheat, potatoes.. basically any mass produced crop. \n\nIn addition to the water purification that others mentioned, it's also a great source of calories. This causes beer bellies now that we sit in chairs all day burning < 2000 calories a day, but if you were a peasant working in the field for 16 hours a day burning 3000+ calories when food was scarce, beer gave you a lot of extra calories so you didnt pass out from starvation. Belgian monks still use beer as a source of calories during fasts (which is why Belgian monasteries brew such great beer).\n\n\nDrugs aren't widespread because so many of them require a lot of chemistry to produce, either by adding complex chemicals or a lot of complicated procedures/equipment. Plants have been used for a long time, especially for religious rituals, but that's only local to where those plants are from. ",
"* Beer was a lot weaker, when it was first invented. So people could drink it throughout the day and not get hammered.\n* In its \"natural\" state (without filtration and pasteurization), beer was a lot more nutritious than it is today - it would have contained live yeast culture, as well as more of the original grain left in it. So the term \"empty calories\" didn't apply the way it does for modern alcoholic drinks.\n* Beer keeps longer than stored grain, allowing grain surpluses to be saved for the future longer than simply siloing the grain.\n* It makes you feel good.\n",
"Thank god I'm not in AskScience, because I'm about to go on an evolutionary biology speculation tangent:\n\nMaybe it's popularity is self-reenforced because it encourages fucking, which creates babies predisposed to the enjoyable effects of alcohol.",
"[this book has a great beer history section, and recipes](_URL_0_)",
"In early civilizations alcohol was used to purify water-hence \"watering down the wine\".\n\nIt has the added benefit that people like to get together and get wasted. Alcohol is more legal than anything else so that's what people do. Many people enjoy being trashed on something or another. \n\nIt's easy to tax and easy to produce. ",
"Since its already been answered, I'll and something else to this discussion. There's a novel called \"The history of the world in six glasses\". It explains the impact of various drinks on society, and alcohol is one. It's a good read. ",
"Well you can ferment just about anything, and face it life's tough and people wanna get falling down drunk now and again.\n\nAs for \"damaging your body\" keep in mind that while anxiety over our own mortality is a fairly universal idea through out the world, the concept of being able to radically increase lifespan through conscious effort is actually a fairly new obsession which sprung up mostly along with medicine becoming scientific perhaps only a scant two hundred years or so ago. Up until then most everyone could agree that life is short and brutal, and anything that really takes the edge off might be a welcome reprieve. That alcohol was detrimental to health in more than just a temporary sense was either ignored, or not even known, so it was, and frankly continues to be for many, a marginal concern at best.\n\nThat said, it does sound as if you may need to chill out and have a drink, man. I know you're only five years old, but you sound wound real tight. Everything is fine in moderation. . . well not everything, but most things, alcohol included.",
"Alcohol production is not equal across cultures. There is nothing like the diversity of beers, wine and spirits of Europe.\n\nThere are possible genetic reasons behind this. European have effective copies of the ALDH2 gene, which aids in creating an enzyme that processes alcohol. Asians, and by extension aborigines are generally not extremely effective at processing alcohol. Thus the well-documented alcoholism issues and Asian \"flushing\" after imbibing. Wiki:\n\n An estimated one out of three people in East Asian countries have an alcohol flush reaction, colloquially known as \"Asian Glow\", a condition where the body cannot break down ingested alcohol completely because it lacks the genetically coded enzyme that performs this function in the bodies of drinkers with \"European\" tolerance levels. Flushing, or blushing, is associated with the erythema (reddening caused by dilation of capillaries) of the face, neck, and shoulder, after consumption of alcohol. \n\nBiological reasons may very well account for the European discrepancy in the variety of alcohol consumption and culture."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://vimeo.com/23278902"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Herbal-Healing-Beers-Fermentation/dp/0937381667/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1346098737&sr=8-23&keywords=beer+history"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
37fu3o
|
why is the public release of my emails 'illegal' but hillary clinton's publicly supported?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37fu3o/eli5_why_is_the_public_release_of_my_emails/
|
{
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"I think Hillary Clinton's position as Secretary of State creates an overarching duty of candor, if not a full duty to disclose these emails (freedom of information act perhaps on the full disclosure). This is especially so considering that she is now running for POTUS. Your emails differ in that you as a private citizen have an expectation of privacy in those emails, whereas Hillary Clinton arguably does not have much of one in hers.",
"Public figure in a position of public service, therefore any emails relating to said public service belong to the public.",
"The difference is that, by law due to her position as SecState, all e-mail has to go through government servers for archiving. This is actually fairly important for a multitude of reasons not the least of which is transparency and the protection of classified information.\n\nYOU, as a private citizen, have a right to keep your e-mails private. Hillary Clinton was not a private citizen -- she was a public servant; therefore, her emails for the period of her service are a matter of public record as is the law.\n\nShe knowingly circumvented and broke the law.",
"So back when Clinton was in office, all top level government employees get a secure email account. Something uncrackable, hosted locally. So there is a government data center(s) which securely houses classified email, rather than rely on a service like Gmail and whose infrastructure could be prone to hacking. Well Bill Clinton was president back in the day, so he had his own secure network for email set up at his house. \n\nNow a few years ago. Hilary was probably busy with running her department (or consp theories argue trying to hide something), and decided that the \"new\" email system was going to be too hard to migrate too, and she would just use her personal email (secured at her house on servers) for non classified talks, and her government one for classified. \n\n\nSo Benghazi happens and rumors come out they knew it was an attack earlier than stated, etc. \n\nWell the Freedom of Information Act says that we as citizens have a right to see government documents after X amount of time from being declassified. \n\nSo there's this huge scandal that could be solved with a simple check of her email. Did she or did she not receive/send emails knowing about these threats. \n\nAs per freedom of information act, it should be simple. Just download the emails from her government email account. But remember. She used her personal home network email. And all the Benghazi emails were lost in a data corruption. \n\nSo now here me and you are, the average citizen. If Hilary were to abide by typical standards and practices of her high ranking job and use the government email account, we would all know how this happened. Except now there are dead ambassadors, and the only place that has am answer to \"why\" is stored on Hilary's computer. \n\n\nSince you are a private citizen, your rights are protected against this by the 4th amendment. \n\nTl-dr/WrapUp: We have a right via the patriot act to see government documents. Clinton used her personal email for official duties of her office, and now something bad went down and we don't have the answers legally we deserve. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
ry54l
|
Why do we crave things especially when we cannot have them?
|
Yesterday, Passover began. And since that sundown I have never craved something with bread more than now (except for on other Passovers). But why does this happen? Why, when we suddenly restrict ourselves, do we crave what we just restricted?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ry54l/why_do_we_crave_things_especially_when_we_cannot/
|
{
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"c49l6rk"
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"text": [
"Instead of the \"levels\" of craving themselves changing, remember that the way you *remember* things influences the way you view them.\n\nIn the case of craving things more when you can't have them, maybe the times that you *can't* have them are more memorable than the times you can.\n\nBecause you remember times that you craved and did *not* get your way more than times that you craved and *did*, you may come to believe that cravings happen more when you can't have things, as your question suggests.\n\nWhat I summarized here can be seen as manifestations of the [availability heuristic](_URL_1_), [misleading vividness](_URL_0_) and [hasty generalization](_URL_2_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_vividness",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization"
]
] |
|
42b3rd
|
If you've lost a limb like a hand or foot, what do your muscles do when your brain sends the signal to move that limb?
|
Obviously there's no hand to move but is there still muscle contraction? Will the "stump" (for lack of a better word) move slightly? Will it hurt?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/42b3rd/if_youve_lost_a_limb_like_a_hand_or_foot_what_do/
|
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"It results in a phenomenon called phantom limb pain. It is the brain trying to compensate for a lack of sensory input from that body part and can result in false sensations or as the name suggests, pain. It can take an extended period of time to go away. ",
"Your brain has a homunculus mapping of your body in the somatosensory cortex. Basically, even though you have lost the limb, your brain still has the map for it being there and will attempt to move it as before. This can result in phantom limb pain which can actually be alleviated by tricking your brain through a simple mirror experiment. Eventually, the region of your somatosensory cortex which maps the missing limb will dissipate and a neighboring map of a body part will utilize that space. I believe this is also potentially temporary and is the result of actually inhibition as I recall there was a case where a persons limb was actually reattached and the corresponding somatosensory map region was able to recover its ability to map for the previously missing appendage.\n",
"Therapists have used mirrors to make it look to a patient like they were viewing their missing opposite limb. This enabled the patient to scratch or un-clinch the fist on the missing arm and relax it for the first time in years. ",
"I don't believe that the actual question has been addressed yet. Unless I'm mistaken, the question wasn't referring to signals unable to reach missing muscles after loss of a limb. It's asking about muscles still present which at one time had a part in controlling the missing limb, EG forearm muscles after loss of the hand at the wrist. Surely THOSE muscles still are able to contract. My guess would be that they atrophy, but that a surgeon may reattach the tendon at the end of the stump so the muscles don't ball up towards the elbow when they try to contract. \nPlease, somebody who knows better, am I way off base here?",
"Sometimes a severed nerve will attempt to find lost connections, fail to do this, essentially get \"tangled up\" and cause a very painful condition called a neuroma. Often times surgeons will try to reattach any nerves with lost connections to muscles, even if the muscle ends are damaged and cannot generate much force. This helps to avoid painful neuromas even if the muscle is too damaged to work properly. ",
"I had to research this a bit for a paper years ago, so I'll put in my two cents.\n\nTo oversimplify things a bit, for most of the joints in your limbs you have two sets of muscles that work in opposite directions, like the biceps that flex your elbow and the triceps that extend your elbow. When a limb has to be amputated the modern method is called myoplastic amputation. The general idea is to take these pairs of muscles, wrap them over the end of the remaining bone, join them together, and cover everything over with skin. This has the advantage that the muscles don't just contract into a lump with no way to extend themselves again, as well as giving a smooth and rounded stump that makes it easier and more comfortable for the patient to attach a prosthetic limb.\n\nTo answer the other questions, yes there is still muscle contraction, and there are some types of (myoelectric) prosthetics that take advantage of this by picking up on the small electrical signals of the muscle contractions and using this as a control signal to tell the motors to open/close/etc. This way the muscles that used to open and close the fingers of your hand could be used to open and close a prosthetic hand for example. \n\nI can't speak for pain in the limb, I expect that would mostly vary from patient to patient, but the muscles would still move slightly just like your muscles can move a bit even if your limb doesn't move.",
"I lost the four fingers of my right hand last November and it's interesting to read all these comments - there are a lot of talking heads who don't know a damn thing about what it feels like!\n\nFor me, when I try to move my fingers I feel tension in the remains of my hand and a kind of electrical, pins-and-needles sensation. I played guitar and when I mimic the finger picking movements my metacarpals 'roll' in a familiar fashion but it feels really tight, so not very comfortable.\n\nPhantom pain is misunderstood; it's not actually pain but the sensation that the limb is still there but in a state of entanglement. However, it is prolonged by excessive pain medication, I refused any kind of high-level pain killers and my phantom sensations disappeared about a month ago. The strongest pain medication I took was ibuprofen - but this was for my broken ribs, having broken ribs means you can never be comfortable which means you cannot sleep, which in turn leads to a decline in your positive mental attitude. The Brufen helped with that.\n\nBack to my hand. The muscles under your forearm are the ones that control most of your finger movements for gripping, playing guitar/piano, etc. I was shocked at how quickly these muscles withered away (atrophy). I later found that this was mostly because my hand was immobilised with the dressings, I still have dressings but these are cosmetic/protection so I have much better hand articulation now and the muscles are rebuilding slowly.\n\nI had a skin graft over the amputation plane but some of the nerves from my fingers were left very close to the surface, the slightest touch at any of these points feels like sticking your fingers in a 240v light socket - and I mean *exactly* like that; the jolt is incredibly painful.\n\nSo why did the surgeon do that? Well, I'm at a half way house; one of my options is to have two toes grafted to my hand to give me tripodal grip, the nerves can be reattached to provide complete sensation. This is not a direction I will be taking but until I have further surgery I need to be careful with those nerve endings. I'm an engineer so I see my future in the realm of elegant engineering solutions - and there are many wonderful developments out there.\n\nIf anything like this should happen to you guys, I have some simple advice: 1. You're alive, be grateful. 2. Be positive, right from day one I knew the worst an thought \"I can deal with this, this will not define my future.\" 3. Stay away from morphine, it will drive you down faster than any injury. If you maintain a PMA it will help you through.",
"As an amputee I can tell you that the muscles are still very much able to be flexed. \n\nIt might be different for non trauma amputees, but since I lost mine at 15 I was familiar with using those muscles well before the amputation occurred.\n\nMy amputation happened just about 10 years ago and I can still flex my calf and \"move\" my foot. \n\nIn fact I can still wiggle my toes!\n\nFeel free to PM me with any further questions any of you guys/gals might have. :)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
27l8s6
|
Do oral histories exist of extinct pleistocene-era megafauna such as the wooly mammoth and ground sloth?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27l8s6/do_oral_histories_exist_of_extinct_pleistoceneera/
|
{
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"The Klamath tribe of Native Americans have oral stories and legends about the collapse of Mount Mazama and the formation of Crater Lake, which happened due to a massive volcanic eruption 6,000 and 8,000 years ago. [Source.](_URL_0_) So oral histories, legends and myths regarding mammoth or other megafauna might possibly survive for an equally long period of time.\n\nFrom NATHPO (National Association of Tribal Historical Preservation Officers):\n\n > To the Navajo, the mammoth figured prominently in their story of creation. Changing Woman (Asdzaa nádleehé) married the Sun and bore two sons, twins, and heroes to the Navajo people. They were known as \"Monster Slayer\" and \"Child-Born-of-Water\". The twins traveled to their father the Sun who gave them weapons of lighting bolts to fight the dreaded “monsters.” \n\n > Native Americans have a specific way of revealing their historical knowledge. Their oral stories are often embellished with interactions between historical events and supernatural beings. In 1762, the Shawnee told John Wright about the big stone skeletons found along the Ohio River. They said the bones belonged to an immense animal, the \"father of all buffalo,\" which had been hunted by \"great and strong men\" of the distant past. But the Great Spirit destroyed the huge animals with lightning. The Delaware elders told Thomas Jefferson a similar story; only they claimed that the gigantic animals were driving away smaller game, like deer and bear. This angered their god, who blasted the great beasts with lightning. Only their petrified bones were left, although some thought that the huge animals escaped to the far north.\n\nHow much is later myths to explain the origin of mammoth bones and how much is actual oral history regarding mammoths is hard to determine now. In other words, the narrative may be recent enough for the fossils of the present to be interpreted, or old enough to explain how they got there. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to come up with a more comprenehsive answer though. ",
"There exists a hypothesis that a mythical monster of Australian Aboriginals called *bunyip* may be a cultural memory of extinct giant marsupials such as the Diprotodon, Zygomaturus, Nototherium or Palorchestes.",
"I read a hypothesis that gold-horned deer from Slavic folk tales may be a memory of now extinct Irish elk, based on the golden color of its antlers, and being described as very large (in a ritual poem, described as carrying a man and a woman in its antlers). Sorry, could not find the source for the life of me."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.nps.gov/crla/planyourvisit/upload/2010-history.pdf"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
11gavq
|
why did cell phone companies develop so many different kinds of chargers? even within the same brand. was it really that financially beneficial?
|
so frustrating. I've had 5 samsung phones and every one has a different plug
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11gavq/eli5_why_did_cell_phone_companies_develop_so_many/
|
{
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"text": [
"It's generally because they didn't care about making them the same. Typically, if you don't have a requirement like using the same plug, they start by choosing a chipset, then design the rest of the board for compatibility with that chipset as first priority, availability of parts second, and cost of parts third. Using the same connector is something they don't care about at all and the bosses don't care about. They care about getting it to market quickly so they can be the first phone with the new xyz feature that someone will pay a premium for, even if the overall design of the phone sucks. ",
"Its starting to get better. Android has been a driver for this, and the EU has passed laws related to this too.\n\nGoogle's compatibility standards for Android (that manufacturers have to follow if they want to use Google's app store) say that android phones \"SHOULD use the micro USB form factor on the device side\" and \"MUST be connectable to a USB host with a standard USB-A port\"\n\nSo pretty much every android phone I can think of off the top of my head use the exact same cable for charging.\n\nAdditionally from January 2011 the EU passed a policy that requires that all mobile phones to adopt the standard Micro USB charging connector."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
11uo1j
|
I've heard humans are great hunters because of their endurance. Do other bipedal runners like kangaroos and ostriches have great endurance?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11uo1j/ive_heard_humans_are_great_hunters_because_of/
|
{
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"An Ostrich is in fact a VERY enduring runner. Their top speed is up to about 43 miles/hour (69.2 km/hr) which they can hold for about 20 minutes. That doesn't sound like a lot, compared to some Kalahari bushmen speeds of 16 miles/hr for 3 hours, but the ostrich runs at 3 times their speed. Even a cheetah, the fastest land animal, can only maintain its top speed for (at most) 90 seconds. So for an ostrich to run at 3 times a human's speed for a ninth of the time is really phenomenal. The thing is, Humans used persistence hunting, tiring out their prey, to hunt them down, while an ostrich will merely sprint away from its hunter. Ostriches only use this for survival, not for hunting. Kangaroos, I have no idea. \n\nsources:\n[animal planet](_URL_0_)\n[persistence hunting](_URL_2_)\n[cheetas](_URL_1_)\n",
"According to *T[he First Humans - Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo](_URL_1_)*, the primary concern when considering endurance running (i.e galloping, faster than a jog/trot) in mammals is the ability to remove the heat generated from sustained strenuous activity. The paper does not give any indication that bipedalism grants any significant advantage to endurance running. Indeed, the paper only mentions hyenas, wolves, and hunting dogs as being comparable to humans in endurance, and it specifically states that \n > [Other] tropical cursorial mammals such as hyenas\n > and hunting dogs that can run long distances are constrained to do so at night or during the dawn and dusk when the days are hot. Humans alone are capable of [endurance running] during midday heat. \n\nThe paper does not mention ostriches, but it does state that \"Even a kangaroo, which is capable of sweating and has a speed-independent [cost of transport], reaches lethal core body temperatures after 1 to 2 h of running.\"\n\nI'm not entirely sure that this paper is the right one to answer your question, as it deals more with discovering *why* humans (and especially, why *only* humans, among primates) have such a phenomenal endurance capability. In any case, the paper is quite interesting (noting for example, that humans running on foot have beaten humans riding horseback in a cross-country marathon on [multiple occasions](_URL_0_)), and I would highly recommend reading it.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/ostrich-info.htm/printable",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon",
"http://iho.asu.edu/files/Kimbel_Homo%20Origins%202009.pdf"
]
] |
||
swvlv
|
cpu, gpu, ram, and swap
|
What are the differences between them, both in role and function?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/swvlv/eli5_cpu_gpu_ram_and_swap/
|
{
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"**CPU** - Central processing unit. Your Intels and AMDs. It is the brain of your computer or device. It processes the instructions that it gets and it sends signals to everything else in the computer. \n\n**GPU** - Graphics processing unit. Your Nvidias and AMDs. They are processors whose only job is to draw the graphics that you need. When you play a game, you *could* get the CPU to do everything but that would severely overload it and you would get quite annoyed. You can thus benefit from having a processor dedicated solely to this purpose, and that is a GPU. Similarly, there are sound cards, physics cards, etc.\n\n**RAM** - Your 4GB and 8GB and similar sizes. When you run an application on a computer, the operating system is running it from the RAM. The operating system is managing the program as well as the memory required by the program in the RAM. RAM is the computer's memory. It is faster to work with than a hard disk. It is only temporary. When you turn the computer off, whatever was in RAM will go away. It is called 'volatile memory'. The RAM does not calculate or process anything. It just sits there and waits for stuff to be put in. Note that some GPUs have their own 'RAM' which the GPU uses for its calculations and number crunching. \n\n**Swap** - If you are using a lot of heavy applications that fill up your RAM, your operating system starts using the hard disk to temporarily store some of the data. Suppose you have App1 and App2 open and they are very heavy - they use up all 4GB of your RAM. Now you open App3. The operating system has nowhere to put App3, but you want App3. So it puts App1 in a temporary location on your hard disk, clears that bit of RAM and puts App3 there. You then go back to App1. The operating system now needs to put App1 back from disk into memory and *swap out* something else. That space used for the swapping is called swap space. Swap is a term I generally hear with Linux/Unix operating systems. In Windows, you would call it a pagefile. ",
"**ELI5:** Sometimes people need to do very complicated math problems that take a long time to even do on paper. So, if this was your problem, what would you do? Well, to replace the person we need something to do the thinking, and to replace the paper we need a place to put the question. We found a way to solve complicated math problems by storing them in a place (RAM, Swap) and using a thinking machine (CPU, GPU) to solve them using electricity.\n\n**ELI15:** A few decades ago, the Integrated Circuit was developed, which took a bunch of components and shrunk them down into a chip with a very specific set of functions that was meant to be mass-produceable and space-saving. These ICs were/are a combination of resistors and transistors that could do any number of things, but the relevant ones were called \"logic gates\"; that is, they perform a very specific role in combining values of \"true\" and \"false\", or in electric signals, \"1\" (5V) and \"0\" (0V). \n\nLong story short, we also found out that with the proper application of NAND gates, we could solve virtually any problem we needed to logically (NAND gates can act as any other kind of gate, they're *universal*). CPUs and GPUs are certain configurations of NAND gates built to solve very specific problems, GPUs are specifically geared towards the types of problems that appear when calculating lots (and lots and lots) of vector transformations.\n\nWe need, though, a way to store the information that they need to act on. We could read stuff directly from the HDD (Hard Disk Drive), but that would take a while. RAM is a much faster form of memory storage that has essentially a direct, wide, rapid data pipeline to the CPU. The Swap file (normally implemented on Linux systems, it's called Paging for Windows) is used for things that would normally be stored in the RAM, but haven't been accessed in a while, and are being pushed out by newer, more active data. Access to the Swap file/partition is noticeably slower than access to RAM, but it gets the job done.\n\nSource: Computer Engineering student."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
7scy1a
|
why is listerine not corrosive for the teeth but the chemicals in coke is?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7scy1a/eli5_why_is_listerine_not_corrosive_for_the_teeth/
|
{
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"dt3sysi"
],
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8
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"text": [
"Listerine contains no acids. Mainly ethanol, which may feel like it \n\"burns\" but isn't doing any damage to your teeth. \n\n It's the highly acidic content of coke (and orange juice) that's harmful to teeth, along with high sugar content that promotes bacterial growth."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3x3j3m
|
how does youtube decide which video needs an user to sign-in?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x3j3m/eli5_how_does_youtube_decide_which_video_needs_an/
|
{
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"text": [
"If it has explicit content. If the uploader checks the \"Contains 18+ material\" box (not the exact phrasing) when uploading or when YouTube gets user submitted complaints/reports, then YouTube applies the age restriction."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
dvasxz
|
how do we develop tolerance to things (e.g. pain medication, caffeine)? is there anyway to prevent this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvasxz/eli5_how_do_we_develop_tolerance_to_things_eg/
|
{
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"text": [
"Our bodies try to keep our internal body chemistry within a pretty narrow window for things to work optimally. Not too much of this or too little of that...etc. If something gets outside that range, it takes steps to bring it back. Drugs change this balance, so the body tries to restore balance.\n\nDrugs work by binding to receptors in the brain, which causes some chemical changes to happen that throws off that balance your body prefers. Your brain goes \"oh, there's too much stuff happening at these receptors, so I'm going to turn some of them off, or make them less sensitive\". Basically, it's ignoring some of the input. The result is that you need more to get the same output (the desired effect).\n\nIt's sort of like if your neighbors are throwing a loud party while you're trying to sleep, you might put in ear plugs so you don't hear them. In order for you to hear it again with the earplugs in, your neighbors would have to be even louder than they were before. Now you put on noise-cancelling headphones. In order to counter that, your neighbors would have to yell into a bullhorn aimed directly at you, and it just keeps going like that.\n\nThe only way to prevent a tolerance is to limit how much of the tolerance-forming substance you consume, or to not use it all of the time.",
"Imagine you're outside on a cloudy day. All of a sudden, the sun comes out from behind the clouds and is shining bright in your eyes. You immediately are like \"Woah!! Too much!\" As a response, you pull on your sunglasses to block the overstimulating rays from the sun.\n\nYour brain does basically the same thing. Your brain really does not like change from its baseline and tries to maintain a \"normal\" as best as it can. When you take certain drugs that act in the brain, the brain changes to minimize unwanted effects (unwanted as determined by the brain). When you take caffeine, opioids, cocaine, etc., it causes an increase in the \"happy\" messengers in the brain (dopamine, serotonin, etc). However, the brain doesn't like this change and says \"woah! Too much!\" and changes itself to reduce the effect. Let's say that you take heroin and it causes an increase in dopamine, over time your brain reduces the number of dopamine receptors so that it doesn't get over-stimulated by the excessive dopamine. It's a process called homeostasis."
]
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[],
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obtzr
|
Is there a developing (strong) link between Autism and vitamin D?
|
There seems to be evidence linking a deficit of vitamin D and Autism. Doctors are telling my wife and I to supplement our newborn with Vitamin D.
_URL_4_
_URL_3_
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
_URL_2_
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/obtzr/is_there_a_developing_strong_link_between_autism/
|
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"Current research does not support the idea that there is a causal link between vitamin D deficiency and autism. The theory is not widely accepted. From what I can tell, there is basically one guy, Dr. John Cannell, funded by the Vitamin council, that came up with this hypothesis. All of the links you provided, except the Scientific American one, base all of their claims on this one man's hypothesis. (Even his 1 peer reviewed paper is published in \"Medical *Hypotheses*.\" There is really no evidence to support the idea at this point. As mentioned in the Autism Today article, it is \"interesting speculation.\" It is beneficial to introduce new hypotheses and examine their explanatory power, but this one simply doesn't have any proof right now. Some of these articles also make false claims, like that the rate of autism in higher in darker-skinned people, which is simply not true.\n\nOn the other hand, yes, vitamin D is incredibly important, and in many places, there is a lot of vitamin D deficiency, especially in very young children who tend not to spent much time in outdoors. Vitamin D deficiency leads to bone problems (rickets in children), and it may be important in brain development, at least in a few animal studies. It is general medical advice to supplement with vitamin D. Where I live, we supposedly do not get enough sunlight to maintain vitamin D levels from October through March.\n\nInterestingly, there has been some pretty interesting research recently on the link between vitamin D and multiple sclerosis, so we are really still looking into all of its roles. ([Recent post on r/science](_URL_0_))"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/Researcher%20sees%20link.asp",
"http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201104/autism-and-vitamin-d",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17920208",
"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism",
"http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions/autism/"
] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/n61ll/rare_gene_links_vitamin_d_and_multiple_sclerosis/"
]
] |
|
e67yoq
|
when you roll your “r”s while looking at a digital clock why do the digits vibrate?
|
If you look at a digital clock or any other display like that and roll your Rs or vibrates your lips, the digits seem to vibrate violently as well while nothing else in your vision moves. Why does that happen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e67yoq/eli5_when_you_roll_your_rs_while_looking_at_a/
|
{
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"Your brain does a bunch of correcting of your eye's sensory input, and 2 in particular that come into play and kind of conflict here.\n\nFirst is that when your head or eyes are vibrating your brain compensates to steady the picture a little bit.\n\nSecond is that an LCD clock doesn't display all of the lit segments at the same time, but rather it cycles between powering the ones that should be lit really quickly (this has to do with maintaining brightness out of a limited number of circuits); normally, like the refresh rate on a TV or monitor, this happens too quickly for you to detect, so you typically just see a uniformly lit LCD display.\n\nWhen you combine the two effects, you see them light up when the clock is in a slightly different part of your brain and it can't quite keep up, and it corrects wrong (because LCD clocks aren't common in nature)."
]
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[]
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odi0y
|
Does a sprouted bean/nut have greater nutritional value than an unsprouted one?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/odi0y/does_a_sprouted_beannut_have_greater_nutritional/
|
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"As someone into brewing, I will answer this question from my perspective.\n\n\nSeeds (and beans and nuts) contain reserves of energy for the plant embryo to grow. These are stored as starches, proteins or oils. When the seed germinates enzymes within will convert these resources to chemical forms more useful for metabolisation (like sugars).\n\n\nThe sum of nutritional resources in the non-germinated seed is technically the same as in the germinated one. However your metabolic system would need to put in energy to break down the starches/oils etc. when eating the non-germinated seed, while the nutrients in the germinated seeds are directly available for metabolisation.\n\n\nThe germinated seeds will therefore net you more energy, as the enzymes have already done the work of breaking down the complex molecules for you.\n"
]
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[]
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a9l9mi
|
how do heat pumps find heat in the air on a cold day? what kind of thermodymagick is this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9l9mi/eli5_how_do_heat_pumps_find_heat_in_the_air_on_a/
|
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"There’s no such thing as “cold” just less warm. Temperature is a measure of energy. There is still plenty of energy in this above absolute zero. \n\nCan you give more context about what you mean though, like an example?",
"If you compress air, all of the energy that was in the air still exists. Now that air takes up less space, but has the same energy, so it is warmer. Now you blow different air across a radiator filled with that compressed hot air. The air that is blowing across it picks up that heat. \n\nEventually, you blow enough air across it and the compressed air is now the same temperature as the air blowing across it. When you decompress that air, it goes back to its normal size, but without as much energy (which you took out of it by blowing other non-compressed air across its container). That newly decompressed air is super cold, so you blow it back outside, and grab new air to compress (and thereby get more hot compressed air) and blow other air over.\n\nYou have literally pulled energy out of the outside air and transferred it to the air blowing into your house.\n\nUnless the original air was at absolute 0 (-273.15° Celsius) it has energy in it, and if you compress it enough, that energy is enough to be warm. Obviously, it probably becomes very inefficient below certain temps.",
"Heat pumps are refrigerators and air conditioners just that we're capturing the hot side not the cold\n\nYou take a refrigerant like Freon, and squish it into a liquid. This brings it well above room temperature. You then pass some air over it to take some energy (heat) out of it to move to the room. Then you pump it outside and let it expand which causes it to get really cold, far colder than normal outside temperatures so it absorbs some energy. Then you compress it back into a hot liquid and the cycle repeats.\n\nThe energy is captured in the phase change and the compression/expansion which is what let's us move energy in seemingly the wrong direction\n\nThe efficiency of a heat pump drops as the temperature difference increases so below a certain outside temperature you won't be able to collect enough outside energy to heat your house and have to rely on the auxiliary heat which is often electric baseboards or gas heating"
]
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5k13y1
|
is "tolerance" psychological, or is there a physical basis for it (alcohol,pain,etc)?
|
Two people (of the same weight) consume the same amount of alcohol. One remains competent while the other can barely stand. Is the first person producing something in their body which allows them to take in more alcohol before acting drunk, or is their mind somehow trained to deal with it? Same thing with pain. What exactly is "tolerance"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k13y1/eli5_is_tolerance_psychological_or_is_there_a/
|
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"It's a physical thing.\n\nThere's this idea in biology called \"homeostasis\". Basically, your body has an idea of chemical balance, and it adjusts to stay balanced. Like: it's hot out, so you sweat, so you cool down, then you stop sweating. Or you eat candy, which raises your blood sugar. Your body will release insulin, which will lower your blood sugar. As it gets back to normal, insulin release tapers off.\n\nThis applies to everything. If you drink alcohol once, it'll make you drunk. If you drink it every day, your body will start adjusting to compensate for it, and you'll have a harder and harder time getting drunk. Soon alcohol just brings you up to normal. If you then stop drinking, your body will now be off-balance in the other direction, and you'll go into withdrawal until homeostasis can be restored.\n\nPain? Similar deal. Your brain tries to maintain homeostasis. Acute, agonized misery is only sustainable for so long. If the pain itself can't be dulled down, your emotional reaction to it can be. The emergency shutoff switch is when this doesn't work, and *all* your emotions are cranked down as far as they can go. That includes distress, pleasure, and fear: basically, it causes apathetic depression. This is why you can't just expect people to \"get used\" to severe pain. \n\nWhen I say this applies to everything, I mean it. Sex, gambling, sugar, background noise, *everything* is filtered through your perceptions in this way. Why aren't rich people all happy? Because that level of prosperity is their new normal. What's up with Stockholm syndrome? Victims become desensitized to abuse, and their expectations for \"kindness\" are steadily reduced. Why aren't teenagers overwhelmed by the pace of the internet? Because it's normal for them. Why don't better football helmets reduce the number of concussions? Because people just do dumber things in order to maintain the same sense of acceptable risk.\n\nThis one principle explains quite a bit about why people act the way they do.\n\nEdit: Minor correction, plus some comma wrangling.",
"It is both.\n\nAs with most poisons (alcohol is a poison) your body can build up a tolerance to alcohol. This is done by being able to metabolize it more efficiently. It is similar to being able to digest foods you eat a lot vs getting an upset stomach because you ate something new.\n\nAt the same time an experienced drinker knows how their body reacts to being drunk and can compensate for it in most circumstances. \n\nThey can walk like they are sober and talk like they are sober because all that requires I knowing you aren't actually on a slope and knowing to enunciate, but they can't drive (no matter what someone says) and they won't have fine motor control as if they aren't drunk. Those require greater perception rather than corrective perception.",
"Physical\n\n\"The liver does this by producing larger amounts of the enzymes which break down alcohol. Because the liver has become more efficient at breaking down alcohol, drinkers need to drink more alcohol in order to get the same effect. This is the role that the liver plays in the development of alcohol tolerance.\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWhat the liver does in more detail:\n\n\"Alcohol is metabolized by several processes or pathways. The most common of these pathways involves two enzymes—alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). These enzymes help break apart the alcohol molecule, making it possible to eliminate it from the body. First, ADH metabolizes alcohol to acetaldehyde. Then, in a second step, acetaldehyde is further metabolized down to another, less active byproduct called acetate, which then is broken down into water and carbon dioxide for easy elimination \"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"The brain also has a role in the development of alcohol tolerance. When the neurotransmitter systems in the brain are regularly exposed to large amounts of alcohol they begin to adapt to the presence of alcohol. The alcohol works to suppress the functioning of the neurotransmitter systems. For example alcohol affects the GABA system causing sleepiness and a reduction in anxiety and alertness. With long term exposure to alcohol the GABA system adapts so that the alcohol causes less relaxation, sleepiness, and dulling of alertness. Because of this adaption to the presence of alcohol by the brain heavy drinkers begin to require more alcohol to get the same effect.\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\nTLdr: The liver eliminates alcohol more effeciently. The brain adjusts so that alcohol doesn't affect it as much.",
"It's both because those two things are connected very closely. \n\nGenetics is always going to place the foundation with what you can work with. But epigenetics is what is going to make it what it actually is. Psychologically you can be triggered or with high levels of training activated to resist pain better.\n\nThere is the concept of the 40% that marines talk about in training. It's basically the point where the body says STOP YOUR DESTROYING ME!!! It is possible to overcome but intensely difficult and very few ever will. \n\nSo tolerance is your existence's (mental, emotional, and physiological) combinations to resist a certain stimuli. Some things like alcohol resistance is more based on physical/physiological factors while pain for example is much more psychologically based. For example there have been times where I've worked in really extreme conditions (hot/cold) where initially I was very preoccupied but said conditions. After sometime I psychologically entered a flow state and completely disregarded these stimuli because they were not productive to accomplishing my flow state's goal. ",
"It's both, I think there are enough answers here on the physical side. On the Psychological side, if you think you are getting drunk then you will display symptoms of becoming drunk. This can also mean that if you're drinking alcohol, you may feel the symptoms \"early\", so to speak. You're mind expects the effect, so it produces the effect itself. \n \nHere's an [article](_URL_0_) on how your mind can trick you into thinking you're becoming drunk (there's many more articles on this too). Essentially, it's just a placebo effect (if you're not using real alcohol). If you take this concept of psychological \"drunkenness\" and combine it with the physical component described in the other answers, you get the case of two people being the same body weight and same alcohol being on completely different levels of inebriation.",
"Well, pain is based on both. You can had just less tactile feeling or response to pain, males have a higher threshold to pain than females for instance (Yes, that includes pregnancy which releases endorphins etc to numbs the pain of childbirth mildly).\n\nMentally, oh boy. In the first place, pain and pleasure are exhibited in the same area's of your brain, but mentally a person can begin to substitute pain for pleasure if it is the stimuli they receive on a regular basis. This can condition a person to have a positive response to pain. The repeated exposure to pain can also just simply numb the mind to the stimuli of pain.\n\nAnother thing can be mental conditioning to basically... \"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.\" The human mind is an amazing thing, you can literally condition yourself to the point where despite being in great pain, you can block it out. Males are often conditioned from birth to \"Suck it up\" and such, which begins the macho method men respond to pain. Other conditioning is the military which is an example of both male and female conditioning to being more tolerant to pain and stress, martial monkhood, Buddhist monks, general martial arts both physically damages nerve endings and conditions you to better handle and deal with pain, and other situations.\n\nThen there is nerve damage which causes pain in a sense, repeated tingling or numbing pains etc like that, but actually causes a lack of tactile feeling etc at nerve ends that have either been damaged or severed.\n\nNow Alcohol, again... Mixture, BUT it is more based on your bodies response to you basically poisoning the shit out of your liver. You don't so much of build a \"tolerance\" per say like... Some people here are saying... You literally are killing your bodies ability to try and save your liver and brain from the damage you are doing when you over-drink. When you are drinking in the same place over and over again you condition yourself mentally so that your brain basically goes \"Okay, its time to get prepped\" and it will put you in a state of expectancy to become drunk. This is also why narcotic users will overdose on the exact same dose in an unfamiliar location, there's a mental bit to it.\n\nBody and mind.",
"I got caught smoking pot in the dorms and had to attend a session led by a psychologist at my university, and he actually talked a little about this. Most people here are hitting the head on the physical aspect but one thing I didn't see is a certain, interesting (to me) psychological aspect. Let's say you drink if and only if you're in your room, and you need 12 beers to get drunk. Well, two things happen - when you enter your room your body primes you for alcohol consumption, since your brain is associating your room to drinking. Secondly, let's say one night you mix things things up and decide to drink at a friend's house. Well your brain doesn't associate your friend's house with drinking, so you don't have that priming, and those 12 beers will actually get you more drunk than if you were in your room. He also brought up the fact that most heroin overdoses occur in a new area from where the junkie usually shoots up. I don't have his sources for this stuff, I'm just writing what I remember from the lecture. ",
"Unless we are referring to Cartesian philosophy, there is no \"physical\" versus \"psychological\" (i.e. mind-body dualism). Everything psychological is based in neurobiology and follows the laws of physics.\"Tolerance\" is both the effects of plasticity (changes in brain network connectivity) and varying sensitivities/availability of neurotransmitters. \n",
"It's psychological and physical. I know more about the psychological side of this, so that's what I'll focus on. There are certain variables that affect your tolerance such as amount, setting, time since last usage and method of use.\n\nLet's take heroin for example. Many overdoses from this drug aren't caused because that person took more than normal. When those people overdose, they either are in a brand new setting (different location or with different people) or haven't used the drug in a while so their tolerance has lowered. \n\nUsing psychedelics really helps you understand this effect. If you trip in a familiar setting with people you trust, then you are more likely to have a good trip. However, if you trip in an unfamiliar setting with people you don't trust or know well, then you'll likely have a bad trip. \n\nAlso the method of consumption makes a huge difference. If you smoke crack compared to snorting it then your body with become more addicted and tolerant accordingly. Smoking a substance allows the chemicals to reach your brain much faster than snorting so your body has less time to prepare itself for the influence of the substance.\n\nTLDR: Your body is greatly affected by the setting of your substance usage. If you are in a familiar environment with people you know, consuming the substance like you normally do, then you will show higher tolerance. If you do it in an unfamiliar setting with new people in a novel way, then you'll have a lower tolerance ",
"How does this work with temperature? When I was younger I walked home from school every day. I grew up in upstate N.Y., so it could get quite cold in the winters, like -30f with wind chill. I would usually just wear jeans and t shirt when it was 20-40. It wasn't really a big deal and I didn't feel very cold between 20-40f unless it was terribly windy. Meanwhile everyone else would be freezing their ass off even with multiple layers and a winter coat.\n\nNow I've lived in Thailand for a couple years and I'm back in Korea. It's about 25-35 degrees Fahrenheit and I can still go outside and I'm generally still able to tolerate it in a t shirt without feeling really cold, while everyone else is freezing, even people who live here. My hands and stuff do actually get cold, but most of my body doesn't.\n\nAm I an Android? Or can someone explain this? P.S. I'm not fat. I only weigh like 60kgs/130~ pounds.",
"You've gotten a lot of good answers, but I will add some texture to the explanations by saying that psychological experiences shape biology (as do actual biological ones). This is especially so in childhood when stress or eustress affect brain development and prime people for weaker or stronger distress tolerance.\n\nIf you are exposed to a lot of stress during formative years, your brain will be flooded with cortisol (a stress hormone) and it will change the number and type of receptors to adapt. This change is, as far as we know, relatively permanent. The same sort of thing happens when you take certain drugs (e.g., cocaine) and overwhelm dopamine receptors. \n\nKids who experience this sort of brain change in response to excess cortisol are literally overwhelmed by stress and have lifelong weak distress tolerance. They often turn to substances or other types of vice (gambling, sex, etc.) in order to moderate their reactions because they don't have the same internal chemistry that other people who didn't experience their life situation did. Obviously, what you are born with biologically also factors into this, but bad stress (as opposed to \"good stress\" or eustress) is going to increase the chances that you will have tolerance issues for emotional tasks in the future. This is why people can't just \"get over\" a bad upbringing when they are adults. Their capacity to adapt is much poorer - their body is akin to a house built on a very shaky foundation. You can't replace the foundation, though you can learn to embrace healthier tools to moderate your distress, but such tools are slow to act on the body relative to substances.\n\nedit: typo",
"It's very odd that none of the top replies mentions the conscious psychological aspects of physical pain tolerance.\n\nIt is very possible for two candidates to have a perceived equal amount of pain, yet one of them can \"tolerate\" the pain for greater lengths.\n\nSubjects that have received amble motivation can also tolerate more pain even if they've had lower tolerance in previous unmotivated tests.\n\nOf course this is all regarding to PAIN, not alcohol. Pain is completely different than alcohol intoxication.",
"I'm late to the party, but I'd like to present the ~~medical~~ pharmacological side of tolerance.\nPut it simply, Tolerance is the need for larger doses of a drug to produce a given response.\n\nThere are a couple types of tolerance really ;there's species tolerance, where some species are tolerant to certain drugs.(Rabbits can handle a lot of atropine); and there's acquired tolerance, which is what most of us mean by \"Tolerance\".\nThere's also genetic factors, gender factors etc.\n\nThe mechanism for tolerance is complex and debatable, but here's what most people seem to agree on:\n\nThere's ***Pharmacokinetic tolerance***, which means there's a reduced concentration of drug at the site of action. (Seen with rifampicin and oral contraceptives)\n\nNext is ***Pharmacodynamic tolerance***, which is due to decreased sensitivity of the receptors for a drug or decreased signals from the said receptors. (Seen with Opioids and Barbiturates)\n\nYet another common thing is ***Cross Tolerance***, which is development of tolerance to some Drug X because it's too similar to Drug Y. (Seen with Opioids and Nitrates)\n\nAnd lastly there's something called ***Tachyphylaxis*** which is definitely not ELI5-material. It's seen with Ephedrine and Tyramines.\n\nI'd actually say that tolerance is neither Physical or Psychological, rather I'd say it's ***Physiological***. \n\nSource: Have finals on Monday.\n\nHope this answers your question, and still is understandable.\n\n",
"I have a chronic pain disorder that most people get when they are older if they get it but I started having symptoms when I was 14 and it kicked in fully by 17-18. I'm able to handle the pain a lot better (as in not showing others that I'm in pain and not letting it run my life ) than most others with the same illness and that is probably because they spent a large portion of their life without pain where as I didn't have much of one before hand. Of course I went through depression periods and I still do but on the whole I basically had to except that life is painful but that doesn't mean I have to be sad too. The pain isn't getting better but I'm able to not let it affect my mood most of the time. I've found things that let me not think too much about the pain and that's the biggest thing that's helped. Its pretty cool that even if you're in a lot of pain if you find something that really interests you and makes you concentrate the pain doesn't seem like its there until I stop doing that thing. For me it was videogames, books, and art those are my best pain killers.",
"Are mind and body separate?",
"Pain and alcohol are very different in this situation. Pain is enterpreted electrical signals between your muscles and brain, alcohol is a neurotoxic poision technically. You can't really ignore drunkenness, but you can sure as hell ignore pain. ",
"It's physical.\n\nCalluses on your hands are a great analogy of tolerances. Calluses are a result of excess use of the skin in those areas. Your skin becomes tolerant to use. Your once soft, sensitive skin dies because of the excess use. This builds up a thick layer of dead skin which protects the soft new skin underneath from the excess use.\n\nThe same basic idea can be applied to your neurons when excess chemicals are applied. You start with many sensitive receptors, but if you flood them with a chemical, they will start to ignore that chemical or even die off. Causing you to not react to that chemical as much.",
"It is physical, but you can train yourself to ignore/transcend fear and pain. To give an example in fiction: Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's \"Dune\" repeated this to himself while facing the Gom Jabbar trial of the Bene Gesserit. \n\n“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ",
"Basically I just didn't give a fuck when I broke my finger in 2 and I put it back on again while it was hanging by skin. I continued playing in the snow for another 5 mins then I got hit by the shock. I was 9 at the time. Thereafter I had to have reconstructive surgery and took 6 months for my hand to recover. I was upset that I couldn't play video games for a long time. \nAnother time I tore the ligaments in my foot. Only reason why I had to get a wheel chair was because my foot kept twisting backwards when I tried to walk. Sure it hurt like hell but was more annoying having to move my foot around after every step. \nHowever... when I get period pains, it's so bad I have to take hardcore pain meds just to get out of bed ;__; ",
"In terms of alcohol, it's called \"metabolic induction.\" Or hepatic enzyme induction.\nEverything that you take into the body must be processed and excreted. There are metabolic pathways, for alcohol the liver, that process alcohol. Cytochrome P450 is something to look up. Some people who drink may mess up the levels of certain medicines because they change how fast something is processed and removed from the body.\nSo if someone drinks alcohol more readily, the tolerance factor that comes into play is that they can excrete alcohol slightly faster than someone who rarely drinks. That's the physical aspect of your question.\nPeople also get accustomed to the effects of alcohol and don't \"feel drunk\" even if their BAC is .08 and seem to speak clearly and could possibly pass a field sobriety test. Where other people could have a couple drinks and have a .04 BAC and start acting goofy.\nSource: advanced anatomy and physiology education, masters degree in health science\n\nIn terms of pain, there are genetic factors others mentioned. Redheads reportedly feel less pain. In my experience practicing medicine in orthopedic pain tolerance is more more mental fortitude and physical/life experience based. Someone's who has \"been through a lot,\" for example a traumatic car accident with multiple fractures, though there are exceptions, those patients typically have a higher pain tolerance and minor things bother them less. Pain is much more subjective. Perhaps someone else can speak more to pain tolerance. I did learn however that \"pain threshold\" is inaccurate as a term and pain tolerance is more accurate.",
"For all those posting about their depression and chronic pain for many years; take a look at the links I've provided below. \n\nWhen you have chronic pain your body is constantly sending those signals to your spinal cords \"dorsal horn\" I believe they called it. And that sends a signal to figure out what's happening and then sends it to the brain to answer the history questions such as, have I felt this before? Is it better or worse? And then signals are sent to your limbic system in which gives your emotional response. If it was a new pain and you just got paid, you may act differently than if you just had a fight with your gf/wife/husband/bf. The first article I posted is how chronic pain causes depression more often times than not. This is because, again, those signals are constantly being sent to your brain causing stress and your body goes into \"fight or flight\" state of mind and without a break from that, you don't really have other emotions to tend to. It's basically as if your brain only cares about getting you out of that painful state in which, it won't without proper medication. As for the depression, depression alone causes aches and pains, lack of enjoyment in previously enjoyable activities such as, being in love, hunting, being with friends, having sex - those activities that we enjoy are all are important in a healthy emotional state. However, with CLINICAL DEPRESSION that coincides with chronic pain, needs to be treated along with the pain management in which you should seek conseling, a pain management doctor, and a psychiatrist or mental health nurse practitioner to manage psych medications. \n\nI hope this helps! Please excuse the grammar errors I just needed to get this out before I had Christmas Eve things to attend! \n\nI have a masters in Applied Behavior Analysis and am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa72/aa72.htm",
"http://hams.cc/tolerance/"
],
[],
[
"http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2002/pr021224.cfm"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.verywell.com/how-we-feel-pain-2564638",
"https://www.verywell.com/depression-and-chronic-pain-2564443"
]
] |
|
abj4dd
|
Since when and how was porn a thing?
|
[deleted]
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/abj4dd/since_when_and_how_was_porn_a_thing/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ed2047n"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"I have covered this a number of times. Here are a few:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI also discuss this at greater length in my book. But the quick and fast answer is that the concept of pornography as we have it originates from about 1850 or so. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1v38ja/what_are_the_earliest_known_pornographic_texts/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hkvlj/nsfw_in_bram_stokers_dracula_1992_when_dracula/"
]
] |
|
j3llo
|
how does the tape adapter that you plug into the headphone jack of an mp3 player work (li5)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3llo/how_does_the_tape_adapter_that_you_plug_into_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c28un72"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"The tape head works by having a magnet inside a metal coil. As a magnetic field passes under the head, it makes the magnet move and induces a current in the metal coil.\n\nHow you put a magnetic field doesn't massively matter. It can either be the magnetic field from the tape, or you can just make a coil, which produces a magnetic field when a current is passed through it.\n\nSo the audio signal is passed to a coil, which produces a magnetic field, which pushes the magnet instead the pickup head to produce a matching signal."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
30gk51
|
how does obama get the money to spend for his campaign / ideas?
|
Like, who funds these campaigns? Are the Feds involved, or Obama can ask some guy to print the dollars and they will get it done.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30gk51/eli5_how_does_obama_get_the_money_to_spend_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cps8g2x",
"cps8mmt"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Do you mean the election campaigns, or the policies of his office?",
"Campaigns are funded by many sources. Individual donors, companies, Political Action Committees (PACs), really big PACs (Super-PACs), etc. \n\nFederal programs he's funded get their money from Federal taxes."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
astgi7
|
what are concrete benefits to nose-breathing and are humans designed to mainly nose-breathe instead of mouth-breathing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/astgi7/eli5_what_are_concrete_benefits_to_nosebreathing/
|
{
"a_id": [
"egwkb57",
"egwkcbr"
],
"score": [
10,
4
],
"text": [
"I know of one benefit to nose-breathing: your nose acts a filter, removing small particulates from the air before it's passed down into your lungs.",
"Your nose is effectively an air filter. It has a bunch of hairs in it and mucus which trap and encapsulate particulate matter in the air for removal before it reaches the lungs. Your mouth does not have such a filtering mechanism."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
15mxk4
|
Engineering on Mars
|
Since Mars's gravity is around one third that of Earth's, would modern construction methods brought to Mars allow us to build buildings three times taller simply by scaling all dimensions by a factor of three in the Y axis? Would other factors need to be taken into account?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15mxk4/engineering_on_mars/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7nzcla"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"I'm not a structural engineer, but a geotechnical engineer. So I deal with the structural capacity of soils. I'm assuming your argument is that since the structure weighs 2/3's less, then you could build 3 times higher. I would assume that if you are neglecting external forces (wind, seismic, etc) then maybe. But from a geotechnical standpoint, the strength of soil is depend (usually) on confining pressure of surrounding soil. \n\nImagine you are standing on a surf board, the water directly underneath you is supporting your weight, but only because the water surrounding the water beneath you is confining it. (So if you had a column of water with nothing around it, it would quickly turn into a puddle with 0 confining pressure). \n\nNon-cohesive soil (re:sand) is similar in that it draws much of it's strength from confining pressure. So what causes confining pressure...Well, in geotechnics it is generally the weight of the surrounding soil multiplied by the heigh (or depth) of the soil (so basically a hydrostatic pressure calculation) times a factor. So if you reduce the weight of the soil (due to gravity) by 2/3's then it can only support 1/3 of the structures weight. \n\nTL;DR:\nI believe (from a geotechnical engineering standpoint) you'd have to resize your footings and foundations of the buildings before you'd be able to have a building not fail. You would have a soil bearing failure before a building material failure."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a2b9qr
|
can the non dominant hand ever be as dextrous as the dominant hand?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2b9qr/eli5_can_the_non_dominant_hand_ever_be_as/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eawp677",
"eaxjlb8"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes. The non dominant hand can be, you just have to start at a young age practicing or practice really hard now. \n\nThe brain has a preference towards your dominant hand, making you ignore your non dominant. Since you ignore it, it’ll never get better and only make you use your dominant more.",
"My father is a leftie and remembers back when he was in grade school some teachers would not find it acceptable writing with the \"wrong\" hand so he learned to write with both."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
9mnisw
|
How exactly does acne form when there are too many hormones like testosterone in the body?
|
[deleted]
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9mnisw/how_exactly_does_acne_form_when_there_are_too/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e7k8dta"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Androgens (like testosterone) increase the amount of oil your skin produces. This oil, called sebum, \"feeds\" the *Propionibacterium acnes* (an actinobacteria) that colonizes the human skin and causes acne. Basically, more androgens = more sebum, more sebum = more proteins that allow *P. acnes* to grow, more *P. acnes* = acne. \n\nThe inflammation is caused by P. acnes and from what I gather, it's through the clogging of pores and/or the body's immune response.\n\nIn some cases, hormonal treatment is given to reduce acne and its inflammation. This is why some women who take the birth control pill find that it controls their acne (and why some women take it *just* for this purpose).\n\nOtherwise, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of products on the market. Some folks seem to find great results when taking medication that severely dries out their skin (likely by blocking the body's ability to produce sebum) while others try every face wash on the market with varying results. It seems that what works for some won't necessarily work for others. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1mhoyf
|
what makes a person shy?
|
I have always wondered this.
EDIT: Thanks for all the good answers, I enjoyed reading them all!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mhoyf/eli5_what_makes_a_person_shy/
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"text": [
"First, there needs to be a clear distinction between \"shyness\" and \"introversion\".\n\nBeing introverted simply means you don't get 'a buzz' from partying/socialising, etc, and so you don't do it often. It has nothing to do with feeling anxious or uncomfortable; you simply don't find it emotionally/mentally rewarding. You tend to spend more time in quiet atmospheres, thinking about things. Ongoing research suggests that it has a [strong biological link](_URL_1_).\n\nShyness, on the other hand, is when those things actually make you feel awkward and nervous, and you struggle to integrate with new people or new environments. While it also has a number of [potential biological links](_URL_0_), it is more commonly assumed to be a result of a 'sheltered' or 'disruptive' or even 'fearful' childhood, where kids are not encouraged to interact with others positively, and don't learn the relevant social cues. [*EDIT: Please don't misinterpret this sentence. I'm not claiming that \"all shy people have bad childhoods\" or anything like that. It's merely one small facet of a rich and complex set of hypotheses*] In extreme cases, shyness turns into an social phobia where people cannot function normally in society. This is just a guess on my part, but I'm assuming that such severe examples are probably caused by harmful experiences, such as physical abuse, emotional trauma, etc.",
"Being confronted with strangers or conversation topics that make one feel uncomfortable and reluctant.",
"An extrovert would quickly overcome shyness because of the want to interact; so shyness and introversion go hand in hand sometimes because an introvert doesn't mind being alone",
"People confuse introverts for simply being shy. That's not always the case. I'm am definitely an introvert, but I am not shy. Anti social? Maybe. Shy , no.",
"I'm shy when I'm around new people, and I even get shy sometimes when I know someone but haven't seen them in a long time. For me, I think it comes down to trust. I don't know if I can trust this person to accept me for who I am, to be kind to me even though I come off as a weirdo. I know that they say it's best to always be yourself and all that, but with people I don't know, I feel safer just keeping myself to myself. Now, if I get to know a person and feel comfortable with that person, the shyness melts away and that lucky person can finally really get to know me. And most people are surprised, and that's fun to see.",
"From personal experience of shyness for majority of my young life, it's usually caused by an incident or two when at the impressionable ages. For instance, as a child just starting school, the child might try to make friends with a crowd and is either (metaphorically) pushed away or is made fun of. This scars the child making them think since that crowd pushed them away so will other crowds. ",
"Shyness = fear. If you live in fear, you are already dead. \n\n\nSource- recovering shy person. ",
"the fear to act stupid",
"I'm definitly an introvert and in highschool I had some pretty severe social anxiety/shyness. In college I worked hard to get over the anxiety and become more open which involved joining a fraternity, making friends, and putting real effort into my relationships. I was very succesful and went from the pledge that barely talked to running philanthropy events and becoming president of my fraternity. My ability to open up and feel comfortable in social situations has not; however, changed my nature as an introvert. Even if I enjoy other people's company and have a great time going out. The entire experience is taxing and saps my energy.\n\n**TL;DR** - I conquered my shyness, but being an introvert is part of who I am.",
"The fact that we act or make decisions by choosing what we prefer -- our inertial state where we continue to do whatever we are doing (like if you are reading a book you continue reading), or do something which challenged this inertial state (make a remark to this stranger who just passed by). An introvert would in most cases choose the inertial state and an extrovert would choose otherwise. I guess an introvert would think in his mind that if I make a chit-chat most likely I would not get an information which would be of use or interest for me, and in that sense it would be optimal for me to continue and put effort in whatever I am doing. An extrovert on the other hand would think that 'the little banter could lead to much more useful outcome than me continuing to do whatever I am doing'. I wonder if the role of the extroverts is diffusion of knowledge and that of introverts processing of knowledge. \n\\\\\n\n**In short is there a correlation between procrastination and being introvert or extrovert ?**\n",
"For me I can always feel when I'm going to be able to cope with a social event. I can be driving in my car towards the event and something inside me says 'tonight you aren't going to be in the mood for this.' Other times I can be in the mood for social events and feel I will enjoy myself. The problem arises when I am forced to go to an event and I'm not in the mood. I never make anyone do anything they don't want to do... I never understand the benefits a person is achieving from making an introvert attend a social event. If an introvert goes to a social event they will probably just be in a bad mood and not enjoy themselves... So why bother making them?\n\nMy aunt tried to get me to come join some adults around a table to chat and drink coffee. She knows I'm quiet and not into that sort of thing. If I do join the social group I won't contribute to idle chit chat so no ones gaining anything in the first place... Yet every time a social event comes up the same process is repeated. Why can't people just let others do what they want and stop taking every thing so personally...",
"I live in Japan where being shy is the norm. The average person hides their true feelings and any social interaction, outside of family members, is stressful for them. \n\nI'm not shy and love meeting new people. Before I came here, I really never met anyone that was as shy as they are. From my point of view, it seems like a cultural thing. \n\nAn example of my childhood, when I was growing up and my parents were talking to a friend that I didn't know and felt a bit scared of, they would tell me to say hello. This person would say hello back and ask me some stuff and I would answer. I think these kind of things helped me get over my shyness of talking to strangers.\n\nIn Japan, when you say hello to someone's kid and they hide behind their Mum/Dad, they would make excuses for them and tell you he/she's shy and the kid wouldn't have to say a thing. \n\nThis could be the difference between being shy and introverted. An introverted person in the same situation wouldn't get used a situation like this but a shy kid could. ",
"As a shy person myself, I believe it comes from the fear of rejection. Like if you be yourself, they will see who you really are and reject you.\n\nI have to get drunk in order to not feel awkward around people I don't really know. And I am even shy/awkward around my family and friends sometimes.\n\nI think for me anyway, it's a mixture of social anxiety and low confidence. It sucks, but you learn to deal with it. ",
"I transitioned from shy to introvert. I used to be terrified of talking to new people. Now, I just don't want to talk to anyone. It is amazing that I can work in a field that requires extensive customer interaction and have no issues until I clock out for the day.",
"Loneliness seems to make you much more sensitive to rejection and ridicule and therefore cause anxiety and more loneliness. Also shy people get less social experience which makes them more likely to behave in an awkward way causing a negative reaction.",
"Fear of rejection.",
"I am a very shy person and while a am a little bit introverted I often find myself longing for social encounters.\nI think my problem comes down to nerves, I never really no what to say, I have no idea how to flirt and I am utterly terrible at breaking the ice. I am more like the Titanic, the ice breaks me.\nThis has meant that I haven't had much luck in meeting girls and I have had even less luck in girls being interested in me. I am also fairly plain looking, not good looking but not unattractive either so people easily forget me.\n\nI do have one method of meeting people that has been successful which is joining in on a group conversation made up of new people and people I already know and then gradually directing things I say towards a specific person. But most of my very few friends are much older than me which doesn't help in meeting girls, or even just making friends my own age. \n\nIronically, I am perfectly comfortable speking in front of people. I can quite happily speak in front of large groups without freaking out. I think it is because I see it as speaking at people rather than to people. I also find when speaking up front that it is more like a performance in which I am acting as whoever is giving said speech/presentation or whatever. But a conversation involves talking to someone and you can't hide behind a character. \n\nAnother problem I have is that a number of my female friends see me as the advice guy, so I get to talk to them when they have a massive problem but I hardly exist when they don't need me. \n\ntl;dr: nervous, nit knowing how to flirt",
"It's being afraid to take risks. It's like how maybe you get nervous before you ask a girl out or something. It's like that for shy people except before they say everything. The stuff that would make less shy people nervous will also make shy people even more nervous than most of the nervousness they already encounter.",
"Lemme give you a rather dispassionate interpretation, as a therapist and former shy person. First of all, shyness is a symptom of being too concerned with your own person. Shy people often feel that all eyes are on them because they are unable to step back from their own ego and look at the big picture. You could jokingly say that inside every shy person lives a tiny egomaniac. Second factor in shyness is low self esteem. This gives shyness it's avoidant characteristic. That awkwardness that shy people experience is the squirm of a frail ego trying to protect itself from imagined threats and in the process doing more damage to itself. Good news is that shyness disappears with constant exposure to nurturing life experiences. Note that I said nurturing, not positive. Sometimes a little adversity does wonders. ",
"The fear of not belonging.",
"I'm a shy person, which people consider strange, as I run a busy pub, and meeting and greeting is one of my most important roles. Over the years, I have developed a persona which enables me, within the context of work, to force myself to chat to customers. I'm a larger than life, confident character. But inside, I die a little each time I walk through those doors. Outside of work, I struggle with most social situations, parties, dates, general small talk. Personally, I would much prefer my own company. I feel this stems from my childhood. I was an intelligent and overweight kid, who was bullied and abused from a young age. I drifted the playground alone, right up until the age of about 11 when I started high school. This coincided with some weight loss, and I saw the opportunity to make people laugh, and they would enjoy my company. I guess it's all just originated from there. ",
"To add on to what everyone else is saying, I know I can be shy alot of times which doesn't make sense to most people when I open up to them, but for me it's about being confident in myself. If I'm not confident in myself or what I'm saying, I tend to speak really soft and or not at all. However, in areas or situations where i'm a bit more confident of what I know and who I'm with, I speak up a bit more, interrupt a bit more, and speak more loudly. I'm saying all of this because when I was young I think I was told I was wrong on a lot of things, so when it comes to saying something I tended to second guess myself, and paralyze myself from opening up. Now that I've learned to be more confident in more areas I speakup a bit more.",
"Negative experiences. Social skills are acquired at an early age. I was adopted and often ridiculed for it as a child and before that I was passed around from several homes and identified several people as my parents before I was adopted. Socialization is not something you learn how to do as an adult.",
"What I find fascinating is how there are so many people in this post who feel comfortable talking *with complete strangers* about how shy or introverted they are. I'm not saying their stories are bogus, but it makes me think that shyness is *situational*.",
"Having been a very nervous child, I wrote this short piece on dealing with shyness and nerves, hope it might help someone _URL_0_",
"**A fear of vulnerability and not being worthy of connection with one or more individuals**. Please watch this [TED video](_URL_0_) if you are curious, it changed my views in ways I still havent really understood. It is such a fundamental difference whether or not you believe yourself to be worthy of connection. ",
"Why has no one mentioned that maybe, some people are just born that way? I'm shy and introverted, but I never had any childhood abuses. I feel kind of annoyed that all of you think there's something wrong with me. Fucks sake, this is why people like me are made fun of. I was just born this way, I had as much control over it as you did, which is none. Goddamnit.\n\n/rant/",
"With this many comments, I'm sure someone touched base on the neurotransmitter process that goes on in a shy person's brain. \n\nI really like The_Helper's reply. Very spot on contrasting. When it comes to the brain, shyness operates on a continuum. It ranges from sheet terror of social interaction to a normal level of shyness that requires exposure (just bitting the bullet and communicating with others)\n\nThe chemical processes in the brain are responsible for the involuntary/voluntary responses a shy person will have in any social situation- be it internal thoughts (this person looks fun, will they find me interesting? ...or....OMG THESE PEOPLE WILL HATE ME) or physical responses (difficulty speaking, sweating...)\n\nThe brain's neuro-network operates much like an advanced computer would, attempting to solve the same equation over and over again. Sometimes the computer would make errors and without correction, it will continuously follow the same patterns (or find shortcuts) that will lead to the same miscalculation or worse (continuously bring shy or becoming anxious). But there is a caveat...\n\nThis pattern the brain follows could have been learned subconsciously from past experiences, or it can be a disorder that must be dealt with. \n\nI fit the confines of the latter. I didn't grow up in a harsh environment. I had friends, but I would always find myself worrying about what I said, or what others will think of me.\n\nI didn't know what to do, so I turned to a professional. I was diagnosed with a minor anxiety disorder that combined obsessive thinking (OCD) with worrying (social/generalized anxiety).\n\nThrough special training I have come to realize that people are shy for the two reasons I listed above. It is a learned predisposition to act Ina certain way given the external stimuli present at a certain time. Or it is completely involuntary.\n\n",
"Although I know this isn't all of it, I think that a reason a lot of children are shy is because their dumbass parents raise them saying \"oh, he's just shy\" or \"oh, she's just a little shy today\" when their kids won't talk. If a child hears this his/her whole life, then naturally one will grow up thinking \"yeah, I guess I am shy.\" I cannot stand it when parents do this. ",
"I'm an introvert. I guess sometimes I'm 'shy'. I just don't like to be the center of any attention. I don't have a fear of rejection, I'm just a listener/observer. If I can figure out what you're about in the first few minutes of you talking to me, I can decide how much I feel comfortable sharing. I like to keep my personal life to myself. Small talk is exhausting. And gossip...I'll literally walk away. I'd much rather grab a drink with a friend or two in a small bar than go out to the club. ",
"I used to be shy. In some respects I still am, but I've gotten over it for most social situations. People don't realize that social skills are *skills* and can be learned or taught. A person is shy because they have no confidence in these skills. The last time they tried to be social, they embarrassed themselves, which they do not forget easily. It's the same as never learning to use a computer because you imagine that if you try to do things on it, you'll break it, so you never learn computer skills.\n\nYou can't learn unless you try it and make some mistakes, and therein lies the problem. Mistakes in the social world are less forgiving. And it's not just a matter of gaining confidence either. I knew a guy who was very shy. We all encouraged him to \"come out of his shell\" so to speak. Eventually he did! And then we couldn't get him to shut the hell up. He always talked over people, interrupted people, said the most inappropriate things, etc. We wanted him to go back to being shy.\n\nI lost my shyness gradually, not all at once.",
"I consider myself shy (all through school and beyond it has been noted that I 'lack confidence').\n\n\nFor me it is extremely simple. I feel like I must make sure my contribution is valid. I spend so much time doing this that on one of the, maybe 30/70 occasions that I deem it to be so; the conversation has moved on. Making what I'm about to say not just lacking in value but completely irrelevant. This means I rarely open my mouth, because I'm spending too much time thinking about what I'm about to say.\n\n\nPeople have commented a lot that I am very witty. Really, this is just because when I do open my mouth you can be sure what I'm about to say is cutting, relevant and thoughtful. Plus I am sarcastic, for a Brit!",
"Shyness really boils down to fear of rejection. (Real or perceived). Shy people may have been sensitive and/or had critical or negative parents. Maybe they perceived negative feedback from others or were afraid to step on people's toes. Shyness correlates with a conscientious, cautious personality type. So while others may have no problem being the life of the party (putting themselves up for rejection) shy people might be more fearful about the consequences. \n\nThere was another description in a sociology class I took that I never cared for but is possibly true: shyness is an intense preoccupation with oneself; an extreme inward focus that makes it difficult to act natural for fear of being judged, usually incorrectly. It's very hard to overcome.",
"Is it my time to shine? I mean if it's not it's ok...",
"Probably different reasons for different people.",
"Pulling down their pants in public.",
"My shyness comes from the feeling that people are more confident and know what they're doing. I never feel like I know what I'm doing and I don't want to have the gall to assume I do.",
"As a longtime shyperson, I mostly agree with the \"trust\" theory, it's sort of a fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment. I've been told \"just forget the fear and put yourself out there\" which I've done before, and going up to it I was fairly optimistic. I was like \"I'm somewhat smart, I can handle witty banter, I'm just gonna jump into a social situation\" the next time I did just that, but then came up with absolutely nothing to say for hours on end. The whole evening was just awkward silences with co-workers and acquaintances. Brutal. I went with a co-worker who is pretty outgoing, and he just jumped in not knowing anyone at all and within an hour had phone numbers and camping plans with half of them, WTF....\nI read somewhere that circumcision at birth can lead to shyness and trust issues, I should set up a poll and graph the results. ",
"There are two things people tend to do in social situations. Self-monitoring, and monitoring of others. Some people do both.\nIn healthy amounts, this monitoring is normal. But shy people like me sometimes do it excessively, to the point that every word and movement is analyzed to see if it's positive or negative, and this seriously impacts my ability to have a natural conversation sometimes.\n\nOnce I know people, I'm normally a lot more open and the monitoring is reduced.",
"I'll give a shot at explaining what shyness was/is for me.\n\nImagine taking a few years of a foreign language and then being put in a group of people all fluent in that language. They are speaking normally and naturally to each other, but so quickly that it is taking all your concentration just to follow along. There's no brain power left over for you to actually participate. If someone asks you a question, you can answer, but it takes you longer because you need to process what they said, come up with your answer, and then figure out how to say it. Oh, and fairly often you get it wrong. So you spend most of the time just listening and watching.\n\nAt the end of the group, you've said very little, but had a good time since you were able to follow along and you actually understood some of the jokes and so-and-so is a really funny guy. Sadly, no one else can tell you had a good time, since you didn't act like it. Then later on when you get time to yourself, you think about what went on and try to absorb it so that you'll have an easier time next go 'round - even so, it will take years.\n\nNow, if you're talking with just one person it's a lot easier because you only have to concentrate on understanding them, while at the same time they should be paying attention to you and tailoring what they say and how they say it to you. This may confuse your second-language friends, since they know you as a talkative person, but you are suddenly very quiet and awkward in a group.\n\nWell, that's the best case scenario. Then you have to add in the anxiety of being put on the spot to participate in something you're not really understanding, at least, not as well as everyone else is. And by the way, you aren't getting the practice everyone else is at being social, instead you get more and more comfortable being quiet and listening, and no more comfortable participating and so the anxiety remains.\n\nI don't know if this is true for other shy people, but I know that I have a low tolerance for anxiety, so I don't/didn't seek out situations that would make me anxious, including big groups or speaking in public. The rewards were minuscule compared to the cost. ",
"Personally: I consider myself to be an shy person that loves being out maybe one on one with someone. I get overwhelmed by huge social events if I'm there alone, but if I am with someone somehow that rush of nervous energy is alleviated. Sometimes when I'm out, I feel \"different\" when I'm alone and around other people having a steady conversation. I would consider myself a shy extrovert in some ways...\n\nTo answer your question more specifically, I would say that that person is CONTENT being more quiet or thrives creatively while keeping to themselves. Shy people may have hesitations or feel they can't relate to people who are more into social. They may lack the \"visual\" confidence that people who are more outgoing exude in conversation...\n\nI think people who have shy characteristics just need to find people they relate to...Once they do this, they will soon see that they are really not as shy as they think they are. Everyone needs someone to talk to. A lot of people who are shy feel as if they are their own best friend, and don't really look outward socially. I am in no way saying that shy people need to get out there and SEARCH for friends, but if you open up just a little bit, those doors will open. I've learned over the years that if I had not initiated conversation in whatever situation I was in, that I would not have the friendships I have if I didn't just say \"hey\". Oh, and that is another thing...Many shy people appear unapproachable. I know that if I don't initiate conversation, smile, or go to an event where people will probably initiate conversation with me, that people will most likely not walk up and talk to me. \n\nThose are just a few of the things I've noticed about myself and other shy folks out there. :)",
"I think it is trying too hard to fit in. I am socially awkward because I'm constantly thinking \"where am I supposed to look? Do I look them in the eye constantly or do I look around every now and then? If so how often do i look around and where do I look? What should I do with my arms? I must look stupid just having them dangled at my sides so I'll cross them. Now I look pissed off but all I can do is put them at my side again.\" It's stuff like this all the time and I can't help it. ",
"As a socially-inhibited person myself, the main reason is anxiety.\nIt's called social-anxiety disorder for a reason, its about the fear of potentially saying something or doing something that would cause someone else to judge you in a bad light.\n\nIf I meet someone I'm constantly freaking out. I have about 20 simultaneous conversations going on in my head, revolving around my hand gestures, my mouth, my face, the words coming out of my mouth, my eyes, my legs, people who are in the same proximity and who might hear what I'm saying, it goes on and on.\n\nAs a result I freeze up. I'm so afraid to do anything that I end up doing nothing, and come off as 'shy'. It's horrendous really, and in general I have anxiety about a lot of things in my life but socially is the worst.\n\nThings that help - Drinking, being around friends, being spontaneous, having a shared activity, anything that is a 'controlled variable' and I can eliminate a few of those simultaneous conversations in my head.",
"Fear of rejection. I think it's usually that simple.",
"Anxiety. Plain and simple. Trust issues, anxiety. Judgment issues, anxiety. It all boils down to anxiety. ",
"If you are someone that doesn't talk, you might often notice interesting things about your environment in brief flashes. Your observations happen in a micro second, and once the information is processed and that micro second is up, it is gone. Then someone ELSE makes a simple comment about it and gets the credit for it. Why did you observe it and discard it in a micro second if it was worthy of credit from the group? Because you have little confidence in your conversational skills to express the observation. As conversational skills improve, you will be able to catch some of these things and act on them, and as you get more confident fewer of them will slip by.\n\n\n\n\nSo why shyness? Fear and a lack of experience.\n\nMy parents never talked to me when I was growing up. If I said \"I like turtles\" my mom would parrot it back and say \"Oh, you like turtles.\" My dad would not even respond. My mom would \"ask\" questions like \"do you want to take a bath?\" and I would say \"no\" and she would look at me like I did something bad and say \"Nooooo... watery_stooool...\" so I would change my answer to \"yes\". By asking me a question about how I think or feel, but only one choice is correct, she was dictating my thinking. She shouldn't have asked a question if my opinion didn't matter, she should have made a statement \"go take a bath\". These things I have just described to you sum up the only conversation I had with my parents during my childhood.\n\nThis is important: Conversation skills are 100% LEARNED. It is mostly about how many hours you log. We live in the era of birth control. Many children do not have siblings. Their hours are cut MASSIVELY short as only children. This slack in hours can only be picked up by parents that realize this and interact, or by watching TV (yes, the thing that \"makes you stupid and lazy\" is invaluable as a conversation learning tool). The slack in hours can not be picked up by school alone and here is why: In order to do well socially in school, you have to bring something new to the table (new to school, not the world). Otherwise you are just copying or repeating what other students have already brought to the table. You will never catch up. To bring something new to the table, you have to to have a lot of exposure to sources outside of school. The three main sources are parents, siblings, and TV. Thinking back, all of the most popular boys in grade school had older brothers.\n\nI had no siblings. My parents never talked to me. And they didn't let me watch very much TV. Just the same hand full of VHS tapes over and over. And yet SOMEHOW they expected me to be perfectly socially competent so that one day I could be the manager, and not the guy on the bottom. This is just not how reality works. Sure people may come up with some truly original witty remark, but 99.9% of conversation, even the clever sounding stuff, is built on material that has been learned and repeated or recombined. You can't recombine anything if you have nothing to work with. No one proves a hard math theorem by first deriving everything that has been done before them. Conversation is the same way.\n\nIt is better learn social skills at a young age so you can get in a cycle of positive reinforcement. A cycle of negative reinforcement might seem like a death sentence, but once you learn the \"secret\" that social skills are learned, and the main reason you suck is because you never learned them, it's not too hard to catch up. TV is your ally, pay close attention as you watch. Maybe even try to predict what will happen.\n\nLife is about knowing little (and some not so little) secrets.\n\nA secret: If you want to be a top math student, you have to first know that things like the IMO exist. Most people don't know about it, so it is a secret. Then you have to know how to study for it specifically, and how to study for math in general. For example, there is a list of of about 15 things one needs to know to solve inequalities on the IMO. Recently there have been level 2 and 3 inequalities on the IMO that are easy as piss once you know these 15 or so things (and have some experience using them). Secrets.\n\nAnother secret: You want to realistically draw what's in from of you. Imagine taking a photograph of it and using a ruler to measure distances from different points of the image. Now treat your own vision as a photograph and use an imaginary ruler. Then it's like \"AHA! The width of the banana is 2/3 the width of the apple. So in my drawing it needs to be the same. You can even hold up a ruler to your drawing to check, but eventually you need to do all of this measuring in your head with an imaginary ruler. This might seem obvious but most people don't know it and their drawing of something in front of their face looks like shit because they draw what they naturally PERCEIVE and not what they SEE.\n\nAnother secret: Want to throw a baseball faster? Most people probably throw a baseball like they would throw a spear. It's what's natural. Cavemen didn't hunt deer with baseball sized rocks. But a baseball is much lighter. It's kind of hard to explain, but imagine treating your arm like that of a rag-doll, and pop your shoulder forward quickly to make your arm follow. Your arm will move at a faster velocity following your shoulder simply because its connected than it will otherwise. To turn this poping motion into a throw takes a lot of practice and flexibility, but its the early stages of throwing faster. But since most people would throw a baseball like a spear, then this poping trick is another secret.\n\nAnother secret: When doing creative writing or short stories for English class, don't start off trying to think up a story. Start off by thinking about a profound or unique emotion, and build a story around that. The point of creative writing is to generate an emotional response, just like art and paintings. You are not conveying information, you are making someone feel an emotion. Also surprise is often an important element. I never had an English teacher explain this. I'm sure many people have, but many haven't which makes it kind of a secret.\n\nThe simple fact that conversation is LEARNED and the avenues by which one can learn it is not common knowledge. This makes it kind of like a secret. The children of parents who don't know this secret are at a grave disadvantage.",
"Social anxiety and shyness are closely linked. Some consider them synonymous. I've been reading a book lately to help me overcome my shyness and social anxiety. Here are some of the key points from they shyness chapter of that book: \n\n*Shyness is almost universal, although about half the people who suffer from it in childhood overcome the problem as adults.\n\n*The symptoms of shyness are similar to those of social anxiety.\n\n*Shyness is different from introversion. Introverted people have a less sociable style than extroverted ones, and shy people may be either introverts or extroverts.\n\n*The effects of shyness are wide-ranging, similar to those of social anxiety, and extend to all aspects of life, professional as well as personal.\n\n*Shyness has advantages as well as disadvantages, and can be an attractive characteristic. Our social life probably benefits from having the full range of people in it: shy or inhibited as well as bold or disinhibited.\n\n*Shy people often fear being rude, or giving offence, and are careful not to do this by mistake.\n\n*There are probably some cultural differences in shyness, but few differences between the frequency of the problem in men and in women.\n",
"Most people that are shy are just built that way. I've been a very reserved and quiet person my whole life. I feel awkward in most social situations. That being said, its a matter of just pushing through that feeling to be able to communicate with others. \n\nFunny thing is, as shy as I am, grown ass people that are REALLY shy and pretty much whisper when they're talking to you and don't make any sort of eye contact, piss me off lol (not literally, it's just annoying). But I'd definitely enjoy my own company over others any day of the week. ",
"Sometimes I just literally have nothing to say to someone, and prefer to sit in intuitive silence. This makes other people uncomfortable, and they pass me off as shy, when in fact, I just identify more as an introvert. I know I've made a friend when I can feel comfortable in a silence with them without feeling like I have to make idle chat. ",
"What is the cause of shyness when you've had a \"normal happy\" childhood? I've been wondering this for a long time. I've read that it can be genetic though too which might be a possibility, but I'm the only one in my family who is shy. They had always said that I would out grow it too, but I really don't think that's going to happen as I am 27 years old and still act this way and do silly, eccentric behavior to avoid people. ",
"I was extremely extroverted and witty for the first 16 years of my life. Eventually I said a few things that got me into so much trouble I ended up having to switch schools. When I moved, I decided that socializing and maintaining friendships in school wasn't nearly as important as finishing school.\n\nI still had a few friends at the new school but I had totally reprogrammed myself to think extremely hard before I said something that could be considered controversial. Of course, this caused a significant retardation of my 'small talk' conversation skills and I get asked why I'm shy by everyone now as an adult. The thing is, I'm not shy. Not at all. I'm just still programmed to think hard before speaking which makes normal conversation extremely tiring.\n\nOn the internet I've found that I can totally be myself without restriction and I do not think about what I say, since if someone doesn't like it I can just hit the ignore button on wherever I'm talking at. I actually only realized this is why everyone asks me if I'm shy in the past couple of weeks and I'm really hoping I can convince myself to open up again since I've also finally reached that true point of \"you don't like it? I don't give a shit.\"",
"the beauty of the internet you don't have to worry about being shy, say what your thinking and watch the responses. its lovely.",
"I was bullied throughout school, had very few friends, had a very passive, frightened mother and a very dominant, overprotective father. Add to that my natural tendency towards introversion, and you have a recipe for disaster.",
"TL;DR: There are many reasons someone can be shy",
"I think a lot of people are confusing legitimate social anxiety/phobia, an anxiety disorder, with shyness/introversion. \n\nIt's like saying every extroverted, outgoing person is essentially histrionic, or something. They aren't the same or even related :/. \n\nIt's actually offensive, and I am not easily offended.",
"As a shy person, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be the next Steve Jobs. People would be like \"Wow, _BreakingGood_ is awkward as hell\" then people would respond like \"Who gives a shit?! He's a genius!\" ",
"I think most people blur the differences between shy, introverted, and socially awkward. When in my opinion, the 3 are very different things and aren't mutually exclusive.\n\nTo make this easy to understand, I'll create a figurative \"party\", a crowded and rich social environment.\n\nShy person: Will *want* to be at the party, and will enjoy himself/herself at this party. But will be quiet and probably not interact with new people, unless they (the new people) initiate the contact first. \n\nIntroverted person: Would rather be at home, than be at the Party. This isn't to say they can't enjoy themselves, sure they can. But when they got *invited*, their first inclination would probably have been to stay home instead, and they only went to perhaps appease the person who invited them. \n\nSocially awkward person: This is just how you describe someone whose social interactions and/or body language is just *off* They say things that are strange, or at the wrong time. A socially awkward person can be quite talkative, but if they just say things that are weird or irrelevant to the conversation, people's eyebrows will go up.\n\nTo digress, social awkwardness can be changed; with practice, maturity, or being forced to (a job requiring lots of human interaction, for example) \n\nShyness / introversion can't. I believe these 2 traits are genetic. ",
"I have always been shy, as a kid, as a teenager, as an adult now. \n\nFor me, I think my shyness is due to my lack of power behind my voice. It seems to me that, when in a group setting, everyone is in a big circle talking and sharing stories, whenever I try to chime in, someone just talks right over me. If this happens once or twice depending on the scenario, I will just shut down and not say another thing the entire night even though I am dying to be a part of the conversation. I don't know if it's like that for everyone, but that's how it feels for me in a group setting. \n\nWhen it comes to a complete stranger and myself alone, I find it very difficult to just spark up a conversation with someone, be it a cute girl, a random guy, or just anybody I don't know on a personal level. \n\nIt really is strange, not being able to talk in a crowd. It forces me to shut down and just stand there listening to people talk and gives off a vibe that I'm too good for them. In high school (which was like 8 years ago now) I had a class with a girl I thought I had been friends with for years. Turns out, in class when we really got to know each other, she told me that she always thought I was a mean person because I would walk around by myself, never say anything in groups at lunch, and never speak at parties. I was baffled by this because I am the complete opposite of a mean person, I don't have a mean bone in my body. That conversation with her made me realize that my shyness was making people think that I don't like them because I don't talk to them. \n\nEver since then, I've tried to be more open at parties, and bars, and in public in general, but it is tough to talk to someone with the fear of being cut off and looking like an idiot. \n\nLike I said, I don't know if this is the case for a lot of shy people, but this is what drives me to be an introvert..",
" In your head is a balloon full of water. That water is all the great things you want to say, all your ideas, jokes, compliments. When we're born, there are a pipes where the water flows out, and gates where we control how much. In some people, the pipes don't work as well as they should. In some people, the gates don't close at all, they just keep on talking. In some people, the gates won't open, even if they want it too. Just remember, everyone has water in their balloon. Being mean to someone about being shy hurts their pipes, and makes them even more shy. As we grow, shy people keep their water away from the world because they can't get it out. Sometimes it stagnates, sometimes their pipes get too rusted over, and they need someone to come in to fix them. Or, they fix the pipes themselves. ",
"I think a lot of people here would benefit from joining /r/socialanxiety",
"Some people confuse shy people with introverts. Not the same thing.",
"Shyness is not just one thing. Some \"shy\" people have serious anxiety disorders, and some are quite depressed. Some people have been shy since they were young children, and will remain shy until the day they die, while others are going through a bad chapter in their lives. Some people become \"shy\" after a traumatic experience. In that case, maybe they'll get over it, maybe they won't. Some shy people are dreadfully uncomfortable. Others are perfectly at ease and simply prefer quiet and solitude. And so on.",
"For me, shy = lack of conversation skills + fear of rejection\n\nI had always thought that whatever I came up with for a conversation starter would be so silly/unimportant/unrelatable that the other person would think I am strange/weird and not want to be my friend.\n\nAfter reading \"Winning Friends and Influencing People\", I realized that people don't care about how you start the conversation (which is relatively unimportant) and that people care MUCH more about if you can talk about something they can relate to. Now I'm not shy at all because I can always figure out what they can relate to by being very interested in THEIR life, what THEY are talking about, asking questions about THEM, and everything about THEM in general. Talking about them gets them engaged with you so much every time. It works every time.",
"I am sure that this is going to be lost in the huge heap of comments but I think it's a combination of nature and nurture. I am the first born child of my parents and I was the \"favorite\" while growing up. My parents enjoyed praising my childhood accomplishments to others and would introduce me to many people. I kind of always wanted to just do what I do and not be have my childhood accomplishments paraded to others. My younger brother did not have as many \"noteworthy\" accomplishments as a child and I feel like he had to fight more for the attention that was placed on me. So I ended up a bit shy and my brother ended up as a huge extrovert with the gift of gab. I am sure there are biological differences at play as well but this is what I have come up with through my own personal self analysis. Since most of those type of things aren't truly in my memory since they happened when I was so young, a portion of it is conjecture based on how I perceived my parents to be with me at those younger formative ages. \n\nLike many others have stated, I am not a permanently shy person and I can be quite gregarious in a mixed group of people I know and don't know, but put me in a bar with no one I know and I will probably stick to myself for an extended period of time.",
"Ok, just wanted to add my two cents here: shyness often gets mixed up with introversion and they are not the same thing. Here's how I see it:\n\nI am an introvert but I do not think of myself as shy. I was in plays all through high school, on the radio in college, and as a grad student now I am an English instructor and the public editor of a student news paper. All these things require me to be very outgoing and, well, not shy.\n\nBut I am only very gregarious like this when I am occupying a role (as an actor, DJ, salesperson, etc) and with my close friends. If you saw me on the street, you'd probably call me shy. I tend to avoid eye contact, don't like to meet new people, and never really feel like contributing to conversations with people I don't know.\n\nEssentially, as an introvert, being myself in a large group requires an emotional investment that is physically taxing. It takes a lot of my energy to put myself out there, meet new people, and start new conversations. It's not that I don't enjoy it necissarily, it just gets draining. After a while, I need to retreat and spend some time alone to feel rejuvenated. Often people interpret this as me being depressed or bored, but really I'm just emotionally drained and exhausted. I need to recharge my batteries and process new social interactions.\n\nSo, I may seem shy but really I'm just introverted. And I'm definitely not mad/upset/bored or whatever, sometimes I just need to be alone",
"The sudden realization that you are surrounded at all times by violent, psychotic apes. ",
"The best piece of advice I have ever heard about being nervous around people is this:\n\nJust remember, everyone is so caught up in worrying about themselves, they aren't looking at you and judging you. ",
"I'm a 17 year old girl, almost 18. I haven't had a friend since I was 10. I had (and have) stereotypically male interests (dragons, dinosaurs, trains, videogames, being rough and getting dirty). I was pretty wild. Not extroverted, just full of energy. It was fine during most of elementary, even after my old friends moved away, but during the last years I was shunned by everyone. So I did a complete flip and became awkward, quiet and depressed. Not being friends with a wild nut I can understand. But I shared my interests with no one. I couldn't fit in with the girls, and the boys didn't want to be with me because I was a girl. Guess I was dealt bad cards, it's kind of painful how many people I see online that I might be able to get along with, if we met each other in person.\n\nIn middle school I became incredibly depressed. Between social issues and a homework load that left me going to bed at 2am, I thought about killing myself. If you don't enjoy living and there's no hope of life getting better, there's no point. I survive because I have a cat a love, a strong sense of self preservation, I enjoy the little things (such as how light reflects off of road reflectors at twilight), and I still have hope.\n\nI had some people I hung out with in middle school during lunch, and I was part of a (horrible, cheating) girl scout troop but I didn't have any emotional connection to anyone. The only things I said were weird, funny things. That was my place. I could only reveal a small part of myself, the part of myself that can come up with strange ideas about nothing (a dragonfly once hovered over my lunch group for over 15 minutes, so I joked that it was a government spy drone). I'm tired of this role, and want to express myself. All of myself. When middle school ended, I went to a different high school than them. I never really missed them.\n\nI was strange before, but 4 years of complete isolation and internet access have made me even stranger and socially incompetent. It's like I have a different culture than everyone else. I can't small talk. How do people come up with comments on people's Facebook pages? They're words, but they mean nothing. All people want to talk about are high school \"romances\" and superficial topics. Any other topics are very quick and shallow. Two comments, moving on. \n\nI'm forced to talk without thinking, and there's always a grammar mistake, or I never word my statements the way I want them. I stammer. I have nervous tics because of anxiety, such as rubbing my hands, licking my lips, or blinking hard. I can't make eye contact with people. I suspect people now think I'm mentally ill, as they talk down to me as if I can't fully comprehend what they're saying. All I do is sit alone during lunch, and then come home to be an only child with working parents who don't take my depression seriously.\n\nI've tried making friends, but I'm always rejected. I'm a naturally empathetic person, and I'm also nice to people because I can't afford everyone turning against me. So it can't be because I'm a jerk, I guess. I've just never \"clicked\" with anyone. I can't even really comprehend what friendship is. Someone was kind to me once, as she was worried about deserting me by going off-campus with her friends. It shocked me. I don't know what it's like to have someone watching your back, a person to support you emotionally. A person who understands you, who cares about you. \n\nI like being alone now. It's what I'm comfortable with. But I'm still depressed. I wonder how much space this post will take up.\n\n\nTL;DR Just a (relevant) personal rant. I'm shy because everyone rejected my friendship.",
"I think there is one underlying reason for being shy that many of these responses is forgetting to mention, and that's fear. Fear has a huge role in success in social interactions. I don't think anyone wants to admit it, but the reason a lot of shy people (and I mean “not introverted” or having an actual desire to be more outgoing/less shy) hesitate to make a move or strike up a conversation is because they're afraid of rejection, judgment, ego damage etc. Outgoing people, extroverts, that charismatic guy at the party talking to all the girls have all gotten over their fears of social failure. And even these people still deal with fear of rejection, they’re human, but they counter this by having been desensitized to it by repeatedly stepping out of their comfort zones. Many use alcohol and getting inebriated as a crutch (some would probably prefer the word “tool”) for getting over their initial fears of social rejection.\n\nChances are, if you're admittedly shy, it’s your ego that’s setting you up for failure. And you might think “I’m shy, I don’t have an ego.” My response would be yes you do, everyone does, and if you’re afraid then your ego is going to tell you that you’re not good enough and should be insecure. Compare this to a confident ego that should be yelling “YOU’RE THE BEST, SO ARE YOUR OPINIONS, REDDIT IS GOING TO LOVE THIS POST!” Give no fucks, be fearless, be shameless, be careless but not to the point that you’re reckless, and you’ll have a blast living outside of your comfort zone. \n\n**TL;DR:** Fear prevents shy people from taking the steps to get out of their comfort zones. Hell, fearful is a [synonym](_URL_0_) for shy.\n",
"I tend to belive being shy/outgoing is part of a person's temperment, which one is born with. They've done studies with babies and some babies are naturally fussy while others are very easy going. But I also think you can influence and shape a kid's behavior. If you have a kid who is very fearfully shy, you can still teach good conversational and social skills and have them practice it with trusted family members and friends. Expose and practice.\n\nI was very shy until mid 20s and remember being extremely self conscious in large groups. No problem one on one or up to 2-3 people but just clammed up when part of a large group. It wad hard for me to keep up with the the conversation with so many people talking. As more people talked, the more self conscious I felt not saying anything and it made me feel like the quiet freak. It wasn't an issue of low self esteem because I've always done my own thing, and was very self aware and perceptive of other people/environment. Going to parties didn't bother me, I just preferred connecting 1 on 1. It's more intimate and less superficial talk, ya know?\n\nPeople confuse shyness with introversion but they are two SEPARATE things. They're often linked (along with social awkwardness) but there are socially awkward, shy extroverts out there. My ex was one but for the longest time, I mistook him for a fellow introvert.\n\nIntroversion/extroversion is mostly about energy: introverts get energy from within self and hence feel drained being around people for a long time and need time alone to regain energy; extroverts get energy from an external source -- from contact with other people and they're not good alone.\n\nEven as an introvert I can chat up people no prob, enjoy parties and even called a party girl in my younger days. But I always needed/enjoyed spending a lot of solo time like going to see films and treating myself to a nice restaurant which was viewed as weird by others. Hanging with certain extrovert friends totally drain me and I can only handle them in small doses whereas with other introvert friends, I could hang out with them all day and we both feel fine. No sucking out of energy. Extroverts put out a lot of energy in their manner and talking and introverts find it draining.\n\nU.S is very geared towards outgoing extroverts and that is made to be the \"normal\" way to be. Other cultures like Japanese and French embrace a more introverted, thoughtful culture.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyness#Genetics_and_heredity",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion#Biological_factors"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://showbizgeek.com/the-sunday-open-letter-8/"
],
[
"http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://thesaurus.com/browse/shy"
],
[]
] |
|
9ggpge
|
How did POWs of WWII receive packages?
|
I know that family and friends often sent packages of food and presents to allies in POW camps, but how did those relatives and friends know they were there? Was there an official letter sent from the camp to let them know? Or otherwise how was the information given out that the person was at that camp?
Also, was there a difference in sending/receiving packages if you were a soldier or air force personnel? Or was it the exact same?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ggpge/how_did_pows_of_wwii_receive_packages/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e64ikxh"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"For signatories of the 1929 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, [Article 77](_URL_4_) stated: \n\n\"At the commencement of hostilities, each of the belligerent Powers and the neutral Powers who have belligerents in their care, shall institute an official bureau to give information about the prisoners of war in their territory.\n\nEach of the belligerent Powers shall inform its Information Bureau as soon as possible of all captures of prisoners effected by its armed forces, furnishing them with all particulars of identity at its disposal to enable the families concerned to be quickly notified, and stating the official addresses to which families may write to the prisoners.\"\n\nThe official bureau was the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, who worked in conjunction with a Protecting Power (for British prisoners the United States, until their declaration of war when Switzerland became the Protecting Power), various national organisations (the American Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, British Red Cross Society and Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, etc.), and government bodies who held e.g. next-of-kin information. Families would typically be informed by the military that their relatives were missing, then prisoners of war once that information was confirmed; the Red Cross would also contact the family with information on how to send letters and parcels. A Red Cross card, often pre-printed, might also be sent by the prisoners themselves shortly after capture where available, to let their family know they were alive and safe; the Germans used a bogus form (initially labelled \"Red Cross\", later changed to not specifically name the Red Cross but marked \"Printed in Geneva\"), telling prisoners that if they completed it then it would greatly speed up the process of contacting their family. It asked for much more information than the standard name, rank and serial number (e.g. names of units, objectives, comrades etc.), and once word filtered back Allied personnel were warned not to complete it.\n\nSome idea of the scale of the undertaking can be seen in this [picture of records at the Central Prisoners of War Agency, Geneva](_URL_2_), from a University of Melbourne [blog post](_URL_7_) about their holding of Australian Red Cross cards relating to Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiries.\n\nThere was no particular difference in sending packages to different branches of the services, but the circumstances were quite different between prisoners of Germany and those of Japan. There are some example online of family members who have published the various telegrams, letters etc. connected with a prisoner of war such as [Ken Fenton](_URL_3_), a Britsh airman held by Germany, and [Frank Larkin](_URL_0_), an Australian held by the Japanese. They both include Red Cross documents with guidance on how to send letters and parcels to prisoners. Guidance could also be found in Red Cross magazines that were published and sent to relatives of prisoners such as [\"Prisoners of War Bulletin\"](_URL_1_) in the US and \"The Prisoner of War\" in the UK, and the Great Britain Philatelic Society also has Post Office leaflets on communications with prisoners of war in [Europe](_URL_6_) and [Japan](_URL_5_). \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://pow.larkin.net.au/documents/",
"https://archive.org/details/PrisonersOfWarBullitin",
"https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.unimelb.edu.au/dist/9/92/files/2017/05/Geneva-Bureau-2kuli6f.jpg",
"https://kenfentonswar.com/stalag-ixc/",
"https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/9ac284404d38ed2bc1256311002afd89/8dfed95c1e653fdac12563cd00519226",
"http://www.gbps.org.uk/information/downloads/files/airmail-leaflets/POWs-in-Japan.pdf",
"http://www.gbps.org.uk/information/downloads/files/airmail-leaflets/POWs-in-Europe.pdf",
"http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/archives/a-humane-and-intimate-administration-the-red-cross-world-war-two-wounded-missing-and-prisoner-of-war-cards/"
]
] |
|
6uhl10
|
How do satellites stay on their course? Wouldn't the slightes change make them slowly rotate off their path leading them into crashing down on to earth?
|
[deleted]
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6uhl10/how_do_satellites_stay_on_their_course_wouldnt/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dlsq6ze",
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16,
4,
2
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"text": [
"You only need a certain speed for a perfect circular motion. Any deviation from this will lead to an [elliptic motion](_URL_2_), not a spiral.\n\nHowever, due to drag with the atmosphere, satellites close to earth (like the ISS), permanently [lose energy](_URL_1_), which actually leads to a inward spiralling. That's why the ISS has engines and carries fuel, to compensate for this loss.\n\nSo no, if a satellite isn't coming to close to earth it will stay in orbit virtually forever. And it is stable, as deviations do not build up.\n\n_________________\nedit:\n\nTo add to this, this only holds true for satellites orbiting the earth or another gravitational attractive object. Satellites orbiting for example [Lagrangian points](_URL_0_) are often in an unstable configuration that need constant compensation.",
"The other comment is correct in pointing out that a certain speed must be met for a perfect circular motion; and that the ISS has to occasionally power up their engines to correct the the change in velocity (and ultimately the path of orbit). \n\n The most common satellites are geostationary in nature and they often follow these 3 simple rules to maintain in a circular orbit:\n\n1. They have a period of 24 hours.\n2. They must be at the equatorial center of Earth.\n3. They move from the west to the east to counteract the east to west rotation of the Earth. \n\nBy using [Kepler's third law](_URL_0_), where in this context \"P\" will represent the time taken for the satellite to complete orbit around the Earth (period) and \"a\" would represent the radius of the orbit to the center of the Earth (assuming point mass). From the equation, we observe that the square of the period is directly proportional to the cube of the radius of the orbit P^2 =ka^3 , where k is a constant (4pi^2/ GM). \nThis also means, to obtain perfect circular motion, the satellite has to orbit at a specific height in order to satisfy the 24 hour period requirement for a geostationary satellite for a specific linear velocity (since v=rω, where ω=2pi/T). At a larger orbit radii, the satellite has to travel at a slower linear velocity to satisfy Kepler's 3rd law. Similarly, if the satellite is in low orbit, it requires a very large linear velocity. Thus, the limited change in velocity will only change the orbit radii of the satellite assuming all other geostationary conditions are still met. However, the drag force becomes exponential as the satellite reduces its orbit and can indeed spiral down into Earth since air resistance is a force acting against the direction of motion of the satellite's orbit (this reduces its velocity and hence from the equations above we can derive the orbit radii will rapidly decrease until the satellite starts literally dropping out of the sky). \n\nPutting it simply, the slight changes in velocities in high Earth orbit will not cause the satellite to fall back into Earth but rather change its orbit radii. At low Earth orbits where the effects of air resistance is not negligible, the slight changes in velocities can lead to the satellite falling back into Earth if it does not exert an equal and opposite force to act against drag force. (net force must strictly only be the gravitational force acting perpendicular to the direction of travel of the satellite, drag force will cause the net force to deviate from perpendicularity and result in a loss of circular motion, hence the falling down to Earth.)\n\nedit: formatting",
"Your observation is definitely not wrong, if you want a satellite to have a exact certain orbit the velocity magnitude needs to be exactly right and also in the exact good direction (however a lot of applications do not require a satellite to have a centimeters or meters precise orbit). One of the governing equations relates the object's speed, distance from the planet (or star), the [semi-major axis](_URL_0_) of the orbit and the [gravitational parameter](_URL_1_) of the planet and is called the [Vis viva equation](_URL_3_). For circular orbits the direction of the velocity is always perpendicular to the radius vector, meaning the speed will be constant. If the orbit is elliptical the orbit is said to have a non-zero eccentricity (between 0 and 1) and the velocity magnitude will decrease and increase depending on the place in the orbit. Also the direction will change w.r.t. the radius vector, this all is discussed in [Orbital Mechanics](_URL_4_).\n\nSo basically if the velocity vector and/or magnitude is changed w.r.t the desired state for that moment in the orbit the orbit is changed. If a satellite orbits Earth it is constantly perturbed by every other planet in the solar system, the moon, if low enough the atmosphere and even the Earth itself (for example the [J2 effect](_URL_2_)). Each of these perturbations can change the orbit, also of which other parameters than the velocity, w.r.t. the Earth or Sun. \n\nHowever to stay up there and not fall towards Earth the satellites basically need to have enough speed to fly \"past\" the Earth, lots of videos are on [Youtube](_URL_5_) that explain this principle. Although all perturbations could potentially make the satellite slow down the atmosphere and solar radiation are the most prominent effects. These can slow down the satellite making it spiral inwards (see the vis viva equation, for a smaller velocity **v** and the same distance **r** at an instantaneous point in the orbit the semi-major axis **a** has to decrease to keep the equation balanced (G and M are constants)) to the Earth and re-enter or burn up in the more thick atmosphere.\n\nI hope this was a bit of a good explanation. Source: I am doing a Msc. in Aerospace Engineering."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#Stability",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Internationale_Raumstation_Bahnh%C3%B6he_%28dumb_version%29.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-major_and_semi-minor_axes",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_gravitational_parameter",
"http://ccar.colorado.edu/asen5050/projects/projects_2013/Gisler_Andrew/j2-effect.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmFHwQkCYlQ"
]
] |
|
1v0pto
|
Did William the Conqueror expect that the invasion of England would be harder than it was? If so, what main centers other than London and York would he have planned to take?
|
There might not be sources for his mindset on this. If so, just say what the most important cities for economic or military purposes were at the time.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1v0pto/did_william_the_conqueror_expect_that_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cenqazr"
],
"score": [
13
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"text": [
"I'm going to answer your question in two parts: 1) William the Conqueror's own idea of the difficulty of the invasion of England, and 2) the strategic course the invasion took. Now, to address the first part, William knew that invading England would not be a cakewalk. It was a gamble, the single riskiest endeavor the Conqueror ever attempted in his 40 year rule as duke of Normandy including his 20 year rule as king of England. That William understood the inherent risk of the venture is illustrated by his designation of his young son Robert as his heir (and sworn oaths of fealty to by the Norman magnates) in the months leading up to the Conquest and that he left his wife Duchess Matilda and the elderly Roger Beaumont as regents of the duchy in his absence. Duke William took the proper precautions to ensure, as best as he could, the continuation of his line should his invasion fail. \n\nAs far as the actual invasion is concerned, I think a timeline would best the Conqueror's overall strategy in seizing the crown of England. William and his host set sail from Normandy on September 27th, 1066. He landed in Pevensey, England on September 28. From Pevensey the Ducal army traveled to Hastings and quickly constructed a castle (a wooden one, but wooden castles were the norm in 11th Century Europe). William chose the site of Hastings because it was an easily defensible position and had a harbor where he could station his ships in the event he needed to make a quick retreat. Also, Hastings (and Pevensey, for that matter) happened to be a part of the earldom of King Harold Godwinson, William's chief rival for the throne of England. William used his position at Hastings to ravage Harold's lands in order to goad him into fighting, for if Harold could not protect his own earldom (in the eyes of the English lords) he was not fit to rule as king. This action by William succeeded in drawing Harold out to fight the Conqueror and forced a decisive battle, exactly what William was looking to do. \n\nHarold's Saxon host met that of William and his army at Senlac Hill, a few miles from Hastings in the early morning of October 14th. The ensuing battle lasted most of the day and the outcome was uncertain for much of its duration. However, as the day wore on Harold's defensive position weakened; the battle was ultimately lost by the English when Harold was killed in combat (tradition says by an arrow through the eye, although he could have been slain by Norman cavalry). The English army routed and Duke William won the decisive battle he was seeking all along. It is here that William made one of his only mistakes during the Conquest. After the battle, William remained at Hastings awaiting the submission of the English nobility; in this miscalculated for upon hearing of the death of Harold, the English named Edgar the Atheling, member of the royal family, as king. For five days William remained at Hastings, waiting in vain for the submission of the Kingdom of England. \n\nOn October 20th, he realized he still needed to impress upon the English that he was indeed king and that resistance was futile. On that day he reached the town of Romney, in Kent, and put the town to the sword. Upon hearing the fate of Romney, Dover, the foremost port in southeastern England, surrendered immediately. From there, William marched toward Canterbury, home to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest ecclesiastical position in England. At this point, William's advance halted for a period of five weeks due to an outbreak of dysentery. This was not all terrible however, for this pause allowed the English nobility to fully appreciate the magnitude of William's victory at Hastings. During this time, more and more regions of the south of England, the traditional base of royal power, submitted to William the Conqueror. With the surrender of Winchester by the late King Harold's wife Edith, William gained control of the all-important royal treasury. In the south the only city that remained unconquered was London, the capitol. William thus marched in a circuitous route around the city to isolate it. Once that was done, the English nobility finally began to submit to William. He was given hostages and oaths of fealty. On Christmas Day, 1066 William the Conqueror was crowned King of England.\n\nAs a side note, William did not march to York during the initial invasion of England in 1066. He chose instead to leave the local earls Edwin and Morcar in charge of the North. It was only after repeated rebellions did William remove these earls and install Normans to rule in their stead, although the North was not pacified until the winter of 1069/1070 when William executed the infamous \"harrying of the North\" in which he devastated the land, killed the peasants and induced an artificial famine that killed tens of thousands. \n\nI hope you found this answer helpful! \n\nMy sources include: William the Conqueror by David C. Douglas, The Norman Conquest a New Introduction of Richard Huscroft, and the Bayeux Tapestry. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a6d5ik
|
how does 1 - - 1=2?
|
I know it does.Ineed to explain it to my 8yo brother,can’t provide real life examples.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6d5ik/eli5how_does_1_12/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ebtux7p",
"ebtv1s9"
],
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4,
27
],
"text": [
"Think of -1 as something owed. If I have -1 donut, I am owed a donut. If I have 1 donut and I'm owed a donut, then really I have two donuts, just one isn't with me right now. ",
"Imagine counting how far you have walked. 1 = a step forward. -1 = a step backward. \n\nDo a step forward and then a step backward. 1 + -1 = 0. You're back at the starting point.\n\nDo a step forward and then *undo* a step backward. It's the same as taking two steps forward. 1 - -1 = 2. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
5puvg6
|
what makes water such a pure compound for all living organisms?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5puvg6/eli5_what_makes_water_such_a_pure_compound_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dcu2cq9"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"I don't understand the question. \n\nDo you mean what makes water such an essential compound for living organisms?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1v4djn
|
In the Old Testament, Israel/Canaan is described as a land flowing with "milk and honey". Why were milk and honey so desirable?
|
Is it a quirk of translation?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1v4djn/in_the_old_testament_israelcanaan_is_described_as/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceolo7b",
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12,
4,
4
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"text": [
"First, it's not really a quirk of translation, but it's possible that the word for \"honey\" refers to date honey, not that of bees. Many references in the bible unambiguously involve bees, but other Semitic languages use the same word for both types^1 . Additionally, later Jewish texts (the Talmud) seem to think that bees don't make honey, they collect it, so perhaps regular honey and date honey would've been thought to have been the same substance^2 .\n\nAnyway, both items are used in the bible in other idioms. Honey is often used as an idiomatic \"sweet thing\"^3 . Milk is somewhat less common idiomatically, but represent a generally tasty beverage whose abundance is symbolic of general bounty even when not paired with honey^4 . Together, using these two foods as the representation of a land that's rich makes sense given use of two as idiomatic foods.\n\nSources:\n\n1. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament\n* Talmud Bavli, Bekhorot 5-7. Food produced by non-kosher animals isn't kosher, but honey is, because according to the Rabbis bees collect and store it without producing it.\n* C.f. Psalms 19:11; 119:103, Proverbs 5:3, 16:24, 24:13; 25:16), Song of Songs 4:11\n* See [here](_URL_0_). I'm a little skeptical of its \"necessities and luxuries\" explanation, but there it is.",
"I hope it's alright if I add a question, if not feel free to delete. \n\nAccording to Zonaras' account of scaphism, the condemned was force-fed a mixture of milk and honey. Aside from the practical effect of this mixture attracting insects, did the specific use of milk and honey, given its idiomatic meaning, have any symbolic/\"poetic justice\" connotations, e.g. executing a greedy general with molten gold?",
"I apologize as I do not have a historical background for this particular question, but I do have an animal husbandry background and have a possible explanation.\n\nWhen weather is good and conditions optimal, both bee hives and cows will overflow. Hives will drip honey and cows will drip milk from their teats. Both occur only in times of good weather that promotes an over-abundance of flower bearing, fruiting plants, and ample lush grass and really occurs in only very fruitful agricultural areas with plenty of rain and rich soil. But when conditions are right, both hives and cows will 'overflow' with overproduction. So one possible explanation is that is a very literal description of Canaan being a land of plenty by describing both milk and honey as 'flowing'."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10835-milk"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
5hygxc
|
how do buildings with flags know when to put them at half-mast?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hygxc/eli5_how_do_buildings_with_flags_know_when_to_put/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"There actually is a website that will send you email alerts on when to do it. According to the Flag Code, which is non-enforceable U.S. law, the flag is supposed to be flown at half-staff at the instruction of the President or Governor of a state to honor deceased individuals. \n\nThere are also certain days on which the flag is customarily flown at half staff:\n* Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15th, unless that day is also Armed Forces Day. (sunrise to sunset)\n* Memorial Day, last Monday in May (sunrise to noon)\n* Patriot Day, September 11th (sunrise to sunset)\n* National Firefighters Memorial Day, October (typically a Sunday during Fire Prevention Week, which is around Oct. 9, and along with a memorial service held in Emmitsburg, MD)\n* Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, December 7th (sunrise to sunset)\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6b81ig
|
How much, if at all, do other stars' heat and light affect the Earth?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6b81ig/how_much_if_at_all_do_other_stars_heat_and_light/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dhkl36l",
"dhm07an"
],
"score": [
46,
3
],
"text": [
"Based on figure 2 of [this paper](_URL_0_) discussing accurate rendering of the sky, they put the sum of all starlight around 3x10^-8 W/m^2, approximately 10^-11 times as intense as our Sun. That's 30 nanowatts per square meter. This is a stupidly small amount of light energy. To power an average home off of solar panels using nothing but starlight, you'd need a square of solar panels roughly 50 miles wide. Other stars are *stupendously* far away.\n\nThe full moon is 10,000 times brighter than all the combined starlight! But even that's not enough to have a noticable effect, per [this reddit commenter](_URL_1_). In fact, I think I recall reading somewhere that the Earth warms more due to being closer to the Sun when the moon is in the full phase than it does due to reflected moonlight. (Don't quote me on that though, I haven't done the math and can't find a source!)",
"Dung beetles navigate via the light of the Milky Way [source](_URL_0_)\n\nMaybe not what you were really asking, but interesting nonetheless."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://graphics.stanford.edu/~henrik/papers/nightsky/nightsky.pdf",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15o5im/does_a_full_moon_provide_any_noticible_reflected/c7o9awa/"
],
[
"http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/24/dung-beetles-navigate-via-the-milky-way-an-animal-kingdom-first/"
]
] |
||
2o4l8m
|
How did the followers of Hong Xiuquan's brand of Christianity fare after his death and the fall of the Heavenly Kingdom?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2o4l8m/how_did_the_followers_of_hong_xiuquans_brand_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmjrscp"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Zeng Guofan wrote to the Tongzhi Emperor after the capture of Nanjing \n\"Not one of the 100,000 rebels in Nanjing surrendered themselves when the city was taken but in many cases gathered together and burned themselves and passed away without repentance. Such a formidable band of rebels has been rarely known from ancient times to the present.\"\n\nSo according to Zeng Guofan at least, they resisted till the last."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5gdyt0
|
Was Henry II of France's jousting opponent that inadvertently killed him punished in any way?
|
Even though it was an accident in a jousting tournament, would there have been any repercussions given the concept of lese-majeste, and the eventual political fall-out of the Wars of Religion?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gdyt0/was_henry_ii_of_frances_jousting_opponent_that/
|
{
"a_id": [
"darsmln"
],
"score": [
107
],
"text": [
"At the beginning he was not punished because he fled the capital soon before King Henri died of his injuries. On his deathbed, Henri apparently said to Gabriel de Montgommery that there was nothing worth asking forgiveness because all Gabriel did was what he (the king) ordered him to do. All this in the most knightly fashion. Everyone heard the King say these words to the man who wounded him but Montgommery knew that he was more or less safe only as long as Henri was alive which is why he fled soon after.\n\nThe context of the Wars of Religion is of course very important. Montgommery was to eventually become the most hated man in the kingdom or a hero. The day after Henri II died a council took place and the Guises and Catherine of Medicis stripped him of his lieutenancy of the Scottish Guard and banished him from court. So the late monarch's words were already forgotten of course. \n\nThe issue however is that so much was said about Montgommery is that is hard to know wether or not he was a Huguenot at the time he killed Henri. But when he returned to his castle in the North of France he did not hide that he now was a Huguenot (he invited a Reformed priest). Some say he converted after the Vassy Massacre in 1562, which marks the beginning of the *civil war* in France. The Huguenots of course dreamed of having Montgommery with them, the enemies of France as well were making Montgommery a hero. Now that he officially was fighting with the Huguenot, Montgommery was going to be punished if every caught. It did not even matter now if in a trial the fact that he killed Henri II was brought up or not. Fighting with the *heretics* against the King and the Kingdom was more than enough to chop his head off.\n\nMontgommery was eventually caught in 1574 when he surrendered a castle to the Catholic armies. Brought to Paris for a trial he was actually convicted of a crime of Lèse-Majesté, probably because the recent development in the Wars of Religion tended to more lenient towards the Huguenots (the Crown was in conflict with the Ultra Catholics). But as he had killed the King, intentionally or not, it is sure that he was going to be executed for it. It also was a time where some people, the Huguenots monarchomachs, called for the murder of the King because he is a tyrant (in the context of the war between Huguenots, Moderate Catholics and Ultra Catholics) and repression was needed. \n\nIn June 1574, Montgommery was executed."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
7h2tr6
|
What did all the gangsters do when prohibition ended in 1933? How did they earn their money afterwards? How many switched to respectable jobs? Was there an increase in different criminal activities?
|
Why I am asking this question: In a discussion whether de-criminalizing drugs will dry off the income basis of criminals and therefore massively reducing crime, somebody made the point that most of the countless criminals involved will simply switch to different criminal endeavours (like buglary, robbery, or kidnapping for ransom); he claimed that nearly no of the drug dealers and middlemen will say "oh, this isn't profitable anymore, lets learn programming and join an IT startup"
I am not sure what to make of this point, so to know what happened in the aftermath of the prohibition might give valuable insights. Of course people like Al Capone had 'free lodging' for the rest of their lives, but there must have been tens of thousands of people involved who needed an income afterwards. As they were humans, they surely tried to keep and increase the level of lifestyle and income they were used to. Did they compensate by switching the type of criminal business?
With searching askhistorians I only found a similiar question from a year ago which didn't receive any replies.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7h2tr6/what_did_all_the_gangsters_do_when_prohibition/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dqp44sk"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"So a lot of economists of black markets have talked about how organized crime grows and diversifies. One important thing they note is how crime groups start with the easiest, most low-risk, high-profit activities, which is usually selling illegal drugs (including alcohol). First off, as a victimless crime, hardly anyone has any reason to report your activities to the police. Secondly, if there aren't yet any local dealers of illegal alcohol or drugs, then there's a huge untapped market where generous profits can be made.\n\nAfter organizations are formed though, they \"diversify\" into other criminal activities. And oftentimes these are the kinds of activities that require a certain level of scale and criminal \"infrastructure\" to pull off. Any two-bit crook can peddle drugs, but doing kidnappings for ransom, protection rackets, gambling rings, etc. requires a level of sophisticated organization that has to come from somewhere, they don't spring up out of nothing.\n\nSo by the end of Prohibition, a lot of gangs and the Mafia had already done this. They'd expanded beyond just bootleg liquor to prostitution, illegal gambling, illegal pornography, protection rackets, embezzling from labor unions, etc. So when Prohibition ended and the legal alcohol brewers started business again, organized crime cartels lost some business, but they now had other businesses to fall back on. They did decline a bit, the \"Golden Age\" of the Mafia was back in the 1920s and they've never been as powerful or as profitable as they were since. Surely a lot of people who'd been involved \"went straight\" and no longer participated in organized crime, especially low-level people who'd only been peripherally involved in crime. The kind of people who were lookouts, the drivers and keepers of secret caches of liquor, dirty accountants, etc. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9w2cwy
|
in american elections, how can there be uncounted ballots yet a result is called?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w2cwy/eli5_in_american_elections_how_can_there_be/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e9h0owj",
"e9h0oyh",
"e9h14yx"
],
"score": [
14,
4,
7
],
"text": [
"If there is a box of 100 ballots that were not counted, but all the other votes are in, and the winner has a lead of 50,000 votes, you can safely say they are the winner of the election. The outcome is not going to change based on counting those ballots. All votes should be counted, but you can still declare a winner. Just as different news networks will call presidential elections before all votes are in, just because they can confident that a candidate is going to meet the required electoral college votes.",
"The best way to think about it is that there are only so many point to give out. So if someone had enough points, you might as well stop counting there. It’s like playing best of three Rock Paper Scissors. If someone wins 2, it doesn’t matter the outcome of the third because it can’t change the final result. ",
"I take it you're talking about the media calling results (as opposed to the chief election officers of the states)?\n\nExit polls are done with people who have just voted. Within a margin of error the media knows who won long before the polls close. It used to be that the margin of error was very tiny and races were called in many states the instant the polls closed (out of courtesy they waited). In other states they needed to wait until there were enough actual ballots reported (by key precincts) to verify closer exit polls. Occasionally they had to wait a very long time in tight races.\n\nBeginning in 2000, the exit polls started to show severe variances in a few states (one, really). People started to lie about whom they just voted for, or there was something else going on, but in any case the margin of error was increasing. In 2004 the margin got much wider (in 8 states) and the trend has continued,\n\nSo the media has gotten lots more cautious about calling races, relying much more on actual voting results coupled with more sophisticated analysis of precinct-level results. But the process is functionally the same, the calls are made on a mathematical projection basis.\n\nBut these media calls are completely unofficial. We viewers take them more seriously than we probably should. The individual state certifications are made several days or more after the election and they are the only official \"calls.\" They are made on the basis of actual votes counted and certified (and may be different from preliminary results reported on election night or soon after) at a scheduled time. Later than scheduled if the results are still uncertain due to ballots yet to be counted (provisionals, mail-ins, etc.) if the number of those votes still left are capable of affecting the result.\n "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1287fq
|
is it true the near east and the Mediterranean experienced major climate problems in and around 1100BC?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1287fq/is_it_true_the_near_east_and_the_mediterranean/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6t0t4e"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"We don't know. There is no actual evidence for climate problems. The reason that the idea is propagated is because it would provide a very convenient explanation for [the Bronze Age collapse](_URL_0_).\n\nThe *actual* reasons for the Bronze Age collapse are unknown; climate change happens to be a strong contender because it's one of the few explanations that could affect such a large area. But other than its convenience, there is no evidence for it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse"
]
] |
||
17irp7
|
why canned food (like tomatoes) don't need to be refrigerated but uncanned ones do
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17irp7/eli5_why_canned_food_like_tomatoes_dont_need_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c85vidf"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Canned food has been heated up to a certain degree in an effort to kill bacteria, and is then immediately canned to seal out any other bacteria that may be in the environment. Existing bacteria are already dead, new bacteria can't get in.\n\nFresh foods need to be refrigerated to retard the growth of bacteria that grow best at certain temperatures. Lowering the temperature kills or puts most bacteria into stasis so they won't continue to grow and infect your food. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
xqfwh
|
Question from a 10-year-old: How to bugs "know" which part of something matches their coloring so they can use it for camouflage?
|
[From him:] I saw a small tan moth in our shower this morning. The walls of our shower are made of slate that is mostly grey but with red and tan parts. This moth was on the tan part and it matched the wings great. How did the moth know not to be on the red or grey to hide?
Things I know: I know some animals see color differently than us. And some see black and white.
I also don't know how lizards know what color to change in to, but that is a different question.
[Mom again:]Thanks, askSci -- we appreciate any answers you can give us (the more kid-friendly the better, but I'll do my best to translate.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xqfwh/question_from_a_10yearold_how_to_bugs_know_which/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5oorsp",
"c5ooudl"
],
"score": [
2,
17
],
"text": [
"I'm not trained in this area of research so I'm not going to try and answer this question. I was however very intrigued by it, and think you have are raising a very bright 10 year old if he/she is asking something like this. \n\nAnyway, I found this link that seems to explain a lot, and the website can probably keep your child glued to the computer learning about a lot of different things:\n_URL_0_",
"The insect doesn't have to 'know' what things match it's camouflage, it just as to prefer to stand/rest on certain colors. Basically, it has to have a 'favorite color'. This is a fairly easy preference to evolve - insects already respond to many color and texture cues in their environment - and it happens like this: any insects who happen to prefer the wrong color, die."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/all-about-animals/animal-camouflage.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
2nou7s
|
Was there an equivalent to pornography throughout the past? Or is it a relatively new phenomenon?
|
Paintings? Sculpture?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nou7s/was_there_an_equivalent_to_pornography_throughout/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmfhvur",
"cmg4fpv"
],
"score": [
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Unfortunately I'm away from my computer today so I won't be able to fully answer your question as i would like to. But please see my previous AMAs on the subject and feel free to ask anything here and I can try to follow up next week. [AMA History of Pornography](_URL_0_)\n\n[AMA History of Libertine Literaute and Pornography](_URL_1_)\n\n[AMA History of Sexuality](_URL_2_)",
"There was *a hell of a lot* of Classical Greek erotic painting on vases. In the classic (but now somewhat dated) *Greek Homosexuality* Dover writes that \"we cannot fail to notice how greatly male pinups outnumber female at the beginning of the classical period\".\n\nThere are lots of vase paintings of sex acts. Like, so many. All sorts of sex acts, too: men and women masturbating (women with *olisboi*, which are essentially dildos), M/M sex, M/F sex (anal and vaginal), fellatio...\n\n[Here](_URL_4_) is a red-figure pot depicting M/M anal sex (the image is in fact of the rape of Ganymede by Zeus, you can read Ganymede's name in the image). The receptive partner is holding an *olisbos*. \n\n[Here](_URL_1_) is a woman masturbating with one *olisbos* and holding another.\n\n[Here](_URL_3_) is a man having sex with a prostitute (note the money pouch at the top of the image).\n\n[Another sex scene](_URL_0_). [Some more](_URL_2_).\n\nThere was also written erotica in the classical world, though largely it doesn't survive. The Suda has a tradition that Astyanassa, one of Helen of Troy's maids, was the first writer of erotica, and we know of other sex manuals, for instance, that of Elephantis, though they don't survive. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cssrf/ama_history_of_pornography_14001800/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24d05t/ama_panel_history_of_pornography_and_libertine/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lkszg/askhistorians_ama_thread_history_of_sexuality/"
],
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Shuvalov_Painter_erotic_scene_Antikensammlung_Berlin_F2414.jpg/674px-Shuvalov_Painter_erotic_scene_Antikensammlung_Berlin_F2414.jpg",
"http://www.hellenica.de/Griechenland/LX/HetaeraOlisbos.jpg",
"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifactBrowser?object=Vase&field=Keyword&keyclass=Actions&keyword=copulating",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Griechen31.png",
"http://deantiquashistoriam.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/olisbos.png?w=487"
]
] |
|
5txx2g
|
why good quality images go bad when we upload them on social media?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5txx2g/eli5_why_good_quality_images_go_bad_when_we/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddpvkz9",
"ddpvvzv"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"They are compressed to take up less space on the company's servers. A program looks at the image and trims out some of the visual information. The side effect is that your picture ends up slightly worse-looking than it started. Most people on social media don't particularly care, or even notice, so for the company it's an acceptable tradeoff.",
"the answer will vary depending on the site you are using and the image you are uploading but essentially it is to save space.\n\nWhen you upload an image to a site like Facebook, the image gets stored on one of their servers. And since there are now about 300 million photos uploaded every day ([source](_URL_0_)), Facebook would need a LOT of space to accomodate everyone.\n\nSo rather than storing the raw image (which is normally around 4mb), they compress the image down to something more reasonable.\n\nAnother argument for doing this is that when looking at photos on computer screens and mobiles, its often very difficult to tell the difference. And since most posts uploaded to social media are only viewed for a short time, and then forever forgotten about (but still stored on the servers), it would be a waste to upload everything at full quality."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/"
]
] |
||
1y07w7
|
why do all organisms simply exist to reproduce and die?
|
This is a little philosophical, and maybe there are better subreddits for it, but the answers might be a bit out of my league.
Anyway, everything (e.g. humans, crocodiles, parrots) in our universe/reality simple eats food (or gets it from the sun, whatever) and then reproduces. Then everything dies. It's a lot simpler for animals, and humans have made it a more complex and elaborate process, but why does everything have to be like this? Wether you believe in god or science, how do you explain it? Why wasn't everything made so that we wouldn't have to work all the time to get food and then reproduce and die? Is it impossible to ever achieve this utopian like ideal?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y07w7/eli5_why_do_all_organisms_simply_exist_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cfg69sb",
"cfg6d29"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"I don't think we can possibly know the reason for our existance",
"Well we will eventually reach the singularity which is essentially your utopia.\n\nThe reason everything simply exists to reproduce and die is because the very first form of life which EVERYTHING EVOLVED FROM, by happenstance they simply existed to reproduce and die. We are essentially just an extension of them.\n\nThere is no great mystery to life. It started because of a random combination of events. We are a cosmic anomaly the fact that we are here at all is just random and meaningless, while at the same time amazing and profound. \n\nAll life in our solar system will most likely die out eventually. And the universe will not have even noticed our brief existence. Our atoms will be re absorbed into the cosmos. Potentially fueling the next random event.\n\nTry to remember that you are a carbon based life form. Which means you have a a lot of carbon atoms making you work. There was no such thing as carbon after the big bang. Carbon was create. How was carbon created? Fusion, in the center of stars over billions of years, which eventually exploded. Scattering atoms of carbon across the universe. One day those atoms of carbon bumped into other atoms, and with access to H20 came alive. \n\nThe universe is cyclical, if stars had the capacity to think. One might have postulated. \"Why do all stars simply exist to bun and then explode\""
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1kii8v
|
why do we use pink or blue to know if a baby is a girl or a boy?
|
This is my first question on Reddit, I'll figure out how to correct it if it's not.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kii8v/eli5_why_do_we_use_pink_or_blue_to_know_if_a_baby/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbp9wlw"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"QI had a section on this:\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2f7urmRaRxY&t=132"
]
] |
|
59puk4
|
why is there a specific set up and order of attachment/detachment when jumping a dead car battery?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59puk4/eli5_why_is_there_a_specific_set_up_and_order_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d9adkfc",
"d9aetxd"
],
"score": [
9,
4
],
"text": [
"Because some batteries, the kind you put water in, can generate hydrogen gas when being jumped. This gas is explosive (e.g. Hindenburg) so you want the spark at the other end, where the car is running and the battery is charged.",
"If you connect the positive cables first you make it harder to accidentally bump the frame/ other components and short the battery to ground. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
afmb9c
|
why aren't all six strings on a guitar perfect fourths like a 6 string bass?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afmb9c/eli5_why_arent_all_six_strings_on_a_guitar/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ee0210e"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because chords aren't typically made out of perfect fourths.\n\nWhile a bass usually plays a single string at a time, guitars often play chords by using multiple strings at once. The strings are spaced to fit common chords easily - you can play most common chords (like major or minor for example) by adding just one or two fingers.\n\nAdditionally, while it's easy to raise individual notes in the chord, because of the way human hands are shaped you can't easily lower individual strings. The string intervals sort of form a \"base\" for chords, then, attempting to naturally be at the lowest notes you would want so you can then raise the ones you need to."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
739bfu
|
When did the US figure out that the USSR could not keep up?
|
We all know that the USSR was struggling to keep up with the US technologically while also trying to keep its economy a float, but at what point did the US figure this out?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/739bfu/when_did_the_us_figure_out_that_the_ussr_could/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dnp590b",
"dnp8o7n",
"dnpgtse"
],
"score": [
35,
1104,
54
],
"text": [
"Hello everyone, \n\nIf you're a regular, you know how this subreddit works. If you are a first time or infrequent visitor, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the [rules here.](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) We have high expectations for responses here, and we will remove comments which don't comply with them. If you have questions or comments about this policy, please do not add to the removed comments already existing in this thread. We are happy to answer polite inquiries to modmail, but consider all users forewarned about what we expect in a comment. If you post META commentary in this thread, it will be removed, and you may be further warned. /r/AskHistorians isn't for everyone, but that is just how we roll.\n\nWe know that you want an answer, and so do we! But [it takes time for a good answer to be written](/r/AskHistorians/comments/6a5duv/a_statistical_analysis_of_10000_raskhistorians/). In the meantime, check out one of these venues where earlier content is highlighted including [Twitter](_URL_1_), the [Sunday Digest](_URL_2_), the [Monthly \"Best Of\"](_URL_3_) feature, [Facebook](_URL_0_).",
"American diplomatic and intelligence circles feared the Soviet Union even before the end of the Second World War. The whole world had witnessed Soviet power in defeating the German invasion of 1941-1945, and Americans feared that Soviet ideology coupled with Stalin's ambitions could prove an existential threat for the United States. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt did not distrust the Soviets so badly--he in fact envisioned a postwar world led by a continued alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States--but others, including Roosevelt's heir Harry Truman, were not so sure. So while, at the highest levels (Stalin and Roosevelt), Soviet-American relations only strengthened as the war approached its end, you can see fear manifest at lower levels; notably, a cooperative Soviet-American initiative to create common wartime propaganda fell to pieces after the Allies gained the clear advantage in the war (see Todd Bennett's *One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II*, or at least the chapters on the Soviet Union).\n\nWith the passing of Roosevelt in April of 1945, relations began to deteriorate at the highest levels as well. Stalin feared that Truman would renege on agreements he made with Roosevelt, and so Stalin rushed to conquer the areas of Central Europe that Roosevelt had agreed at Yalta would reside in a \"Soviet sphere of influence after the war.\" Truman--and we are getting to the meat of your question now--shortly thereafter hid from Stalin the fact that the United States had successfully tested an atom bomb. Truman chose to use it, too, without telling Stalin (and this further undermined Roosevelt's relations with Stalin, since Japan had been a focal point in their negotiations). \n\nFear came to dominate the American worldview after the war. In his famous \"Long Telegram,\" diplomat George Keenan warned from Moscow in February of 1946 that the Russians could not be trusted. Their ideological desire to dominate all the world could only be contained, Keenen warned. That same year (I really am getting to your question now), the Central Intelligence Agency, one month after its founding, concluded in in October of 1946 that\n\n > It is probable that the capability of the USSR to develop weapons based on atomic energy will be limited to the possible development of an atomic bomb to the stage of production at some time between 1950 and 1953.\n\nSo the United States was always afraid of the Soviet Union. But Americans did not fear that the Soviet Union could *keep up with, and potentially surpass* the United States technologically until 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. The *earliest* the Americans thought they would have to contend with Soviet nuclear might was in the early 1950s, perhaps even a decade after the Americans had first tested their own nuclear device. Instead, the Americans faced another nuclear power just *four years* after they had created their own weapon. The Soviets were more advanced than the Americans thought, *and* American intelligence had failed to determine that fact.\n\nStill, no moment compared to Sputnik. Up to that point, Americans still had the security of the oceans coupled with their industrial superiority. Even after the Soviet Union began producing its own nuclear bombs, Americans knew that they could win a nuclear war with the Soviets, even if at great cost. The United States could send in waves of bombers over the Soviet Union, while absorbing the bulk of the Soviet counterattack in Europe. Sputnik changes that formula, not only by ushering in the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but also by placing the Soviet Union *at the head of that race.* \n\nI want to break here to underscore this point: a lot of people seem to miss that important detail regarding Sputnik. The satellite itself was almost useless; Sputnik scared Americans because of the *rocket* that was used to put it into space. It displayed a Soviet technology that the American didn't have! So now, if we were to head to a nuclear war, it was possible that the Soviets could build up an arsenal of ICBM's and destroy the United States.\n\nOf course, the \"Sputnik moment\" ignited a passion for rocketry in the United States. By the time Kennedy became president in 1960, just a few years after Sputnik, he discovered that his fear mongering over a \"missile gap\" with the Soviet Union had been just that; the Americans had already taken back the lead and developed an arsenal of nuclear missiles that put the Soviets to shame. NASA, which Dwight Eisenhower had created in 1958 in response to Sputnik, took a rocket to the moon by 1969. \n\nThe Soviet Union never again took an American-identified lead in the nuclear arms race again, but the construction of a Soviet missile defense shield (as we call them today; back then, they were called \"anti-ballistic missile systems\") around Moscow underscored the fact that the Soviets would continue to prove a competent adversary in the race. This continued fear, mutual as it was, helped to bring about negotiations from 1968-1973 that ended the construction of missile defense shields, at least until Reagan reneged on that deal in the 1980s.\n\nBut, in short, Sputnik is the moment of peak fear of Soviet technology; 1957. ",
"“We Now Know” by John Lewis Gaddis is an excellent book on the topic. Tangentially, “Skunk Works” by Ben Rich also fills in a lot of gaps, since the former book ends at the Cuban Missile Crisis. \n\nThe shortest answer is that the Eisenhower Administration knew. Eisenhower had made an hard push for aerial reconnaissance (and argued for an international “free skies” law on that topic, knowing full well that US lost nothing due to its geographic isolation). It became rapidly apparent that the USSR was deploying a lot of stagecraft to appear stronger than it was, and a great example of that was the so-called “bomber gap” that was a brief topic of intense political debate. At a 1955 air shoe, the Soviets had numerous M-4 Bison jet-powered bomber thundering overhead, leading analysts to think there were hundreds of such bombers ready to go, and the US was shockingly far behind. In truth, the Soviets had less that thirty, and we’re flying them in loops over the air show grounds. As the reconnaissance photos mapped out the USSR and discovered only a handful in the whole country, the fear of the “bomber gap” evaporated. \n\nAt the same time, Eisenhower was also aware he could afford to expose the Potemkin Village too nakedly, because even in their condition, destabilizing the Soviets was dangerous, and war would be ruinous (even though they could have only delivered a nuclear weapon by truck). Secondly, as a student of Clausewitz, he was familiar with the construct of “absolute war” and could see that nuclear weapons were close to that. So, his strategy was to try to keep everyone calm. Which was a fine enough thing - except that a lot of people in the US had a vested interest in stoking red dear into the US (cf. “the military industrial complex” speech). \n\nAnd this is the game that would play out over the next decades. Apart from the occasional provocation (especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Khrushchev badly misjudged what American reaction would be) the Cold War was a game of Soviets trying to be a strong as they appeared and presidents trying not to humiliate them too badly while appearing concerned enough to fend off challenges at home. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.facebook.com/askhistorians/",
"http://twitter.com/askhistorians",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/bestof"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
dljknn
|
The impact of scurvy on the crews of Age of Sail vessels is well known, but I don't imagine most contemporaneous poor people had access to high-vitamin-C fruits and vegetables, either. Was scurvy a problem on land, too, at this time? If not, why not?
|
[deleted]
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dljknn/the_impact_of_scurvy_on_the_crews_of_age_of_sail/
|
{
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"text": [
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but the impact of scurvy on ships is vastly overstated. [I've written about this before](_URL_0_), but the tl;dr is that it takes at least a month if not longer of being deprived of any vitamin C for symptoms of scurvy to express themselves, and that any fresh foodstuffs (and most pickled foods) have enough vitamin C in them to ward off scurvy. People eating preserved food throughout winters would be unlikely to suffer from scurvy."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hfag0/why_exactly_did_folks_in_the_age_of_sail_think/"
]
] |
|
kumkf
|
those floating black/white dots in my vision i get after looking over my shoulder for long periods.
|
Or when straining my vision in any direction really...
What are they and is it bad for my vision?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kumkf/eli5_those_floating_blackwhite_dots_in_my_vision/
|
{
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"c2njnb3",
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],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The floaters are actually pieces of your eye falling/moving in front of your retina which blocks the light going into your retina, so they appear as floating shadows in your vision\n\nI think its common with diabetes and near-sightedness",
"The floaters are actually pieces of your eye falling/moving in front of your retina which blocks the light going into your retina, so they appear as floating shadows in your vision\n\nI think its common with diabetes and near-sightedness"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
amtg9t
|
vga vs. hdmi vs. displayport
|
Like, why do people think that DisplayPort will become the standard for PC, instead of the "old" HDMI?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amtg9t/eli5_vga_vs_hdmi_vs_displayport/
|
{
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"text": [
"It’s mostly just gamers who say this. In reality both HDMI and DisplayPort are quite good, and the differences in trade offs can be small in many cases, not relevant in others, and niche for a special case. \n\nFor gamers, DisplayPort can support multiple monitors from a single source output as well as supporting G-sync and Free-sync for monitors. This is it’s big pluses. \n\nThe multi monitor support is also good for business users and for devices which are constrained on space (like a laptop) as only one output is needed... however as most consumer electronics use hdmi, you may still need a converter for many business uses, so in this case DisplayPort is just meh. \n\nNeither are going anywhere soon and both HDMI and DisplayPort are improving with new updates regularly and neither one seems to be winning, except that HDMI controls the consumer electronics market, and has some additional functions (long list) that may prove useful in the consumer world in the future over DisplayPort which is more aimed at some more specific use cases on computers. ",
"From a professional video engineer point of view, I like DisplayPort better for one major reason, it has a locking connector. I like to remove as much risk as possible and a connector falling out of a graphics laptop (power point) is a small but tangible risk. DisplayPort locks and so is much less likely to fall out. That said, I usually have to use whatever laptops the production company rents so I don't often get full-size DisplayPort. I have to use HDMI and some strong tape. Lots and lots of tape. ",
" > Like, why do people think that DisplayPort will become the standard for PC \n \n..will?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
eyahh3
|
why does air blowing in your face help you feel less carsick?
|
Always wondered why it helped (at least me) when I was younger and got carsick a lot
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eyahh3/eli5_why_does_air_blowing_in_your_face_help_you/
|
{
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"text": [
"Personally, over ventilation (breath faster than needed until slight headache) helps too. And in general cold in face helps.\n\nI have no idea why.",
"Humans maintain their sense of balance by combining several major and minor senses together. We can see the positions of things with our eyes, hear things moving with our ears, and feel air moving against our skin using our sense touch. We even have some fluids in our inner ears to help us balance, which is called endolymph.\n\nWhen a human is poisoned or intoxicated, it can mess with our sense of balance. For example, if you drink enough alcohol, you'll start to stumble around.\n\nAt some point along our evolutionary path, we seem to have developed a primitive defense against getting poisoned in this way. Perhaps back when we were more like apes or lemurs, or even farther back when we were more like reptiles, we must have had some problem with getting all messed up on bad berries. Because now, when the senses of balance all disagree with each other, many people have an instinctive desire to throw up.\n\nDo your eyes tell you you're moving, but your inner ear say you're standing still? \"Puke!\" says your ancient lizard brain. \"That will get the bad berries out of you, and prevent your dumb poisoned self from being eaten by a predator.\"\n\nBut your ancient lizard brain didn't anticipate the invention of cars, so now your senses are totally confused. Your inner ear detects movement, but your sense of touch detects stillness. You see movement but you don't hear the air blowing past your ears. \"Puke!\" says your brain. \"You must be poisoned!\"\n\nAir blowing on your face will reduce that conflict among your senses. Now your sense of hearing and touch will be in line with your sense of sight and equilibrioception. No more conflicting senses? No more carsickness.\n\nsource: I make Virtual Reality software for a living, where motion sickness is a huge problem.",
"From what I've read, we're still not entirely sure why people get motion sickness in the first place (we know the mechanism that seems to cause it, but not why some people get it and others don't, or why it is caused by those mechanisms in those people), and similarly other than chemical solutions that help with nausea, people aren't really sure why some of the other remedies work; I saw dozens of sites recommend either opening a window or directing an air vent to blow cold air in your face, but nothing that indicated even a hypothesis of why that might work.\n\nTo give a hypothesis: the main theory of motion sickness is that your eyes and inner ear disagree about what is going on with relation to your motion (you're bumping around and your inner ear fluids are sloshing about, but your eyes tell you that you're relatively stationary in the car), so the feeling of wind on your face gives your brain more sensory input that, at a subconscious level, tells you that you are moving, even if other signs are missing.",
"My guess it’s the more senses you have that are aligning the less carsick you get. I think it comes from your sense of balance telling your brain you are moving while everything else says you are stationary. \n\n*Look out the window (let your eyes see that you are moving)\n\n*roll down the window (feel and hear the air whooshing by)\n\nI’m not a doctor or anything, this is just my guess, but you never get carsick when driving and I think it’s because you are fully in tune with what you are doing.",
"One interesting theory I've heard is that dizziness and nausea were historically more associated with eating foods that had gone bad or were poisonous, than with travelling at high rates of speed (a very recent phenomena). The nausea from eating poisons would lead to vomiting and rid us of that noxious substance. \n\nWhen our inner ear's movement sensors detect movement that doesn't track well with visual or tactile cues, we feel that same kind of dizziness and nausea; and our body's response begins to mimic that of eating something poisonous.\n\nSo when wind is blowing on our face after feeling carsick, it creates the tactile illusion that we are indeed travelling in a manner more consistent with visual cues, and the nausea is somewhat reduced."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
b2ef7w
|
How far away are we really from quantum computing?
|
I feel like I keep seeing sensationalist articles on the implications, but it appears that there are still problems regarding scalability and other concepts I can’t fully grasp.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b2ef7w/how_far_away_are_we_really_from_quantum_computing/
|
{
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"It's here. The IBM Q System One is commercially available, having launched in January 2019. It's reported to have 20 qubits.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso D-Wave have been selling \"quantum\" computers since 2011. Their systems are somewhat specialised *quantum annealing* processors, not general purpose quantum computers. D-Wave published a 2014 experiment showing they do use quantum behaviour (which was disputed), but it's unclear if D-Wave's systems are any faster than a regular computer.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThere's still a long way to go, and quantum computing is still somewhat experimental, but it is now commercialised."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/system-one/",
"https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.3500"
]
] |
|
2d8ygh
|
do women who don't give birth live longer?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d8ygh/eli5_do_women_who_dont_give_birth_live_longer/
|
{
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"text": [
"Quite the opposite, actually. A number of scientific studies have indicated that women who have children live longer.",
"At one point in time, the average life expectancy of a mother was lower than that of a non-mother, because we factored in an increased chance of death in childbirth. However, it's been a long time since that was true. More recently, mothers actually lived longer due to support from their children into old age. But with the era of putting-grandma-in-a-home, things are starting to even out. ",
"There was an article on Reddit recently explaining how a woman with a health defect had her fetus share stem cells to that area to cure a terminal ailment. A bit like how tapeworms have cured quite a few things like asthma in their hosts. \n\nIf you don't have kids you will look younger though :D",
"Another point is that breastfeeding reduces your chances of a whole bunch of cancers, so there is another reason that mothers may live longer than non mothers. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2yrgxn
|
With the newest Island in the Pacific, this question comes to mind. How do islands gain such diverse wildlife for both plants and animals? Where does it all come from?
|
Looking at the photos, there is absolutely nothing there. No grass, no animals, no trees. Where does it all come from?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2yrgxn/with_the_newest_island_in_the_pacific_this/
|
{
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"text": [
"Eventually a bird or some other creature will go there and while doing it could bring seeds or whatever. Strong winds from one of the other islands in the area of there was bad weather or something could carry pollen to the new island. Mixed with that and natural erosion life will take place there. ",
"Much of that rock can be very brittle, and when it breaks up enough to form a more or less sandy gravel texture it can support some seeds. Bird guano is a very important source of nutrients on many of these islands, as is the stuff that gets dissolves in the rain (I would image that there would be quite a bit near that volcano). \n\nBirds also carry the seeds. Those could be in their guano or feathers. They also can carry some invertebrates with them although I do not know the ecological impacts of those. Many of these islands are great nesting spots because there aren't any other animals there to eat their eggs.\n\nCoconuts are very good at traveling to islands like this by floating on the water and riding currents. They have enough water and nutrients to actually live a pretty good while and establish themselves there. \n\nThere are also many seeds that can fly on the wind, I am not sure how close the closest land is to this island or the wind currents, but there probably will be some plant dispersal that way as well. \n\nStrong storms are able to transfer many small animals such as lizards, beetles, birds, and even small rodents. It is more rare than the other methods, but it can occur often enough for populations to establish. \n\nLichens are able to grow on bare rocks with little else but air and sunlight. They take a long time to grow, but they help break down the rock and are critical in forming soil in the long term.\n\nThere will always also be the tidal communities, which can help provide a base for an ecosystem (bird food) and provide organic matter (kelp etc) that can help build up the soil.\n\nIf you can recall from the picture, there appears to be a small lake on the island too, over time that lake may be able to become fresh water, it would be able to provide a different community of algae as well, and possibly be a good source of water for plants during part of the year.\n\nAlso people always move life around, wash your boots when you travel!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
ecz17r
|
why does so much cut content remain present in video games, just unused?
|
I see a lot of examples of cut assets in video games that people find still remaining in files of the game itself. Why does this happen? I'm am sure there is a reason why its not as simple as highlighting everything unused and hitting "delete"... but what is it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ecz17r/eli5_why_does_so_much_cut_content_remain_present/
|
{
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"text": [
"Games will go through a process where they are built (all of the code is assembled to produce a \"finished\" game) many times over the course of development. Through out this, things will get added and pulled over and over as they work towards a finished product. Some things that get added may get pulled later, and some things that get pulled now may get added back.\n\nAs a result, it is typically much easier to just disable the triggers for thing getting pulled rather than remove them entirely - maybe it gets added back later and you just saved yourself some work, or maybe some other part of the game uses a texture that you didn't realize and pulling your code will break someone elses. Given that space isn't really at a premium anymore, the benefits are higher to just leave the code there.",
"\\ > I'm am sure there is a reason why its not as simple as highlighting everything unused and hitting \"delete\"... but what is it? \n\nBecause coding is messy as hell and it's really easy to break something because of some weird issue. So unless space is a serious concern (which isn't much of an issue nowadays), it can be easier just to hide a batch of code or remove the triggers that activate it, instead of removing it completely. Ideally the players don't accidentally access it somehow (unless they're really fiddling with the game), and it's still there in case some other part of the game pulls from that batch of code. \n\nPlus, game design includes a lot of back-and-forth, so if something ever gets added back in during development, or later as downloadable content, it'll be easier to add back in."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
e6t518
|
why are some foods more filling than others? eg. baked potato vs a slice of pizza
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6t518/eli5_why_are_some_foods_more_filling_than_others/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f9t1904"
],
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],
"text": [
"An average potato weighs about 10 oz. Half of a large cheese pizza from Dominos also weighs about 10 oz despite there being *substantially* more calories in the pizza. The reason for this difference is in the water content of the two foods. 80% of the potato's weight is made up of water, whereas water only makes up about 20-30% of the pizza.\n\nWater adds weight without adding calories, but your body has no way of determining the caloric or nutritional content of the food you eat. The only thing that your body is capable sensing is how full your stomach is, and weight is the only thing that matters for that. Because of that, high water content foods fill you up despite not having very many calories. Conversely, high calorie content foods tend not to weigh very much and so you don't feel full after eating them."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
elub1y
|
why did president roosevelt get to serve 4 terms in office?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/elub1y/eli5_why_did_president_roosevelt_get_to_serve_4/
|
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"text": [
"There were no term limits before FDR, it was a custom started by Washington that every other president followed.\n\nAfter FDR, the limit was created.",
"There wasn’t a term limit amendment for the president until after Roosevelt. Before then it was just customary to only serve two term because that is what George Washington did.",
"The two term limit didn't come into play because it didn't yet exist. It was established by the 22nd Amendment, and that wasn't ratified until February 27, 1951.",
"Thanks guys! I didn’t know it was just a tradition to limit your terms until the 22nd amendment. As I said, it’s been a while since I studied anything political and just came across something about him serving 4 terms and got really confused."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
dnfd6l
|
Why does dengue cause low platelet count?
|
I know platelets are responsible for blood clotting but I don't understand how disabling that mechanism could be beneficial for the virus's survival.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dnfd6l/why_does_dengue_cause_low_platelet_count/
|
{
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"f5argqv"
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"text": [
"That's a loaded question, there are many many mechanisms for viral induced thrombocytopenia, and in dengue they include but are not limited to monocyte mediated activated of platelets and acceleration of their apoptosis, direct and indirect mechanisms leading to a suppressed megakaryopoiesis, and cross reactivity of platelets with anti dengue anti bodies. Now regarding the purpose of this for the survival of the virus, that's very debated and we don't really know whether it helps the virus or the host, but it is pretty established that coagulation is not the only purpose platelets serve, they play many parts in the immune response. This is too complex to explain over a comment and it isn't really my field of expertise, so I'll refer you to a good review on the matter:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270245/#__ffn_sectitle"
]
] |
|
sypdv
|
Which biblical passages (or other sources) were used to back up the concept of predestination in Calvinism?
|
This has always piqued my interest when learning about Colonial religions. How exactly did they get the idea of predestination?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sypdv/which_biblical_passages_or_other_sources_were/
|
{
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"text": [
"You might be better off asking this question in one of the Christian subreddits, such as [r/Christianity](_URL_1_) or [r/DebateAChristian](_URL_0_).\n\n",
"From my understanding of Calvinism, the basis for predestination is the logical extension of the concept that God is omniscient (and that idea is prevalent in Abrahamic religions as a whole). If God is omniscient, it stands to reason that God knows the past and future, and hence knows who will go to heaven, and who will go to hell.\n\nIf God already knows who will go to heaven and hell, it has causative implications - namely, that some people are destined to go to heaven, and some are destined to go to hell.",
"Calvin, in his Institutes ch. XXI-XXII, argues that \"all are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation\", and he ends up listing quite a few scripture verses to back up his claim. He begins with Romans 11:6 which talks about a remnant people who are elected by God. Throughout XXI he links predestination with the origins of the Church - ecclesiology. \"Remnant ecclesiology\" was quite popular in the early Church and I think that this was adopted and elaborated by Calvin, predestination, in this regards would imply someone who found themselves already in the Church. In the next chapter he elaborates on biblical proofs for predestination beginning with Colossians 1:12 and Ephesians 1:4-5. His OT quotations are usually from the prophets through which he elaborates on his 'remnant' beliefs. \n\nEDIT: To look at other sources used by Calvin I think he is indebted to Saint Augustine's Retractions.",
"If you're interested, I suggest you read [Erasmus and Luther's debate on Free Will.](_URL_0_) You could most likely find it at your library. \n\nWhile not specifically including Calvin, I think its safe to say that Calvin took Luther's original idea to its logical conclusion. You'll see Luther cite biblical passages chiefly Romans 3:20, 28.\n\nErasmus, on the other hand, points out some Pauline works (sorry, don't have the book in front of me) and a lot of stuff in the Old Testament, including: Genesis 4:6-7, Deuteronomy 30: 15-19, Isaiah 1: 19, 21:12, 45:20, 45:22, 52:1-2 and Jeremiah 15:19.The thrust of Erasmus's argument is that a whole host of passages admonish the Jews to \"repent,\" and \"make the right choice.\" < -- Which, as I'm sure you can tell, implies free will. Here are some quotes from Erasmus (I wrote a short paper on this work for my reformation class)\n\n > If the differences of good and evil and the will of God had remained hidden from man the wrong choice could not be imputed to man. Had the will not been free, sin could not be attributed to man, since it ceases to be sin if it is not voluntary (p 25-6)\n\nand later on, Erasmus lays out the doctrine of salvation by grace and works (which the Church would later adopt at Trent):\n\n > Now, if man could do nothing wrong, there would be no room for merit and guilt; consequently also none for punishment and reward. If on the other hand man were to do all, there would be no room for grace, which is very often mentioned and emphasized by Paul (p59)\n\nIts really a fascinating debate, and the book is only like 100 pages long and all of it is enthralling. As I'm sure you know, these passages (both sets) can be interpreted either which way creating a headache, so to speak. Erasmus makes a brilliant point that if Luther's correct- that the tradition of the Church is merely that of man- than isn't Luther himself just a man, and his interpretations just as susceptible to fallibility? Doesn't it make more sense that the Church, which god has vouchsafed and guided for over a 1000 years, would hold the correct interpretation? (that last bit was paraphrasing, I'm **not** suggesting either is right or wrong; even though based on what I've read Erasmus at least won the debate)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826477941/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER"
]
] |
|
6fs5a4
|
Why focus on green energy when fusion could solve all our problems?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6fs5a4/why_focus_on_green_energy_when_fusion_could_solve/
|
{
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"text": [
"Think of it by the following reasoning: How much money and time are you willing to invest into an idea that doesn't have any timeline or concrete promise about its future?\n\nFusion is definately possible but the question is if we can get fusion reactors to produce more energy then they consume. There is fundamentally no reason why this isn't possible but there is only so much money we can invest in this technology while it is still in its infancy. We don't know how to make it profitable yet. The ITER is currently trying to achieve exactly what you want it to. Should we invest more money into these projects? Good question, that is what politics attempts to figure out. \n\nTL;DR\nWorking on it!",
"Fusion is just really, really difficult to get right. \n\nRight now, we can achieve fusion, but only using exotic materials, and once we start a fusion reaction it currently takes more energy to sustain a fusion reaction than it produces. As far as we know, fusion can only sustain itself on massive scales (stars are the only self sustaining fusion we know of.) Even then, fusion isn't actually that great at producing energy - [meter for meter, the sun produces less energy than a backyard compost pile.](_URL_0_) \n\nTherefore, we have to strike a balance between having something big enough to sustain itself and provide energy while still being possible to contain. I think we're still honestly a bare minimum of 65 years from commercial power from fusion, and I honestly think that's pretty generous. We need to start using non-fossil fuels NOW, and the technology for wind, solar, nuclear, etc is already here and mature enough to handle the world's power needs for years to come.",
"Its silly to say things like \"x amount of fuel is needed to power US with fusion.\" Often those calculations are done assuming 100% efficiency, and its impossible to ever reach 100% efficiency. Not to mention the transfer of electricity, with one powet plant in US it would be extreamly inconvenient to supply the entire country. All the fusion engines built and planned so far have negative efficiency, meaning they require more power than we can harvest from them.\n\nSure, there are all kinds of fairy tales of the potential of fusion, but after hundreds of billions of funding and decades of research we have come only so far. Compare that to conventional green energies that with already with todays technology are very much usable. You can power the entire world with solar many times over aswell.\n\n > There wouldnt be a point of charging people for power use\n\nPlease. No matter what happens, fusion power plants will be extreamly costly to build and maintain even if the fuel is cheap, and supplying the produced energy is not free either.\n\nMaybe someday fusion will be the most favorable way of harvesting electricity, but for now I dont see a reason to focus on it even one precent as much as we should for current green energies. We definetly should not pollute our planet to the maximum with fossil fuels just because we hope to someday master fusion."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.htm"
],
[]
] |
||
8hze50
|
[Medieval Sex] How did the idea originate in the Middle Ages that a female orgasm is required for procreation when society *also* believed in ONLY having vaginal sex?
|
I was debating whether to post this question to r/AskHistorians r/NoStupidQuestions or r/TooAfraidToAsk. Hopefully it fits here, if not please let me know and I will move it to a more appropriate sub. TL;DR at bottom.
---
I have always been secretly curious about what sex was like in the Middle Ages, specifically oral sex. As a woman (22F) I get self-conscious about receiving oral sex if I haven't showered in a few hours, let alone days or weeks. I can only imagine how unbearable it would have been to perform cunnilingus back before women were regularly bathing. Therefore, I was surprised to read that back in the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that in order to conceive a baby, *both* parties must reach orgasm.
> Contrary to what you may be getting from medieval romance novels, the medieval scientific theory of sexual reproduction had a pretty strong role for the lady's orgasm. Namely, they thought it was absolutely required if a sex act was going to produce a baby. As an idea, this turns up in a host of medieval texts, from the 13th century onwards.
[(A Brief History Of The Female Orgasm, From Medieval To Modern Times)](_URL_0_).
& nbsp;
At first I was like *damn, I wish I could go back in time and become a medieval surrogate*. 75-80% of women cannot orgasm from penetration alone, so I assumed this meant Medieval-era men ate a lot of p**** back in the day. But then I found out that oral sex was outlawed by the Church at the time.
> Marital sexual activity had to be intended to be procreative, so certain heterosexual non-procreative positions were outlawed (sex standing up, penetration from behind, woman on top), as were oral sex and anal sex even between husband and wife in a marriage.
[(Medieval Sex and Sexuality)](_URL_1_).
& nbsp;
**If couples in the Middle Ages were only having vaginal sex (in the missionary position, no less) to conceive, how is it possible that both parties were reaching orgasm every time?**
Humans obviously did not go extinct in the 1300's, which means there must have been some justification at the time for how these women were able to get pregnant. If anyone could enlighten me about medieval sex and/or the origin of these rumors, it would be much appreciated. How seriously was the oral sex prohibition really taken?
---
**TL;DR - If people in the Middle Ages commonly believed that women needed to orgasm in order to become pregnant, but oral sex was taboo/illegal at the time: were women *actually* orgasming during sex as much as their husbands and male doctors believed?**
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hze50/medieval_sex_how_did_the_idea_originate_in_the/
|
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"It's true, oral sex was not permitted under canon (Church) law. Neither was fornication (sex between unmarried people), adultery, sodomy between men, sodomy between women, non-PIV heterosexual sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, intercrural sex/grinding, use of a dildo, use of a premodern Fleshlight, sex on Sunday, sex in churches, and everything else listed on the [medieval penitential sex flowchart](_URL_0_).^1\n\nGuess what we know from court records, letters, popular literature and similar sources what medieval people were doing? Fornication, adultery, sodomy between men, sodomy betwen women, non-PIV heterosexual sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, grinding, use of a dildo, use of a premodern Fleshlight, sex on Sunday, sex in churches, and--you guessed it--everything else listed on the medieval penitential sex flowchart.\n\nWhat you've stumbled on first of all, OP, is the difference between \"prescriptive\" and \"descriptive\" sources. That is, just because a law exists or a behavior is promoted in a sermon or didactic text, does not mean people are obeying the law or following the advice. Prescriptive sources only tell us what people thought, not what they did. You likewise cannot apply the \"if there was a law against it, that means people did it\" logic so simply to medieval sources, alas. However, \"descriptive\" evidence can fill in some of the gaps. It's still not a complete open-and-shut case all the time, since formulas and tropes comprised such a large portion of medieval legal records and rituals, but the sheer weight of cases with some sexual crimes/sins or the specific details related in other cases indicates a connection to real practice.\n\nCertainly the same principle can be applied to medical texts as well. Yes, the belief that pregnancy was impossible without the woman reaching climax is found in a lot of medical texts in the medieval West. One might well point out that the authors of most of them were celibate men (the *Trotula*, a compendium of three texts connected to a woman physician, does not discuss orgasm or how to get pregnant), and the reach of academic medicine was almost certainly rather restricted. Rock-bottom literacy rates beyond the clergy and a number of university-trained physicians deeply inadequate for the total population interacted with a world where people might not have seen the need for academic medical knowledge! In late medieval towns, people could go to barber-surgeons, midwives, surgeons, oculists, dentists, herbalists, apothecaries, snakebite healers, a whole *host* of medical practitioners lacking the university/degree background.\n\n\nBut then again, the belief was inherited from ancient and late antique Greek medicine, which transfers the problem rather than solves it. And with the (still slow) rise of vernacular literacy among late medieval nobles and in late medieval cities, there was a significant demand for translations of the major Latin medical texts. Your fifteenth-century barber might well be quoting Avicenna (Ibn Sina) to you on the proper cure for pestilence! So, while the total number of people who read in books or heard from educated physicians that women needed to orgasm to become pregnant might have been small, it was hardly inconsequential. And more disturbingly, because Christian thought held that orgasm was the voluntary result of lust, pregnancy was held up in court as proof that rape had not occurred--the woman had committed fornication or adultery with her rapist instead, since pregnancy proved orgasm which proved she wanted it.\n\nSo what gives?\n\nBelieve it or not, none other than Claude Levi-Strauss theorized the answer in *Structural Anthropology.* Looking at \"shamanistic\" healing traditions, he found that the key was not the percentage of times that shamans \"actually\" healed the patient. Rather, it was the *belief* in the power of shamans to do so that counted--the belief of the community, not just the individual (\"social consensus\"). Medieval belief in astrology, or cures for pestilence (that would be *the Black Death*) that were basically spices in rose water, or that if you thought about horses during sex the child conceived would look like a horse, offer other examples of medieval social consensus. \n\nMore historically rather than anthropologically, too, Robert Bartlett has argued that trials by ordeal worked on the same lines. The outcome--guilt or innocence--was what the community had already collectively decided; the trial served to confirm what \"everyone knew\" rather than inform them one way or the other.\n\nSo all in all: we shouldn't count out the potential liveliness of the medieval bed, and eventually bedroom. But nor should we see a contradiction between the belief that pregnancy required the woman to climax, and observations that she hadn't.\n\n\n~~\n\n^1 Compiled by James Brundage in *Law, Sex, and Christian Society in the Middle Ages*",
"While I've got some knowledge here, I don't have the qualifications to discuss things, so let me offer some other relevant links for discussing hygiene...\n\n* [With deodorant first really coming out commercially in 1888 in Philadelphia, did most of the world just smell like armpits once the clock struck noon on a warm day?](_URL_0_)\n\n* [Is it safe to say that every single great person in history prior to, say, 1930, would, to our noses, smell just horrible?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [What was hygene really like in Europe between, say, the End of the Roman Empire in 500 A.D and 1850 A.D? Most interested in 1000 A.D and 1600 A.D](_URL_2_)\n\nSo, with those threads in mind, ahem.. what smells 'good' and what smells 'bad' are rather subjective, and one person's \"gross\" is another person's \"perfectly normal\"... "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.bustle.com/articles/66678-a-brief-history-of-the-female-orgasm-from-medieval-to-modern-times",
"https://www.historychannel.com.au/articles/medieval-sex-and-sexuality/"
] |
[
[
"http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/flowchart.png"
],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7j20vy/with_deodorant_first_really_coming_out/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bxo7e/is_it_safe_to_say_that_every_single_great_person/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37tz0w/what_was_hygene_really_like_in_europe_between_say/"
]
] |
|
76bwly
|
How were ports build in medieval and/or early modern Europe?
|
More specifically I'd like to know what machinery, materials, etc. were used to build/reinforce wharves and piers and how they managed to lay foundations or place pillars underwater to support those structures?
Bonus question: Were others machines, materiel or methods used in the early colonies because of a (possible) lack of what they had back in Europe? Or was it just the same?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76bwly/how_were_ports_build_in_medieval_andor_early/
|
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"You're assuming there's a single, homologous method of construction was used in all all of Europe; but the fact is that methods of construction varied immensely and were much less important than geography as the biggest consideration in the establishment of a seaport. Under many respects geography is still an important determinant to this day; after the industrial revolution rolled around the development of poured concrete along with steam power allowed for the creation of [small artificial harbors](_URL_4_), but it is nonetheless still expensive and impractical to create an artificial sea wall large enough to shelter a harbor with facilities handling freighter traffic. For example, look at [this image](_URL_5_) of the New York's harbor; you can easily make out the NY & NJ Port Authority facilities in the Upper New York Bay and the Bay of Newark, while there's literally nothing in the ocean-facing parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Most of the time, modern sea-walls will expand existing natural shelters, as we'll see below. \n\nThe most complicated hydrographic works in pre-industrial Europe were probably in Northeast Italy, where the Republic of Venice founded the *Magistratura alle Acque*, or \"Magistrate for the Waters\" whose function it was to oversee the maintenance of aquatic infrastructure (the bureau continued to exist, unmutated, until 2014). However, the Magistrate's office historically dealt with river redirection and inland canal navigation; the infrastructure in the actual city of Venice is rather simple. As you you can see in [this arial view of the city](_URL_0_), the entire historic center is contained within a brackish-water lagoon connected to the sea by three narrow channels; the sheltered waters of the Lagoon allowing for ships to be moored nearly anywhere. You can even see the poured-concrete modern docklands in the Marghera neighborhood just across the water from the old city. The historic docklands of the city are two adjacent parts of the historic center called *il Molo* and *Riva degli Schiavoni* which were high sandbar banks facing the deepest water in the lagoon and were paved with Istrian Stone as early as the eleventh century (you can see an 18th century depiction in [this](_URL_8_) image). But the choice of Istrian Stone wasn't some significant europe-wide necessity; the Republic of Venice simply had historic ties to Istria it was easiest to pave the city with stones from there (more than half the city streets are paved with Istrian stone). There's an interesting story to be told about how city expanded and constructions were built increasingly densely on farther-out sandbars, necessitating some fairly innovative construction mechanisms: [tree trunks were driven into the ground before construction](_URL_12_) to strengthen the structural integrity. However's that's a Venice-specific thing, and only tangentially related to seaport construction; the waters of the lagoon are calm enough that simple wooden piers suffice when ships and boats can't be moored directly to the banks. If anything, paving banks was by far the most common form of \"port infrastructure\" before modern cement, although you do see wooden docks and some dock constructions of Roman-style concrete slabs. \n\nThe size of ships in medieval Europe, and especially the mediterranean, meant that it was seldom necessary to build large dock structures jutting out into the port; there were, at most, one or two docks that could be made up of carefully placed stone, but were mote often than not wooden strictures. Ships, when necessary, would be moored alongside the bank (as you can see [in this depiction](_URL_6_) of the Italian port of Genoa). And I stress when necessary, because as you can see in [this depiction](_URL_1_) of Venice's lagoon basin, ships by and large dropped anchor in the protected basin, while smaller tenders manned by local boatmen carried their cargo to shore (you can see this happening on the bottom-left). \n\nIt's fair to say that not all European cities on the sea had deepwater ports; in cities with wide enough beaches, ships and boats could be dragged on land. In Barcelona, for example, ships had to be run aground in this way. The beach was only paved sometime in the 1700s to constitute a true dock; you can see how in [this depiction of the city from the 1700s](_URL_9_). The city's industrial explosion in the 19th and 20th centuries necessitated the artificial creation of more seaport capacity, so the government constructed a complex system of poured concrete sea-walls, but these could not have existed before the modern day. So predictably, sea-walls are much more likely to be seen nowadays than they were in the past; in [this diagram](_URL_2_) of the French Navy's base in Brest, for example, you can make out the older facilities [located up the Penfeld river](_URL_7_) in addition to the newer facilities on the coast encased by the sea-wall. Although there certainly is a pre-industrial precedent for sea-walls, most of the time they were built on existing sandbars or outcroppings for defense more so than for harbor expansions as they are now. You can see, for example, in [this](_URL_11_) 15th century depiction of the seafaring city of Genoa the sea-walls are very clearly built on solid ground; you can also see some four docks (also visible in [this](_URL_3_) later depiction) where the first seems to be made made of brick ([recently unearthed, accidentally, during construction](_URL_10_)) while the other two look like they're \"floating,\" possibly made of either wood or even large concrete slabs placed lengthwise. The point is, even a single seaport can have different elements constructed with different methods at different times. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-00-jbI_Z7Vo/Tt1WcbGgMQI/AAAAAAAABLA/G4FXP0I0viw/s1600/0+Lagunaa+de+Venecia+mapa+con+Lido+Malamocco+y+Chiogia+ampliado+y+reducido2.jpg",
"http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/bacino-di-san-marco-venice-32679",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/PlanArsenalBrest.gif",
"http://genova.erasuperba.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1450-TURATI-PORTO-NEL-XV-sec-180dpi.jpg",
"http://www.enteportogiulianova.it/site/main/thumbnail/800/450/uploads/Image/SLIDER/porto.jpg?samedir=false&crop=true",
"https://placesjournal.org/assets/legacy/media/images/on_the_water_2.jpg?55a5bc",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Genova-1810ca-acquatinta-Garneray.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Chateau_de_Brest_et_Tour_Tanguy.jpg",
"http://www.arte.it/foto/600x450/3a/42197-06-Luca_Carlevarijs.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Map-Barcelona-c.1700.png",
"https://i1.wp.com/genovaquotidiana.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/moli-colombo.jpg?ssl=1",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Genova1493.png",
"http://venice.umwblogs.org/files/2008/12/piles-stone-brick-fletcher-35-001.jpg"
]
] |
|
38gwoy
|
Any good books about religious belief in Britain in the late 17th century?
|
I'm looking for any books that discuss the general/social history of religion in Britain and Ireland, particularly among the laypeople in the late seventeenth century. Thanks!
--------------------------------------------------
Edit: Thanks for the help, guys!
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38gwoy/any_good_books_about_religious_belief_in_britain/
|
{
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"text": [
"The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution by Christopher Hill. Not late seventeenth century but close enough.",
"*Religion and the Decline of Magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England* by Keith Thomas ",
"It's the sixteenth century, but you might enjoy, *The Voices of Morebath.*"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
9g9mdk
|
Is there a connection between the age of newborns mother and the life expectancy of the baby?
|
For example will a baby born to a mother who is 20 have a longer life expectancy of a baby born to a mother who is 50 or vice versa?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9g9mdk/is_there_a_connection_between_the_age_of_newborns/
|
{
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"text": [
"I looked into this about 3 years ago, and could find no scientific study on the topic in humans. In some species of birds, there is an inverse u shaped longevity curve, where offspring of young mothers die early due to inexperience and offspring of very old mothers die early due to a physically less capable provider. ",
"found this study about health and maternal age:.\n\n_URL_0_\n\ntl;dr: maternal age between 20 and 34 is the best. Mortality and other issues occur more often when the mother is very young, even when accounting for other factors, and somewhat for mothers age > 35"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881604/"
]
] |
|
6v0ml5
|
why are u supposed to not ration water but ration food when you are stranded in the desert?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v0ml5/eli5_why_are_u_supposed_to_not_ration_water_but/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because you lose water through sweat, the minimum water intake is a hard minimum. You can go longer without eating because your body can turn to fat stores/muscle mass for energy.",
"You can ration water, but there is a hard minimum required to keep living in that environment and if you go below that you will die. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1ymgnl
|
why does congress have a 13% approval rate but incumbents are re-elected at a rate of 90%.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ymgnl/eli5_why_does_congress_have_a_13_approval_rate/
|
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"text": [
"They elect a person, but are fed up with 'the system' and not making the right connection between the two. Also the system also allows to put the blame on somebody else. \n\nAnd the elected might have something done for his local voters and they respect that, but still hate on Washington. ",
"Follow the money.\n\nA key factor in election to the US congress is strong financial support. Rallies, flyers, helpers, advertisements, etc, all cost money. For a few *very* well off individuals this money can come out of their own pocket. For the vast majority though, this money comes (largely) from lobbyists. Campaign sponsorship comes with an implicit recognition that you'll do your best to support their interests, a very valuable commodity for many companies.\n\nNow, most lobby groups do hedge their bets a bit, the worst possible outcome is that a person who knows they helped the other guy gets elected. However, there are already a few factors which favour the incumbent. The incumbent inherently has a greater name-recognition; he spent all that money on advertising 2 years ago, remember?\n\nAs a result, lobby groups / campaign sponsors give more money to incumbents than challengers. A **lot** more. In 2000 for [example](_URL_0_), incumbents spent 92.8% of the money. Not surprisingly, this translated to 67.3% of the vote.\n\nThis is a self-sustaining advantage too. The fact that incumbents get more money means they are more likely to win. The fact they are more likely to win means that the benefits from donating to them are greater than the benefits of donating to the other guy. Thus, incumbents get *even more* money.",
"People like their own representatives, but don't like Congress as a whole.\n\nMost people are familiar with their own representative. That makes sense; when their local politician does stuff, it gets on the news (and the rep makes sure it gets on the news). Despite popular perception, a lot of the staff work in their offices is \"constituent service\": It has nothing to do with policy or party but everything to do with civic bureaucracy (getting licenses renewed, pushing through car registrations, etc.) Locally, a lot of people might say \"Oh, I don't agree with X's stance on this issue, but he helped get my visa application through so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.\"\n\nIn addition, politicians can speak to their constituents; they have a sounding board through which they can explain their positions more fully. A politician can release a statement tailored to their area to help explain why a vote is important. \n\nIncumbency is also important; it generally has an advantage (name recognition, local connections, etc.) It can sometimes be a liability, but most of the time it's a benefit. \n\nFinally, they can start local projects (\"pork\"). Now that earmarks are gone, that's not as effective as it used to be, but it's still there.\n\nAll of these factors are things that are locally known, and none of them are nationally known. So when people say \"I hate Democrats/Republicans!\" they're looking at the wide view--they only are aware of the upper-level decisions made on important issues. But for their own representative, they can say \"Well, I only agree with about 40% of what his party stands for, but he got that baseball park built for us, and I know the local pipefitters like him, and he helped my aunt get a wheelchair from Medicare, so I trust him to do the right thing.\" You don't think those things about a representative across the nation because it doesn't help you, but they're doing the exact same thing.\n\nEDIT: A lot of people are mentioning money and gerrymandering. While both can certainly be a factor, they're not close to being major factors. I won't go into it (unless we get another ELI5) but while money favors incumbents, it can often be a tool used against them as well (see: 1994, 2006, 2010). And gerrymandering doesn't really answer the OP's question--it can certainly be an issue but it wouldn't explain why they are locally popular and nationally unpopular.",
"Simple, congress doesnt work well as a team, but you cant trace it down to any one person (except maybe senators like Ted Cruz that spend all their time filibustering). Also these congressmen are getting paid more to get nothing done in a sense from big sponsors. Almost always if you have plenty of money you can get re-elected with extensive campaining. In general there too much differences between the two parties to get anything done in politics and thats ultimatly damaging the reputation of congress.",
"Because of the way Congress is set up in the Constitution, members of the House of Representatives only represent people from their district and Senators only represent people from their state. What this means is that when it comes time to vote, as a citizen, I can only vote for the member of the House associated with my district and the 2 Senators from my state (during different election years). \n\nIn other words, there are 435 people in the House and 100 in the Senate. A single voter only has a say for 3 of these 535 people. \n\nBecause of this concentration of votes on only a few elected leaders, Congress is made up of people from all over the political spectrum, rather than just being an average of everyone's views. As a result, there are plenty of Congressmen people like and plenty they hate. They tend to like the ones from where they're from and share similar views, but they dislike those with opposing views from elsewhere. When all is said and done, people hate Congress as a whole, but that hatred's usually based upon the actions of politicians that the individual is unable to vote for. ",
"1. False dichotomy two party system.\n\n2. Lobbying dollars used to buy advertising.\n\n3. Numbfuck idiots believing what they see on tv.",
"Gerrymandering and money. Basically, setting up the voting districts so that your party cannot lose. And because you are the incumbent, special interests will support you with plenty of money for your campaign.\n",
"because it's never *my* congressman.",
"it's only pork when it's not your district.",
"Sports team based mentality when it comes to politics. What team are you on? Democrat or Republican? Blindly vote for the member of your team.\n\nHonestly, the only way to really garner any change would be to always vote for the other guy. I never vote for the incumbent. Doesn't matter what political party their affiliated with, or what their beliefs/ideals are - insanity wolf is the only solution to this horrible mess we're in.",
"because most people are fucking stupid.\n\nmost of those who do bother to vote, only do so by party lines or by who they think will give them free shit (regardless of how much damage it's doing).\n\naka worthless/selfish ignorant assholes. \n\nyou'll also notice, especially on a local level, that the same last names are in the political elite year after year after year... no matter how shitty their local city/town economy is doing.\n\nagain, this is because most people are fucking stupid and they vote for the name they recognize instead of actually being politically involved, or at the very least, researching the candidates before election day.\n\nthis is what frustrates me the most about my country. while everyone should have the right to vote, they also should have the personal obligation to understand what certain politicians (and political parties IMO) are doing to them.\n\ni'd much rather someone not vote at all than go to the booth voting based solely on platitudes, ingrained behavior, and willful ignorance of the world around them.",
"Because people are fucking stupid, through and through",
"Because if you ask most Americans what they think of their individual Congressman, they will usually say they like them. It's a kind of, \"Well, MY Congressman isn't like the rest of Washington.\"",
"I wish my laptop worked as i could type this much faster. Here goes.\n\nApproval rating overall doesn't have much effect on specific people who get elected. Viewing congress as a whole is different than how people view their individual elected officials, particularly because you can pinpoint the projects a local official has taken part in and relate personally.\n\nMore importantly, incumbency and re election is a separate beast that rides on two main factors: name recognition and money. Incumbent re elections are very high because their names are at least recognized due to already having campaigned and been in office. People trust things they at lest have heard of. \n\nNext- money. Money is used to get name recognition. Money is spent on flyers, signs, canvassing, events, renting office space, cold calling, paying finance directors to call people to get more money, etc. incumbents are already in the lead here because they already have the names of people they need to call, they already have franking privileges (mailing ) which saves a shitload of money. They have databases with information readily compiled from previous election runs. So a non-incumbent has to work a ton harder to raise money and get her name out there. \n\nThis kills me i cant keep typing maybe i write more later when laptop fixed ",
"Most Congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered, wherein a majority of the constituents are historically Republican or Democratic-leaning voters. So even if many of them are upset with how Congress operates as a whole, they would still be much more reluctant to kick out the incumbent (who represents their views) than to vote for the other party's candidate.",
"1. Because we are idiots who vote Party Lines.\n\n2. Because the system is set up so that we are typ0ically offered a choice between 'Dumb and Dumber'.\n\n3. Because we are too lazy to even keep track of what our own particular 'Esteemed Legislator' is doing and only blame them in \ngeneral for the messes they create.",
"incumbency name recognition advantage - people are subconsciously more likely to vote for a name they recognize, and most people just do not take the time to educate themselves about the candidates.",
"Gerrymandering!\n\nGerrymandering is the act of redrawing district lines to make is easier for one side to get elected. Imagine there is an area that is electing 3 congressmen. There are 100 hardline republicans and 50 hardline democrats. If split fairly you might see 2 republicans and 1 democrat. If you carefully draw the district line so that each district has 33 republicans and 16 democrats (the leftovers can go anywhere) you now have 3 republicans.\n\nHere are some examples of [gerrymandered districts.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt is a very popular strategy, particularly among republicans. Draw the districts so any many of the opposing party is in a single district limiting them to one seat. Then the remaining districts are strongly in your favor. The problem is now these congressmen have no fear of losing future elections. The democratic district is near 100% democrat, the republican districts are usually very safely republican. The congressmen could run down the streets naked flipping off their constituents and still probably win. Republicans don't want to vote for democrats and vice versa. The only danger of losing their seat is to another of the same party in the primary.\n\nA second major reason is SuperPACs. Corporations can basically pump unlimited money into campaigns and flood television with commercials trying to sabotage candidates they don't like and telling people to vote for candidates they do. They get away with a lot of things. People don't have enough time to really research the candidates and vote the way TV tells them to. Flooding the television with attack ads is very effective.",
"Gerrymandering, is the correct answer. The boundaries of Congressional districts are very carefully drawn, with great complexity, so that they include people who will vote for the candidate. The politician picks his voters, instead of the voters choosing the politician. Imagine if you were running for an elected position and you were able to decide who votes for you. Do you think that you would win?",
"It's because of what they call \"politics\". They are using reporters to leak stories in their favor, using back stabbing tactics against those in their way. Also, setting up other candidates for failure to somehow ensure personal success. Ultimately they all want to get to the top ASAP and be as powerful as possible. They will use any means necessary. For example, back channeling with foreign dignitaries, say from china for instance, and powerful billionaire business men to leverage control. sometimes they don't even need your vote, they are so crafty they can get people around them to resign and slowly move up the ladder that way.",
"Everyone hates congress but your local congressman get little bits of legislation passed to benefit your area. So the people there love their congressmen but hate everybody else's.",
"Everybody thinks they have the best congressman. It's always somebody else's fault.",
"Because people are idiots.",
"Because House of Cards",
"Pork.\n\nYour congressman brings home federal money for the project you like (a community swimming pool or a waste facility that creates jobs or gets some local person on a postage stamp, etc.) You may hate the other congressman in other districts doing the same but you got yours!",
"People tend to blame congressmen other than the ones in their state/district. ",
"People are uninformed. Name recognition helps get politicians reelected",
"Political Science major here! I'll focus more on the House, which is the more obstructionist part of Congress, for reasons I'll discuss. Congressional House districts cater to a relatively small constituency and districts are often drawn in ways that preserve a member's electoral majority, a process known as [gerrymandering](_URL_0_). This means that a member of Congress doesn't have to tailor his image and positions to a randomly selected 1/435 of Americans in his state, but a carefully selected group that is predisposed to support him.\n\nIt's important to remember that job security for Congressmen depends only on whether or not their constituents approve of the job they're doing. One reason so many people don't like Congress is that many members refuse to compromise. This leads to gridlock; most Americans agree that Congress needs to compromise more to get things done. However, this logic collapses when looking at their own Congressman. When other Congressmen oppose legislation to move forward on an issue these Americans care about, they are being \"obstructionist\" and Congressional disapproval increases. When their own Congressman refuses to compromise on an issue, he is \"taking a principled stand\" or \"doing what's right, not popular\".\n\nIt can help to think of Congressmen as rational actors; their is no incentive for compromising to get things done for the \"good of the nation\" because the nation doesn't elect them. They only need to serve the interests of their (often quite narrow-minded) constituents - there is no incentive to compromise. Indeed, doing so could be seen as weakness and become a huge liability in the next election. For example, Senator McConnell, the Senate Republican majority leader, is being hit with attacks from the right for not taking enough hard-line stances against Harry Reid and the Democrats. \n\nIt's a complicated issue but it becomes clearer when you remember that Congressmen want to be reelected and to keep their jobs, not necessarily do what's best for the country.",
"Ctrl+F: first past the post\n\nNo results.\n\nSeriously, guys?",
"\"It's not my guy, it's everyone else.\"",
"Everyone loves their congress critter. Their congress critter has done a lot for the district. It's your congress critter who sucks and needs to go so please vote him out.\n\n",
"Fenno, where are you to explain?",
"A two party duopoly. The first priority of members of congress are to get elected and remain in office, and they are very good at it. After this, they are interested in getting fellow party members elected to office and keeping them in office. Distantly after those two priorities, and probably numerous others, is to actually pursue their legislative agenda and try to get some laws passed, but that's really unnecessary in pursuit of the first two priorities.\n\nNow, in a given congressional race, the candidates must convince the voters of two things. First, they must convince the voters that the Democrat and Republican running are the only two worthy candidates, and that a vote for a third party candidate is a waste. Since both parties agree on this, there isn't much a third party can do to get recognition and access to voters through debates. (Even if a third party candidate did get some attention, most voters just don't pay that much attention.)\n\nSecond, the candidates must convince voters that they are better than the other candidate. The easiest way to do this is to take the other candidates positions and highlight the negative aspects and drive those home in every speech while remaining ambiguous about their own positions. When candidates are ambiguous, people tend to assume that they agree with them on the issues. Just look at how President Obama ran on a campaign of hope and change, and what people just assumed that meant.\n\nNow that the candidate has managed to get elected, they need to focus on their reelection. That means focusing your legislative agenda on bills that are sure to please the voters, while avoiding anything that could be used against you. That's how you end up with deficit spending, because anyone who would vote to raise taxes or cut spending could be cast in a negative light during the next election. So, they vote to spend on things all the voters like while also voting to keep taxes low. If the president wants to go to war, they won't vote for it as they required by the constitution, but they also won't stop the president from doing it anyway, because being for or against war can be used against you.\n\nCongress is like your shitty roommate who doesn't stop the dog from taking a shit on the floor. Sure, they're against the dog shitting on the floor, but doing anything about it may cause them to get shit on their hands and the dog may not like them for it. Fortunately for them, they have you convinced that only one other person is willing to live with you (because they tore down your fliers), and that other person clearly hates dogs because they happen to own a cat.",
"It's true that \"Congress sucks but my politician doesn't\" for one reason: gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is why. ",
"There are quite a few reasons. The first is that incumbents have nearly every advantage in an election. Elections come down to money and networking. Incumbents have already raised the money the first time. They know who will give them money and they know how to get it. Similarly, they have all the connections. People know them and will support them. \n\nSecondly, super PACs will tend to support incumbents. PACs want to get in good with politicians and will support this whom they think will win often regardless of affiliations. Ted Kennedy was very anti gun yet every election he received the maximum donation from the NRA. The perception that incumbents will win helps make sure they actually will win.\n\nThird, people tend to hate all politicians except the one they elected. ",
"[This is a simple and mind-opening book](_URL_0_) about the problem. \n\nBasically? The voters are the problem. We vote for our representatives based on our own local interests, then expect them to carry those out. But we also expect Congress as a whole to do things that are best for the entire country. What we don't do is consider the possibility that what's best for our local community may not be good for the country. We also don't think for even a second if every district and state acted as selfishly as we did that it would cripple the nation.\n\nFarmers will think \"We produce the food for the whole country! We deserve these subsidies!\" That costs the rest of *the country* money. The steel industry thinks \"without us, American manufacturing is dead. We deserve these tax breaks!\" That costs the rest of *the country* money. The banks think \"With all these regulations, we can't quickly manage investments to keep the economy productive, and everyone depends on us doing that. We need to get these regulations gone!\" That results in *the country* getting proper fucked.\n\nNearly every \"special interest\" group can think of legitimate reasons and rationalizations for why they deserve special treatment. But everyone claiming that treatment drains our national treasures. Think about this the next time you hear a politician railing against special interests. He'll call out the easy targets, but if you dig into his politics, you'll see he has a ton of his own special interests. You shouldn't be surprised when those interests align with those of his district, his voters. \n\nWe're all a selfish bunch of assholes without any foresight or long-term thinking.\n\nThis is the exact same problem we see when we take national polls about what to do about our budget problems. \"Balance the budget!\" we say loudly. \"But don't raise my taxes or cut any of these programs!\" we say, just as loudly. You look at the poll results when they ask about specific programs to cut for spending, and even Republicans won't say yes to any of them. We're a stupid fucking group of people. \n\n**The voters are the problem.** If politicians are a problem, it's only because they listen to us so well.",
"Imagine you poll three cities for their favorite foods. These cities are A, B, and C. The poll finds the following results:\n\nA - Steak\n\nB - Candy Corn\n\nC - Deep Fried Broccoli\n\nThe pollsters say \"Well, this is fantastic, we know what each city likes, so let's give them all the same dish, one that contains all three favorite foods!\"\n\nYou now have a dish that contains steak, candy corn, and deep fried broccoli. Because it contains all three favorites, it's said to be representative of all cities preferences, but if you ask the people what they think of the dish, most of them will say that they DON'T enjoy it, because their favorite dish is being overpowered by other dishes in the casserole. \n\nThe favorites are the individual representatives, the casserole is congress, and the cities are the individual districts. \n\nIf you want to learn more about why people overwhelmingly elect incumbents in each election, that is a different story. ",
"Basically it's battered-wife syndrome. I predict you'll see a change when people stop engaging in the charade and start opting-out en masse.",
"Because everybody elses congress critter is teh devil.",
"It's never our fault.",
"My government teacher put it as \"I voted for this guy, and I'm not an idiot, so it must be the rest of Congress that is the problem\"",
"Hardly anyone will read this at the bottom, but it's lobbying, or as most politicians will never admit to calling it, legitimized bribery. I was a lobbyist for 2 years for the largest lobbying 501(c)(3) on the planet, the AARP. If we're ever going to have the opportunity for beneficial reform, lobbying/bribery has to become illegal. ",
"Answer = Gerrymandering. \n\nIn most states (some, like Iowa, California are exceptions) districts are drawn by the state legislators. Extremely advanced computer software is used to draw district lines to guarantee outcomes, allowing for maybe a single competitive race (i.e.: Florida). \n\nIn the 2012 election, more Democratic votes were cast in the nation, but the House of Representatives is Republican controlled. That is due to gerrymandering. Both parties are equally guilty of this all over the country.\n\nPeople like their Representative because they have purposefully & statistically been grouped with other like-minded citizens. This causes a galvanization of people's beliefs (nice way of saying \"close-minded\"). \n\n(Source: I have a degree in Political Science and teach college level government). ",
"\"Why does congress have a 13% approval rate but incumbents are re-elected at a rate of 90%.\"\n\nSimple. People want to think that the problem is with everyone else and not the guy that they elected. After all, the people in a district don't want to believe that they could put a guy in office that sucks. For example, you are a manager and you hire someone you really believe in to do a difficult job. He's screwing it all up and everyone around you knows it.... but to save your own ego, you deny to yourself that the guy you hired is the problem. Instead, you blame the problems on the people around him.",
"I worked on the campaign trail for nearly a decade, so I can tell you the three most interesting reasons: \n\n1. The Optimism Gap - People hate Congress but love their Congressman. This is less true than it used to be but the dynamic still holds. While Congress is less popular than the King of England at the time of the Revolutionary War, most members of Congress get something like 60-70% approval in their home district. This high level of approval among active voters is primarily due to the gerrymandering of districts (i.e. politicians choose the voters, not the other way around). However, widespread voter apathy also contributes to this dynamic because most polls only take into account the opinions of people planning on voting (the first question in most polls is: Are you planning on voting? No = goodbye). Therefore, the positive reviews of the politician's active supporters disproportionately skew polling and ignore the potentially negative opinions of inactive voters that exist in the population. \n\n2. PAC Checks - Most Political Action Committees (PACs) have a rule that they only give money to incumbent members of Congress. It's not just that the guy with the most money wins something like 95% of the time, it's also that most of the money flows to incumbents specifically. So while the challenger is phone calling every one of their friends for $100 or asking for $25 in an email to build their campaign from scratch and then later spending 5-7 hours/day 5-7 day/week raising money by cold-calling rich donors, politicians already elected to Congress get multiple $5000 checks handed to them at lunches and happy hours in DC. The incumbents-only rule is especially true of corporate PACs and rarely broken (only when it's obvious the challenger will win). \n\n3. Franking - In the budget for every member of Congress is an allotment of money for substantial amounts of postage and constituent contact, known as \"franking\". Essentially, elected member of Congress get to mail their voters for free, telling them how awesome they are and how much amazing legislation they've passed (or stopped). It's like a low-tech advertising budget for incumbent Congressmen (though some offices have even used franking dollars to run online ads). This really entrenches incumbents even further because they are constantly corresponding with constituents and doing them favors, which tit-for-tat picks them up additional support at the polls. Challengers face an uphill battle in gaining similar name recognition and popularity among the population because they have to do it all with their campaign. Incumbents get to use their office and the campaign to make their case for why they are a good member of Congress who should be re-elected.\n\nWait, this isn't ELI50? Oops, my bad. Hope it helps!\n\nPS. It's really interesting to combine the 13% approval of Congress with the Gallup poll result showing 87% of Americans believe reducing government corruption is extremely or very important (making it a top 3 issue). I wonder if the 13% of people is the same in both cases - approve of Congress and believe corruption is not a problem. Who the hell are those people?\n\ntl;dr - Congress sucks, but incumbents got the votes, the money, and the favors. ",
"I know others have mentioned the obvious answer to this paradox: redistricting. A while back, Slate magazine came up with a jigsaw puzzle game that illustrates how arbitrarily these \"districts\" are often drawn in order to all but ensure victory for one party. Give it a try here if you like: _URL_0_",
"Approval Rate: \"Do you like the president/congress?\" 'NO FUCK THEM'\n\nElection Time: \"Who'd you vote for?\" 'Same people ... didn't know anything about the others' *or* 'Didn't Vote' *or* 'etc...'",
"* Because running for office is extremely expensive \n* name recognition goes a very long way",
"see GERRYMANDERING ... that is the answer.",
"People love their state congressmen, they just hate everyone else's.",
"Scientifically gerrymandered districts + scientifically effective techniques that reduce voter turnout = polarized electorate, and defeat-proof incumbents. ",
"Wikibot, what is Gerrymandering?",
"The entire political process has been hijacked by money and the people running are always the same cogs in the same machine. They don't represent us and they haven't in 100 years. The ad campaigns they run to sell us these people work on most of the Lemmings (i.e. \"hope and change\"). Collectively we don't have the intelligence or the will to get people in office who actually represent us.",
"People hate change. They fear what they don't know \n\n",
"Here's an example for you: Congress is currently authorizing tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars to be spent on construction of fighter jets that the military has no use for. These jets are going straight from factories into scrap yards. The vast majority of the country thinks this is outrageous, but the thousands of people who work at those factories are very happy with the work their representatives in Congress have done to keep their jobs from disappearing.\n\nCongressmen are elected to serve the interests of their states or districts. If they can siphon enough tax dollars back into their home districts, then their constituents will love them, even if it means they're screwing over the rest of the country in the process.",
"You should change yours I'm afraid of charge. ",
"OOH OOH WE TALKED ABOUT THIS IN GOV CLASS\nits something called the incumbent advantage: essentially, he's already well known, and the other guy has to fight an uphill battle to get his name out there. essentially they use those ads, \"do we really know who (insert person running against incumbent) is?\" also, most local parties don't allow fellow party members to run against them (so a republican can't run against a republican incumbent and get party support and has to run as an independent) and in some districts that are overwhelmingly one party the other guy (democrat or republican) doesn't really stand a chance. ",
"Because we, the people, are horrible at making decisions. Just like Congress.\n\nPeople don't actually follow political news for the most part. They vote based primarily on familiarity with a name, or for their \"political party\". I feel confident that 90% of people that vote for an elected official can't tell you with any level of confidence what that person actually stands for or has built their \"campaign\" on. \n\nIn short, American politics are awful, and we need to erase what we have and start over, imo.",
"Extremely simple answer: people hear national news about congress and local news about their representative (if they hear information about them at all).\n\nNational news work is often higher profile and there's a much bigger focus on investigative journalism. Local news is more concerned with fluff pieces and the image of whatever region they are in. This isn't true in bigger locales, local news in New York city almost certainly has a hard-hitting investigative bent to it, especially compared to the newspaper from buttfuck nowhere.\n\nThat means that when you hear about your representative, unless they've done something bad enough to draw the attention of national news, you're probably reading a fluff piece.\n\nThis phenomenon alone is enough to give people a biased opinion of their own representatives compared to others.",
"Because research is hard, and commercials are pretty.",
"Because *your* representative sucks.",
"The two party system has failed us. That is why.",
"I think it's because congress, not their specific politician has a 13% approval ratings. For the most part, republicans blame democrats and democrats blame republicans. So a republican thinks democrats ruin congress and thus congress is bad. And vice versa. I've come to this conclusion because these are my opinions, but I won't get too opinionated or political here",
"Fixing it would involve more than 50% of voting-age Americans giving a shit. Of those only 50% show up to vote. Of those, only 50% know anything about who or what they are voting for. Of those only 50% bother to be involved in the political process beyond voting day. The rest watch \"16 and Pregnant with the Kardashians\"",
"because when you check approval ratings people think about the \"actions\" of congress as one entity.\n\nbut when they vote they vote directly on party lines (all dem all repub) and or as the media \"tells\" them to vote.\n\nOR the \"ratings\" are cherry picked statistics that mean nothing.",
"Because people are generally forced to pick between a turd sandwich and a giant douche.",
"The short answer is, because they aren't real elections.\n\nWhile that's not entirely true, after two centuries of political positioning and posturing, the cards have been effectively stacked in favor of the incumbent and reigning political parties.\n\nedit: crap, I only just noticed this is supposed to be ELI5... oh well. I'll leave it up. I can take the downvotes.",
"It's called gerrymandering and it's bullshit.\n_URL_0_",
"Power - > Money - > Advertising - > Votes",
"Watch this movie. It explains everything. [The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) starring Eddie Murphy](_URL_0_)",
"\"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.\" - Winston Churchill",
"I'm a little late to the party, but I think I can make a meaningful contribution to this ELI5.\n\nA major problem with the American political system is how we vote. I'm not talking about the Electoral College, electronic ballots or anything like that. I'm talking about the mathematical system we use to combine individual preferences into a group preference. Each person selects one candidate, the votes are tallied, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This is known as plurality voting, and it sounds fair.\n\nUnfortunately, plurality voting is deceptively simple. It has a major defect known as [the spoiler effect.](_URL_0_) The spoiler effect occurs when a candidate draws votes from a major candidate with similar political views thereby causing a strong opponent of both to win. Famous presidential spoilers include Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader. Spoilers not only happen during presidential elections, but at every level of government. This is why [Republicans fund Green Party Candidates](_URL_5_), and [Democrats fund Libertarian Candidates](_URL_3_) in an effort to take votes away from their opponents.\n\nThe spoiler effect has trained voters to [strategically vote](_URL_2_) to prevent the spoiler effect from occurring. Unfortunately, [strategic voting perpetuates the two party system](_URL_6_), and the two party system is a major reason why we have such crappy candidates.\n\nThe good news is that there are voting systems that eliminate the spoiler effect. The bad news is that there is no clear best voting system. [Score Voting](_URL_4_) (The same system Amazon uses to rate products) is a personal favorite of mine.\n\nTL;DR: We keep voting for the same crappy politicians because math. [Here is a CGP Grey video about it]( _URL_1_)\n",
"Because a state representative congress was a great idea 250 years ago but sucks now. When a congressman tacks on $50 million worth of pork on a bill his own state loves him while the rest of the country hates him for wasting our money. When the military gets stuck with a billion dollars worth of planes they don't want, which prevents them from getting equipment they DO want and can cost lives, everyone hates that congressman, but the people in his state where the manufacturer is located love him. It is an awful system right now, the country suffers because they all look out for themselves first, their state second, the country last. Add to that the money trail, where encumbents have corporate dollars already behind them, plus they can sell their seniority as a benefit if they are on key committees and the system is rigged for reelection.",
"It's because the way most districts are drawn there is really no more competitive races left for Congress.",
"How has gerrymandered districts not come up yet? Gerrymandering produces safe districts that encourage extremism, as the only challenger will likely be the one more able to appeal to the district's base.",
"Because Americans just vote straight ticket instead of researching their candidates. ",
"I like to tell Australians that \"I exercise my right not to vote.\" I refuse to vote for the lessor of two evils, and I'm still waitng for a canidate who represents me fully. I'd go to write in \"Stephen Colbert\" but thats just a waste of resources. I would always vote if the gov comes up with an app for that... ha"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_stagnation_in_the_United_States#Incumbency_financial_advantage"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.rollcall.com/features/Election-Preview_2011/election/top-5-ugliest-districts-210224-1.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/11/the-top-ten-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts-in-the-united-states/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Governments-End-Washington-Stopped-Working/dp/1891620495"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/08/gerrymandering_jigsaw_puzzle_game_put_the_congressional_districts_back_together.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering"
],
[],
[
"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104114/"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_voting",
"http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/revealed-obama-campaign-bundler-helping-fund-libertarian-in-tight-va-gubernatorial-race/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_Voting",
"http://www.greenparty.org/PA_funding.php",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
xr1xg
|
Curiosity landed on Mars successfully: what does this mean for us?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xr1xg/curiosity_landed_on_mars_successfully_what_does/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5ouc3x"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Let's celebrate first! Nothing beats real time experimental verification of all the science and engineering that went into successfully accomplishing this feat!!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
fiuqw
|
Official: r/askScience survey: How and why do you get involved with the community.
|
Hi guys, my name is Charlie. I'm a science communication student at Imperial College London. I'm doing some research on web based science communities, and i thought r/askscience would be a great case study. If you have 2 minutes, would you mind filling out this form [askscience survey link](_URL_0_). The mods have given me temporary moderator powers to aid my research (don't worry - ill give them up ASAP). All the answers are anonymous, unless you chose to put your username in. If you would like the results after theyve been analysed, let me know.
Thanks very much for your time, I really appreciate it.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fiuqw/official_raskscience_survey_how_and_why_do_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c1g8vx6",
"c1g963v",
"c1g97ux",
"c1g9h5x",
"c1g9v07"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
4,
13,
2
],
"text": [
"Would you describe more about your major and research please? It sounds interesting, but I am woefully ignorant of your field of study...",
"I am not the smartest person but I love learning and I love Science! Doing your survey now.",
"official... hmm..\n\nI like science, I like learning; but sometimes there are questions there I want to know but I didn't know I wanted to know and this is a great place to learn those questions (and hopefully their answers) that I would have wanted to know if I had known I hadn't known about them, but for science (not regular askreddit). additionally I know a little science that I can share with other who ask the questions which I know the answer to",
"Sorry to throw a wrench in your research methods, but you might want to allow people to respond to 'Highest Level of Education Completed' with 'Some University' or 'Some Graduate Work' etc, as I imagine you will find a lot of students on this board.",
"I miss the informative TV programming that use to be on when I was a kid where they asked simple (yet profound) questions about the phenomenoa around them, and this subreddit is the closest thing to it....although you people don't make as many whitty puns as Bill Nye."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://charles-harvey.co.uk/askscience/"
] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
l475c
|
how the reddit spam filter works.
|
I have only submitted 3 links which were not even remotely spam, and 2 of them were caught by the spam filter and I had to message the mods, yet I constantly see actual spam in the new que. So what's up with this thing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l475c/eli5_how_the_reddit_spam_filter_works/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2po7au",
"c2pon6a",
"c2po7au",
"c2pon6a"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"nice try spamer",
"The reddit spam filter is a highly tuned machine, carefully taking into account many factors such as your previous posts and how well they did, your karma, whether you have reddit gold, Tuesdays, solar flares, CMBR and and the stock market, before flipping a coin and deleting your post on heads.",
"nice try spamer",
"The reddit spam filter is a highly tuned machine, carefully taking into account many factors such as your previous posts and how well they did, your karma, whether you have reddit gold, Tuesdays, solar flares, CMBR and and the stock market, before flipping a coin and deleting your post on heads."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
5s34lc
|
why do most artists, actors, musicians and comedians tend to be left leaning? what is it about being on the right that makes you less inclined to create art?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s34lc/eli5_why_do_most_artists_actors_musicians_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddc5n5u"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Think of it this way:\n\nWhen you do your taxes or you fill in your name on some form, you're technically creating something that wasn't there before. But we don't call *that* kind of thing \"creative,\" because you're not doing anything *new and different.* \n\n\"Creative\" people are people who naturally like to do things differently than others. \n\nAnd that usually means they're naturally more comfortable with the changes that *result* from doing things differently...and also that they're more comfortable with other people who are openly different, just like *they're* being \"openly different\" every time they do or make something that's creative and new.\n\nAnd by contrast: If someone is \"right-leaning,\" that means they're (typically) politically *conservative.* And if someone is more \"conservative\" and more comfortable with things staying the way they are, then they usually won't become \"a creative person\" who does things differently. (Although they might, of course, still become a *traditional* artist who \"follows the [old] rules\". But we don't hear about those artists as much.)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1107o8
|
In medieval battles, what was the psychology of front-lines troops?
|
Most of my "knowledge" of medieval combat (and all eras before that, too) comes from movies. In them, you see big masses of men marching grimly toward each other, and then hacking one another to bits. The front-line guys get mowed down, then the next guys step over them to get at the enemy.
How did armies avoid a "No, really. After you" scenario? It seems to me that being near the front of the army is essentially a death sentence, since the guys behind you are safe until you're dead. You know that you have the worst odds of survival in the entire battle. How in the world did you draw such a short straw?
1. Glory and bragging rights? On the outside chance that you don't get chopped in half by William Wallace, the other guys will buy you a round of mead.
2. Confusion? Maybe it wasn't exactly clear who would actually be at the very front of the army until the battle started.
3. Expendability and disregard for human life? Maybe you were a worthless peasant whose commander shoved you to the front ranks and promised to hang you if you disobeyed.
**Edit** Thanks for all the replies! It sounds like most of the answers are extreme compensation for the highest-risk soldiers, extreme discipline and fervor, and the fact that in close-quarters warfare the side that flees first probably gets massacred.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1107o8/in_medieval_battles_what_was_the_psychology_of/
|
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"It depends a lot on the army, leader, and time period you are talking about. Sometimes your front line was your most experienced soldiers used a shock troopers. Sometimes you sent out your inexperienced troops to inflict casualties without any real \"cost\". Many times the first person to breach a castle gate or over the wall, or the guy on the front line of a battle was paid more than other men. \n\nIn the end, any army relies on discipline, and when you are told you fight in the front, you fought in the front. When they say march, you marched. If you fled from battle you risked being killed by your own side. The reality is also that medieval warfare was probably less deadly than you imagine. \n\nEdit: [This line of comments from an old post of mine may help.](_URL_0_)",
"Many European armies, especially as muskets gained popularity, offered promotions or bounties to men who volunteered to be the first to breach a fortress' walls.\n > A forlorn hope was typically composed of volunteers and led by a junior officer with hopes of personal advancement. If the volunteers survived, and performed courageously, they would be expected to benefit in the form of promotions, cash gifts and adding glory to their name. The commanding officer himself was almost guaranteed both a promotion and a long-term boost to his career prospects. As a result, despite the risks, there was often competition for the opportunity to lead the assault.\n_URL_0_",
"I'm not so sure about medieval warfare, but I know that Ancient Greek and Roman warfare was way less deadly than portrayed in films because of those formations. As long as both sides could hold their lines it could develop into more of a shoving match in which the endurance and morale were key. If a side broke their line due to fear, fatigue, or lack of coordination they could be slaughtered. It was also common to spell off those in the front to try and maintain a fresh line.\n\nYou see something similar in Northern European shield walls during the Dark Ages. So I would imagine later medieval battles between two trained forces might have been less if a swirling melee than you see in the movies and professional soldiers probably knew that their best chance of victory and survival lay in successfully holding that front line. ",
"Well, in some cases, front line soldiers earned more. For example: the 16th Century German Doppelsoldner was paid, as the name suggests, twice as much as regular soldiers.\n\n",
"I believe you're underestimating the importance these cultures placed on personal bravery. Here's are the closing admonitions from from \"Flos Duellatorum\", a 14th century Italian manual for armored and unarmored combat:\n\n* Be audacious in the attack and let your soul not be old.\n* Have no fear in your mind; be on guard, you can make it.\n* Take the woman for an example, fearful and stricken by panic, she would never face the naked steel.\n* And so a fearful man is worth less than a woman. If you don't have audacity of heart, all else is missing.\n* Audacity, such virtue is what this art is all about.\n\n(Translation from Latin by Hermes Michelini, 2001)",
"I am not sure where I heard this, it may have been from the documentary series Peter and his son Dan Snow did on famous battles throughout the UK, Battlefield Britain. Anyway they seemed to think that during medieval periods it was less of a charge and fight each other till they are all dead, but more a charge and then a quick melee before pulling back again. It makes sense really when you think about it. It would be exhausting to fight for more than 10 minutes.\n\nIt may have been this episode _URL_0_ If it isn't then try some of the others!\n\nEDIT: Ok I was bored so I just watched the episode and it wasn't there. Still a fascinating documentary!",
"Death isn't as scary to those who believe in an afterlife. Religion helped.",
"I can't answer your question, but imagine being on the front line against [this guy's army](_URL_0_)\n\n\n > King Goujian's army was known for scaring its enemies before battle by forcing its front line, composed of criminals sentenced to death, to commit suicide by decapitating themselves",
"Perhaps you should take a look at John Keegan's classic, *The Face of Battle.* \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt might not specifically answer your question, but his attempt to figure out, as you put it, the mindset of the troops themselves, with limited historical documentation, is an amazing experiment.",
"The following is mostly on topic. Sorta.\n\nWhat I am reading is that the mind set of soldiers on the front is going to vary greatly depending on time and who they are fighting for. While I can't speak for Middle Ages I do have related information.\n\nA few years back I visited Gettysburg and took a very cool your with a very cool guide. I was in the military at the time, in the infantry, airborne no less. The tour guide was floored that I wanted to be with the best unit I could. He commented that during the American civil war the people most likely to retreat had the best chance of survival. He mentioned a unit from, I think it was, Rhode Island, who had a reputation for not retreating and had an extremely high casualty rate. As a modern soldier this shocked me, we have the idea of running away ground out of us very early. Besides, I am not risking leaving a friend behind while he is in trouble.\n\nAnother interesting tid bit, during the American civil war it is estimated that 70-90% of bullets fired by union troops went over the heads of their confederate counterparts. This is due to many reasons, poor marksmanship, fear of reprisal killing, religious reasons, etc. The idea of missing on purpose (save a warning shot) does not occur. If someone has earned being shot at by me and mine it means that either myself or my friend(s) are in mortal danger. I am going to do everything in my power to ensure their and my safety. Furthermore, bullets travel an extreme distance. I am not going to live the rest of my life wondering if those bullets I fired may have hit a bystander miles away. No thanks. \n\nTactics have changed considerably as well. I know that if wounded I will be given medical attention very quickly.\n\nMedicine has changed. Simple wounds do not necessarily mean death or mutilation.\n\nTechnology has changed. When I walk around I am wearing a suit of armor. I am a modern knight, on foot in my case.\n\nI am extremely expensive. SGLI (soldiers group life insurance) topped of at $400,000 when I got out. Training me cost about that much most likely. \n\nPolitics have changed. A draft is political suicide. High losses means less willing replacements. Modern media means much more visibility of any losses, which hurts recruitment further.\n\nDuring previous wars there were almost none of the above. \n\nTL;DR it is very hard for me to understand the mind set of soldiers throughout history, because modern soldiers have it so differently.",
"Medieval society was divided into three parts. Those who fought. Those who worked. And those who prayed. There was an imperative for the knights and nobles to be seen as front-line fighters, and they were trained for it from an early age. They have a very strong warrior ethos, and they want to be in the front-line. It's their right to be there.\n\nHow do they feel? They generally feel confident, sometimes over confident.\n\nWhy are they confident?\n\nFirstly they're worth more alive than dead. Small fortunes can be won by ransoming an enemy knight or noble. So mercy can be asked for, and more often than not it will be granted.\n\nSecondly they are better armoured and better trained than anyone else on the battlefield. This is very much where they belong. They know what to do, and they have the best equipment to do it with.\n\nThirdly, they are generally mounted warriors. Now there are various times and places where they dismount to fight, and there are differing degrees of horsemanship, but they've all been trained to ride. And horses respond badly to a rider who isn't confident. It's almost a necessity to project confidence if you want to be a good rider, let alone a mounted warrior.\n\nNow what I've said so far is only true for the early and high medieval periods. During the late medieval warfare changes. Armies increase in size and become more professional, and the common man becomes more important than the knight on the battlefield. Additionally there were a lot of region variations I haven't gone in to, such as the Italian city states, where the ethos was more one of civic pride.",
"Fiorre Dei Liberi wrote in one of his combat manuals ( C 1400) that he would rather fight on the walls of his own city against invading armies than fight in a duel. Contrary to what you see in movies, armor wasn't made of paper and was quite effective at saving the lives of those who could afford it.\n\n > And most of all I was wary of other fencing Masters and of their students. And they, the Masters, out of envy demanded me to fight with cut and thrust swords in zuparello darmare, without any other armour except for a pair of suede (chamois) gloves; and all this had happened because I did not want to practice with them and teach them anything of my art.\n\n > \t And this fact happened five times. And five times, for my honour, I have had to fight in unfamiliar places without relatives and without friends, not trusting anyone but God and my art and myself, Fiore, and my sword. And by the grace of God, I, Fiore, kept my honour and I did not injure myself.\n\n > Also I, Fiore, told my students who had to fight in the barriers that fighting in the barriers is much and much less dangerous than fighting with cut and thrust swords in zuparello darmare because to the one who plays with sharp swords, failing just one cover gives him death.\n\n > While the one who fights in the barriers and is well armoured, can be given a lot of hits, but still he can win the battle. Also there is another fact: that rarely someone dies because he gets hit. Thus I can say that I would rather fight three times in the barriers than just once with sharp swords, as I said above.\n\n > \t And thus I say that a man who fights in the barriers, being well armoured, and knowing the art of combat, and having all the advantages which can be obtained, if he is not valiant, he would better hang himself, although I can say that for the grace of god never one of my students I have made a looser in this art. In fact they have always kept their honour.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHis writings give many valuable insights into the mentality of trained fighters of 14th century Italy. All of his works, and the works of those like him, are especially significant because they are both contemporaneous with the use of the techniques discussed therein, and written from a perspective of intimate first hand knowledge, outside the speculative walls of the ivory tower. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v8dql/did_people_really_throw_themselves_on_spears_and/c52a2vy"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu2ma1kqtkA&feature=related"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Goujian_of_Yue"
],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/The-Face-Battle-Agincourt-Waterloo/dp/0140048979/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de%27i_Liberi"
]
] |
|
46yzcf
|
Who is the guy second top middle?
|
Can you help me identify the guy top middle? A former student has asked me and I don't know.
edit: sorry, forgot the image _URL_0_
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/46yzcf/who_is_the_guy_second_top_middle/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d08w8xw",
"d08xigt",
"d08xmfl"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"You got to provide an image for us to identify.",
"That's Francisco Franco at about 35 when he was a brigadier general. \n\n_URL_0_",
"An earlier Franco of [1926](_URL_0_), apparently. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://i.imgur.com/i8yJPDZ.jpg"
] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-brigadier-general-francisco-franco-bahamonde-news-photo/106498652"
],
[
"http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-brigadier-general-francisco-franco-bahamonde-news-photo/106498652"
]
] |
|
llklt
|
Are adipose cells in the human body created but never destroyed?
|
And if so, does this mean that, for example, a person who weighs 300 pounds then loses it down to 150 pounds will never be the same physically as someone who has always been 150 pounds?
I know excess skin flaps occur in people who've lost lots of weight, but what occurs as a result of all the extra adipose cells that remain?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/llklt/are_adipose_cells_in_the_human_body_created_but/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2tnpke",
"c2tnpke"
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
"text": [
"More or less. Adipocytes do have a lifespan, but it's quite long when compared to most other cells. Can range from months to years. \n\nThere's two ways that you can gain fat: hypertrophy and hyperplasia of adipocytes, and the distinction is important. \n\nHypertrophy of an adipocyte is just where they grow larger, but do not increase in number. However, at a certain point in growth they'll start telling other cells around them (adipocytes that haven't developed yet, essentially) to turn into adipocytes, and this is called hyperplasia of adipocytes, where the number of adipocytes actually increases, and not just the size. \n\nSo if you get extremely fat, and then lose a lot of weight, you'll still have more or less the same number of adipocytes if they underwent hyperplasia instead of hypertrophy (in other words, you stored your new fat gain inside new adipocytes instead of ones you already had), which, from what I understand, is why it's easier to regain weight once you lose it (that and down-regulation of metabolism). \n\nHere's a [site](_URL_0_) that may explain it better. Just gave the highlights. ",
"More or less. Adipocytes do have a lifespan, but it's quite long when compared to most other cells. Can range from months to years. \n\nThere's two ways that you can gain fat: hypertrophy and hyperplasia of adipocytes, and the distinction is important. \n\nHypertrophy of an adipocyte is just where they grow larger, but do not increase in number. However, at a certain point in growth they'll start telling other cells around them (adipocytes that haven't developed yet, essentially) to turn into adipocytes, and this is called hyperplasia of adipocytes, where the number of adipocytes actually increases, and not just the size. \n\nSo if you get extremely fat, and then lose a lot of weight, you'll still have more or less the same number of adipocytes if they underwent hyperplasia instead of hypertrophy (in other words, you stored your new fat gain inside new adipocytes instead of ones you already had), which, from what I understand, is why it's easier to regain weight once you lose it (that and down-regulation of metabolism). \n\nHere's a [site](_URL_0_) that may explain it better. Just gave the highlights. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.scq.ubc.ca/america-and-adipocytes-why-liposuction-is-not-the-answer/"
],
[
"http://www.scq.ubc.ca/america-and-adipocytes-why-liposuction-is-not-the-answer/"
]
] |
|
14hx8p
|
what is the difference between an institute, university, community, and college?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14hx8p/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_an_institute/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7d822q"
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"text": [
"Institutes and communities can be a lot of different things!\n\nA university is a collection of colleges. When you go to a university, you don't graduate from \"University X\", you graduate from \"The College of Y\". Think of a university as the federal government and colleges as states. States are largely self-contained and autonomous. If states get in a lot of trouble financially, they can turn to the federal government for help but it won't always work. The same is true of colleges inside of universities.\n\nThere are also colleges that are stand-alone, not part of any university system. These are, as an example, community colleges and state state colleges. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
35eubu
|
why do female rabbits hump?
|
Whenever I put two female bunnies in the same cage they take turns humping each other? They are both definitely female.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35eubu/eli5_why_do_female_rabbits_hump/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cr3zjy8"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Rabbits, both female and male, mount and hump each other as a sign of dominance. Rabbits tend to be very territorial and surprisingly aggressive.\n\nSorry if this answer isn't super in depth. Hopefully someone with a more satisfying explanation will come along.\n\nSource: Owned two rabbits (one male, one female). They would take turns humping each other.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
dt9ahv
|
how do different types of cells make different types of proteins?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dt9ahv/eli5_how_do_different_types_of_cells_make/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f6vmmjj",
"f6vr5ik"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"This process is highly regulated and has a lot of intersecting influences \n\nIn general, when embryos start to develop specific tissues some changes happen on the DNA that makes certain areas more \"open\" or readable. These open areas lead to higher levels of those genes turning into RNA and then proteins. Some of these differentially expressed genes search out for specific codes in your DNA that correspond to other genes associated with a specific tissue type. So these tissue specific \"transcription factors\" help muscles cells make muscles, or immune cells make immune signals.",
"All nucleated cells have the same DNA content. But you never express all the genes in the same cell. The genome is a library, and each cell reads only a section of that library.\n\nDuring development, there are asymmetrical gradients of secreted proteins. Say you have two cells next to each other, A on the left, B on the right, and you secrete protein X from the left of cell A. Due to diffusion, protein X will spread, but it will have a higher concentration near A than B. So now A will have a different response, and it will start to express different \"transcription factors\" than B. These factors are basically specific to certain genes, they facilitate their expression.\n\nNow A has slightly different genes, as the cells divide more and more they also secrete their own proteins. This creates a spatially complex network of many secreted proteins. The different combinations of protein concentrations each cell receives pushes it to have a more and more unique identity.\n\nThen these cells differentiate to tissues. And in the developed organism, you have a wide range of tissues, even expressing different transcription factors. And they also have different parts of their chromosomes \"loosened\" making them readable, as opposed to compact and tight.\n\nThese identities affect expression of many things that can in turn affect expression of other things, how you splice (how you create a given protein from a given gene), how you regulate that protein, how this protein responds to a given signal from the outside etc. It's really just layers of complexity compounding on earlier layers, generating cells with highly specific functions.\n\nNote: this is very simplified. Dozens more mechanisms exist for all the above. I just gave you an idea about how it works."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
5jkx1s
|
how do usb-c ports support so many different types of connection (power, thunderbolt, video, etc) at the same time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jkx1s/eli5how_do_usbc_ports_support_so_many_different/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dbgxz06"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"USB-C has a lot of pins, some of which can be repurposed. So it can't carry everything simultaneously, but it gives you the flexiblity that previously took a whole row of different ports.\n\nThere's 10 non-duplicate pins:\n\n* 2 for power (coming and going)\n* 4 for either high-speed USB (3.0) or DisplayPort (for video)\n* 2 for standard USB (2.0) for backwards compabibility and so you can use USB and displayport simulatenously (just not as fast)\n* 1 that's totally open for future standards and options if people want to implement something \n* 1 for USB Power Delivery communication, to confirm if devices are capable of handling higher juice to charge faster\n\nA couple of these are duplicated resulting in 12 pins, and then the entire setup is duplicated and mirrored on the other side for 24 pins.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3b6j1l
|
how much more dna do we share with relatives than the average stranger?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b6j1l/eli5_how_much_more_dna_do_we_share_with_relatives/
|
{
"a_id": [
"csjbudz",
"csjby62",
"csjc6y7",
"csjcp6h",
"csje5nl",
"csjug5b"
],
"score": [
126,
3,
15,
6,
3,
5
],
"text": [
"Among humans, all but about 0.1% of our DNA is the same. That .1% accounts for all differences we see among humans. Every color, shape, and size.\n\nFor identical twins, the DNA is 100% the same. Siblings/parents/children share about 50% (of the .1%). Grandparents/grandchildren it's about 25% (of the .1%).\n\nA distant cousin might share .01-3% (again, of that .1% that's different, not the total).\n\nWith a stranger, nearly none of that .1% that makes us unique is shared, but of course, the 99.9% we share with all humans would still be the same.",
"There's a certain percentage of our DNA that all humans share, because that DNA is essentially what makes us human (for example the genes that make sure our internal organs form properly). I believe this percentage is upward of 99%. Of the remaining DNA, on average you will share 50% with a sibling, since you both received a random mix of genetic material from the same two people. This percentage lessens the more distant the relative. So to answer your question, mathematically speaking the extra similarity in DNA between you and a sibling as compared to you and a stranger isn't that large, but that extra similarity often codes for aesthetic things such as eye colour which are easily noticed.",
"It also depends where you are in the world. In Africa there is in general more genetic variation between people. So in Africa you will share slightly less DNA on average with a random stranger. In the rest of the world, the hypothesis is that they were founded by a subset of the African population which left in the past, and so everyone is slightly more interrelated than the African population.\n\nThere are on average ~5 million differences between any person's DNA and the reference genome. Total human DNA is 6 billion bases, so you have ~ 99.99% of the same DNA as any other human being. Your 5 million differences from the reference will be shared 50% with your siblings. With a complete stranger from the same population, you will share less than that, but the exact amount will depend on which population you are in.\n",
"The percentage of the genome varying among humans is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.4% ([source](_URL_0_)). Let's say it's 0.2% for this example. So if you compare your genome with a random human, you should share 99.8% of your DNA with them.\n\nYou may have heard that you share 50% of your DNA with your siblings. That seems crazy when you compare it to the numbers above, but they aren't the same thing. The 50% you share with your siblings is what geneticists call \"identical by descent,\" meaning you not only got the same sequence at those genes as your sibling, you also inherited that sequence from the same place. (Note: 50% is a probability, not an exact measure.) A lot of it is going to be the same anyway (probably 99.8%). But you also share 50% of the remaining 0.2%. So if the average similarity between any two humans is 99.8%, then the average similarity between two siblings is 99.9%.\n\nWhether that is rather small or not depends on your point of view... to a geneticist, its quite a lot. :-)",
"It depends entirely on how close a family member is. \n\nAs stated by other posters we're all 99.8 more or less the same in structure and composition of genes. The closest relationship (the one with the least genetic diversity) is between identical twins, which is estimated at 60 SNP variants at birth. ",
" > Given that we share ~50% of our DNA with a banana\n\nBy the way, numbers like these are often misunderstood. The banana genome is 600 million bases long, while the human genome is 3 billion bases long. So how can we share 50% of our DNA with banana when we have 5 times more DNA than it does?\n\nWhat this number is really is the similarity between regions of both genomes that are \"orthologous\", meaning they're descended from the same region is the most recent common ancestor. There are tons of human genes that don't have orthologs in bananas (like genes to grow an eye, for example) and vice versa, so they're just not considered."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1438.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
3oo8lr
|
why does hypoglycemia give you a headache and shakes?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oo8lr/eli5_why_does_hypoglycemia_give_you_a_headache/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvz2h7g"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Most of your cells use a molecule called ATP for energy. However, ATP is too large to pass through the blood-brain barrier, so the brain uses glucose (the \"sugar\" in \"blood sugar\") for energy instead. Those symptoms are the result of your brain being energy-starved during periods of low blood sugar."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
23ud9q
|
what is the advantage to separating urine and feces?
|
I know how urine is from kidneys which has a different function, but why doesn't it just feed back into the fecal system? Wouldn't it be advantageous to have one fewer orifice? Or to reduce the sexual system to 1 output? Women get UTI all the time. Is there an advantage to separation I'm missing here?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ud9q/eli5_what_is_the_advantage_to_separating_urine/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ch0odj0",
"ch0oe0t",
"ch0oeqc"
],
"score": [
3,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Don't birds work that way? Presumably also many reptiles. And don't cows have their tubes much closer together?\n\nNow you got me wondering.",
"Amphibians, reptiles, birds, egg-laying mammals (the duck-billed platypus and some species of echidna) and some fish all possess one opening for faeces, urine and egg-laying. When people joke about eggs coming from the anus of a chicken, they're actually quite right, except that it's not called an \"anus\", it's called a \"cloaca\" -- which, rather distressingly -- is the Latin word for \"sewer\". When you look at bird poop, it's usually white with a black dot -- the white part is the urine, and the black dot is the actual poop.\n\nWe humans have a sort of residual cloaca; it's just divided up. However, there is a congenital disorder called \"persitent cloaca\", where all the openings come together and everything comes out of one channel. This causes severe problems in most cases: loss of bowel and urinary control, impaired sexual function and, for women, problems with menstruation and real difficulty with childbirth.",
"Liquids can be filtered out via osmosis, but bacteria LOVE fecal matter. You have so many bacteria in your gut. It's necessary to separate them because of this, and due to the nature of fluids and solutes they can be separated easily, whereas poop not so much. So it makes sense to use chemical filtration rather than physical filtration to divide the two from the intestines and be processed similarly, so that only one tube so to speak, needs to be set up to deal with a lot of bacteria. That would be your colon."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
160xc7
|
What is happening during a fusion reaction, and why is it so much harder to control than nuclear fission? Will it ever be possible?
|
Put your science in me.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/160xc7/what_is_happening_during_a_fusion_reaction_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7rnsnj",
"c7rnx9z",
"c7rnzhx"
],
"score": [
11,
7,
2
],
"text": [
"In fusion two light nuclei smack into each other hard enough to form a bigger nucleus which is lighter than the sum of the two nuclei that produced it. The extra mass is released as energy which we can use.\n\n\"Control\" isn't quite the right word. The problem is that we have to heat the stuff up to millions of degrees to so they hit each other hard enough to fuse. Containing that hot plasma such that we don't end up cooling it down is the challenge. If we just put it in a steel tank the gas will heat up the walls and we'll end up dumping more energy into it to keep it hot than we get out in the reactions. We are using magnetic fields to try to contain the plasma without having to actually touch it.\n\nAnother difficulty is getting the heat we do want out in a useful way. The best candidate fusion reaction emits most of its energy as fast neutrons, which are not the best thing for extracting energy in an orderly fashion.\n\nAs for if it will be possible, the answer is yes, it's just a matter of time and engineering. Right now a huge [test reactor](_URL_1_) is under construction which should produce a net energy output around 2020. Then a [prototype power plant](_URL_0_) is proposed, which is planned for operation in 2033.\n\nWhether or not those projects succeed, there's no reason it can't be done eventually.",
"In nuclear fission, to sustain an energy-producing chain reaction, when an atom is split it needs to emit neutrons with enough momentum to split another atom. Uranium and other fissionable materials do this spontaneously, with no external input, just through radioactive decay. If you have a critical mass of one of these fissionable elements all in one place, then a chain reaction will happen on its own, with no external energy input. Controlling this reaction is a matter of slowing down the neutrons to prevent it from running away out of control.\n\nFusion, on the other hand, doesn't happen spontaneously at normal pressures. In order to fuse atoms, you have to collide lightweight atoms (hydrogen, ideally) with enough energy to bring their nuclei together so that subatomic forces fuse them together. This process releases energy because under these conditions it takes more energy to keep the nuclei apart than it does to fuse them together. The reason this is so hard to control is that the pressures and temperatures necessary to make this happen are extremely high and the fusion reaction doesn't generate enough energy to sustain the containment devices. In the Sun, however, there's enough hydrogen in one place that gravity provides enough pressure to initiate fusion.\n\nEdit: That's not to say it's impossible to beat break-even with fusion on Earth -- just that it's only recently that we've had the technology to do it well enough to benefit from it.",
"The governing forces in fission and fusion reactions are the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. The protons in a nucleus mutually repel each other electromagnetically. While this is a strong repulsion, it is overwhelmed by the much stronger Strong Nuclear force, which is why nuclei can stay together even though there are multiple positive charges near each other. The thing is, the strong nuclear force has a very short range compared to electromagnetism. While the strong fore may be very powerful, it loses most of its influence over a pretty short distance. This means that in a large, massive nucleus that is oblate or misshapen (like Uranium-235), protons on opposite sides of the nucleus exert an electromagnetic repulsion without a correspondingly appreciable Strong attraction on each other. This makes the nucleus less stable and that means adding only a little external force (shooting a neutron at it, for example) will tip it over the edge and the nucleus will split; fission.\n\nTl;dr fission is easy because nuclei are big enough that we don't have to deal with the strong nuclear force as much.\n\nNow, in the case of fusion the goal is to fuse two or three protons or neutrons together. If we can get them close enough, the strong nuclear force will take over and the nuclei will bind. The problem is that the electromagnetic repulsion between two protons is tremendous at small distances. The pressure required to get the nucleons close enough that the strong nuclear force has an influence is monumental; it is only found at the core of a star or in a supernova. In our own Sun, the first step of 'stellar nucleogenesis' is to push two protons together. If this occurs, one of the protons undergoes beta decay and becomes a neutron, turning the nucleus into deuterium. This event is the hardest step in the process, and has an extremely low probability of occuring even in the core of our star. Luckily the Sun has enough mass and pressure that enough of these rare interactions occur for it to sustain fusion and keep shining."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
32sdzo
|
In Germany, what were various people's and group's reactions the Night of the Long Knives.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32sdzo/in_germany_what_were_various_peoples_and_groups/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqegdcc"
],
"score": [
148
],
"text": [
"So almost immediately after the the violence occured, Goebbels began working overtime spreading propaganda about what had actually happened. He portrayed the SA Leader Rohm and General Kurt Von Schleicher, a former chancellor, as plotting a coup against Germany. Hitler said in a speech that \n\n > Every clenched fist that is raised against the leader and the regime, will be pried open, by force if necessary\n\nStill he had a lot of explaining to do, as among the victims were former Nazis members like Gregor Strasser, and army majors like Ferdinand von Bredow (who Hitler thought was publishing subversive material). He said that they had all been part of Rohm's supposed coup, and they they were plotting with the French. Of course most of these people weren't in any way, shape or form plotting against Germany. \n\nSo this won the army's support as well as Hindenburg; even though the army had lost men in the purge. Von Blomberg, the Army Chief, and Hindenburg both sent congratulations and thanks to Hitler for (in the words of Hindenburg) \"nipping treason in the bud\". Of course by this time Hindenburg was ailing and not in his right mind. \n\nOf course any sympathy among the general public was quickly squashed when it was revealed that Rohm had been found sleeping with a young boy when he was captured, and propaganda was spread about SA members being homosexuals and pedophiles (not unfounded, but not universally true either). Also the Nazis pushed through a law retroactively justifying the purge and legitimizing further violent purges. \n\nHitler gave a speech on July 13th, 1934 further justifying his actions.\n\n > If anyone reproaches me and asks why we did not call upon the regular courts for sentencing, my only\nanswer is this: in that hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and was thus the\nSupreme Justiciar of the German people! . . . I gave the order to shoot those parties mainly\nresponsible for this treason . . . The nation should know that no one can threaten its existence - which\nis guaranteed by inner law and order - and escape unpunished! And every person should know for all\ntime that if he raises his hand to strike out at the State, certain death will be his lot.\n\nHitler's fiery rhetoric ensured that there would be no vocal criticism from either the Reichstag or the German Judiciary; less they be branded communist sympathizers. \n\nSocial Democratic Agents, loyalty to the former social democratic party, who's leadership had either fled or been imprisoned, reported that the Nazis were arresting anyone caught questioning the purge and sending them to concentration camps. But they also reported that many people seem relived to no longer have the SA stormtroopers patrolling the streets. \n\nIn private Von Blomberg assured Hitler that the army was now completely devoted to him, and he was grateful that the army no longer had to fear a take over by the SA. A young Claus Von Stauffenberg, who in ten years would try and kill Hitler, described the action as \"Lancing a troublesome boil\", he confided to one of his army friends that he could have been there to see Rohm die. \n\nSo outside of the usual gossip and story swapping, staunch criticism of the action had to come from outside Nazi Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II said two things on the matter:\n\n > \"What would people have said if I had done such a thing?\n\nAnd upon hearing of the murder of Kurt Von Schlicher's wife:\n\n > We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the Nazis will push their way in and put them up against the wall!\n\nFor the exiled Social Democrats and Communists it was just another instance of violence from a regime that had already committed great acts of violence, so it served to further reinforce there hatred of the Nazis. But by that point there was very little they could do besides, Hitler was far too popular and too well entrenched in power for their pleas to have any affect. \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1njnc7
|
why websites do not render apostrophes properly.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1njnc7/eli5_why_websites_do_not_render_apostrophes/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccj693s",
"ccj6s5b"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Where do you see this?\n\nThat's, it's, etc.",
"I take it you mean \"fancy\" apostrophes like this one: ’\n\nInstead of \"straight\" apostrophes like this one: '\n\nTo really explain this we need to talk about Unicode, character sets, and character encodings.\n\nA *character set* is a scheme where you assign a number to each character that you need to write down.\n\nA *character encoding* is a way of writing down the character set. If you have a number like 8217, how do you write it down so that a computer can read it nicely? What about 44032?\n\nAnyway, computers need to use a common character set and character encoding for text, if a person is going to read the text later on.\n\n* Websites are hosted on web servers - web servers can tell your web browser what character encoding / character set the page is meant to be using.\n* If the web server itself does not tell you the encoding scheme, the page can mention it instead in its contents.\n* If the page doesn't mention it, then your web browser has to guess the scheme used.\n* But when it guesses incorrectly, or worse, if the web server or the web page mentions a wrong scheme, then the browser is bound to mess up, and you're bound to see funny letters instead of the proper letter(s).\n\n\"Straight\" apostrophes are commonly used in a character set called *ASCII*, and the encoding scheme is very simple too.\n\n\"Fancy\" apostrophes are not included in ASCII, and they belong in different character sets. There are different ways to write those character sets down (different encodings)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3eldcx
|
if you were to look at a mirage through binoculars or telescope, what would you see?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eldcx/eli5_if_you_were_to_look_at_a_mirage_through/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctg1qc8",
"ctg1tz2",
"ctg2tlo"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"You would see exactly the same mirage, just bigger. The use of a magnifying lens doesn't really affect the mechanism that causes mirages, which is an interaction between air layers of different temperatures.",
"You would see a magnified version of the mirage. A mirage is caused by a difference between refractive indexes of the hot layer of air close to the pavement and the relatively cooler air above it. That change in refractive index and the shallow viewing angle create a reflection which shimmers. Viewing it through a magnifier just makes it look closer. ",
"You're seeing the souls of those damned by heaven and rejected by hell. Stare too long and you'll join them. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
53tnkn
|
what exactly is the "core" that they talk about in fitness? (e.g. use your core, find your core, etc.)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53tnkn/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_core_that_they_talk/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d7w3tv5",
"d7w3vv8"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"There is a group of muscles within and around your abdomen which keep the top of your body from just flopping around on top of your hips. That is referred to as your \"core\" and is important in supporting almost any other exertion you can do.",
"It's the set of muscles that keep your spine straight. That includes all the muscles around your spine and the ones around your abdomen. \n\nWhen you hold your whole body straight while doing one of the plank variations* the muscles that get tired around your torso are your core muscles.\n\n*Hold a push-up position, then rotate so your facing right and then left. Finally face up."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
4029cr
|
why are diamonds found so much more commonly in south africa?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4029cr/eli5_why_are_diamonds_found_so_much_more_commonly/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cyqvvz5",
"cyqwkb7"
],
"score": [
2,
13
],
"text": [
"Diamonds are hardened carbon - which also makes up coal and oil. Coal and oil come from dead organic stuff that has decomposed. There used to be a large rainforest over Africa before the split of Pangea, which allowed for large coal deposits to form, and then time allowed them to turn to diamonds more so that other things. That's why oil is not (commonly) found in areas with diamonds; the diamonds would be oil, the the oil diamonds, due to differences in which forests occurred in that area.",
"The geology of diamonds is interesting, they are formed in the Earth's mantle, miles below the surface. We live on the crust of the Earth, and plate tectonics mostly recycles crust material, and what does come up from the mantle is altered significantly. The only formation that contains diamonds is a kimberlite pipe, which forms in an explosive volcanic eruption from deep in the mantle. Those kimberlite pipes aren't common, and only a small fraction contain diamonds.\n\nThere is only one known diamond field in the US, but a few diamonds have been found in all 50 states. This is because diamonds are much harder than other stones, the diamonds have probably been on the surface for a very long time, moved from place to place by rivers and glaciers. I imagine that many of them traveled as gastroliths- stones that birds swallow to grind food inside their stomach. The odds of a bird swallowing a diamond are one in a billion, but there have been countless billions of birds.\n\nDiamonds are dense, so they are found in the same river gravel that gold prospectors search. They have a high index of refraction, they sparkle even if they aren't cut and polished, so a person interested in minerals- like a gold prospector- would notice them instantly.\n\nSome redditors like to say that diamonds are common, and that DeBeers hoards them. I cut gems as a hobby, I can assure you that if diamonds were common, I would quit my job, find them, and sell them. Faceting isn't terribly complex, you can learn to cut a round brilliant in a day, although diamonds cut slowly. [Diamond mines are also incredibly huge](_URL_0_), if the diamond cartel already had vaults of diamonds they would probably *stop digging the biggest mines in history*. Most stones are exponentially less common in large sizes, the diamond cartels might have tons of tiny stones that they keep off the market."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-the-worlds-top-10-biggest-diamond-mines/"
]
] |
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