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12c9a2
|
who lived in north Africa, west of Egypt and before Carthage?
|
if you were to visit present day Tunisia in 1597BC who would you find living there, and how would you find them living?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12c9a2/who_lived_in_north_africa_west_of_egypt_and/
|
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"As far as I know, historical records and knowledge of the era are extremely scant. Before the arrival of Phoenician and Greek colonists, who founded cities like Carthage and Cyrene, the area that we today call the Mahgreb was occupied by a prehistoric people identified as the [Capsians](_URL_0_). \n\nTheir influence seems to end several thousand years before you specified though, and their civilization seems to have been tied to the fact that the landscape of North Africa looked very different in prehistory--it was less arid, with more forested areas and less of the desertification that would encroach over time.\n\nUntil the Phoenicians show up around 900 BC, I'm not sure if we're aware of any solid records of notable inhabitants, but hopefully someone with more expertise will come and correct me. My guess is that it would be some society that was the precursor to the Berbers, but the Berbers themselves don't start to appear with regularity until the Roman era in the region.",
"According to [UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. II, Abridged Edition:\nAncient Africa](_URL_0_), 1990 pp 236-245 (most of those pages available online, it was the [proto-Berbers.](_URL_1_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsian_culture"
],
[
"http://books.google.be/books/about/UNESCO_General_History_of_Africa_Vol_II.html?id=aDxMF-6UdCQC&redir_esc=y",
"http://i.imgur.com/q0U3e.png"
]
] |
|
9rpd03
|
what is the difference between city court, high court, and supreme court, and how is it decided which trials are held where?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rpd03/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_city_court/
|
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"There are different courts that hold jurisdiction over different cases. City Court holds jurisdiction over anything within the city limits. A county magistrate would hold jurisdiction over misdemeanors within that county. A general sessions court (in assuming that's what you mean by high Court) handles felonies within that county. The Supreme Court of the state you are in is the highest appellate court in that state.\n\n Appellate courts do not hear criminal cases in the manner that other courts do. They best appeals from lower courts and trial courts and rule on whether or not the lower court or trial ruled correctly in the case in question as it pertains to matters of law.\n\nEdit: the names of the courts will vary depending on the state but that is the basic structure for the US. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5fs2ex
|
why aren't prenuptial agreements standard for marriage licenses?
|
Tv makes it seem like the hardest part is asking your partner to sign one, so why aren't they just required? Are they still a big deal when both members work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fs2ex/eli5_why_arent_prenuptial_agreements_standard_for/
|
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"Some people dont want them?\n\nI'm getting married in May and insisted we don't have one (We earn ~ pay and I even had a higher savings). ",
"The current regime is that state law functions as the default and if the parties agree they can sign a prenup to change the default assumptions. So if you're cool with the default rules (which in most states means economically combining most assets earned during the marriage), which most people are, you don't need them. And prenups only come into play if the marriage dissolves. So the drama is inherent in saying \"I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I don't trust you, so I want to make sure I can dump you without it being too expensive.\""
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
1ej4cw
|
why do clouds of tiny flying insects hover in the exact same spot?
|
We've all seen them, just a basketball-size cloud of gnats all circling each other, remaining more or less at the same altitude and without moving around. They don't swarm you if you get close, and you can walk right through the cloud and it will simply reconstitute itself and remain hovering in place after you've passed. I assume it has something to do with spawning, but...?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ej4cw/eli5_why_do_clouds_of_tiny_flying_insects_hover/
|
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"text": [
"Typically there is a female gnat in the center giving of pheromones.",
"Yeap, just horny bug clouds making more bugs. They're everywhere from Feb-Oct around here. Close your mouth when you walk through. ;)",
"They're having sex.",
"So completely off topic, the next time you see this cloud, go \"heeeeee\" really high pitched, and they'll fly higher. Go \"ohhhhhhh\" really low pitched, and the cloud will move down. Way more entertaining than it should be.",
"TIL clouds of gnats are actually an orgy. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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|
3oiz9f
|
where did replacement swears (heck, darn, shoot, etc.) originate?
|
I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit, but this one seemed the most fitting.
Where did these words come from? The first person to say them would probably be considered weird because they basically just made up a word, so how did they originate and become so popular?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oiz9f/eli5_where_did_replacement_swears_heck_darn_shoot/
|
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"They sound sort of like the swear words they imitate. Heck=Hell, Darn=Damn, Fudge=Fuck, etc. They're sort of \"safe\" swears because they imply the meaning of the word without actually saying it.\n\nOn an interesting side note \"Cheese and Crackers,\" (Jesus Christ) is banned as a term in the Jehovah's Witnesses because even though it isn't technically blasphemy it's a workaround to essentially invoke blasphemy. ",
"They became forms of dancing the exclamation without crossing into blasphemous territory. \n\nDarn is the evolution of \"eternal damnation\" which became \"tarnation\" which became darn. \n\nMy favorite is a Chaucer era curse: \"God's wounds\" or \"by His wounds\" which by Shakespeare's time became, \"Zounds\". I don't know what happened to Zounds.\n\nI don't know the origin for heck but I suspect it has a similar backstory."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
4nvdg7
|
if i fuck up my sleeping schedule and start going to bed at five, what is the best way to go back to going to bed at 11?
|
Problem is if I try going to bed at eleven immediately I will just turn around and end up falling asleep at 5 anyway. So how earlier is OK to go to bed at a time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nvdg7/eli5_if_i_fuck_up_my_sleeping_schedule_and_start/
|
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"The best thing you can do is just making yourself tired over the day.. be active, work-out, whatever..\n\nAlso make sure that just just stand up the time you have to stand up, even if you're fucking tired, just do it, and don't sleep that afternoon, wait till it's evening!\n\nIt usually takes like 2 weeks before your body is used to a new sleeping schedule so you should give it some time.",
"Your easiest path is to go to bed at 5 as normal, set an alarm for 7, get up, have a horrible day where everything looks gray and you have a killer headache, and go to bed at 9 or 10 PM. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
w3k03
|
How would we know if a distant star is made up of regular matter or anti-matter?
|
So say we pick same arbitrary star and we wanted to find out if it was made of antimatter or not. Is it possible? Would we look at the emmission spectrum or would that be the same?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/w3k03/how_would_we_know_if_a_distant_star_is_made_up_of/
|
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"[Searched](_URL_4_)\n\nRelevant [discussion](_URL_3_)\n\nOriginal question by [xerwin](_URL_2_)\n\n > Hi, I'm big physics fan and the thought of anti-matter excites me, but I have few questions that I still haven't figured out/learned yet.\n\n > 1. Can anti-matter form structures in universe? Can there be a star, galaxy, galactic cluster... that is made out of anti-matter?\n\n > 2. If the answer to above question is true, would there be a way to detect it using current technology? I know the best way to detect anti-matter is to throw regular matter at it and see what happens, but is there a way to detect it just by observation?\n\n > 3. What exactly happens when matter and anti matter annihilate each other? I know they release energy, but in what form? Do they emit photons, or can they even create particles, given that E=mc2 ?\n\nTop comment courtesy [mmypig](_URL_0_)\n\n > > Can anti-matter form structures in universe? Can there be a star, galaxy, galactic cluster... that is made out of anti-matter?\n\n > In principle, yes, it should behave more or less the same as matter. Checking that it actually does so is an area of current research.\n\n > However, we don't think there are any such structures, the entire Universe appears to be made of matter, for reasons that are unclear. If antimatter structures existed, they would give off unique signatures at their boundaries where they interacted with matter, but we can't find anything like that. And in any case, there's no obvious way or reason for matter and antimatter to have been spatially separated during the early stages of the big bang.\n\nWhat seems to actually be the case is that there was slightly more matter than antimatter in the early universe, and the antimatter all annihilated leaving everything we see made out of the remaining matter. We don't know why this would be, but we're trying to work it out.\n\n > > If the answer to above question is true, would there be a way to detect it using current technology? I know the best way to detect anti-matter is to throw regular matter at it and see what happens, but is there a way to detect it just by observation?\n\n > Since the antimatter would interact with matter at some point (given there's no reason for it to be totally separate), we'd expect to see those regions of activity. But we don't, as above.\n\n > > What exactly happens when matter and anti matter annihilate each other? I know they release energy, but in what form? Do they emit photons, or can they even create particles, given that E=mc2 ?\n\n > The energy normally goes to photons, though I think higher energy interactions can produce other particles. Those photons may themselves become matter/antimatter pairs and so on. The case of photons to antimatter is [pair production](_URL_1_)."
]
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[] |
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[
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"http://www.reddit.com/user/mmypig",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production",
"http://www.reddit.com/user/xerwin",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uh6oo/few_questions_about_antimatter/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=antimatter+star&restrict_sr=on"
]
] |
|
2tf5an
|
Is there any way to experience the rotation of the earth?
|
Can you experience the feeling of spinning/rotating on the surface of the earth?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2tf5an/is_there_any_way_to_experience_the_rotation_of/
|
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"**Short answer:** Yes, but it won't be immediately obvious to you that what you're seeing or feeling is caused by the earth's rotation. \n\n**Long answer:** In some sense, there are easy experiments you can do, without fancy equipment. Obviously the motion of the sun across the sky every day isn't caused by Apollo's chariot, but by the earth's rotation. You could similarly start a Foucault pendulum and watch it precess, but that's also easy. You want to *experience* the forces due to rotation yourself, not just watch something else move because of them. \n\nWhen you write the equations of motion in a rotating reference frame, like on the surface of a planet, there are a few *fictitious* forces that emerge from Newton's equations. \n\nBy *fictitious* I mean that they aren't fundamental, like gravity or electromagnetism, and in a non rotating frame they'll be recognized more simply as *inertia.* In the rotating frame, however, the consequences of rotation cause inertia to be felt like a force. For example, when your car is on an curved ramp and you feel your self getting slammed into the car door. It really feels like something is pushing you towards the car door, and with a few springs or scales you could even measure the magnitude of this pushing, but an outside observer recognizes that it's just your inertia trying to keep you moving in a straight line while the car curves. \n\nAnyway, **in a rotating frame there are two such forces, known as the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force.** The best way to understand them is like this: [when you are on a merry-go-round in the park that is spinning, you feel like something is trying to throw you off. That's the centrifugal force.](_URL_1_) If you are spinning it much slower so that you don't get thrown off, [and you try to toss a ball across it, it looks like it's not traveling in a straight line, but curving. That's the Coriolis force.](_URL_2_) \n\nOn the earth, to experience the centrifugal force, go to the equator. At the equator you're experiencing the fastest moving part of the earth, due to its rotation, and that 'throwing you off' feeling will make you weigh slightly less. Step on a bathroom scale in Ecuador, measure your weight, and then dart up to the north or south pole, where you can't feel the earth's rotation. You should see a different weight on the scale. You'll need a really precise scale though, because in the experiment I just described the Coriolis force at the equator is incredibly weak- it's only a fraction of a percent compared to the force due to gravity. \n\nThe Coriolis force is trickier, and is felt by moving objects, and is due to the earth moving underneath you while you move. Of course, whenever you move, you'll experience the Coriolis force, but it'll be so tiny that you won't notice it. This is a very small effect and you won't notice it when you toss a ball around in your back yard, but you could notice it if you tossed a ball on a spinning merry-go-round. If you are a gunnery officer on a battleship that can shoot your cannons at targets miles away, you would have to adjust the Coriolis effect due to the earth's rotation. Depending on your latitude (which determines how fast the ground underneath the projectile is moving (faster at the equator, slower at the poles)), and your projectile's velocity, you can calculate where it will land due to this effect and correct for it. If you want to feel the Coriolis force, get in a cannon and get shot out of it very very fast, and if you survive the launch you can watch the earth rotate underneath you. \n\nIn fact, my choice of a battleship for the above example is no accident. [I'll reproduce the (suspected apocryphal) anecdote as told by Neil deGrasse Tyson here:](_URL_0_) \n\n > The military normally knows all about the Coriolis force and thus introduces the appropriate correction to all missile trajectories. But in 1914, from the annals of embarrassing military moments, there was a World War I naval battle between the English and the Germans near the Falklands Islands off Argentina (52 degrees south latitude). The English battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible engaged the German war ships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst at a range of nearly ten miles. Among other gunnery problems encountered, the English forgot to reverse the direction of their Coriolis correction. Their tables had been calculated for northern hemisphere projectiles, so they missed their targets by even more than if no correction had been applied. They ultimately won the battle against the Germans with about sixty direct hits, but it was not before over a thousand missile shells had fallen in the ocean.\n\n\n",
"Lay down on a nice grassy field at night, and just stare at the stars above, youll notice how the night sky slowly wander :) \nBonus points for how relaxing doing nothing can be, and fresh feeling youll get when done stargazing \\o/",
"Yes. Enjoy your weight that is not proportional to your mass because of partial centrifugal cancelation.\n\nOne way is also to fixate on a star aligned near the rotation axis of earth. There is one good star on the north side. You need to look at it to a time comparable that the stars take to move a distance you can resolve. This is about the same speed or half of what sundials move. To really see the spinning pick a star that is near some landmark such as a tree top etc and keep taking note of the separation between the star and the tree top. If you extend your arm out and compare your thumb width to the visual distance between the tree top and the star your thumg should be about 2 degrees of the sky. 24h/360 degrees=0.066..h/degree= 4 min/degree = 4 min / (1/2 thumb) = 8 min / thumb. This time increases the nearer the star is to the rotatation pole. In anyway within an half an hour you should see a definite rotation."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
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"http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/1995/03/01/the-coriolis-force",
"http://i.imgur.com/W6totHt.gif",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36MiCUS1ro"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
5p3h70
|
Chinese Dynasties: what's worth reading about?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p3h70/chinese_dynasties_whats_worth_reading_about/
|
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"This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_1_). These poll-type questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. “Most”, “least”, \"best\" and \"worst\" questions usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult [this Roundtable discussion](_URL_0_).\n\nFor questions of these types, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory."
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[] |
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]
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||
1tuolo
|
why was communism a particularly hostile threat to america (to the point of squashing even infant communist regimes via the cia), and why aren't north korea and china pursued in a similar way?
|
I suppose a common explanation against pursuing North Korea is "they don't pose any real threat to anyone", but historically America has jumped at the opportunity to thwart for example, a foreign communist rebellion, although I would argue that a rebellion is a long way from a threat. Additionally, North Korea is a pretty good example of communism failing miserably (perhaps why it isn't a threat), but was America ever seriously concerned that people would one day think "you know, I think communism is the answer", and therefore desperately wanted to keep it from spreading?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tuolo/eli5_why_was_communism_a_particularly_hostile/
|
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"China, before Mao (before and during WWII), were allies to the US, since Mao's death relations have been improve with them.\n\nThe UN and the US went to war with North Korea, a significant war. At the time, Korea was supported by Moaist Chinese.\n\n100s of million of people died as a result of communists and their conquests. it wasn't trivial."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
8toyi3
|
How accurate is to suggest that post-colonial dictatorships in many African countries were the result of Colonial institutions and obstruction of native democratic developments?
|
I was reading [this](_URL_0_) article and it claims,
> Despotism and dictatorship did not exist in traditional African political schemes. In fact, the famous British economist, the late Lord Peter Bauer, noted this in his book, "Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in Economics of Development" where he wrote, "Despotism and kleptocracy do not inhere in the nature of African cultures or in the African character." Stateless societies such as the Somali, Igbo, and Tiv—which are characterized by the rejection of any centralized authority or “government”—did not have leaders who could be despots or dictators. Rather, these political systems stressed customary law and emphasized justice, or the establishment of justice, as the ruling principle.
> King Mswati III is often portrayed as the prototypical “traditional” ruler, his bad deeds emblematic of an unsophisticated and backwards political society. However, an examination of history reveals something altogether different. Rather than corruption and despotism being inherent to traditional rule, it is the undermining of traditional checks on executive authority by the colonial state that has left the population exposed to the whims of their despotic king. Moreover, by writing traditional checks, such as destooling, out of the political narrative of Africa, the colonial legacy has painted a false picture of African leadership. It is time to re-examine the traditional priority of executive accountability, and once again hold Africa’s leaders to task.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8toyi3/how_accurate_is_to_suggest_that_postcolonial/
|
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"There are three main theories on the failure of democracy throughout most of post-Colonial Africa. The first is that traditional African kingship before colonialism resembled dictatorship more than it resembled democracy, so Africans defaulted to historical forms of government, cloaked in the trappings of a modern, Western republican system. This view was promoted not only by Western imagination, but by regimes like that of Mobutu in Zaire, who used the motif of tribal kingship to legitimize their rule. For reasons you have already touched on, this view draws a false equivalency between pre-colonial African kingship and European monarchy. As Joseph Hayford explains, traditional kingship in the Gold Coast and Nigeria closely resembled modern local democracy: the Oyo and Gold Coast societies had elected kings, and provisions for impeachment if the King displeased his constituents. Ainslie and Kepe, in a study on the resurgence of traditional authority in South Africa after 1994, note that in that region as well, locals often feel that traditional authority was *more* democratic and representative than the present-day Republic of South Africa.\n\nThe second theory, which has gained more popularity in recent years, is that African democracy failed simply because Africa is poor, and poor countries can't have democracy. An influential paper by Barro noted, \"Increases in various measures of the standard of living forecast a gradual rise in democracy. In contrast, democracies that arise without prior economic development … tend not to last.\" By the late 2000s, this view was so widespread that Daron Acemoglu called it \"conventional wisdom\"\n\nThis theory is actually completely backed by correlation. Indexes of political freedom and GDP per capita show an almost perfect correlation. Causation is intuitive as well - poor countries tend to be less educated and less stable: the populace simply doesn't understand finer things like democracy, and if they do have it, it will inevitably be destabilized by irrational fears. This theory is in vogue for two reasons: first, it appealed to the general backlash against neoliberalism after the Iraq War. Second, it benefits everyone involved in the discussion. Some of its most zealous evangelists are actually African politicians and scholars. Searching for ammunition against the IMF, which demands political reform for economic grants, politicians like Museveni of Uganda have become die-hard promoters of the growth-first argument. The theory has the added benefit of legitimizing the powers that be - excusing abuses and allegations of corruption as normal for poor countries.\n\nHowever, on further investigation, this causation does not exist, and there are a number of confounding variables. Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, and Yared 2008:\n\n > although income and democracy are positively correlated, there is no evidence of a causal effect. Instead, omitted—most probably historical—factors appear to have shaped the divergent political and economic development paths of various societies, leading to the positive association between democracy and economic performance. Consequently, regressions that include country fixed effects and/or instrumental variable regressions show no evidence of a causal effect of income on democracy over the postwar era or the past 100 years. \n\nA variety of factors (spread of technology and Western institutions concurrently during the industrial revolution, spread of those same institutions and technology to Asia after the US occupation of Japan, etc.) have produced a strong correlation between democracy and growth, but there is no evidence that the causal mechanism exists. Counter-examples such as the poverty of Bangladesh compared to the wealth of China are evidence against this. \n\nThe third argument is structural - the idea that post-colonial leaders inherited an oppressive colonial system and simply made themselves masters of it. Some, like Mswanti III and Mobutu, cloaked their basically exploitative regimes in traditional symbolism, while others shrouded it in the vestiges of Western democracy. \n\nColonial regimes basically intended to restructure African society to become dependent on outside sources for industrial production, to produce resources, to be easy to control, and to be integrated into the world market. Moses Ochonu:\n\n > A supreme goal of colonizers' economic policies was to transform African subsistent and semi‐subsistent farmers into export oriented peasants‐‐peasantization in the jargon of African economic history.\n\nSome examples of this include the rail structure in Africa - which, instead of targetting population centers, were directed towards resources. Local colonial forces, such as the infamous Congolese Force Publique, also were structured to maximize control, with mercenaries from one region dispatched to oppress locals in another. Not every regime after decolonization immediately defaulted to oppressive methods, but there were clear incentives, and few checks and balances, on those that did.\n\nA number of regimes, such as that of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, were honest in their intention to break the vicious cycle of resource dependence and industrialize. As Waldner points out, however, such an effort in itself required centralization.\n\n > Two types of developmental enterprises composed the world-historical context of post-colonial regime dynamics: state building, or political development, and economic development which, for most of the twentieth century, meant industrialization. Both of these projects, loosely termed modernization, involve struggles for control over the transformation of the agrarian political economy. State building involves transferring the authority and control over politically relevant resources from local elites to national centers of power while economic development involves shifts in relative prices that transfer wealth produced by the primary sector to the nascent urban industrial sector. \n\nIn order to achieve industrialization, reformist governments had to force sacrifices on the rural population which would be harder to obtain in democracies. \n\nThis all begs the question as to why no countries simply chose to deconstruct old economic relationships, reform the mercenary armed forces inherited from colonial masters, and devolve government back to local authorities. The answer lies both in class and incentive factors. First, the first generation of leaders after decolonization were predominantly Western educated and upper class, and would not cede control to the less educated masses. Second, colonial economic and political structures persisted because of influence from internal actors. While Western intervention in internal African affairs declined sharply after decolonization, local elites preserved the existing structures for their own gain. Most of the commercial activity in East Africa, for example, was controlled by an Indian minority, who facilitated the old resource-exporting economic relationships. In Congo, wealthy African businessmen co-operated with Belgian mining companies, and strove to maintain their business connections after independence. Two groups of these businessmen funded mercenary armies and seceded when the Congolese government drifted from Belgium, creating the Mining State of South Kasai and the Republic of Katanga. Finally, the first generation of native African generals had no incentive to instill civic duty in post-colonial militaries that were controlled mainly by pay and personal loyalty. The less civic consciousness the soldiery had, the easier it was to launch a coup.\n\nTLDR: Post-colonial leaders inherited the colonial power structure, and all the most important businessmen and military officers were happy with it. Some tried to use funds from resource export to industrialize, but this too required centralization and dictatorship.\n\nSources/further reading:\n\n* Barro, Robert J. 1997. *Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study.* MIT University Press.\n* Acemoglu, Johnson et al. 2008. *Income and Democracy.* MIT University Press.\n* Ainslie, Andrew and Kepe, Thembela. 2016. *Understanding the Resurgence of Traditional Authorities in Post-Apartheid South Africa*. Journal of South African Studies.\n* Hayford, Joseph. *Gold Coast Native Institutions: With Thoughts Upon a Healthy Imperial Policy for the Gold Coast and Ashanti*\n* Waldner, David. 2004. *Democracy and Dictatorship in the Post-Colonial World*\n* Ochonu, Moses. 2013. *African Colonial Economies: State Control, Peasant Maneuvers, and Unintended Outcomes*\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://worldpolicy.org/2014/05/28/the-imported-tradition-of-african-dictatorship/"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
3vxoc4
|
why does the cat in the video cease all movement when they simply put a clamp on its back?
|
This is the video I'm talking about:
_URL_0_
It seems like magic! The cat just stops moving completely. Implied in my question is the expectation that this happens to many more cats, not just the one in the vid, is this correct?
I apologize for the bad formatting and linking, I'm posting from mobile.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vxoc4/eli5_why_does_the_cat_in_the_video_cease_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cxrjyhg",
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"score": [
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3
],
"text": [
"Cat mothers (and some other animals too) tend to carry around their offpring by holding them in the neck. This is a kind of natural mechanism that ensures that the kittens do not move and hurt themselves while being carried. Apparently it also works for adult cats.",
"Swans have a mechanism that works in a similar way, wherebyputting pressure on the two 'spots' above their beak forces them to regurgitate food. It's a behaviour that seems to be innate. In the Swan's case, it's chicks peck at the spots to get food. In the Cat's case, it's also a parental thing - \"Stay still, I'm carrying you now.\""
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://youtu.be/T9TmmF79Rw0"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
dxaldx
|
Wild beast hunts in ancient Rome
|
Evening all, I've been reading Mary Beard's fascinating book, [*Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town*](_URL_0_). She has discussed the games: Gladiators and wild beast hunts. I was wondering what happened to the corpses of the wild beasts "hunted" in the Pompeii amphitheatre and, by extension, the wider Roman empire. From the book it sounds like Pompeii's beasts were local - no lions or anything else transported over long distances - but were goats and bulls (named) and presumably dogs, maybe wolves. What happened to the corpses of the "wild beasts" once they'd been slaughtered? Was the meat considered fit to eat and so ended up in the local butchers / restaurants? After all goat and bull / cattle meat is calorie-rich and in the case of the latter there would be a lot of it, or would it be considered sacred in some way?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dxaldx/wild_beast_hunts_in_ancient_rome/
|
{
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"f7os5bb"
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"text": [
"Cool question. There is no definitive answer, and no source explicitly states an answer to your question. We can, however, establish that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Romans considered the victims of the animal hunts to be off-limits due to religious consideration. The origins of the practice are obscure in the extreme, and almost certainly date back to Etruscan times. Gladiator fights, originally, were an Etruscan funerary blood offering, and I think most scholars assume that Roman animal hunts stem from the same idea: blood for the ancestors - > blood for the gods. But like most things having to do with the enigmatic Etruscans, it is not entirely clear.\n\nThe Romans were a practical people, and it seems almost certain to me that the meat, when appropriate, would be butchered and distributed in some way. The common plebs had a generally meat-deficient diet, and they looked forward to the many Roman state festivals as sources of meat. There is no good reason to think this situation would be different. Many point to modern practice as at least some evidence. For instance, when in Arles in 2004, I attended the bull fight in the old Roman amphitheater, then had some stew from the butchered meat the next day at a restaurant (clearly announced as such). \n\nThe go-to scholar for this is probably Donald Kyle. Here is a snippet from his *Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome* (Routledge 1998/2001).\n\n > The common people of Rome were pragmatic, demanding, and often hungry.\nIn the late first century BC Rome was a city of perhaps a million souls with 200,000\nor more on the grain-dole lists, and astute politicians and patrons were concerned\nwith grain supplies and the threat of shortages and food riots. The diet of the\nlowly Roman was protein-deficient, and festivals and public banquets were anxiously\nawaited. Focusing on the elite and the nouveaux riches, the delicacies in Apicius’\ncookbook and the exotic meats in Trimalchio’s elaborate, expensive, and yet gauche\ndishes in Petronius are not representative. Most Romans were not fussy eaters,\nand wealthy Romans had adventuresome palates. Apicius includes recipes for wild\ngame and a sauce for meat that smelled bad. Horace claims that Rome’s forefathers\nfinished up boar meat even if it had gone bad. Remember that garum, a sauce\nmade from rotten fish, was the Roman’s condiment of choice. Romans ate scavenger\nfish that fed on sewage in the Tiber, and Roman potions included wild boar’s\ndung, human blood, and more. In a society resourceful enough to use night-soil,\nto tax toilets, and to save urine for fullers, it seems probable that dead arena\nanimals (their meat, hides, and horns) were utilized commercially for profit or\nsymbolically for political effect. If Caligula felt that butcher’s meat was too\nexpensive for arena beasts and fed them convicts instead, would that ingeniously\nexploitative megalomaniac, who sought popularity through games, have wasted\narena meat? At least some of the animal meat from the beast spectacles could have\nbeen given to the people of Rome, both as a nutritional supplement and as a\npolitical device. Common Romans were hungry and malnourished, and givers of\ngames were unlikely to waste potential arena-meat gifts."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pompeii-Life-Roman-Mary-Beard/dp/1846684714/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=55802345200&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2b7uBRDsARIsAEE9XpForB3EKraghFWkbQNiR8c_BkMS3o3r8fZkNAjM9ST1zKrgJFFZfQ0aAotgEALw_wcB&hvadid=259160112644&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1006944&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=6890839387000044804&hvtargid=aud-613328383199%3Akwd-300500583109&hydadcr=11644_1781909&keywords=pompeii+mary+beard&qid=1573928516&sr=8-1"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
28v7x3
|
Is it possible to practice typical IQ tests and improve your score? If so, can IQ can be considered a valid measurement?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/28v7x3/is_it_possible_to_practice_typical_iq_tests_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ciezkj4"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Yes, exposure to IQ tests typically results in improvements in later performance, [here's](_URL_2_) just one recent paper on this topic but it's pretty well acknowledged. The majority of the evidence suggests that such practice effects are only local and not general, meaning they represent improvement in specific tasks (i.e. basic arithmetic, vocabulary, etc.) invovled in the test and not in general intelligence ([here's a reference on it](_URL_3_) although it's somewhat technical).\n\nIQ tests can still be considered valid as a measure, but only under certain conditions and with a few caveats. Most tests produced nowadays are rigorously checked for systematic bias and tend to be ok if used correctly (for example, not administered to participants who aren't comfortable with the language the test is presented in) however practice effects introduce such bias in favour of those who've practiced the tests. This should only be a problem if they're taking tests using the same more item formats than once as the gains aren't general, which should immediately wash out a large amount of the potential for practice effects in the real world. \n\nMorover we know that even with all the kinds of measurement error that might effect test scores IQ tests remain highly predictive of a broad range of [social](_URL_1_) and [health](_URL_4_) outcomes. If practice effects were pervasive enough to undermine IQ as a measure we wouldn't expect to see such strong relations between test performance and life outcomes.\n\nPractice effects are a huge problem in one area though, longitudinal studies. If you want to see how intelligence changes across the lifespan you'll need multiple measures taken at different times but this opens to the door to practice effects across your entire sample. This is a real problem and a fair bit has been published on this trying to work around it ([for example](_URL_0_)).\n\ntl;dr: practice effects are real, but don't seem to be too serious a problem in general."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/11/118",
"http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22353021",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000214",
"http://jech.bmj.com/content/61/5/378.short"
]
] |
||
2uuw76
|
Is all caps inherently more difficult to read, or is it simply more difficult because of the connotation, i.e. it feels like something is yelling at you because we usually use all caps to express that?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2uuw76/is_all_caps_inherently_more_difficult_to_read_or/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cobyi0i",
"coc17jo",
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"score": [
8,
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8
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"text": [
"I remember hearing something about this in regards to road signs:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"The actual word shape was the most distinctive thing because if you had Birmingham in capitals, from a distance, it's difficult to read but in caps and lower case you have word shape,\" says Calvert. \"That was fundamental.\"\n\nSo, yes. All caps is more difficult to read because you lose the shape of the word.",
"All caps is not the norm that you are used to. Reading is similar to muscle memory. Your brain has to stop and translate when words are in all caps. Your brain translates caps as a specific placeholder, such as the beginning of a sentence or a name. If you spend time reading all caps you would become adjusted to it, the same way you become adjusted to a second language after enough exposure.",
"Lower-case letters are more visually distinct than upper-case letters, and that makes them easier to recognize. In particular, some (but not all!) lower-case letters have descenders and ascenders. Descenders are parts that stick out below the base-line, as seen in y and g. Ascenders stick out above the median, and seen in d, t, and l. No upper-case letters have descenders, and all of them are the same height as ascenders.\n\nI believe there are cognitive studies that show that people recognize words first by their \"outline,\" and only break it into individual letters later on, if necessary. Most common lower-case words can be identified by their first and last letters, and the up-and-down \"skyline\" of their ascenders. All-caps words are just rectangles."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15990443"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
4h1d15
|
why are officials burning tons of ivory in order to fight smuggling?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h1d15/eli5_why_are_officials_burning_tons_of_ivory_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d2mjbyx",
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5
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"text": [
"Well what are they going to do... sell it?",
"Because they want to kill the market for ivory entirely. If they sell the ivory then they add on to the existing ivory market and if there's an ivory market there will be a way for poachers to sell illegal ivory. If they don't sell the ivory they have to store it or dispose of it somehow.\n\nIt's the same reason cops destroy drugs after they're no longer needed as evidence. If your stance as a government is \"this should never be traded\" then you can't exactly turn around and sell the thing you're trying to ban and expect the ban to work."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
5um48t
|
why dogs within 5 seconds of meeting each other know if they are friends or enemies.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5um48t/eli5_why_dogs_within_5_seconds_of_meeting_each/
|
{
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"text": [
"I hope someone answers this. ",
"It's all about body language. Dogs don't really become friends or enemies but they do establish an order when they meet. Who is the leader of the pack when they meet. Some dogs will fight to be the leader, some will roll over on their backs immediately with every dog they meet as a sign of submission. Most dogs fall between and check each dog out. \n\nTwo dogs that haven't figured their order out tend to cover each others pee, one will hump the other, or put their head over the neck of the other. These are all signs of establishing dominance. They'll tend to become more and more aggressive with the signs until the one they're trying to dominate submits or has had enough and they fight. \n\n\nMy husky used to be really dominant aggressive before I got him fixed. I had to learn his signs and jump in to get him to back off before a fight. He still sends dominant messages when he walks in a park but doesn't fight unless he gets bitten first. ",
"I'm not going to say this an official answer to your question, but we humans communicate with body language, however with dogs, their communication is primarily non-aural. A dog can project what they are feeling with their stance, tail, and their eyes. This is not only a statement of \"how I am feeling right now\" but also \"this is my place in the pack\". If two dogs that dominate as alpha (at home) meet, and one doesn't show submissive signs to the other, there is conflict. Even dogs that are yards/meters away from each other can look at each other and see the stride, tail position, and overall demeanor of the other animal. ",
"Dog's obtain most of the information they need from smelling one another, such as sex, age, and pack rank. If you have two high ranking pack animals meet, they will fight it out until a new order is established. This is why the initial contact is usually very tense followed by either friendliness or hostilities. \n\nIf they're friendly one recognizes where he fits within this new pack and is ok with their status. If hostilities ensue basically the exchange went some like:\n \"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.\" And they simply have what would be considered a duel. \n\nNow I know this all seems really light hearted. But it really does boil down to those simple things.",
"Body Language. It's a crucial part of their communication.\n\nImagine you lived in a very violent neighbourhood. Now imagine you had no way of gauging whether someone approaching you on the streets is friendly or not.\n\nAn even worse scenario: Imagine you had a way of knowing whether someone is friendly, but that it worked sometimes, and sometimes it didn't. Also imagine that outward display of friendliness can be faked.\nNow picture a tall, ripped guy walking towards you. What goes through your head?\n\nWithout body language, dogs would be in much the same position almost every time they met another individual. Fortunately, they have a very elaborate body language that enables them to communicate interest/aggression/friendliness/curiosity to each other. Also, at least among dogs, this body language is not usually faked (coyotes and wolves do lure dogs out of safe territory by pretending though). So when the tall, ripped guy is approaching you in the streets, you know instantly what's up with him. If he/she wants a fight, or to play, or is just curious. Even better, you know how to respond in a way he/she will understand. If he/she is aggressive, you know what to do to avoid conflict (or to engage if you're up to it). If they're friendly, you know what to do to indicate that you're also friendly.",
"I am surprised at the number of comments that focus on the alpha dog model of behavior which is pretty debunked now.\n\nTo answer the OP's question, dogs have a lot of non-verbal cues leading up to the actual contact. The rules one learns about approaching dogs (don't approach head-on, don't make forced sustained eye contact, etc.) apply to dog-to-dog interactions too. For example, my friend's dog charges in to meet new dogs rather than first stopping a little bit away so the dogs can observe each other, so she makes other dogs nervous this way. This is why people talk about socializing dogs, so their pets can learn social cues and get along with others.\n\nSimilar to how dogs that have anxiety or poor impulse control display aggressive behaviors to humans, dogs that are nervous or impulsive can appear aggressive. Dogs can also reflect the energy they get from other dogs, so one anxious dog that is snapping will make another dog anxious and aggro too.\n\nBasically, a dog is communicating with another dog long before they actually make contact, so what to you is a 2 second interaction is already a five minute convo and that's enough to establish how you feel about someone.",
"I'm not a dog expert, but I'm currently raising three dogs and have spent the last five years training them. Based on initial training that I learned from dog trainers and from my own experience over the last five years, I've seen that dogs have a \"doggy etiquette.\" \n\nAs others in this thread have pointed out, dogs communicate with body language. If upon meeting each other two dogs are communicating \"rudely\" (both trying to dominate), there will be some aggression. If both dogs are rather aloof, then the initial meeting will be curiosity based. I'm not implying that dogs take offense because I think that requires the presence of an ego which dogs don't really have. I just mean that if the other dog is communicating with their body language an aggressive stance, then the dog receiving that message will react accordingly if they are somewhat also dominant. The whole scenario depends on whether one or both dogs is dominant. \n\nI've also seen what I can only describe as introverted and extroverted dogs. The extroverted ones will go right up to another dog and get into their space sniffing whatever they want even if the other dog is clearly communicating they don't appreciate it. The introverted ones will meekly sniff the other dog but as soon as the other dog communicates that's enough the introverted dog will back off. I don't know, maybe this is just dominant versus non-dominant dogs.\n\nLastly, I've also seen that there appears to be an unspoken protocol for meeting a new dog. The protocol seems to be to communicate non dominance through limited passivity in body language, approach the other dog slowly and calmly, sniff the scent areas in the rear but only for a few seconds, and then demonstrate aloofness. Breaching any of these unspoken rules tends to set off a momentary aggression between the two. When one dog ignores tense body language from the other, you'll also see some aggression.\n\nAgain, I'm no expert and maybe the experts will refute my observations, but this is what I've seen and how I explain it. There are also ways a dog can communicate that it's not a threat. These are called appeasement gestures (yawning, licking lips, looking away, play bowing, etc) but that's a whole other conversation.",
"Despite people referencing dominance theroy as an answer, please know that dominance theroy is disproven and not based on science. Dogs do NOT operate on a alpha or submissive scale. Some dogs are dog selective in who the like and body language and play style are the most important roles when a dog is deciding who they like. ",
"Many people seem to believe the pack theory of dominance, but I believe this has been debunked and [isn't believed by most experts who study dogs and wolves](_URL_0_). I linked one source, but it is easy to find multiple other sources on this online. I think this is illustrated very well in the fact that the best trained dogs are not beat or hit when they do wrong (negative conditioning) but are instead rewarded when they do right (positive condition) because there isn't any need to establish \"dominance\". \n\nDog \"introductions\" really come down to territory, protection, social skills, and personality. If a dog feels their territory is being invaded, they may show aggression. If they feel in danger or that their friend (owner) is in danger, they may show aggression. If they have poor socialization amongst other dogs, like not meeting any before, they may show aggression. A dog's personality usually comes down to experience and training. If they have been trained to be aggressive, it is more likely they will be aggressive to others. \n\nI also think the \"little dog syndrome\" has a bit of truth in it. Little dogs probably feel threatened more when near a big dog while the big dog doesn't feel threatened at all. To compensate, little dogs act batshit crazy. This has been my experience with little dogs at least.\n\nEdit: sentence structure ",
"Hey, I just want to say that if two dogs are friendly, that does not mean that they are \"friends\" now and won't ever fight. This is a really bad concept to perpetuate because it leads to people who already own a dog getting a shelter dog, then not supervising them properly. I used to volunteer at a rescue and we had so many damn people adopt a dog, only to leave the new dog unsupervised with their current dog after a few hours because \"it seemed like they were getting along so well!\" but the dogs got into a fight. We told them many times that they need to slowly acclimate the dogs, over at least a week's time, with a ton of supervision, but so many people have the \"awww the doggies are best friends!!\" idea in their head. Then they freak out and give the dog back to the shelter.\n\n",
"Possibly related question:\n\n\nIs it true that a dog's tail, and the way that it moves, serves as a non verbal cue for other dogs? If so, does that mean that dogs that traditionally have docked tails get \"misread\" by other dogs? ",
"Short answer, they don't. All they know within five seconds of meeting each other is how comfortable they are with that interaction in that particular moment. Relationships take time to develop.",
"Mostly it's body language as they see each other. As an ACO we're trained to mimic it to raise the possibility of a positive encounter. Last week I picked up a 136.5 pound Presa and my training probably saved me from a very messy fight. \n\nHe was behind the house and came around the corner because he heard me coming. He immediately tensed up (they see our uniforms and catchpoles and that's often the initial reaction). I quickly squatted down turning slightly away from him and put my pole down on the ground. Within a few seconds he came right over and I got him on a leash. Getting him into the truck was another battle but he was never aggressive towards me.\n\nSomething to keep in mind is that two dogs greeting each other face to face on leashes is a very unnatural way for it to happen. Also any cosmetic changes (cropped ears for instance) make it harder for other dogs to read the body language of the cosmetically altered dog. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/dominance/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3yqzea
|
why is insurance federally required? how can the government force you to conduct business with a third party?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yqzea/eli5_why_is_insurance_federally_required_how_can/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cyfv3ee"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"If i remember correctly, the supreme court allowed the aca mandate on the basis that it is essentially a tax that you are exempted from if you meet a certain requirement. The government can tax and it can decide what exemptions and deductions to include, therefore it was deemed legal. It is a bit ironic that esssentially calling it a tax is what saved it as advocates had been adament about saying it wasn't a tax before hand. (Personally I'm for the law, but still find it ironic).\n\nDriving insurance is far more straight forward, as you are choosing voluntarily to engage in an activity that has the high potential of harming others, it can force you to get licenced to prove you are capable and force you to have the financial capacity to compensate someone you might hurt. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
40qee2
|
how does an op amp work and is it similar to a transistor? please strictly eli5
|
Op amp had two inputs and one output.
Transistor had two inputs and one output
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40qee2/eli5_how_does_an_op_amp_work_and_is_it_similar_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cywb1ty"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"OP amp is a complicated topic for ELI5 but I can tell you something useful, an op-amp is made from several transistors hooked up together. \n\nWhat you're noticing is called *abstraction*. It's a very powerful concept when you go to make any complicated system. You can take a complex chunk of the system and draw a box around it and only show the inputs and the outputs. \n\nAs long as you know what kind of output you'll get when you stick a known value into the input, you don't have to care about how it works on the inside. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5drqtv
|
why is this fruit rotted and the others are still good?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5drqtv/eli5_why_is_this_fruit_rotted_and_the_others_are/
|
{
"a_id": [
"da6szae"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"One might have been plucked earlier, or has been in contact with something else that was already rotting.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3m7827
|
why did google chrome kill unity?
|
I don't understand why having it is a bad thing. If it crashes then it crashes and you reload the site. What's the deal?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m7827/eli5_why_did_google_chrome_kill_unity/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvck28m"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"It wasn't just Unity; Chrome stopped supporting everything using the NPAPI standard.\n\nThe reason is that Google wants to promote the use of its own, more modern PPAPI, which is a derivative of NPAPI."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
mh74h
|
What would happen if someone stood in the Cern tunnel during the testing of sub atomic particles?
|
What would happen to the person if they were in the testing area?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mh74h/what_would_happen_if_someone_stood_in_the_cern/
|
{
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"c30vyoe",
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"c30vyoe",
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"text": [
"When relativistic particles turn, they fire a spray of radiation through that turn known as synchrotron radiation. You may well get irradiated through that process.",
"There was an accident similar to what you are asking that occurred in 1978\n\n[Link](_URL_0_)",
"When relativistic particles turn, they fire a spray of radiation through that turn known as synchrotron radiation. You may well get irradiated through that process.",
"There was an accident similar to what you are asking that occurred in 1978\n\n[Link](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski"
],
[],
[
"http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski"
]
] |
|
465ugu
|
How long would the journey from Jerusalem to Rome have taken in the first century AD?
|
Also interested in the methods of transport that would have been used. Would travel by sea have been the most common method, if so, would they have been limited to certain times of the year?
Any links to useful maps showing travel routes from that time period would be very interesting. Thanks!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/465ugu/how_long_would_the_journey_from_jerusalem_to_rome/
|
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"We can do one better than just simple maps these days since we've got ORBIS, free online Roman route-planning software: _URL_0_\n\nIt uses Latin spelling, so you'll find Jerusalem under \"i\".\n\nA quick search gives me 23-28 days depending on the season, but that's on a fast ship that goes on the open sea. This would rarely be the case, as the nature of ancient sailing meant that many vessels put into port very frequently. If we assume a rather direct course but only sailing in daylight (an impossibility) then we can only manage the trip in ca. 50 days. But really, I'm spoiling all the fun. Try it out yourself!",
"A great link from /u/Xuial \n\nI would add, that generally sea travel was the fastest, you wouldn't travel by land if you were going to destinations on the Mediterranean coastal regions. In fact, sea travel really enabled the Roman economy to function.\n\nGenerally, between Sept 14 and Nov 11 was considered 'risky', because it was Autumn and sea conditions were not ideal. Winter, Nov 11 through March 10, was considered dangerous. So, sea voyages were more generally confined to spring and summer.\n\nLionel Casson, *Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (*Princeton 1971) is a classic text that treats this area."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://orbis.stanford.edu/"
],
[]
] |
|
2ukuiu
|
why does it take so long to port pc games to macs?
|
It seems like Mac users have to wait about another year after games have been released to receive their version.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ukuiu/eli5_why_does_it_take_so_long_to_port_pc_games_to/
|
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"Macs have a very small share of the market, and many Mac users aren't gamers. There's not much incentive to try and make a port for a game on short notice. ",
"Bobdole3-2 is basically right. \n\nMacs are essentially irrelevant in the marketplace. The steam hardware survey for january seems to be broken, but\n\n_URL_0_ has some data from about 2 years ago. Mac's combined to 3.26% of the steam userbase. That's not a perfect reflection of mac gamer marketshare, but it's a large enough sample to get the idea.\n\nBecause of that, what happens is that developers usually hire someone to do the port for them - there are companies that specialize in this. But they usually wait until after the game is done and any major patches have happened before really getting into the work.\n\nNow the good/bad news is that newer engines aim to be cross platform compatible. Basically if you're making it for Windows, Android (3 versions or more), iOS, PS4, XB3, maybe WiiU, adding OSX into the mix isn't a huge problem. Both Unity and Unreal engine support mac for example. But not everyone uses those multiplatform engines and even if they do it might not be worth the time to invest in testing and fixing anything wrong with a mac version. \n\nWriting real software has a lot of platform and operating system level stuff that happens. Even if the graphics might be easy to port from OpenGl for windows to OpenGl on mac (which is the same OpenGl), keyboard input, audio playback etc. are different, and you need to write code to deal with that. And frankly, mac users aren't worth the investment most of the time, it's usually much more reasonable to expect your mac users who want to PC game will also have a windows PC. \n\nEdit: one should add that a lot of this push to multiplatform is due to windows 8 and the windows store. If microsoft are smart enough to largely abandon the store option, and if windows 10 isn't a complete clusterfuck expect mac support to start to erode further unless something dramatically changes. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"www.neowin.net/news/steam-stats-show-its-windows-8-users-outnumber-mac-os"
]
] |
|
sutwe
|
Gandhi's Stance on Hitler/Nazism...?
|
What was Gandhi's attitude toward Hitler and Nazism? Did he actually openly defend Hitler? Or did he simply argue against Indian support for the British war effort because he was anti-British? I would appreciate any help you can offer!
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sutwe/gandhis_stance_on_hitlernazism/
|
{
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"text": [
"Interestingly enough Gandhi actually sent Hitler a letter before WWII broke out, you can Google it to read what it says. Beyond that, I don't really know but I at least wanted to mention that. =]\n ",
"In his letter to Hitler he asks him as the \"sole person with the power to stop a war that will reduce humanity to a savage state\" (I think it went something like that) to forgo his instinct to fight. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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] |
|
5h1ko1
|
doctors, what difference does it make if the pain is sharp or blunt? why do you ask me this? what do different kinds of pain "mean"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h1ko1/eli5_doctors_what_difference_does_it_make_if_the/
|
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"Doc here.\n\nTechnical Speak coming up, TL;DR and ELI5 at the bottom of the answer.\n\nPain is a subjective sensation that has an effect on emotion, mood, thoughts and the physical status of a person. It is subject to individual perception, and the intensity of pain varies from one individual to another based on their emotional state, individual pain threshold, health conditions and a few other things. \n\nPain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. It is needed in order to ensure that the organism takes steps to minimise or avoid bodily harm. There are a lot of different ways in which pain is perceived, and some of these ways have been correlated to actual pathology in the body.\n\nFor example, the pain of a heart attack is very distinctive, and is typically described as feeling as if there is \"a tight vice around your chest\". This is in contrast to the pain from pneumonia, which is a sudden, abrupt and temporary sensation, often described as sharp or stabbing, and typically increases everytime you breathe or cough.\n\nOther types of pain can be muscle aches or bowel pain such as cramps or bloating, which are more diffuse, harder to point out and generally feel like a tube is twisting or stretching inside.\n\nAgain, these are all subjective sensations, which require the person suffering from it to articulate it properly. Vague complaints would be \"just pain\", which is very unhelpful, so doctors use words such as sharp, burning, twisting, stabbing and so on to try and narrow down the kind of pain, to more accurately diagnose the problem you come with. You could look it up, there are about 50 different attributes to describe \"just pain\", and each one is indicative of some disease or the other. \n\nAll pain is in your head. Technically, it's perceived in several parts of the brain, with the final say coming in from the wrinkly portion of the old noodle, which points out where in the body the pain is being felt. Because your skin, muscles and bones tend to come in contact with the outer world more often than your spleen or intestines, the skin tends to have a very rich supply of receptors in order to detect pain. This sort of pain is very well represented in the brain, and is easy to localize and point out. Typically, injured cells release a lot of stuff, which triggers the body's clean up crew to come in. The chemical triggers that call for help, also stimulate nerves to create the sensation of pain, in order to warn the organism on a conscious level. This sort of pain is what we call, in doctorspeak, as somatic pain.\n\nIn contrast, visceral pain comes from the internal organs. This pain is not very well localized, and tends to be extremely vague, partly because the area of representation allocated in the brain is much smaller compared to the sheer surface area of organs inside the body. These sort of pain fibers are also stimulated by the same chemical triggers as somatic nerves as well as other things like stretch, inflammation and so on, but the pain perceived in these areas is felt as different. As /u/bezoarboy rightly pointed out.\n\n**TL;DR**\n\nPain perception on a conscious level is complicated and incompletely understood, simply because the answer to it lies in the mechanism of consciousness. On a physiological level however, pain transmission has been mapped out fairly well, and the knowledge and understanding of the cause of different sensations of pain aids doctors into narrowing down the patient's actual problem.\n\n**ELI5**\n\nPain feels different depending on where in the body it is coming from. **Doctors ask people who suffer from pain to describe it, because they have learnt about what can cause such pain from studying and treating people who have complained of the same kind of pain before.** There are a lot of different ways pain can be felt, and the reason for this is because of the way the nerves carry pain from different areas. Some pain such as pain from a heart that's not getting enough blood, feels like your chest is being crushed. Why ? Because a lot of people who had heart attacks said they felt that way. There are other kinds of pain too, and the way this sort of pain can be felt and understood by you depends on how much attention your brain is giving it. \n\nEdit : Added a brief bit on pain perception. ELI5'ed at the end.\n\nThanks to /u/fragilespleen for the accepted definition of pain.",
"Sharp pain is intense and often in a small area, like hitting your thumb with a hammer.\n\nBlunt pain is weaker, or often in a larger area, like getting hit with a brick.\n\nGnawing pain would be multiple blunt pains in the same general area, like if you chewed on your arm.\n\nPulsating pain is tied to your pulse, like a migraine.\n\nThis list isn't exhaustive, and I'm only an anatomy student, but it's the best I could do on an empty stomach. ",
"Doctors ask questions to try to get from a general complaint like \"It hurts\" to the very specific \"It hurts because there's a dissecting aortic aneurysm and I need to get you into an operating room right now.\"\n\nThe best doctors know the universe of possibilities they're trying to rule-in or rule-out. Each question should be helping to shape a list of possible diagnosis, and the relative ranking of them, from most to least likely (the \"differential diagnosis\"), or else the diagnoses that are unlikely, but would be devastating if missed.\n\nPain receptors in different parts of the body are perceived differently. If you have a cut on your skin, it's more likely to feel sharp. If you have an obstruction in your intestines, it's more likely to feel dull / achy.\n\nObviously, \"sharp\" and \"blunt\" doesn't get you enough information to figure out what's going on. So, doctors often have mnemonics to help them remember to ask more questions. One example is \"FAR COLDER\":\n\n* Frequency (how often)\n* Associated symptoms (what else happens)\n* Radiation (whether it spreads from one spot to another)\n* Character (sharp, dull)\n* Onset (when did it start)\n* Location (where)\n* Duration (how long)\n* Exacerbating factors (what makes it worse)\n* Relieving Factors (what makes it better)\n\n*LPT: if you are going to a doctor and you can describe you problem in one long sentence including all the parts of FARCOLDER, your doctor will be amazed, and you'll be much more likely to get your issue figured out quickly*\n\nIf after asking the right questions, the story is \"Patient has dull pain in the chest, radiating to the neck, worsened by climbing stairs, improved after resting\", they would probably be thinking \"heart attack.\"\n\nIf, instead, it where \"Loss of appetite, and then dull pain around the belly button that becomes sharp as it moves to the lower right abdomen, associated with nausea and vomiting, and low-grade temperatures\", it's time to look for appendicitis.\n",
"Doctor here\n\nDifferent types of pain relate to the types of underlying innervation\n\nSo skin and other tissues closer to the surface are good at conveying 'sharp' 'hot' cold' type sensations. They are mapped fairly accurately in your brain to the area of skin they come from which is good for avoiding specific injuries \n\nDeeper nerves are classed as 'visceral' and aren't mapped as well. These give different types of pain, but are more generalised over larger body areas and tend to feel like 'aches' and 'pressure' \n\nBit of your body that have muscles in them like your intestine tend to be painful in a visceral sense when the muscles contract, so comes in waves as 'colicky or 'crampy' pain\n\nWe ask these questions to try and broadly distinguish between the different parts of body that can cause pain and what might be affected. Obviously this is a sweeping generalisation as alot of pain is affected by your brain via emotion, situation etc etc which we don't fully understand but it's a useful basis for diagnosis!\n\n",
"Recovery room nurse here. If my patient says his pain is sharp/ burning, I know that's what it feels like when someone cuts your skin with a scalpel & your numbing medicine was insufficient & I better medicate you right fucking now because as you become more awake you're going to be in a world of hurt! If my patient says he feels pressure, I know that numbing medicine does not hide pressure/squeezing sensation, I better start treating you for swelling & anxiety. Other things mean look for other problems, but those are my big two. The way I see it, if you can't describe your pain, it must not be too bad.",
"In the dental worlx:\n\nSharp pain usually means that a cavity is deep and responds to thing like sweets and cold.\n\nDull constant pain usually means that a tooth is inflamed and is usually a precursor to violent throbbing pain.\n\nViolent throbbing pain means that the infection is fighting through the mucosal tissue to break through bone. Once its through the bone the pain usually stops and an abcess will form.\n\nThe type of pain usually describes to us what action we need to take quickly before it escalates.",
"Not a doc, but a paramedic and 911 dispatcher. Certain descriptions of pain -can- be of extreme importance in triaging prehospital calls. If we get a call for a 'tearing' back or abdominal pain, it is a huge keyword for us that the patient may be experiencing an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which is a rare but potentially very dangerous condition. Very, very few people ever describe pain this way on a 911 call, so when we hear 'tearing' pain in the chest, back, or abdomen, it may trigger a lights and siren response, and raise the priority of the call. In my -extremely limited education and experience compared to a doc or nurse- there are not a lot of pain descriptors that are, in isolation, very telling. Usually they help paint a picture when combined with a lot of other signs and symptoms. Ie. a tearing pain in the toe doesn't worry me too much. A tearing pain in the back combined with cold sweats and grey skin colour suggests to me this is now my highest priority patient.",
"Yep pain quality can definitely point for or against a diagnosis. For example, chest pain that is sharp is unlikely to be cardiac related. But dull, pressure like pain is very alarming for a heart attack or angina.",
"Dentist here. As far as tooth pain goes, a sharp but quick pain tends to be reversible pulpitis (you might be able to get away with just a filling or crown) while a constant dull aching or pulsating pain tends to be irreversible pulpitis which may indicate you need root canal treatment. \n\n(Either way, you should see your dentist before it becomes worse)",
"Having enjoyed my kidney issues for each of my 42 years, & having undergone in excess of 85 surgeries for these... & related issues;\n\nHow do we think the new opioid guidelines will impact pain, the patients who need the medications and won't be able to get them, and medicine as an institution?\n\nI'm new, so please advise if this should be a sub'...I thought it applicable, ergo....I came, I saw, I posted.",
"The different kinds of pain can tell us a lot about where it may be coming from.\n\nSharp pain usually comes from skin, bones and sometimes directly from damaged nerves. Generally speaking, from the \"outer\" parts of the body.\n\nThe inner organs like stomach, intestine or heart usually cause a blunt, diffuse kind of pain.\n\nA pulsating/throbbing pain can be sign of a local infection/inflammation.\n\nPain that is coming and going in waves usually comes from organs that have smooth muscle tissue which contracts periodically. Typical examples are the ureters (=kidney stones), gall bladder (gall stones) or uterus (childbirth).\n\nIf someone tells me that they have a pain in their chest, it can be sign of a heart attack or similar conditions. But if they can point their finger at the exact spot where the pain is coming from and describe it as a sharp pain, it's most likely coming from the ribs or the nerves between the ribs. The pain from a heart attack would be more diffuse, often spreading to other areas like the left arm, jaw or stomach. Patients will typically use their whole hand to show you the general area, instead of pointing somewhere with their finger.\n\nA patient with an appendicitis will typically first describe a blunt, diffuse pain somewhere in their stomach, without being able to point to a certain spot. This is the pain that is coming from the Appendix itself. When the infection spreads to the abdominal wall, they will start feeling a different kind of pain. Much sharper and more localized, usually in the lower right abdomen.\n\nChildren usually aren't that familiar with their body yet, so any kind of pain is \"stomach pain\". They just can't really connect the pain to a certain part of their body yet.",
"After reading the replies on this thread, now everything hurts in one way or another. Why did I keep reading?",
"Alot of long winded answers here. Basically we question patients to try to make an educated guess based on their symptoms what the most likely cause is. Certain conditions typically cause certain types of pain so we ask about it because the type of pain you describe can give clues to the underlying cause. ",
"Nobody important here:\nNo one gave an ELLI5 yet even though they said they did. What you need is a pediatric doctor to explain it to you",
"Doctor of Physical Therapy ( it counts dammit!)\n\nEli5 answer:\n\nSharp=neuro related, maybe musculoskeltal\n\nblunt/achy=generally musculoskeletal\n\npulsating=vascular issue \n\ngnawing=dog chewing on leg, honestly dont know this one\n\nIt is more in-depth than this, but this is the idea. It is a piece to add to your puzzle that is you condition. Helps PTs know whether to treat or refer out."
]
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||
8fv0c0
|
How did Benjamin Disraeli, a British Jew, manage to become prime minister in an era where Jews were still publicly frowned upon?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8fv0c0/how_did_benjamin_disraeli_a_british_jew_manage_to/
|
{
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"British tolerance of non-Anglican religions in politics in the 19th Century was fairly complicated and had a number of progressive reforms, though could hardly be considered liberal in modern times. You might find it useful to compare to 'Don't ask, don't tell' in the military. Disraeli was able to 'climb the top of the greasy pole' because of changing laws and attitudes, an upwardly thinking father, and his own political scheming. \n\nIf you're not aware, the official religion of Britain was (and still is) Church of England, also known as Anglicanism. Legally, Dissenters/Non-Conformists (non-Anglican Protestants), Catholics, and Jews were all restricted to varying degrees. Until the late 1700s, for example, a Catholic father could not leave his entire estate to one son unless that son converted to Anglicanism. All of these religions were officially forbidden from entering public office, lest they use this power to undermine the established religion. The main mechanism for this was the use of a Sacramental Test; before taking office, you had to take communion in an Anglican way (similar to swearing on the Bible before being in court). \n\nIn reality, however, by the early 1800s, these tests were not uniformly applied, even for MPs, so Dissenters were tolerated in public office. The Sacramental Tests Act 1828 officially allowed them, followed by Catholic Relief Act 1829, and Jewish Relief Act 1858. Moreover, Disraeli himself did not experience severe obstacles through anti-semitism. In fact, in the intellectual and literary circles that he preferred to be in, his Jewish heritage was seen as somewhat charming and interesting. This is not to say that either the average man or average voter approved of Jews, but an example of 'progressive' British attitudes towards Judaism in this period. I genuinely don't know to what extent this was anti-Semitic rather than a general nationalism/fear of the other. For decades after Catholic Emancipation, MPs were expected to run for election again if they converted to Catholicism to test whether their constituents accepted this. \n\nIn any case, as an essentially self-made man, Disraeli was helped by familiarity in these circles for a large source of his income (even though the stress of reactions to his first book resulted in him suffering a mental breakdown). During one particularly bad spot when the debtors were looming in the 1840s, he wrote a trilogy of relatively successful novels. After his first spell as Prime Minister, he wrote 'Lothair', and received an advance of £10,000, an amount of money so large it was said that only Dickens could have expected more. (He also married a rich widow, but that's not too relevant to this q...) All this suggests that, given the right circumstances, people were more than willing to tolerate and even support people of Jewish birth.\n\nMore importantly, Disraeli was only Jewish by birth, not by practice. His father was not a true believer in Judaism, and had converted the family to Anglicanism, sensing that they would have better life chances. Benjamin took this a step further, anglicising his last name from D'Israeli to Disraeli. However, he never abandoned his Jewish roots, having had at least a cultural awakening on his Grand Tour visiting Jerusalem. He wrote several books both explicitly and implicitly supporting elements of Judaism, though he was also complimentary of the Church of England. The point remains that with shifting attitudes, and no record of actual Jewish belief, Disraeli faced no legal barriers to entering Parliament in 1837, decades before the Jewish Relief Act. \n\nFinally, Disraeli was simply very good at politics, and very ambitious. As he once publicly confessed: “I love fame; I love public reputation; I love to live in the eyes of the country; and it is a glorious thing for a man to do who has had my difficulties to contend against.” He was a firm believer in oppositional politics - opposing your opposition's ideas and policies simply for the benefit it gave you, rather than because they were genuinely bad ideas. The key example is his championing of protectionist tarrifs on British food. The Conservative leader at the time, Robert Peel, repealed the Corn Laws in 1846 for a variety of reasons, but this was deeply unpopular amongst his own landowning backbenchers. Disraeli ruthlessly exploited this, becoming the leader of a massive backbench revolt, forcing Peel to resign in the same year. Years later, once Disraeli was in a firmer position, he shrugged off any support for protectionism. His books also helped weave a political narrative that attracted support. The trilogy of books I mentioned are partly used even today as the basis of 'One Nation Conservatism', which roughly supports civil and religious institutions and socioeconomic reforms for the common man. His support of the 1867 Reform Act enfranchised a lower rung of respectable working class voters. All of these were designed to consolidate his support both within and without of Parliament. The latter didn't largely work, as his first premiership was only around 9 months in 1868, but he did return from 1874-80. A final point worth mentioning is that he completely charmed Queen Victoria, who considered him one of the two most favourite PMs who ever served her in 64 years. This public support doubtless dulled the edge of any anti-semitic opposition Disraeli could have publicly faced after his first premiership.\n\nHope this answers your question!\n\nSources: \n\n - Richard Aldous 'The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli'\n - Robert Blake 'Disraeli'\n - Paul Adelman 'Gladstone, Disraeli, and Later Victorian Politics'\n - Stephen J Lee 'Gladstone and Disraeli'"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
g2yk5g
|
why do wi-fi and bluetooth need my location?
|
I am concerned about my privacy and have turned on location only for essential services. Can I safely turn off networking and wireless in location services?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g2yk5g/eli5_why_do_wifi_and_bluetooth_need_my_location/
|
{
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"text": [
"If I remember correctly, it's because the SSID's (The name/fingerprint) of WiFi and Bluetooth can be used to figure out your location anyway\n\n[Yeeeee](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/123342"
]
] |
|
2hwd9h
|
why is the past tense of hang "hung" when talking about an object but "hanged" when talking about a person?
|
I've always wondered this, however you can really tell someone's aptitude for grammar if they can correctly use the past tense of hang.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hwd9h/eli5_why_is_the_past_tense_of_hang_hung_when/
|
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"text": [
"The words hanged and hung can be used interchangeably as the past tense and past participle of the verb to hang. So, the bottom line is that you cannot make a mistake by using one of these words instead of the other. \n\nIn regards to an execution, hanged is preferred, but not required.\n\n",
"Traditionally, the words can be used interchangeably; as has already been mentioned, but it is highly discouraged to use hung when talking about the person or hanged with regard to a tapestry. \n\nLanguages are constantly evolving and this is just one recent change that although seems quite arbitrary, so is language in it's entirety. ",
"As far as modern British English is concerned, *hung* is the normal form in most general uses, e.g. they hung out the washing; but *hanged* is the form normally used in reference to execution by hanging: the prisoner was hanged. \n\nThe reason for this distinction is a complex historical one: hanged, the earlier form, was superseded by hung sometime after the 16th century; it is likely that the retention of hanged for the execution sense may have to do with the tendency of archaic forms to remain in the legal language of the courts.\n\nEDIT: see also /u/obiwanspicoli's excellent reply below.",
"Three different verbs, one strong, two weak, merged at different times throughout the history of English. Ultimately they became just the one verb we have, 'hang', but kept the weak past participle 'hanged' for transitive use in legal context, while the(relatively recent) strong past participle 'hung' became regular for all other uses of the verb.\n\nYou know how people sometimes like to sound important while using archaic phrases? Well judges, and people imitating judges, more or less kept 'hanged' around.\n\nFor anyone who cares, the original strong past participle had been 'hangen' before it was replaced by 'hung'.",
"If you start talking about how hung someone is, people are going to get confused."
]
}
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[] |
[] |
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[],
[],
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|
2n7avq
|
why does an ipad mini or hybrid laptop sell for $200-300 but new iphones cost $600?
|
There are tablets with 4LTE technology so is the "phone" part really that expensive?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n7avq/eli5_why_does_an_ipad_mini_or_hybrid_laptop_sell/
|
{
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"text": [
"The fact that they are smaller makes them more expensive.\n\nThey have to cram a comparable amount of computing power into a smaller container, so they require newer and thus more expensive technology.",
"Someone mentioned that smaller electronics are more expensive to make which is definitely true, but iPhones are so expensive for a different reason. They want to encourage people to buy the phones at a discount by creating or renewing their contracts with cell carriers (Att, Verizon, etc.). The $600 price discourages people from paying full price. Here's a breakdown of Apple's costs for production:\n\n\n[A 16GB iPhone 6 cost Apple $200.10. The device is selling for $649 in the U.S. without a contract with a wireless carrier.](_URL_1_)\n\n[A 16gb wifi only iPad Air 2 costs apple $275 to produce and retails for $499.](_URL_0_)\n\nSo, you can see that the iPhone is cheaper to make and retails for more than the iPad. Apple really wants people to get cell contracts, and they also know that early adopters will pay full price for the phone before their 2-year contract expires. It's a win-win for Apple.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.cnet.com/news/apples-ipad-air-2-costs-275-to-358-to-make-teardown-reveals/",
"http://time.com/3426087/apple-iphone-6-cost/"
]
] |
|
1lwr7o
|
why are newer smartphones so much easier to break than "old" ones?
|
I have a 2009 Nokia touchscreen phone. It's been through drops, falls, and thrown from the back of the car to the windshield, yet it's still in relatively good shape. However, my friend dropped his iPhone and it cracked. Badly. So why are newer phones so weak?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lwr7o/eli5_why_are_newer_smartphones_so_much_easier_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cc3i6f2",
"cc3i93h"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Nokia's are the beast. Although I did dropkick my iPhone 3g and drop my iphone 4 more than all my other phones combined and neither broke. Iphone 4 still in use by someone. I cringe when I drop my s3 though. ",
"The big change has been making the entirety of one side a fragile glass screen. \n\nThe decision to make the bezels thin means that there is little space to absorb impacts without putting the forces onto that large, fragile glass panel. They try to make the phone strong instead, but the desire to make the phone as thin and light as possible compromises that as well.\n\nTough, modern phones do exist. My Motorola Defy has been dropped many times. It has a tough, rounded bezel that absorbs impacts."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2dz247
|
movie profits.
|
So say a movie does really well and sells a lot of tickets and eventually a lot of DVD/Blueray copies, to who does the profit go? Actors and staff get their salary, distribution fees and licenses take their toll.. but when a movie has paid it's dues and is still making money, where does it go to? Does this change years later, when people are still buying copies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dz247/eli5_movie_profits/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjugdlx"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Some people are given a lump sum for the job and never get paid again, others have \"points\", which means they keep getting paid a percentage for as long as the movie makes money."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
udaxq
|
Can I use my regular sunglasses to see the transit of Venus?
|
They are not really cheap glasses, Ray-Ban to be exact. They are pretty dark, but I don't think that these $0.95 glasses that they sell [here](_URL_0_) will help more than the ones that I have. What do you think?
Edit: Thanks everyone for all of your help!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/udaxq/can_i_use_my_regular_sunglasses_to_see_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4udszm",
"c4udu2s",
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"c4ue46h",
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"c4ujx3r"
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"score": [
5,
4,
3,
3,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"If you read the article you linked they have a big NO! section that says specifically not to use sunglasses, as they will not offer the right kind of protection from the sun.",
"No.\n\nYour sunglasses are nowhere near enough protection.\n\nWelder's Glass #14 (I think this is the darkest of all welder's glass but hopefully someone else can say for sure) [is deemed suitable for direct viewing](_URL_0_).\n",
"No! \"__Unsafe filters__ include all color film, black-and-white film that contains no silver, photographic negatives with images on them (x-rays and snapshots), smoked glass, __sunglasses (single or multiple pairs),__ photographic neutral density filters and polarizing filters. Most of these transmit high levels of invisible infrared radiation which can cause a thermal __retinal burn__.\" [Source: NASA](_URL_0_)",
"[Everything](_URL_0_) you need to know about the transit of Venus.",
"The $0.95 are safe while your Ray-Bans are not. The price is not as important as the filtering ability. My car cost more than your Ray-Bans, but I'm not going to watch the transit through the windshield of my car.",
"You can use them to see the transit of Venus, but you will not see the transit (or anything after it) for long! Sunglasses are meant to block out enough light to make it pleasant to see objects around you, while solar glasses are meant to block out enough light to make the sun safe to view while blocking out pretty much everything else around you.",
"Just to explain about those 95 cent glasses, I have a couple pairs. When you put them on they are so opaque that you see nothing except the reflection of your own eyes. They are made with special solar film that blocks out most light. When you look at the sun with them on, all you see is the disc of the sun on a black background. \n\nLike Zerowantuthri says, #14 welders glass is acceptable to use to view the transit and has the added bonus of being stackable to provide even more protection. Just DO NOT use it in conjuction with a telescope or binoculars. Actually, never use anything except approved solar filters or solar film to view the sun with magnification and never use eyepiece filters on your scope or binos to view the sun. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.transitofvenus.org/june2012/eye-safety"
] |
[
[],
[
"http://earthsky.org/space/view-may-20-annular-eclipse-and-june-5-transit-of-venus-safely"
],
[
"http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety2.html"
],
[
"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/30/everything-you-need-to-know-about-next-weeks-transit-of-venus/"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
xhbri
|
Are high powered electrical towers and cables dangerous to your health?
|
There have been studies that show association between high voltage towers and cancer, and others that show weak or little correlation. I know that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but is there anyone that might be able to provide more insight into whether high voltage towers/cables are dangerous to one's health?
Thanks!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xhbri/are_high_powered_electrical_towers_and_cables/
|
{
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"c5mdxaa"
],
"score": [
9,
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15,
2
],
"text": [
" > Are high powered electrical towers and cables dangerous to your health?\n\nNo. \n\nThere is a longer version of this explanation (an essay!), but suffice it to say that a small handful of poorly conducted studies that maybe show a correlation... don't outweigh the fact that high voltage towers causing cancer would require a violation of the laws of thermodynamics/quantum mechanics.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a WHO publication on the topic from 2007. From the summary statement:\n\n > Uncertainties in the hazard assessment include the role that control selection bias and exposure misclassification might have on the observed relationship between magnetic fields and childhood leukaemia. In addition, virtually all of the laboratory evidence and the mechanistic evidence fail to support a relationship between low-level ELF magnetic fields and changes in biological function or disease status. **Thus, on balance, the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal, but sufficiently strong to remain a concern.**",
"Yes, if you get close enough to the conductor to form a path to ground, quite hazardous. \n\nFor cancer, no, as has been explained by others.",
"A related question. If you're standing very close to high voltage lines (directly under them), you hear a buzzing sound. Is that the wires themselves vibrating or something else?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/elf_ehc/en/index.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
4enjwh
|
water jets. how can the water have so much pressure that it can cut steel?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4enjwh/eli5_water_jets_how_can_the_water_have_so_much/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d21nncg",
"d21noyp"
],
"score": [
5,
8
],
"text": [
"How far something will penetrate into something else is a factor of one thing, and one thing only.\n\n**SPEED**\n\nWhen something under pressure, moves to a lower pressure environment it moves FAST. So fast that even steel isn't enough to get in its way. It'll be pushed out of the way! Or cut.",
"Shoot almost anything fast enough and itll go through something else.\n\nThat said water jet cutters add in sand to the water to make it more abrasive and help it cut through metal. This makes it somewhat easier."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
33ss0u
|
Did China's intervention in the Korean War strengthen support for Mao's regime?
|
Hi, I'm wondering what the effect of the Korean War was on the nascent communist regime in China. Mao had just come to power. What was the Chinese perspective on the war, and did it help Mao consolidate his position? Thanks.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33ss0u/did_chinas_intervention_in_the_korean_war/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqo403n"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Yes, I think new scholarship from China specialists generally agree that one of the *primary* aims for China in the Korean war was to achieve CCP domestic objectives through mass mobilization. One of my professors from undergrad studied this exact topic as his main research area and wrote a couple of books about it.\n\nRemember of course that the civil war had *just* ended. In 1948 the PLA controlled only the city of Harbin and rural areas in north China, from about Hebei up to the Soviet border. After a series of conventional PLA attacks on major northern cities like Shenyang and Jinan, GMD resistance collapsed rapidly. The PRC was proclaimed October 1 1949 and GMD stragglers were finally cleaned up in mid-1950. The state that the CCP inherited was an absolute mess. The GMD fabi yuan was in the middle of an inflationary spiral that saw the cost of living in Shanghai increase almost 20x from September to December of 1948, and this was *after* a currency reissue that July which exchanged the new yuan with the old yuan at a rate of 3 million to 1. At the time of the CCP takeover many transactions were conducted through barter.\n\nThe first few of years of CCP control was focused on reconstruction, with political reform temporarily postponed in the interest of rebuilding the economy after more than a decade of war and economic turmoil. Capitalists were left in charge of their factories, foreigners were left in their international zones, and bureaucrats and policemen remained at their posts. Industrial disputes between workers and owners were kept to a minimum for the time being.\n\nIt's not an accident that the Korean War coincided with the early phases of China's transition into a planned economy and the associated political mass movements that accompanied it. One mass movement was directed at foreigners: the 'Resist America, Aid Korea' movement. This was overtly focused on the ongoing Korean war, and it led to the expulsion of essentially the entire foreign community in China by 1951 and the seizure of their assets. The war coincided with other mass campaigns, including one against GMD 'counterrevolutionaries,' another against CCP bureaucrats known as the 'Three Anti' movement (anti-corruption, anti-waste, anti-obstructionism), and yet another called the 'Five Anti' movement launched to attack the urban upper / middle class (industrialists, managers, etc.).\n\nThe overall purpose of these mass mobilizations was to break the power of the old landowning elite in the countryside and the power of private industrialists, both foreign and Chinese, in the cities, and by the end of 1952 basically all of these goals had been accomplished. It set the stage for the first PRC five year plan covering 1953-1957. Large scale implementation of central planning for industries, and cooperative farming for agriculture followed starting in 1955. The Korean War was instrumental in sustaining the fever pitch of politics from 1950 to 1952.\n\nTo quote from my old prof's book:\n\n > ...the Korean crisis offered the CCP leadership potential opportunities. In evaluating how the Korean crisis might influence China, Mao and his fellow CCP leaders could clearly sense that by firmly and successfully fully confronting the \"U. S. imperialist aggression\" in Korea and Taiwan, they would be able to translate the tremendous pressure from without into dynamics that would help enhance the Chinese people's revolutionary momentum while legitimizing the CCP's authority as China's new ruler. This would help establish the foundation for Mao's grand plans to transform China's old state and society into a new socialist country.\n\nSee:\n\n*Mao's China and the Cold War*, Chen Jian\n\n*China's Road to the Korean War*, Chen Jian"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
u0au3
|
Is it possible to get a Pavlovian response from a known placebo?
|
Let's say I had a certain type of candy each time I took a caffeine tablet, and never had it besides. Would the 101st time I had some of that candy be effective if I didn't take a caffeine tablet to go with it, or would the fact that I was the one who initiated the Pavlovian response disable the placebo effect?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/u0au3/is_it_possible_to_get_a_pavlovian_response_from_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4r87bk",
"c4romzi"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"[This article](_URL_0_) says that placebos can work even when the patient knows they're getting a placebo. So I say, why not?\n\nNote: I'm no scientist.",
"I'm on the fence with this. There's research showing that you can condition a placebo response in some cases (_URL_1_) but not others (_URL_0_). There's a separate arm of research looking at what could be called open label placebos (see link in the other comment) that shows preliminary promising results. But I wouldn't be comfortable linking the two together and saying that it's possible, especially on an effect that neither of the research arms have addressed (i.e. caffeine).\n\ntl;dr - you can get a conditioned placebo response, you can get a 'known' placebo response, but you may or may not be able to combine the two."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effect-patients-sham-drug"
],
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15885259",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12468450"
]
] |
|
6pyaqo
|
Why are calories in chicken not scaled linearly as you increase weight?
|
I was counting my calories today and had 4 ounces of grilled chicken breast fir lunch, but 6 ounces for dinner.
Fat secret said 211 calories for 4 ounces and 276 for 6 ounces.
Of course i thought that didn't math correctly, so looked up what it said about the other weights. Here is what fat secret said:
1 oz = 35 calories
2 oz = 85 calories
3 oz = 128 calories
4 oz = 211 calories
5 oz = 264 calories
6 oz = 276 calories
7 oz = 321 calories
This makes zero sense to me. Is there some science behind this, or is fat secret just kind of guessing.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6pyaqo/why_are_calories_in_chicken_not_scaled_linearly/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dkt7z5r"
],
"score": [
17
],
"text": [
"As a bodybuilder who counts proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in the food I eat, I can tell you that it shouldn't work that way assuming the composition of the food is the same. The only way it wouldn't scale is if the amount of fat on the meat changes the larger the animal gets for example. However, nutritional information is not designed this way and is standardized for the item. So if a piece of meat is slightly fattier, the nutritional content (calories in this case) will be different. \n\nFat, protein, and carbs all have different caloric values.\n\nBut it sounds like your website sucks. A quick calculation using google's nutritional value for chicken breast scales accurately."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
14vrz7
|
How did whaling work? I imagine whales are pretty hard to catch with just harpoons.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14vrz7/how_did_whaling_work_i_imagine_whales_are_pretty/
|
{
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"text": [
"It was pretty hard, incredibly dangerous, but still very profitable. \n\nI can't speak for all whalers ever, but the whalers that operated around the southern parts of Australia in the 1800s basically would sail around looking for whalespout, then when they got close would launch smaller boats. These smaller boats would row up to the whales, and one man would hurl or shoot a harpoon into the whale. Then they would wait for the whale to die (taking a long time, as you'd expect), they they would tow the carcass back to the larger ship for processing.\n\nEDIT: Ok, I'm going to add some more detail, for reasons.\n\nWhaling had an enormous impact on the economies of the Australian colonies. It wasn't until 1830 that land-based economic activity overtook whaling and sealing.\n\nWhales were valued primarily for [whale oil](_URL_4_) and [whale bone](_URL_2_). Whale oil was used as a fuel in lamps and streetlights, baleen was used in corsets. You cut massive strips of blubber off the whale carcass, and boiled it in big pots. Here's a picture of whalers in NZ cutting blubber: _URL_1_ you boil it, then the oil would collect on the top. This is just speculation, but I imagine the smell would have been *spectacular*.\n\nMy home state of Tasmania saw huge numbers of whales migrating past on their way south. The diary of [Robert Knopwood](_URL_7_) records:\n\n > 'we passed so many whales that it was dangerous for the boat to go up the river [the River Derwent, where the major city of Hobart was founded] unless you kept very near the shore'.\n\nWhalers came from all over the world to work the seas, and within just under a century the stocks were nearly completely fished out. The first whaling expedition left Tasmania in 1804, the last in 1900. The vast majority of the damage was done in the first 40 years though.\n\nAs for the actual hunting, this is a painting of what it was supposed to look like (off the coast of New South Wales): _URL_0_\n\nWhy was it dangerous? Well, in Tasmania whale season is in the middle of winter, so it's cold and rough. But at least early on, the whales came so close to shore that wasn't an issue. The danger was more in the wounded whales thrashing about and breaking up the whaleboats. Harpoons were designed a bunch of different ways (_URL_5_), the vast majority of the ones used in Tasmania were hand-thrown one-flued harpoons. Again just speculation, but imagine the pressure on the harpoonist. The whole whaleboat crew are risking life & limb to get you there...\n\nI'll leave it there for now. There are some pretty cool museums in Tasmania where you can see the harpoons and boats they used. It's kind of unsettling to get in an actual whaleboat and realise the size of the whales they were hunting. I would have been absolutely packing my dacks if I was crewing one.\n\nEDIT THE SECOND: You should check out /u/khosikulu's [comment](_URL_3_) for some more reading, and of course a bunch of people have suggested Moby Dick (which you should read anyway). But IMO nothing is better than heading to the various maritime museums around the world and looking at the replica whaleboats, harpoons and the like.\n\nEDIT THE THIRD: You should also check out /u/The_Alaskan's excellent [comment](_URL_6_) about whaling techniques used by indigenous Alaskan people.",
"If you have both netflix and a spare two hours I'd recommend [this documentary on american whaling by Rick Burns for PBS](_URL_0_). It's very compelling but I'm biased in that I have two awesome whaling museums around where I live and I'm a fan of Melville. \n\nIt's pretty comprehensive in telling how whaling evolved from shore whaling, to month long trips, to finally years journeys. If anything it sheds light on the urge to \"go to sea\" that I completely understand (and how harsh a reality it was!)\n\nIf you don't have netflix and have other means to watch it the title is \"American Experience: Into the Deep\"",
"If you're really interested in it, read half of Moby Dick: you will get the most protracted, in depth discussion on whaling, ever. When the novel isn't trying to be a novel, it's a whaling encyclopedia in minute detail. ",
"I know that whaling since at least the beginning of the last century in the Faroe Islands (and still today in the case of Faroe Islands) and in the Shetland Islands relied on whale drives (i.e. boats driving whales into narrow fjords or beaches where the whales beach themselves). Does anyone know whether these \"drives\" were only made possible with mechanized fishing vessels or were these drives common before mechanization of whaling fleets in these territories? If it was possible to \"drive\" whales before mechanization, then that would be one relatively easy and less risky way to whale.",
"You should read Moby Dick, it's half novel, half whaling instruction manual.",
"_URL_0_ Pretty good american experience doc on whaling in america.",
"[This is a 2 hour documentary](_URL_0_) that's on the PBS website. It's all about the American whaling industry. Probably the most interesting part is story story about the ESSEX, which ended up becoming the inspiration behind Moby Dick. SUPER great documentary. ",
"Something mentioned only in passing so far is the [Temple Toggle](_URL_0_), popularized by Lewis Temple, a blacksmith and former slave, in 1848. It made harpoons much more reliable, as, once it was in, it rarely came out. Previously, two-flued harpoons had the problem of not penetrating far enough, while one-flued harpoons had the problem of too easily pulling out. The Temple Toggle's design allowed it the benefits of both, and is credited with revolutionizing the whaling industry during the age of sail.",
"The Makah Indian Tribe (which controversially still whales to this day, but not necessarily using traditional methods) used a modified technique from most of what I've seen here. They would attach inflated Seal bladders to a line which was tied to a harpoon in an effort to keep the whale from diving too deep. I also think it made it a lot easier to track them as they died even if they stayed closer to the surface, but I can't find any confirmation of that right now. Here's a site that lays out the whale hunt pretty succinctly: _URL_0_",
"TasfromTAS has great information. But I can add titles, titles, titles! Anyone wanting a bigger chunk of very engaging historical writing about whaling and its scientific/cultural development (including the crucial ability to take whales that normally sink when dead) should take up Graham Burnett's chronologically sequential [*Trying Leviathan* (2007)](_URL_0_) and [*Sounding of the Whale* (2012)](_URL_1_) which really are excellent pieces of writing by a first-rate historian of science.",
"I would like to add that some whales have a bladder that is filled with very high-quality oil, which was carefully drained. This was in addition to the boiled fat that was liquefied.\n\nWhen whales became scarce, the price of whale oil went up, and inventors proved you could make an alternative lamp-oil by simple refining of crude oil into kerosene. The resultant oil boom happened at just the right moment to save some species from total annihilation.",
"I'm a bit late, but let me write a bit on the whaling history of the Alutiiq and Aleut people of southwestern Alaska. I cannot speak to how close these methods are to those used by the Tlingit, Inupiat or Yup'ik Eskimo.\n\nFirst, a note about why whaling was needed. In pre-Russian Alaska, there was no native ironworking. While there is some evidence of bronze trading with Asia, we do not know how widespread that trading was. Whalebone was a strong material that could be used in tools or construction.\n\nWhales also meant an enormous supply of food, and while seal oil was primarily used in lamps because of its abundance, whale oil works just as well. Given the long hours of darkness in Alaska at this time of year, light is extremely valuable.\n\nWhat about the whalers themselves? I've heard some disagreement about the precise term, whether they were just considered an elite or whether they were more shamanistic. In either case, whalers were young to middle-aged men, and they lived separately from the rest of the tribe.\n\nThey were not considered good, they were not considered bad, but the nature of their job lent them an elite status. That status also meant there was ... not so much a cult, but trade secrets kept only among whalers. \n\nUnlike tribes in today's Washington state, Alutiiq whalers went out singly or in pairs using sealskin kayaks. They used lances made of stone and wood and coated with monkshood, a flower that produces the poison aconite. The poison is fat-soluble, so whalers would use the rendered fat of mummified elites to mix with the poison and coat their blades.\n\nThis likely was considered an honor. One Alutiiq whaler is recorded in Russian records as telling Governor Baranof that after he died, he would dig Baranof up for this purpose. Because Baranof was so powerful, he would surely make good poison, the whaler said.\n\nAfter a successful strike, the aconite would take a few days to take effect and kill the whale. Canny whalers knew hunting grounds whose currents would drive carcasses to shore. Each lance was inscribed with some kind of hunter's mark to ensure that the relevant hunter received credit for his achievement. \n\nNaturally, hunting whales was a dangerous profession. As Dr. Sven Haakanson, director of the Alutiiq Museum, says, \"they were an elite, but they were a short-lived elite.\"\n\nThe aconite lances remained in use even after Russian contact because aconite didn't hold well on iron and steel lances. The Russians attempted small-scale whaling operations in the 1840s and 1850s, but by that time Nantucket whalers already were in the grounds south of Alaska. By the time of the Alaska Purchase, modern techniques like bomb lances were in wide use and soon spread to Native use.\n\nFor more information, see the [blog of Patrick Saltonstall, Alutiiq Museum archaeologist](_URL_1_) and [this 10-minute video about the whaling process](_URL_0_).\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://i.imgur.com/l2etx.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/S4CbK.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baleen#Human_uses",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14vrz7/how_did_whaling_work_i_imagine_whales_are_pretty/c7h52n4",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil",
"http://i.imgur.com/cvxJ0.jpg",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14vrz7/how_did_whaling_work_i_imagine_whales_are_pretty/c7hagmn",
"http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/K/Robert%20Knopwood.htm"
],
[
"http://instantwatcher.com/titles/180963"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://video.pbs.org/video/1485863181"
],
[
"http://video.pbs.org/video/1485863181"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toggling_harpoon"
],
[
"http://www.alamut.com/subj/the_other/misc/makahWhaling.html"
],
[
"http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/85830679",
"http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/711050945"
],
[],
[
"http://frontierscientists.com/videos/they-hunt-whales-with-poison-spears/",
"http://saltonstall.blogspot.com/2008/01/alutiiq-whaling.html"
]
] |
||
2rlp8l
|
obama's power of veto.
|
I vaguely understand that Obama is allowed to veto bills, but what is stopping him from vetoing anything he disagrees with? What exactly is the extent of the veto power?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rlp8l/eli5_obamas_power_of_veto/
|
{
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"text": [
"basically, a bill is written by congress and is passed with a majority vote, which means that > 50% voted yes to it. It then goes to the president to be signed into law. However, if he disagrees with the bill, he can veto it, which sends it back to congress. Congress can either:\n\n1. Revise the bill and make changes that compromise with the president's wishes\n\nor\n\n2. Vote on the bill as is, and if it passes a 2/3 majority, then the veto is essentially ignored and the bill then becomes law.",
"The president may veto any bill passed by both the Senate and the House. However, if after the veto the bill is passed again with a 2/3rds majority in both the Senate and the House the bill becomes law and the president cannot veto it again.",
"Also: Obama has only vetoed two bills. His predecessor George W. Bush used a veto 12 times.\n\nBut if Obama does it a third time, you can count on him to be declared a dictator.",
"As others have said, he can veto anything he wants and if congress can get 2/3 to vote yes on it a second time, it over-rides the presidents veto.\n\nBut also, it's just political capital that he stands to lose. He cannot veto individual parts of a law that comes before his desk, and thus it's all or nothing when he signs it. If he vetoed every bill he had any disagreement on, he'd probably wind up vetoing way more bills than would look good."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1snhea
|
Why was chess so popular during the Cold War and why has it fallen to the wayside?
|
It seems like I always here about grandmasters and great chess players/matches from during the Cold War time period.
Was this just a product of the rivalry between the two superpowers? And why was it such a big deal?
It seems like it might have been to see which country was more intellectually gifted, but that is just speculation on my part.
Finally, why has chess fallen out of the international spotlight now? I feel like I never hear about current grandmasters or mega-chess games. [Feel free to ignore this part if it is too current for the subreddit rules.]
Inspired by [this post](_URL_0_).
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1snhea/why_was_chess_so_popular_during_the_cold_war_and/
|
{
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"cdzbibk",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"A similar question was asked only yesterday, specifically in relation to the Fischer-Spassky Match. [My answer there might interest you.](_URL_0_)",
"/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov already spoke beautifully of the role chess played in American history. I'm going to touch on the major points on why the Soviets dominated this period of chess history.\n\n The popularity of chess in the Soviet Union is due to both coincidence and economic factors. It just so happened that every World Champion from 1927 to 1972 (with the exception of Max Euwe during 1935-1937) was Soviet. It also just so happened that Mikhail Botvinnik happened to be not only a brilliant chess player, but an important Soviet engineer and was a personal contact in Stalin.\n\n Botvinnik's international success drew attention from the government. This not only attracted money for this emergent professional sport, but also set up an extensive network of Grandmasters who could work on teams to prepare each other for big matches and create a training system. This has been referred to as the \"Soviet School\" and provided well funded support from players from the local level up to world champion. \n\n Pioneer's Palaces (government funded extra-curricular classes for children) gathered and scouted for local talent, who would then move up through regional and then national rings. Many of the great Soviet GMs, especially Botvinnik, became influential teachers, allowing for young talent to be properly raised for future generations. Garry Kasparov is the most famous example of this system. He was a personal student of Botvinnik's. Products of the Soviet School include an inexhaustible list of names. Mikhail Tal, Anatoly Karpov, Beliavsky, Geller, etc.\n\n This legacy still exists today, although its nature was changed significantly by the collapse of the USSR. Vladimir Kramnik is one of the last bastions of the Soviet school, and this final generation is beginning to age out of professional chess (it's rare that players much beyond 40 are still able to compete at the highest level). Major centers of chess now are still Russia and the US, but many of the former Satellite States still hold strong players. India and China are beginning to grow as chess powerhouses as well.\n\n There was recently a world championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen that made international news! I'm not going to make any historical claims for it, but I'll link you to a news article giving some match coverage [here](_URL_0_). \n\nSource: *Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors* (Parts 2-5) and *Kasparov on Kasparov* ",
"I would also mention that generally, the USSR condemned \"fanciful\" games, art and culture. They essentially force-marched the population away from pop culture for several decades and heavily subsidized things like ballet, classical music, realist art and the like. Chess was among the the games that the USSR encouraged people to embrace, and it became popular for much the same reason that ballet and classical music became popular in eastern europe - it filled a cultural void.\n\nFrom a US coldwar standpoint, it provided a venue for international competition between the west and the USSR without a military threat. The olympics did the same thing."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/1smz9v/us_chess_prodigy_bobby_fisher_playing_50/"
] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1siwy2/how_big_a_deal_was_it_when_bobby_fischer_played/cdybiy4"
],
[
"www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/nov/22/magnus-carlsen-vishy-anand-chess"
],
[]
] |
|
dqv0vk
|
Many people say that communism has killed millions of people and use things like starvation to come up with those numbers, if that's the case than how many people have died in capitalist countries since the Soviet Revolution?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dqv0vk/many_people_say_that_communism_has_killed/
|
{
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"f6jepy0"
],
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"text": [
"This is a challenging question to answer, as it raises questions of \"what is capitalism?\", and \"what actually drives changes in life expectancy anyway?\" \n\n**What is capitalism?**\n\nThe term \"capitalism\" was first used in the 19th century, as a label for the existing economic system in the UK and other similar countries. Adam Smith, often known as \"the father of capitalism\", never actually used the term himself. In his 1776 book *The Wealth of Nations*, he talked about 'liberty' or 'natural liberty' and 'justice'. Often Smith criticised policies of his time that some future Marxists would describe as essential to capitalism (e.g. Lenin). For a couple of examples, Smith opposed European imperialism and also was stoutly critical of businesses (merchants, in his terminology) lobbying governments for subsidies and laws favouring special interests at the expense of the general public. Smith was actually very skeptical of comprehensive systems:\n\n\n > The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess–board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess–board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. [*Theory of Moral Sentiments* (1759)]\n\n\nThe 19th century, when the word \"capitalism\" was coined, decades after Adam Smith, was a time when historians and economists talked about \"feudualism\" as a distinct system of economic organsiation that had covered much of Europe in medieval times (Adam Smith did talk about feudualism). Karl Marx used the term \"feudalism\" extensively, and contrasted it with capitalism, viewing the two as having very different modes of production. Marx expected Communism to have a different mode again. Marx's intellectual influence has been huge, and many writings in the 20th century and even now draw on his conception of a distinct stage of capitalism.\n\n\nHowever modern historiography, drawing on research carried out since the 1950s, has a very different view now of the economic organisation in medieval Europe. Generally, a lot more complex one that emphases variation between different places and the same places at different times. In the case of England, the medieval economy is now regarded as highly market-based and accounts of the Industrial Revolution talk more about a gradual change. To quote the economic historian [Gregory Clark](_URL_2_):\n\n\n > The more we learn about medieval England, the more careful and reflective the scholarship gets, the more prosaic does medieval economic life seem. The story of the medieval economy in some ways seems to be that there is no story.\n > Back in the bad old days, when the scholarship was less careful, the medieval economy was mysterious and exciting. Marxists, neo-Malthusians, Chayanovians, and other exotics debated vigorously their pet theories of a pre-capitalist economic world in a wild speculative romp. But little by little, as the archives have been systematically explored, and the hypotheses subject to more rigorous examination, medieval economic historians have been retreating from their exotic Eden back to a mundane world alarmingly like our own.\n\n\nAnd it's not just medieval Europe. Economic historians appear to have spent the last few decades engaged in a contest to see who can find the most features of modern financial markets back in Ancient Rome. Nor is it just Europe, economic historians find markets in [pre-modern China](_URL_0_), and just about everywhere else they have looked (see for example this book review on [pre-colonial West Africa](_URL_0_)).\n\n\nThe result of all this research is that we now don't have any agreement of when capitalism came about, nor of what makes it distinctive. \n\n\nTake the UK in the 19th century. It started the century a very limited democracy (an estimated about 1 in 7 men were eligible to vote) and an imperial power, with various government economic interventions, including restrictions on international trade, it tolerated slavery abroad and boys being forced into the incredibly dangerous job of chimney sweeps at home, but with private property, poor laws providing income support for the poorest, and in Scotland a system of schools open to even the poorest. The UK ended the 19th century with a much wider male suffrage (60% of men), fervently anti-slavery, a much narrower poor support system, a primary education system for both boys and girls, free trade, but still an imperial power. Was the UK more or less capitalist in 1900 than in 1800? How about in 1950, where there was universal adult suffrage, the NHS had started, and there was rationing and capital controls, but the empire was declining? \n\n\nAnd there's nothing extraordinary about the complexity and variety of UK policies either. Even Hong Kong, famously libertarian under British control post WWII saw extensive government ownership of land. \n\n\nThis can be contrasted with communism, where there are a number of countries where the leaders explicitly announced that they were socialist, and we can read their articles and speeches and follow the legal reforms they made seeking to achieve their ideals, and their setbacks. Not that there isn't debate about whether a country that called itself \"socialist\" or \"communist\" actually was.\n\n\nIn summary, there's no clear definition of capitalism that allows people to objectively distinguish capitalist countries from others. What's more, countries commonly called 'capitalist' exhibit significant variation in policies both at one point in time and across time, so if we see a country committing an atrocity it's hard to know what to attribute this to. So any answer to this sort of question tends to depend on the analyst's biases about what is distinctive about the countries they call capitalist and what causes atrocities, or improvements.\n\n**What is behind improvements in life expectancy?**\n\nFor example, two countries generally thought of capitalist, the Netherlands and England were the first countries in recorded history to see the disappearance of peacetime famines, with the last peacetime famine being in the Netherlands in the 1590s, and in England in the 1620s. But this seems to be driven by a combination of broad technological changes and effective judicial systems, not any one factor like the enclosures. I wrote a comment about [the start of the end of famine](_URL_3_) and the factors behind it 2 months ago for one of the floating features, if you are interested in learning more.\n\nAnd, while Western countries were the first to see sustained rises in life expectancy from the mid 19th century, [from the 1920s this spread to the rest of the world](_URL_1_), including avowedly communist countries. But this transformation plausibly depends at least on part on technology developed in Western countries, but how much of that is due to market economies and how much to an expanding education system? Or some third factor, there's no requirement that what is important in economic development be easily identifiable, let alone measurable.\n\n**tl;dr** post WWII economic history and economic histography have made this question unanswerable in an objective way."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-premodern-china-from-221-bc-to-c-1800-ad/",
"https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy",
"https://eh.net/book_reviews/peasants-merchants-and-markets-inland-trade-in-medieval-england-1150-1350/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cxwafw/floating_feature_stem_the_tide_of_ignorance_by/eyojf9b/"
]
] |
||
v7qsf
|
Why do objects in zero gravity rotate?
|
When there is miniscule to no movement applied to them, objects will move and spin, why is this?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v7qsf/why_do_objects_in_zero_gravity_rotate/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c522nkc"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"The release of any object in effectively zero gravity will have a asymmetrical shift from points of contact. Unless it is perfectly timed so that all points of contact release simultaneously there will be some degree of tangential impulse, thus stimulating a rotation. If the release was perfect then the rotation always shown in NASA videos would not occur."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5876dr
|
What happened to the European lions?
|
I've heard stories about lions in Europe and recently learned they are believed to have existed in Portugal, Turkey, Greece and southern Russia.
What happened to the lions? Were they hunted to extinction?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5876dr/what_happened_to_the_european_lions/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8yd0gk"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"While you're waiting for answers, you might find the [Lions in European Heraldry](_URL_0_) section of the FAQ to be of some help. A few of the posts there touch on the range of lions in the regions you're talking about."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_lions_in_european_heraldry"
]
] |
|
2de5nr
|
what is a second?
|
Why did did seconds become a unit of time? What is the meaning of it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2de5nr/eli5_what_is_a_second/
|
{
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"text": [
"The second (symbol: s) is the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) and is also a unit of time in other systems of measurement (abbreviated s or sec); it is the second division of the hour by sixty, the first division by 60 being the minute. Between AD 1000 (when al-Biruni used seconds) and 1960 the second was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day (that definition still applies in some astronomical and legal contexts). Between 1960 and 1967, it was defined in terms of the period of the Earth's orbit around the Sun in 1900, but it is now defined more precisely in atomic terms. Seconds may be measured using mechanical, electric or atomic clocks.\n\nIt has no more meaning than what we give it, the same with most units of measurement. Obviously things like days, years, seasons, etc are all in relation to physical occurrences, the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the earth, the slant of the earth, etc.\n\nBut things like months, weeks, hours, minutes, seconds, etc don't have any meaning outside of what we have given them.\n\nEDIT - I know that months are in relation to the lunar cycle, but it isn't like that anymore, as the first isn't always a new moon and the 15th isn't always a full moon.",
"Between about 1000 AD and 1960, the second was defined as 1/86400 of a mean solar day (we have about 86400 seconds in a day). While it should be noted that this definition still applies in some contexts, it is now measured in atomic terms. Since 1967, the second has been defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transision between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. Grossly simplifying, it's the duration of 9,192,631,770 radiation cycles of the caesium 133 atom."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2fgrgv
|
why do people not like calluses and how can i create them 'automatically'?
|
I've often thought about this. I think calluses are awesome and super useful. Want to chop a bunch of wood but don't have a callus? You're screwed.
My wife, however, hates them and removes them when she sees one forming. She's not the only one I know that does that.
Also, why don't we have a machine that could constantly irritate the skin just slightly, but repeatedly over time so that we could form a callus quickly and with less chance of blistering? What would be the best way to do this (i.e. Once per day for 5 minutes or 5 times per day for 1 minute)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fgrgv/eli5_why_do_people_not_like_calluses_and_how_can/
|
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"text": [
"I was a gymnast and I would get calluses on my hands from doing the rings, high bar, and parallel bars. The problem with them is that they would form on certain parts of the hand, but if they were not trimmed, they would rip at the surrounding good tissue creating havoc. I ripped my hand bad many times from not keeping the calluses trimmed properly. ",
"Personal preference? That's all it boils down to. Some people think they're unsightly. As a bass player, I find them quite useful since I can play for longer without getting sore fingers.",
"I'm a woman, I like having soft skin. Callouses are rough to the touch. I just like soft skin. I'm pretty infrequently in a situation where I might develop a blister, but I touch my skin daily. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4jv446
|
What Happened To Any Nazi Barons After WWII?
|
I've done a little homework, so I know the trope isn't really that simple or maybe even accurate. BUT. For those Nazi's that were barons(or any other such nobility) who might have fled Germany/Europe after the war, what would have happened to the barony after they "disappeared?"
I'm working on a character history and was planning his grandfather to have been a Nazi and a baron who went into hiding and was wondering what would have happened to the barony to determine how it might affect the rest of the story. If its just sitting there, open, I would have him go claim it if he can.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4jv446/what_happened_to_any_nazi_barons_after_wwii/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d3a088n"
],
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5
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"text": [
"Strictly speaking, there were no nazi barons or baronies in WW2 since both Germany and Austria abolished nobility as a legal class after WW1. So a hypothetical Klaus, Baron von Schnitzelwiener in 1945 would have the Baron as part of his name (in Germanyt) and others of his former class would probably still regard him as a noble but there were no legal ramnifications from this, he is a citizen like any other.\nFor your story, well, since the Barony in question is normal private property there are several avenues. If your Baron lived outside of what became the (western)allied occupation zone then his land was likely dispossessed/confiscated after the war. Otherwise his inheritors got it or if there were none, the state."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3dz407
|
Is music today really more sexual than it was in the past?
|
I recently learned that the waltz was considered a very sexual dance when it first premiered and so that got me wondering: is Western music (and the culture around music, such as dancing) today actually significantly more sexual than what came before it as some people claim, and, if yes, is this a recent trend or something that has been slowly accumulating over years?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dz407/is_music_today_really_more_sexual_than_it_was_in/
|
{
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"text": [
"I feel like I'm always evangelizing this book, but I have been reading the Oxford History of Music by Richard Taruskin (2005). Going back at least to the Renaissance, some music was intended to be heard as, and apparently was heard as, having very sensual or sexual connotations.",
" There has always been sexualized music and dance. How appropriate this was considered for mixed company has varied by culture and period.\n\nTranslated Sumerian temple chants/songs for public celebrations made no bones about being fertility songs, using lines for the Goddess like \"Who will plow my vulva?\" Look up \"lingam and yoni\" for the religious use of genitalia in India, or huge representations of silk over frames, lit up from inside, in traditional Japanese festivals.\n\nBut I'm pretty sure what you want is the Western European tradition here.\n\nThe songs were out there, but rarely written down. Most music was rarely recorded until the sheet music industry arose. We do have risqué medieval songs from sources like Carmina Burana (11th-13th C) or the Cambridge Songs from around 1066. A fine lady might have been insulted to hear it, but the Wife of Bath probably knew all the verses.\n\nSo you have a tension down the centuries of those who like their bawdy songs and those who want something less sexual. This is usually the middle class. The peasants think sex is what life is about, and often so does the court. Consider the license of the English Restoration, and how much Restoration comedy relies on sexual misbehavior for its plots.\n\nThere also came *Wit and Mirth: Or Pills to Purge Melancholy* (normally called Pills to Purge Melancholy), a large collection of songs edited by Thomas d'Urfey, published between 1698 and 1720, which in its final, six-volume edition held over 1,000 songs and poems. They can all be called bawdy or ribald. They also often are very similar to others in the collection, and you get used to the continual use of certain euphemisms, like \"the white of an egg ran down her leg\" which has the virtue of being pre-rhymed. This was not art song: it was the low stuff from the taverns.\n\nWhat you have at the end of the 1700s is the start of the development of what would be called Victorianism as the wealthy middle class begins its rule. You might want to look into Ben Wilson's *The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain: 1789-1837*; 2007; Penguin press, NY.\n\nThe important thing to note about the indecency of the waltz (popular in England from c.1815)(more like 1800 in Paris, and coming from Germany) is that it was the first dance since the Renaissance galliard where the dancers embraced each other, and for the first time continuously through the dance. Before then, all upper and middle class dances (and oft the galliard) had partners just touching hands with extended arms, and often changing partners down a set, the way in square dancing partners will momentarily dance with their corner or opposite. Before the waltz, the court dance was the minuet. The fashionable dance was the contredanse or country dance, which survives in Scottish country dancing.\n\nA good book for bawdy songs in America is [*The Erotic Muse*]( _URL_0_), now much encumbered with an historical timeline of headlines.\n "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/The-Erotic-Muse-AMERICAN-American/dp/0252067894"
]
] |
|
ewluzg
|
why 2 senators represent 39 million people in california and 2 senators represent 600,000 people in wyoming?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewluzg/eli5_why_2_senators_represent_39_million_people/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because the Senate *isnt* for popular representation? That is what the House of Representatives is for.\n\nThe Senate represents *the States*, and the whole split between the House of Reps and the Senate was the result of a compromise between small-population states (who wanted equal representation as per the Senate) and the larger-population states (who wanted population-based represen as per the HoR)\n\nNow, granted, their are issues with the HoR and how many people each rep represents, but dont try to make the US Senate something it isnt.",
"The Senators don’t directly represent people. They represent US states. Originally, many senators weren’t even elected, but were appointed by state governments. So, in that case, the state of California and the state of Wyoming are equals in the US government. Both are represented by two senators.\n\nMeanwhile, Representatives are in the other part of the legislative branch to represent the people. In this case, each representative represents about 700,000 people. So, Wyoming has 1 and California has 53.",
"The US government was designed as a system of checks and balances that are designed to prevent different forms of tyranny. For example, the Presidency is designed to prevent the tyranny possible from one group of people obtaining a legislative majority. Conversely, Congress, as a whole, is designed to prevent the tyranny that results from concentrating executive power in a single person.\n\nThe tyranny that the Senate is designed to thwart is a geographical tyranny. That is, the Senate purposely gives geographical areas with low population densities substantially more power than geographical areas with high population densities. This stops a few densely populated states from grouping together to abuse low population density states.\n\nFor example: about 50% of the US population lives in two narrow strips within 100 miles of the East and West coasts. These areas also tend to share the same interests in that their economies are dominated by high tech and the service sector. Without the Senate it would be easy for those areas to group together and promote laws that benefit them, while harming people who live in the remaining 99% of the country, where the economy tends to be reliant on farming and manufacturing.\n\nIn fact this is typically what happens in Congress - the House will favor legislation that benefits the interests of the coasts while the Senate favors legislation that benefits the interests of the interior. The result is that the two sides usually end up compromising and you rarely get legislation that disproportionately harms of benefits any particular region of the country.",
"The United States is a group of states which came together to form a union. It is not a nation divided into states.\n\nThe reason Wyoming has the same number of Senators as California is because they're both states.\n\nPretend the U.S. is negotiating with Mexico and Canada about some sort of deal or treaty. What do you think Canada and Mexico would say if the U.S. asserted that, based on population, the U.S. should get 10 votes, Canada 1, and Mexico 3. (my numbers could be off, but that's close) Do you think Canada and Mexico would agree to that, or would they insist on meeting as equals?",
"Because if they were proportional to the population, large-population states like California could effectively control the entire country and ignore anything small-population states said.\n\nThough the **House of Representatives** *does* have proportional representation like that. Both work together to make laws that are fair to the represented people and to the states themselves.",
"The way the Senate is assigned is so that each state has the same number of representatives, so each state has the same influence.\n\nThe House of Representatives is supposed to be a proportional representation of the population, but the problem is that a bill was passed in 1929 that limits the House to 435 members. Since each state needs one member, regardless of their population, it means that the representation is still skewed to penalize states with larger populations.",
"Flip that logic and you might get it. Congress has 2 parts the Senate and the House. Senate gives some power to the small states and the House to the more populace states.\n\n\nSo in the House Wyoming has one representative and the California has something like 51. This serves so that no law can pass purely because a state is so large. It needs to have support by the Senate which equally represents all states.",
"Because the people who made the government said fine half of the government is decided by what state you live in and the other half by how many other people live in the same state as you.",
"The US made a few compromises at the very beginning to match the power of the big states and the little states.\n\nSeats in the House go by population. Big states like California get more Representatives there. So California has 53 Seats.\n\nSmaller states like Wyoming get less Representatives based on their population. They have 1 Representative.\n\nBut they get 2 Senators like every other state.\n\nCalifornia is a big state. But in the Senate, she is equal to anyone else. And Wyoming only has a single representative, but they have 2 Senators like any other state.\n\nThat's why California has only 2 Senators to Wyoming's 2 Senators. Even though their populations differ. It's a trade off between the House and the Senate.",
"Senate represents the States, House represents the People.\n\nCalifornia has 2 Senators, but 53 Representatives.\n\nAlaska has 2 Senators, but one 1 Representative.",
"Senators don’t represent people, they represent states. The states are equivalent, so they get the same representation in the Senate.",
"Not all federal policies affect people equally state to state. Some policies can affect states disproportionately according to their population. The most clear cut example of this is the Supreme Court. If two states have a disagreement and sue each other the case goes directly to the Supreme Court. That's why the Senate confirms judicial appointments and not the House. Just because NY has more people than VT does not mean they should have a greater say in who ajudicates legal disputes.\n\nThere are also more subtle instances, for example if the federal government mandated upgrades to roads and told the states to fund it, large sparsely populated states could easily be required to spend more money per capita in implementing the policy.\n\nThe US is pretty unique when it comes to the power and responsibility of out states."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2nlh6n
|
what would happen if the internet "turned off" for 24-hours?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nlh6n/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_internet_turned_off/
|
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"Well, there wouldn't be any internet for that day.",
"Lots of automated systems and important devices would cease to function and the \"reboot\" would essentially cause lots of potential delays for days, maybe weeks if we're lucky. GPS for example feeds information nearly every second to any device we use daily, from street lights, airplanes, phones, satellites and various other tools we take for granted may not be used at all. Local services may still run for a bit but at limited capacity. Most of the world's money is held electronically so access to it may be limited, and stocks would crash in the event information can't be processed and sales/exchanges can't be made. While certain services can exist without internet services, the reliance on internet accessible products is very high and depending on the infrastructure of wherever you live, lots of services will go down. More examples include credit cards, emergency services that rely on GPS, access to _URL_0_, and satellite communication services like TV and radio. \n\nTL;DR Everything we take for granted will be severely limited and/or ruined and afterwards it'll take days for the internet to be fixed but the damage caused by it being out won't be as easy to fix.\n\nEDIT: grammar ",
"Do you mean the internet or all networks? Do we see this coming or is it a surprise?",
"The North Americas would be struck with massive work startages and periods of increased productivity.\n\nEdit* I think some people are taking this statement too seriously as it was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek.",
"It happened in the the early days of the public internet in Minnesota. At the time the sole connection of Minnesota to the internet was a T3 line between Minneapolis and Chicago. Some bums underneath the Washington Ave Bridge lit a bonfire that melted some very important cables, including that one (telephone service to the entire U of M was knocked out too, IRC). Took over a day to get it fixed. This was before everyone was one, so it was just the nerds like me that were freaking out. ",
"Population explosion 9 months after, no internet means no 'baiting, so all of those knuckle children that would have been discarded into kleenex may find their way into some lady parts. Bingo, bango, babies.",
"Checkout _URL_0_\n\nPredicting logistics and production chains can be very difficult. One impact of a broad 24h internet downtime will be disruptions to logistics. With a 3 day stock at any supermarket you'd likely see impacts on store shelves over the week as deliveries get out of sync and the knock-on effects cause issues.\n\nThink about the knock-on effect from weather impacts on airlines, how a short delay may cause planes to be backed up and how that has broader impacts across the system.\n\nOverall, not much from 24h.... Increase that to 3d and you'd start seeing much bigger impacts."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"reddit.com"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game"
]
] |
||
10wt3e
|
What changes in my body when I exercise at the level of gene expression?
|
I just learned about transcript regulation and gene expression. I'm curious about the changes to the human body from exercise, diet, and common environmental factors at the level of gene expression.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10wt3e/what_changes_in_my_body_when_i_exercise_at_the/
|
{
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"Full disclosure: Undergrad studying biology, so I don't think I can even begin addressing your question, particularly because of it's breadth. Here are just some thoughts:\n\nWith single-celled organism, there tends to be a lag (60+ minutes) between the start of a treatment (say, dosing yeast with a chemical) and transcriptional response to said treatment.\n\nI'm not entirely sure if that would relate to humans and exercise, particularly because of our complexity. With exercise, there may not even be much lag, as muscle cells would promptly begin consuming more glucose, which might lead to a cascade of transcriptional response, or it might not.\n\nIt's important when talking about gene expression to not lose sight of translation, too, however. The correlation between the number of transcripts of a gene and the number of protein products of the gene is usually very, very, very weak. One transcript can be translated like crazy, or a bunch of transcripts can be made, but never be translated. \n\nSo, with that in mind, changes in an organism's motion may not even necessitate a transcriptional response, at least for a little while. Translation may increase without requiring more transcripts. ",
"One change that can occur in your skeletal muscles at the level of gene expression is the transformation between fast- and slow-twitch. Or more specifically, changing from predominantly one type to another type.\n\nFast twitch fibers are mainly anaerobic and supply short bursts of energy, such as during sprinting or weight lifting. Slow twitch fibers are mainly aerobic that undergo cellular respiration and are able to supply long term energy, such as during marathon running. Training in these respective forms of exercise induces gene expression differences that can change the proportion of fast twitch vs. slow twitch in a particular muscle.\n\nSource: _URL_2_, _URL_0_, _URL_1_\n\nEdit: Re-worded somethings to make it more clear."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://jap.physiology.org/content/97/5/1591.full",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280565/",
"http://www.springerlink.com/content/1137px7x66667132?MUD=MP"
]
] |
|
1dgxh3
|
Did World War One start from an inability to reschedule trains?
|
Apparently, there is a theory started by AJP Taylor that WW1 happened from an inability to change train timetables fast enough. In other words, war as the computationally cheaper alternative.
More info: _URL_0_
Meaning, mobilization plans were created years in advance and train timetables laid down with possibly too little flexibility. When the crisis hit in 1914, decision makers were unable to formulate new plans quickly.
Germany's plan for mobilization would send troops directly to the front line, into Belgium (instead of their barracks). For Germany, mobilization would have to be followed by war. For the other parties as well, there were no plans for "posturing" or "partial mobilization", the choices were between full-blown war or doing nothing. Doing something rather than nothing meant escalation.
As a sideline, if Babbage's analytical engine work had been completed and built upon, would it have granted the vital flexibility needed to reformulate war plans faster?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dgxh3/did_world_war_one_start_from_an_inability_to/
|
{
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" > As a sideline, if Babbage's analytical engine work had been completed and built upon, would it have granted the vital flexibility needed to reformulate war plans faster?\n\nNot at all. The primary reason timetables were strict were due to lack of available lines, choke points for customs and a generally newer technology simply not having a broad enough infrastructure.\n\nOver time, these stresses were relieved with a more modern international road system, more ports of entry and more lines of rail.",
"I don't know about that... Taylor's work is a little outdated now and if I remember my classes right his theories about how and why WWI started aren't really accepted. The point he makes about not having a grievance against France is only half-true. France and Russia had been allies since 1894 and under the terms of the treaty mobilization by Germany and her allies meant war.\n\nThe German General Staff basically made an estimate of the time it would take for the Russians to mobilize and decided it had to hold in the East, and win in the West then switch around with newly freed up troops from the West to go win against the Russians. So they developed the War Plan that they did and built a train schedule to deal with the infrastructural constraints mentioned by /u/pkcs11. You can argue that the tail wagged the dog several times during the course of the First World War, especially in Germany, but in this case that is not the case.\n\nIn short: No, the train schedule did not start the war. The real answer is very complex and has occupied historians for about a century now. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.ae.metu.edu.tr/~evren/history/texts/taylor1.htm"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1f92pn
|
Why were there famous and popular black musicians in America before the civil rights movement?
|
For example: Nat King Cole, Miles David, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and I know there were some black members of doo-wop and singing groups of the 40s and 50s and before. If these were periods of time when people were racist, how did they achieve such popularity?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f92pn/why_were_there_famous_and_popular_black_musicians/
|
{
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"ca7zkp8",
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"text": [
"They achieved popularity because their skills and talents were simply too powerful to ignore. Art cuts through our prejudices. It bypasses our cultural differences and connects directly with with our souls (or psyches, or egos, or however you define our common humanity). For example:\n\n[This is Marian Anderson](_URL_2_) (1897-1993).\n\nShe began her music career in 1925 and performed in concert halls across the United States and Europe. She was lauded by fans and critics alike as one of the greatest living contraltos and turned down a number of roles in European operas because she believed that she had no acting ability. Her musical performances included a broad variety of styles ranging from spirituals to arias.\n\n[Here is a video of her singing Schubert's \"Ave Maria\"](_URL_1_).\n\n[And here singing the traditional spiritual \"Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen\"](_URL_3_).\n\nDespite her illustrious career, she is best remembered for singing the \"My Country, 'Tis Of Thee\". In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution forbade her to sing at Constitution Hall because she was a black woman. Numerous DAR members (including then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt) resigned in protest. They resigned not because they had some idealistic vision of racial equality in America, but because they felt that a genuine national (and international) treasure was being insulted. Mrs. Roosevelt wrote the following in her resignation letter:\n\n > \"I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist ... You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.\"\n\nPresident Franklin Roosevelt and NAACP President Walter White arranged for her to play an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. [She performed to a multiracial crowd of more than 75,000](_URL_0_) and was broadcast to a radio audience of millions.\n\nThose people you see in that last video link were not there to promote integration. They didn't all go home to demand a more egalitarian society. They didn't march on Constitution Hall to demand that she be admitted. They came together to hear a masterful musician in the prime of her career. They came because their hearts loved the beauty of her voice more than their minds hated the color of her skin. Such is the power of music.",
"Charlie Christian is known as the first guitarist who could play with the horns. Previously, the guitar was a rhythm instrument that strummed chords on the beat and was really muted on jazz tracks. The guitar or the banjo served a similar role during this period, and were gradually dropped from jazz orchestras.\n\nChristian changed all that after he was discovered and made the guitar a viable melody instrument in jazz.\n_URL_0_\n\nBenny Goodman, though he had a reputation for being a real bastard, was color blind. He played with lots of black musicians before it was considered appropriate for white musicians to hire black musicians for their bands."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAONYTMf2pk",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2asMAfRKH0",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Marian_Anderson.jpg",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOrWpXMTti8"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x52x5hjpD5k"
]
] |
|
4gfgp8
|
what is the process for producing algae fuel?
|
Essentially the title. Are only certain algae capable of producing the biodiesel or can any algae do it given the correct set-up?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gfgp8/eli5what_is_the_process_for_producing_algae_fuel/
|
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"text": [
"Some strains of algae have the ability to form pockets of fat inside their cells. These lipids are, just as in humans, a food reserve.\nWhen the algae is stressed by depriving it from certain nutrients it increases lipid production. The neat thing is that the algae use sunlight as energy source for producing the lipids.\nThese lipids can be harvested, broken down into fatty acids and glycerol. The glycerol can be chemically converted to bio diesel.\n\nOther algae produce methane when exposed to sunlight, and others can produce small amounts of hydrogen as a stress reaction when deprived of sulfur*\n\n*=not really sure its the right compound, long time ago :)\n",
"You know how all foods have a certain amount of fat, protein, and carbs? Algae all have different percentages of these things depending on what family they are from, and how happy they are. When algae don't eat, they get stressed out and fat. Some don't get very fat, but some do, and the ones that get very fat are the best to take for using their stored fat, in the form of oil, as fuel.\n\nSource: I study algae for a living.",
"I remember researching this a few years back starting with a small \"Grow Algae for Profit\" book and internet sources. \n\nWhen growing, parameters such as light wavelength (nanometers) and micro/macro nutrient dosage are tweaked to influence growth phases at strategic times. These phases are focused on optimizing the culture growth up to an exponential replication period, the likes of which will saturate the tank which inhibits light penetration (culture collapse).\n\nA simple press method will squeeze out the lipids and leave behind a biomass, which is nutritious for livestock feed. There are other methods but I think they involve chemicals.\n\nAs for biodiesel refinement, there are kits available on eBay that have effective pump equipment designed for that purpose. Lye is used to break up the particles in the oil (same with used vegetable oil) and there is a ratio of methanol to add in a heated pump loop in order to create diesel that can be added to a regular unmodified engine. I remember finding bulk barrels of methanol on eBay and I did the math for the ratio and current diesel cost and I think it was slightly cheaper. I think race tracks have it on hand.\n\nI planned to try this but all I've bought so far are aquarium tanks for the culture propagation. Theres a website that sells living samples of a high lipid production micro-algae species called Chlorella Vulgaris. There are other species for other products, like spirulina.\n\nOnce again, I've never done this myself, but I've spent a good chunk of time researching. Hope it helps",
"Different strain of algae have different compositions of carbohydrates (can be turned into ethanol/alcohol-like fuels) and lipids/fats (can be turned into biodiesel fuels).\n\nAlso, different strains can survive in different chemical conditions. For instance, there are a lot of issues with bacteria and other organisms contaminating the photobioreactors where the algae are grown, so some scientists are looking into finding algae that can survive very extreme (salty, or acidic, or cold, etc.) environments where most other organisms can't.\n\nThe process for turning the lipids into biodiesel is called transesterification. The triglyceride (the component that fats are made up of) is reacted with alcohol to break it down into its components - three fatty acids and a glycerol."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
agms9z
|
What determines how fast a shower changes temperature?
|
Some shower changes the temperature of water as soon as you turn on the faucet, while others can take 10 seconds before anything happens.
& #x200B;
The shower I have now changes instantaneously, while I have experienced the exact opposite most of the time. What determines this and what can you do to make your shower respond as quickly as possible?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/agms9z/what_determines_how_fast_a_shower_changes/
|
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"The pipe distance from the water source determines this. To get the right temperature as fast as possible, you need to have the water heater right next to your faucet, and it needs to have hot water available immediately. If it is far away, you have to flush all the cool water out of the lines before the warm water gets to the faucet.",
"The distance to your hot water source determines this, because water that sits in your pipes for a long time will get cold. You turn on the hot water and you have to wait while the cold water is flushed out. \n\nIf your water is instantly hot, then you most likely have a hot water recirculating system. This system constantly circulates hot water through the pipes in your house, never allowing the water to sit and get cold, so that the water next to your taps is always hot. \n\nOr, you might live in a big apartment building. If the person above you takes their shower right before you take your shower, then they've already flushed the system of cold water. By the time you turn your shower on you get hot water.\n",
"The length of the pipe that carries the hot water from the water heater, coupled with whether or not the pipe is already primed with hot water. If you’re on the 9th floor of an apartment building with no circulator pump and nobody below you has already used their hot water recently, it could take several minutes for the hot water to get from the boilers all the way up 9 floors and to your shower. I deal with this complaint often from my residents and always tell them to turn on their sink’s hot water and the tub’s hot water to make it come up faster **before** getting in the shower. I have one particular senile resident that lives on the 8th floor and gets up at like 4am to shower. At least once a month I see her unit listed on my work orders for “no hot water” and need to repeatedly explain the same thing to her. It’s frustrating. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
53uoic
|
Was Pompey richer than Crassus?
|
For a long time I assumed Crassus was the richest man in Rome, I've even heard it said that adjusted for inflation (if such a thing is even possible across cultures and aeons) he is the richest man of all time.
However recently in some places I've seen people suggest that Pompey was significantly more wealthy.
Who was richer?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/53uoic/was_pompey_richer_than_crassus/
|
{
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"text": [
"Hi! This was discussed brilliantly here \n/u/Doggies_of_war\n_URL_1_\n\nand here\n\n/u/joak22\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g0jtr/how_rich_was_crassus/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/259xb6/were_the_roman_emperors_not_more_wealthy_than/chf5qdc"
]
] |
|
qu6gd
|
what is a headache and why loud/annoying noises cause them.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qu6gd/eli5_what_is_a_headache_and_why_loudannoying/
|
{
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"text": [
"Loud or annoying noises don't cause headaches. It's the other way around: a headache makes you more sensitive to noise.\n\nA headache is pain in the head caused by adenosine, which is a chemical your body makes. Anything that makes cells in your head release adenosine will tend to give you a headache."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
kdnls
|
is a shadow like this possible in space?
|
sorry for the dumb question, but it's bugging me. i was watching 2001 today, and there are a whole lot of instances such as this: _URL_0_ with very visible shadows. assuming the sun as the only light source, shouldn't anything not in its direct view be pitch black?
i feel like i'm missing something very, very simple here...
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kdnls/is_a_shadow_like_this_possible_in_space/
|
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"text": [
"I am not an expert but consider this a data point for your own research. I found [this site with images of the ISS](_URL_0_). Obviously this close to Earth there are multiple sources of light but the shadows aren't completely black. ",
"I've spent many years working with live video of space operations for robotic vision systems, and you are exactly correct. With only solar illumination, all shadows are pitch black. This has caused some confusion early in the Shuttle program since the crews weren't used to seeing such sharp shadow lines. They were expecting the fuzzy shadows we get on the ground due to all the ambient lighting. So during some operations there was confusion over whether something in the cargo bay was in shadow or the physical edge of the equipment was different from the mockups they trained on. Over time mission planners and trainers made sure that lights or Earth-shine were available to provide some ambient illumination.\n\n\nCheck out the shadow here on the [ISS cast by the Shuttle](_URL_0_) during its departure fly-around. The Shuttle is directly over the ISS blocking the sun, which casts a pretty distinct and black shadow. There's some ambient light coming from reflections off the lit portions of the station, but it's a much more stark shadow than on the 2001 still. Also note that a portion of the radiator on the right solar array is in shadow. Quite distinct from the panels that are lit.\n\n\nNow, what follows is speculation: I believe filmmakers create soft shadowing in space scenes for two reasons.\n\n* They are what we are used to seeing. If they used a realistic visual style that most viewers had no history with, they would add confusion since the viewers wouldn't understand the details of what they were looking at.\n* Making a realistic single source shadow in a movie studio in the 2001: A Space Odyssey era was most likely quite difficult. It's likely an expensive task to eliminate all ambient lighting on your models. Of course, this is easily done with CGI, but even today, the lack of realistic lighting in space-based shows reinforces point 1 above.\n\n\nEdited for minor typos",
"Just as a side note, please don't use URL shorteners.",
"I am not an expert but consider this a data point for your own research. I found [this site with images of the ISS](_URL_0_). Obviously this close to Earth there are multiple sources of light but the shadows aren't completely black. ",
"I've spent many years working with live video of space operations for robotic vision systems, and you are exactly correct. With only solar illumination, all shadows are pitch black. This has caused some confusion early in the Shuttle program since the crews weren't used to seeing such sharp shadow lines. They were expecting the fuzzy shadows we get on the ground due to all the ambient lighting. So during some operations there was confusion over whether something in the cargo bay was in shadow or the physical edge of the equipment was different from the mockups they trained on. Over time mission planners and trainers made sure that lights or Earth-shine were available to provide some ambient illumination.\n\n\nCheck out the shadow here on the [ISS cast by the Shuttle](_URL_0_) during its departure fly-around. The Shuttle is directly over the ISS blocking the sun, which casts a pretty distinct and black shadow. There's some ambient light coming from reflections off the lit portions of the station, but it's a much more stark shadow than on the 2001 still. Also note that a portion of the radiator on the right solar array is in shadow. Quite distinct from the panels that are lit.\n\n\nNow, what follows is speculation: I believe filmmakers create soft shadowing in space scenes for two reasons.\n\n* They are what we are used to seeing. If they used a realistic visual style that most viewers had no history with, they would add confusion since the viewers wouldn't understand the details of what they were looking at.\n* Making a realistic single source shadow in a movie studio in the 2001: A Space Odyssey era was most likely quite difficult. It's likely an expensive task to eliminate all ambient lighting on your models. Of course, this is easily done with CGI, but even today, the lack of realistic lighting in space-based shows reinforces point 1 above.\n\n\nEdited for minor typos",
"Just as a side note, please don't use URL shorteners."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://bit.ly/nXVImA"
] |
[
[
"http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/the_international_space_statio.html"
],
[
"http://imgur.com/FudET"
],
[],
[
"http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/the_international_space_statio.html"
],
[
"http://imgur.com/FudET"
],
[]
] |
|
3k2yz6
|
why do i, and a lot of people, still dream about going to school and forget about a test?
|
I graduated from school 18 years ago and still occasionally dream about going to school and forget about a super important test. Why is that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3k2yz6/eli5_why_do_i_and_a_lot_of_people_still_dream/
|
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"I have a dream where everybody is working on a class project. They all know what they're doing and I sit there with no clue.",
"It's a fear that was never resolved, as it presumably never happened. As a result, your subconscious is stuck with trying to work out what would happen, despite your conscious knowledge that the situation will never arise again. ",
"Wait till you have the one where you are dreaming you are working on your Masters and you have failed a class twice and they only give you 3 attempts to pass it, not only that, but you have to wait a full year because the class is only taught in the fall. Not sure if I am glad or not that I didn't pursue my Masters.",
"I have recently graduated from college, I use to and still do have this re-occuring dream where I've graduated from college, but Iam still in highschool and failing all my classes, I don't know my schedule and I always end up late to a class. I always argue with the people I am with students and teachers that I don't need to be here, I have a college degree. But no one listens to me. I always wake up shaking my head like wtf glad that wasn't real..."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
ipzvh
|
How do things without muscles and nerves move?
|
I guess this could be two in one, but I'm wondering both about microorganisms and things like sunflowers, which turn unaided.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ipzvh/how_do_things_without_muscles_and_nerves_move/
|
{
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"text": [
"In the case of plants, they move based upon some sort of stimuli. For instance, if sunlight hits a certain part of a plant, it can either stimulate the plant to \"grow\" on the opposite side, pushing the stem of the plant toward the other side. This can happen in reverse as well, where the sunlight striking on one side can cause an inhibition of \"growth\" on that side.\n\nMicroorganisms react in a similar manner. Certain stimuli will cause the organism to tumble in that direction or away from that direction (chemotaxis, phototaxis, etc.).\n\nEDIT: Forewarning, not my field, unless you want to talk things with brains and neurons.",
"My favorite instance of this is the case of spiders, which don't use muscles to extend their legs. Instead, they use a hydraulic-type system to pump fluid into their appendages, which allows them to walk. This is why their legs tend to curl up when they die."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
22ofw8
|
elia5: why do humans want to tell each other when they've done something bad?
|
Most of us have done something devious that we shouldn't have and feel the urge to tell someone about it afterwards. Why? Wouldn't it make more sense for us to just keep our traps shut and let life go on?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22ofw8/elia5_why_do_humans_want_to_tell_each_other_when/
|
{
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"cgotsv1",
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"text": [
"An innate desire to correct \"mistakes\", that is, perceived mistakes. You want to own up to your mistakes because it means that if they affect others, then they can correct for them, and the results of your actions are nullified.\n\nYou could also say we feel guilt or are looking for sympathy, it depends on the type of mistake.",
"All of the other answers I'm seeing are good, but boil down to different expressions of one thing: herd mentality.\nThe desire to be and especially feel inclusiveness is **huge** in people as a rule. Anything that threatens or undermines that security- or feels like it could- is uncomfortable to some degree.\n\nAnd being found out is as much or more of a threat than sharing... Unless you're *very* confident in how well you hid the bodies, so to speak."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1bk8mx
|
What are battles that were grossly exaggerated or perhaps never took place at all but were manipulated for imperial or expansionist purposes?
|
Something like the battle of Kulikovo perhaps?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bk8mx/what_are_battles_that_were_grossly_exaggerated_or/
|
{
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"From the book Charlemagne and Muhammad, I learned that the battle of Tours , in which Arab/Berber invaders were repulsed from invading France, was neither large nor very important. In fact, the Franks rarely won battles against the Moors, and lost heavily to a Basque ambush the one time they tried to invade Muslim Spain [legend of Roland](_URL_0_)\n\n[Tours justified the French hegemony over early Latin Christendom.](_URL_1_)",
"The [Gulf of Tonkin Incident](_URL_0_) was a case where a battle that didn't happen led to war. Through either confusion or collusion, Congress was informed that North Vietnamese naval forces had engaged the US Navy without provocation. This led to a joint resolution from Congress, which permitted LBJ to enter the Vietnam war as a belligerent. \n\nThe [USS Maine](_URL_1_) blew up and sank in Havana's harbor in 1898. This incident was used as a pretext for war. \"Remember the Maine!\" became the popular cry, as the American public (driven largely by the jingoist Hearst newspapers), demanded vengeance against the Spanish forces who controlled Cuba. As it turned out, the Maine was probably sunk by a spontaneous fire that erupted near one of her magazines. \n\nPrior to the US-led coup in Iran in 1953, the CIA paid anti-government leaders to stage a protest, coinciding with the arrival of an Eisenhower advisor. They also paid the Tehran chief of police to fire on the protesters. Eisenhower's advisor (I don't recall the name) witnessed what appeared to be a country spiraling into instability and violence. This led to Eisenhower's approval of the coup which installed Shah Pahlavi as dictator. \n\nPrior to declaring war on Poland, Germany staged a series of \"outrages\" at towns near the Polish border. German soldiers dressed as Polish military were instructed to harass German Poles. These incidents were then cited by Germany as the provocations which led to war. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Roncesvalles",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours"
],
[
"http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/",
"http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm"
]
] |
|
686ygh
|
Why are car antennas so small now, when 10 years ago they were 2-3 feet tall?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/686ygh/why_are_car_antennas_so_small_now_when_10_years/
|
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"Aesthetics and durability. You probably still have a long antenna, in your front or rear windshield. If you see a really tiny antenna then it's likely made available for premium service radios (SiriusXM, etc.). Some luxury cars have a panel antenna hidden behind a plastic part of the roof.",
"The length of the old antennas approximately matched the wave length of the band and were placed on the fender to get a good ground plane. Newer digital circuitry in the radio actively matches the impedance so the length or placement of the antenna is less crucial. The antenna can be incorporated into stripes printed on the windows. [A more technical explanation here.](_URL_0_) ",
"Cost of manufacturing has gone down in proportion to manufacturing precision.\n\n1. Some antennas are traced onto the rear or front window using conductive paint\n\n2. Some antennas are hidden behind plastic body panels\n\n3. More compact antenna design ([rubber ducky](_URL_0_)) built into the \"shark fin\" on some cars",
"I found this article published in an automotive engineering textbook. It appears to answer your question more completely than any of the other postings here.\n\n[Advancements in Automotive Antennas (PDF)](_URL_0_)\n",
"Old aerials were just a bit of wire poking up, with some coax connected to the bottom that went to the radio. They were roughly resonant on VHF (about 75cm long) and nowhere near resonant for MW.\n\nOne reason that modern ones are shorter is that they have a little preamp at the bottom to amplify the signal before sending it to the radio (same as a TV aerial booster if you live somewhere with \"fringe\" reception). The other reason is that aerials don't need to be particularly good for reception, they only really need to be resonant for transmitting.\n",
"Im not sure top answers are right.\n\nAntennas resonate with radio wavelength. They can resonate on different ratios of wavelength, those ratios are 1/4, 1/2, 1 and maybe 3/2.\n\nElectrical length and physical length of antenna arent the same, even thought they are closely related.\n\nThere are techniques to increase or decrease electrical length of antenna. These techniques take capacitor or inductor added to antenna.\n\nSo you pick 1/4 wavelength antenna, you can add inductor to its base which will increase its electrical length, so the physical length can be shorter.\n\nWith radio frequency of 100MHz wavelength is 3m. 1/4 is 75cm, which can be shortened further.",
"I have a similar question. I bought a jambox to bring to work (noisy warehouse) and was confused to find that they apparently dont have external antennas anymore, it tunes in fine (at least on my preferred oldies station) but does fade in and out through the day.\n\n was just this a costcutting measure or is there some new tech at play here?",
"There are two main factors. Most antennas people notice are for xm radio that works at 2.3 ghz instead of 100 mhz that standard fm radio operates. The wavelength is directly related to the antenna size and the wavelength of 100mhz is roughly 10 feet were 2.3ghz is 5inches.\n\nSecondly electromagnetic modelling software has made amazing jumps in the ability to model complex structures, like HFSS and Feko. So designers can embed antennas in places they never could before, like most cars have the fm antenna in the wind screen. \n\nThere has been a lot of talk about impedance matching, although helpful not really that important in this case. Just because I can impedance match a beer can to 50 ohms doesn't mean it propagates worth a damn.\n\nSource: I've been rf and antenna designer for 15 years",
"Automotive design engineer here.\n\nProfit is the answer you're looking for. In 2000 I designed the rear backlight (rear window) of the Bentley Continental GT.\nIt had 26 (near invisible) antennas built into the laminated glass and obscuration band.\n\nThose 26 antennas captured all radio (analogue and digital), TV, Satellite, WiMAX etc signals for every overseas continent. All options.\n\nThe cost to Bentley was £450 ($600) per window, back then. So the technology was available (and had been for some time) back in 2000, it just didn't come cheap.\n\nI hope that helps.",
"The major band people listened to in the 1960s when the telescoping silver antenna that disappeared into the fender was AM. 540-1600 kc.\n\nFM (88-108 mc) didn't become common until the 1970s and prevalent in the 1980s.\n\nAs many point out, the antenna length is driven by the wavelength.\n\nFM has much shorter wavelength.",
"If you're talking about the sharkfin antenna, they are for the GPS, not radio. Radio antennas nowadays are all on the top part of the rear windshield. It looks like it's part of the defroster but the top lines are actually radio antenna.",
"The longer antennas are still better antennas, but for most people, overkill. They were used in older cars because a properly sized antenna for the FM band is \"good engineering.\" More recently, manufacturers realized that people are listening to extremely nearby, extremely powerful radio stations (also, good receive electronics got cheaper), and such a good antenna simply isn't necessary, so they shrunk them down for aesthetics and durability.",
"Shape and material also play a role. A man ran a genetic algorithm for NASA to come up with the most effective design given the required parameters. The result was significantly smaller than NASA's initial design, and oddly shaped. But it's function was still the same and it was optimally effective.",
"For plain old AM and FM, shorter antennas do not work as well. But if you are in an urban area, you are nearer the transmitter and you don't care. Auto manufacturers recognize that their market is more urban than in the past, so we get shorter antennas for esthetic and cost reasons.",
"20 years ago they still had to do a decent job of picking up AM, where the wave length is measured in the hundreds of meters.\n\nNow it's OK if they do a crappy job of AM as long as they do a good job of FM, which is roughly 3 meter wave length.\n\nAlso, people stream more and actually use the radio itself less, the reception SHTYNX compared to 20 years ago., ",
"Main thing is that we started making antennas into fractal shapes, allowing the same length of wire to be fit into a incredibly smaller space and still get a signal. Thats why cellphones dont have extendable antennas anymore for example. This doesnt work for every situtation, and there are other factors that other comments have gone more in depth with, but fractal shaped antennas have played a huge role in reducing the size of antennas.",
"Chrysler still puts those long antennas on their vehicles and its annoying. I replaced the antenna on my Jeep with a shorter one that i bought at an auto parts store. Now i don't have to watch the antenna swing around pretty violently on the freeway or when it gets hit by a low hanging tree branch."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.engr.sjsu.edu/rkwok/Engr297/Val_Impedance%20Matching%20and%20Matching%20Networks.pdf"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_ducky_antenna"
],
[
"http://cdn.intechweb.org/pdfs/13369.pdf"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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[],
[],
[],
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||
1m7nv0
|
Do all stars have some sort of planetary system?
|
If not, then how frequent is there a star with planets, and what circumstances cause the star to be that way?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1m7nv0/do_all_stars_have_some_sort_of_planetary_system/
|
{
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"text": [
"No, not all stars have planets around them. There are Population I and Population II stars, and theoretically Population III stars (non observed yet to my knowledge). \n\nPop I stars are like our sun. They are stars formed with heavy elements in the cloud they formed from and thus they can have planets. \n\nPop II stars tend to be older stars that formed with MUCH less heavy elements. They are much less likely to have formed planets with them. Due to the lack of heavy elements they will lack Earth like planets. They could have gas planets around them though so I guess they could have a sort of planetary system. \n\nPop III stars are theoretical stars that were made with basically no heavy elements at all. The original stars. With advancements in technology astronomers hope to be able to find some of these stars, but since they were the original stars they will far from us. \n\nThere are a lot of other factors that go into having a solar system. Did the initial cloud have rotation? Does it have a lot of heavy metals? Is it a binary system? \n\nHope this helps give you an idea of what is out there. ",
"Thanks to Kepler, we've been able to answer this question for the first time. In fact, [this paper](_URL_1_) directly answers your question. It says that ~15% of sun-like stars have Earth-like planets that orbit their star in 85 days or less.\n\n[This paper](_URL_0_) also provides some clues for what influences planet formation. It shows that higher mass stars and stars with more heavy elements tend to have more giant planets.\n\nNow planet formation is not a well-understood process (we're just now getting large enough samples to study the process). However, there are a few things that we do think we understand.\n\nMore massive stars tend to form with a more massive disk around them. This allows more rocky chunks to form that undergo runaway accretion to form a planet. Stars that form with more heavy elements have more heavy elements in their disk that you need to make those rocky cores. However, if the mass of the central star is too high, it will essentially blow away the disk before it can form planets.\n\nEssentially, the planets need to form before the disk dissipates. The interactions between the star and the disk determine what this timescale is.\n\nFinally, even if the planets do form, they can move around or even be ejected if their orbit is unstable. So this can influence where and how many planets you find around other stars."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3084v2",
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0842"
]
] |
|
2a5aoj
|
Is it possible that the universe expansion speeding up is caused by gravitational pull of other universes?
|
The idea that a basic force not yet discovered is pushing the universe outward at an ever-increasing rate seems unlikely to me as I would think that force would have been detected and would manifest itself in other ways. It would also help to explain the missing dark matter, as that could be extra-universal matter.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2a5aoj/is_it_possible_that_the_universe_expansion/
|
{
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" > The idea that a basic force not yet discovered is pushing the universe outward at an ever-increasing rate seems unlikely to me as I would think that force would have been detected and would manifest itself in other ways.\n\nIf you have any ideas, let us know! Finding other manifestations in, e.g., the solar system or elsewhere in the galaxy, of this \"dark energy\" is an active effort that many people are engaged in. It's hard though because the effect is *tiny* - so tiny that it only starts to manifest itself on the largest cosmic distances, and after the (observable) Universe has expanded to this enormous size billions of years after the Big Bang.\n\nThink about it like this. The simplest explanation is a modification of the gravitational force such that gravity switches from being attractive to being repulsive when you look at objects separated by billions of light years. We do experiments on Earth at far tinier length scales. So this would be a very hard effect to notice!\n\nAs for your idea - is it possible? Sure. But it's pretty non-minimal, and not really required by the data.",
"If expansion is speeding up because of external gravitational pull that would mean the universe's expanision speed would increase by the time (as it gets closer to these other universes) also it would mean not all parts of the universe would accelerate at the same rate. both assumptions contradict with reality"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
ja6xj
|
Does anyone have any questions you'd like to ask to leading NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay?
|
_URL_1_
We're spending a weekend with him (as part of a summer program)
See _URL_0_
Edit as of August 7th: Since my internet access here is limited, I won't have too much time to respond now. But I'll definitely forward all my questions to him and get full responses by Tuesday
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ja6xj/does_anyone_have_any_questions_youd_like_to_ask/
|
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"text": [
"Ask him about that whole arsenic based life fiasco.",
"I would think that an obvious candidate for discussion would be the [discovery of seasonally recurring streaks on Mars](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat does he think about these being good candidates for the search for life or, as he says, life's Lego bricks?\n\nWould it be appropriate to send a surveyor to take samples?\n\nIf so given the sterility issues will this require a new mission or can an existing program be modified?\n\nIn both cases how soon, given political willingness, could this be achieved?\n\nEdit stray comma",
"What are some promising planets that might support single-celled or multi-cellular life that we're currently studying? Are there any candidates in our solar system? If so, do we have plans to visit them in the future?",
"Ask him about that whole arsenic based life fiasco.",
"I would think that an obvious candidate for discussion would be the [discovery of seasonally recurring streaks on Mars](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat does he think about these being good candidates for the search for life or, as he says, life's Lego bricks?\n\nWould it be appropriate to send a surveyor to take samples?\n\nIf so given the sterility issues will this require a new mission or can an existing program be modified?\n\nIn both cases how soon, given political willingness, could this be achieved?\n\nEdit stray comma",
"What are some promising planets that might support single-celled or multi-cellular life that we're currently studying? Are there any candidates in our solar system? If so, do we have plans to visit them in the future?"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0020302",
"http://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/staff/chris-mckay"
] |
[
[],
[
"http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/is-mars-weeping-salty-tears.html?rss=1"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/is-mars-weeping-salty-tears.html?rss=1"
],
[]
] |
|
3hmvtp
|
why does the tsa limit liquids to 3oz? couldn't you easily create some kind of explosive out of far less than that?
|
Yes, I'm aware in probably on a list now.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hmvtp/eli5_why_does_the_tsa_limit_liquids_to_3oz/
|
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"text": [
"The TSA is an undertrained, undermotivated agency with little practical purpose beyond presenting the illusion that the federal government cares about your safety.",
"If the TSA was interested in actually keeping people safe it would work like Israeli airport security. the TSA is there to cover the airport owners asses legally and make people feel like something is being done to combat terrorism",
"Your laptop battery contains as much energy as a grenade. If you were to breach it, the heat could melt through your window and force the plane into an emergency landing, possibly killing some of the passengers by sudden decompression.\n\nThe TSA doesn't keep us safe directly. Someone determined and clever enough to get something onto a plane can do so. What protects us is the image that they are infallible. If they can find your little bag of toiletries you forgot about, or a small bag of chips, how is anyone supposed to get things through? In addition, they give a nice, huge, shiny target to hit while all the vulnerabilities are tucked out of sight. People go to the planes normally and get caught with cleverly hidden underwear or shoe bombs, when they could just get a job as a luggage transporter and sneak something into a bag when nobody was looking.\n\nThe TSA's policies aren't particularly secure. The illusion that they are, though, can be better than a suit of armor.",
"Security theater. People hear you can make bombs out of liquids so they limit you to a somewhat arbitrary amount to make people \"feel\" safer, without actually doing a damn thing. \n\nThe reasoning is that you need a certain amount to do a certain amount of damage, but somehow don't come to the conclusion that it would be easy to get past that limit if you wanted. Well I think you can do 3, 3 ounce containers in a quart sized bag. So 9 ounces, Let's say it takes 20 ounces.. You could have 3 people do the same thing, so that's 27 ounces. But, way back in 09' they did a test with 400ml, 100ml over the limit, but as they put it 2 or 3 people could carry it on. They mixed it in a 500ml bottle that was bought in the air port. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo again, it's all security theater, just like the TSA is in a nutshell. \n",
"As others have said, the TSA isn't about security, it's about the appearance of security. A UK news producer reported on a new acetone peroxide \"liquid explosive\". It was really two liquids that when mixed together caused a solid explosive to precipitate from the solution. Chemistry doesn't really matter, he used two half-litre soda bottles and blew up a scrapped airplane fuselage. Fear spread, because soda bottles are sold at airport shops and folks see them on the plane all the time. Thus the TSA desired to ban them. How big of an \"liquid explosive\" could an aircraft sustain? Well, of course, it depends on the explosive. It turns out that 3-4 oz of the explosive from the video could probably not destroy a plane. Thus the 3-4 oz limit on liquids. But wait, you ask, wouldn't 3-4 oz of nitroglycerin blow it to bits? Yes, yes it would, but that's not what people were afraid of from the video, so it didn't count. Plus, there are laws against selling nitroglycerin to randoms. Remember, chemistry doesn't count. Even if you needed a lot of liquid, all you need is associates. Each can bring through 3-4 oz times the number of bottles in their baggie. With 100 friends, you can have a lot. But since liquids are not a real problem, this isn't a real increase in risk.",
"The TSA is sort of like lock on a door. Keeps the honest people out, but actual criminals will get in incredibly easy.",
"It's the illusion of security. Whats stopping someone from bringing on ceramic knives? It sucks when I can't bring my deodorant to another country. I always find that the deodorant overseas are made for hairless cats."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.standard.co.uk/news/we-blew-hole-in-fuselage-with-mix-of-easily-disguised-liquids-6632486.html"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1lv7jw
|
the health insurance portability and accountability act of 1996 (hipaa)
|
What are all the rules? What does this mean for consumers, for providers, and for medical record companies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lv7jw/eli5_the_health_insurance_portability_and/
|
{
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"Basically, it protects your medical records from anything outside of \"TPO\", which stands for: treatment, payment, or operations. If its not another hospital or an insurance company asking for records on a \"need to know\" basis, the hospital should not release your records to anyone without written consent from you. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2g35vf
|
why is government debt and spending always compared to gdp and not to government household volume.
|
English is not my first language so please excuse any errors.
My question addresses reports that always compare the debts and spending of any government to the overall GDP of the country. However, the government does not have the GDP as an income. Would it not be better to compare spending and debt to the household or income of the government? After all, it greatly depends on tax rates which share of the GDP ends up at the government. Am I wrong here? Would measuring debt and spending based on the governments income not be more sensible?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g35vf/eli5_why_is_government_debt_and_spending_always/
|
{
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"text": [
"Well, there's reasons why it's probably more relevant if one is looking at just one number to normalize government debt by GDP than by government revenues: the former reflects the fundamental state of the economy better because the latter depends on a government's particular priorities at the time and theoretically could change significantly at any time by changing tax laws.\n\nBut more to the point, it really doesn't matter that much how you normalize the data as long as you do it consistently. Any serious policy discussion is going to consider the relationships between all these variables and more anyway, and it's easiest to just normalize all economic data by GDP as there are plenty of other economic measures that aren't tied specifically to government activity."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2t5o41
|
What is the difference between antizionism, antisemitism and antijudaism?
|
I know they are all against Jews, but why?
^I ^know ^Zionism ^is ^the ^goal ^to ^create ^a ^Jewish ^country.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2t5o41/what_is_the_difference_between_antizionism/
|
{
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"text": [
" > I know they are all against Jews, but why?\n\nthis isn't even correct. \n\nAnti-zionism is opposition to the creation or continuation to the modern state of Israel. \n\nAnti-semitism is hatred of people of Jewish descent. \n\nAnti-judaism (I've not really seen this term used) would be opposition to the religion of Judaism. \n\nAnti-semitism is essentially racism against people with a Jewish heritage- not exactly racism since, ethnically speaking, Jews are not a distinct population, and anti-semitism focuses on the religious and cultural differences between Jews and non-Jews. At any rate anti-semitism is never justifiable and in some european countries is explicitly illegal due to the heritage of WW2 and the holocaust. \n\nanti-zionism is opposition to the creation/existence of the state of Israel. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
26x5ac
|
why do my earphones work perfectly fine after washing, but other electronics just break?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26x5ac/eli5why_do_my_earphones_work_perfectly_fine_after/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chvbevs",
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"chvc55y"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Headphones contain: copper wires, a magnet and a small plastic wafer (among other things). Since these items can not be immediately destroyed by water, they can be dried out and used. Regular electronics have very sensitive wires, boards and other things.",
"Water conducts electricity.\n The power from a battery is put through a wire that gives a certain amount of power to whatever uses it. When water gets in there, it bypasses that wire and gives whatever uses it way more power than it can handle, frying it.\n Your headphones don't have a battery so it's fine once it dries out. No power, no frying. This is why if you take a battery out of a phone after it gets wet quickly enough, it won't break.\n",
"you can wash all electronics including phones and computers.. you just have to make sure they are dry before any electricity goes through it "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3ape5j
|
what "babylon" means in rastafari culture?
|
I made [this](_URL_0_) meme and somebody asked what it meant. I tried to explain what Babylon was in Rastafari culture, but i didn't really have a good answer for it. I have a good idea of it, but i was wondering if anyone could shed some in-depth light on the subject.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ape5j/eli5_what_babylon_means_in_rastafari_culture/
|
{
"a_id": [
"csep61t",
"csepag8"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"The Jews were once held in Persia, in Babylon, as it was called at the time. This became a metaphor used in the early Christian church for.... sinful Rome holding Israel captive and often Christian in contempt.\n\nSoon, blacks in the Indies and other parts of the Americas were picking up tidbit of Christianity with their old tribal religions. Slavery and other cultural forces tried to remove these hints and histories of Africa. After WW2, these groups of Africans looked to their home continent for culture while still retaining Christian vocabulary. Babylon was not a metaphor for racial problems, or maybe more spiritually, life and its daily trials.",
"For Rastafari the Bible is one of their central books (it is an Abrahamic religion after all). In short they see [Haile Selassie](_URL_1_) as the new Messiah. Babylon in biblical terms was always a place of sin. Remeber the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) and in Revelation 17 is it called the great [Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth](_URL_0_). Babylon became a figure of evil. \n\nNow, in Rastafari culture everything that they consider wrong/bad gets flagged as a part of ''Babylon'' as place of sin. I think it is fair to compared to communist who call everything that is against their belief as part of the capitalist imperialist oppressor (I.e. that is their Babylon). Of hardline Republicans who see things as universal healthcare as dangerous communistic thinking (I.e. their Babylon.) \n\n**TL;DR**: ''Babylon'' means bad. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://i.imgur.com/rvu5FYm.jpg"
] |
[
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whore_of_Babylon",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie"
]
] |
|
95phza
|
why do some cities not get certain restaurants? what's the decision-maker that decides what restaurant goes into a city?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95phza/eli5_why_do_some_cities_not_get_certain/
|
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"text": [
"Some chain resturaunts work in franchises, which means you buy the rights to build a store. The company can set very specific rules about how they want their store built, and where. They may have a limit and say that two stores must be more than 5 miles apart.\n\nOr no one is willing to buy a franchise to said store. They are very costly at first. You pay for everything.",
"Many restaurant chains like to stay regional and expand slowly (or not at all) because food service is a very hands-on industry. If In-N-Out decided they suddenly wanted 20 locations on the East Coast, they would need to build a whole new network of relationships with food and materials suppliers (or pay to get stuff shipped cross-country), scout locations in unfamiliar cities, and learn how to keep their business compliant with new local laws. In-N-Out has probably explored that possibility and decided it wouldn't be profitable (at least not compared to the expansions they're currently exploring close to home). Brand identity and company culture certainly also play a role, but don't discount plain old logistics. ",
"There is the legitimate fear of failure by over-expansion. Some chains, like Quiznos and Krispy Kreame , paid the price of overestimating their popularity. ",
"Each restaurant has different criteria to determine where to build their restaurants. For example, The Cheesecake Factory requires that a certain percentage in the area have college degrees, and that the average income is at a certain level. \n\nEach chain has their own rules, like how many people live within a certain radius of the restaurant. They don't necessarily publicize this information, so it's difficult to say what those rules are."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
25mpkt
|
tattoo copyrights & trademarks
|
I've tried Google. I've tried [reddit](_URL_0_), and I can't find an answer to something that has been bothering me. Tattoo artists work for money, i.e. they are business folk. They are making money off of designs they tattoo onto somebody. And, somehow, this is allowed for copyrighted/trademarked material without licensing. How? I cannot open a store and start offering drawings of copyrighted/trademarked material for profit without licensing. I cannot take a song sample of someone else's work and work it into mine without licensing. Hell, I used to work with a singer at a restaurant and she couldn't sing Disney songs for the kids because they weren't in the public domain (...the songs). But tattoo artists get a free pass, and I do not understand that.
The best defense I've seen is touting "derivative work", but how are my drawings *not* "interpretive"? How is the singer *not* "interpreting" Disney? If a tattoo artist can make profit off a Spiderman (Marvel now owned by Disney) tattoo without licensing, why can I not make profit off Spiderman drawings without licensing?
The other defense I've seen is "fair use", but the defenses only ever apply to the tattooee, not the tattooer. But it is the tattooer making the profit.
How is tattoo artists making profit off copyrighted/trademarked material legal without licensing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25mpkt/eli5_tattoo_copyrights_trademarks/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chip3lk",
"chiqsrg"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
" > How is tattoo artists making profit off copyrighted/trademarked material legal without licensing?\n\nIt isn't.\n\nAn artist who has a reference image of a trademark or copyrighted character in their window is asking for trouble.\n\nThe key is that most of them don't actively advertise the fact that they'll draw without appropriate licencing. So there is nothing that Disney etc. can specifically send them an infringement notice for. To have a case against the artist they would need someone with an infringing tattoo and sufficient evidence to show that that specific artist/studio drew the tattoo; and all of that is almost too much to bother with, even for Disney.",
"Marvel is in the business of selling drawings of Spider-Man. They want to prevent others from doing that, taking away their business. They are not however in the business of tattooing Spider-Man on people. Stopping others from doing that gains them nothing, and they lose a bit of free advertising."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ouizd/eli5_the_legality_of_tattooing_images_under/"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
28l1yp
|
why doesn't the iphone turn on straight away when plugged into a charger. like the galaxy for example you can turn it on soon as it's plugged in at 0% whereas iphone needs to wait till 4%
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28l1yp/eli5_why_doesnt_the_iphone_turn_on_straight_away/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cibxmnr"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"To prevent damage to the battery or phone. It's a precaution."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1fopqj
|
How did operation Operation Barbarossa impact Soviet industry during WWII?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fopqj/how_did_operation_operation_barbarossa_impact/
|
{
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"caea0x7"
],
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"text": [
"Soviet industry was both brutally smashed and reconfigured during and after the invasion. Before Barbarossa Stalin had already begun to dismantle and move portions of key industries (weapons, vehicles, etc.) East of the Ural mountains and away from the path of any future invasion; safeguarding them behind the relative safety of a geological boundary. With the German led invasion in the summer of 1941, various industries became retooled and repurposed: factories previously manufacturing tractors began tooling out T34 and other tanks, some pipe manufacturers began outputting sub machine guns like the PPSh and PPS, arsenals like Tula - Izhmash - Degtyarev began outputting at maximum levels. Workers pushed out as many guns and supplies as they possibly could, factories in Stalingrad would be manufacturing tanks and guns that would immediately be used in combat as they left the doors. Lend Lease programs helped alleviate some strains on the soviet economy, especially trucks that supplemented their supply lines and increased mobility. Operation Barbarossa spurred on an industry that would produce more guns and tanks than any of the other powers during the war - with the T/34 and IL2 being the most produced in their respective classes. This war footed economy is what cemented the Soviet's post war status as a super power, as it gave them the ability to muster up huge amounts of men and equipment at a moments notice - some numbers include\n\n 105,251 - tanks and self propelled guns\n516,648 - pieces of artillery \n 63,087 - Fighter Aircraft \n37,549 - ground attack aircraft "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4hj1tj
|
why is it inappropriate to call certain ranked officers in some parts of the us military "sir/ma'am"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hj1tj/eli5_why_is_it_inappropriate_to_call_certain/
|
{
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"text": [
"Only officers are addressed as \"Sir\" or \"Ma'am\".\n\nEnlisted personell are addressed by thier rank.\n\nSo you'd address them as \"Sergeant\", Sergeant Major\", etc.\n\nOfficers and Enlisted are different rank structures, where officers will always outrank enlisted. So a fresh 2nd Lieutenant with 2 weeks in service technically outranks a Sergeant Major with 15 years.",
"You might be referring to the Warrant Officer Corps. Army regulations state they are addressed as Mr. or Miss. or Mrs. \n\nThey outrank all enlisted personnel and are subordinate to all commissioned officers. ",
"20 years ago Vietnam and Korea vets would say things like,\" don't call me sir I work for a living\" which is a reference to, at least in the Army, non commissioned officers are generally seen as being much more badass and hardcore than many lower-ranking officers that they would interact with.\n\nThe officers that we had great respect for as enlisted men while in the military were the ones who either went to West Point or started as enlisted men and then moved up to be officers after completing some schooling. The majority of officers have not gone through basic training.\n\nTo them being called sir would have put them in the same group with the second lieutenants and low-ranking officers who generally made their jobs more difficult and even more dangerous.\n\nIn general if you are civilian you don't have to worry about this much. If you are in the armed forces and call an NCO sir they are likely to be offended by it.\n\nEdit: an NCO is an enlisted soldier who has reached the rank of E-5 or higher.",
"To add to what's been said, in the USMC there are Warrant Officers which are different than both Officers and Non-commissioned Officers, (enlisted).\n\nWarrant Officers should not be addressed as sir or ma'am.\n\nThat said, while in Marine boot camp you'd better dam well address ALL superiors as such.\n\n ",
"I've been admonished as a civilian for calling unlisted military, \"sir\" and I have retorted that I call everyone sir. Etiquette wise, am I incorrect to call them sir?",
"One exception to note is for basic training drill instructors, where usage varies:\n\n > Within the United States Army, drill instructors are given the title of \"Drill Sergeant\". The United States Coast Guard gives the title of \"Company Commander\" to their drill instructors. The United States Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. armed forces where drill instructors are titled as \"drill instructors\". **Drill instructors are referred to as \"sir\" or \"ma'am\" by recruits within the USAF, USCG (for the first few weeks of basic training, until recruits are instructed to refer to their company commanders by their proper rank), and USMC.** Within the USN, recruits must refer to their RDCs by their proper ranks. Recruits in the United States Army must refer to their drill sergeants as such: \"drill sergeant\".",
"Retired Army Warrant Officer here (CW3). I could be called \"Sir\" but I hated it. My troops could call me \"Mr.\" or \"Chief\". If they called me \"Sir\", they were doing push-ups. ",
"I think what he means is when we are told ( at least I was taught USMC) to respond to generals as Yes General no General not Yes Sir no Sir. it's to remind them that they aaaaaare generals so they don't forget. either that or to rub our noses in it.",
"I was a Sgt, so it was a bit strange when I got out and everyone was now calling me \"Sir\". I had to fight the impulse to respond with, \"Don't call me sir, I work for a living.\"",
"you may also be confused by the term \"non-commissioned officer.\" And NCO is a sergeant and you don't call them sir or ma'am. ",
"Coast guard veteran here. Commissioned officers O-6 and above were addressed by their rank. Officers below that rank were addressed by either their rank, \"Mr.\"(followed by their names),or \"sir\". Warrant officers were addressed as sir or \"Mr\". I can't say the exact reason the tradition has evolved that way, but it's the way things are after hundreds of years. Maybe there's something in my bluejackets manual, but that's in a box somewhere. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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[],
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[]
] |
||
zs79y
|
why can't cell phone antennas support all bands in the same chip?
|
A few months ago I lost my iPhone 4 and got a cheapass Samsung Galaxy Y as a replacement. 3G wasn't working and I wondered why. Turns out I got the model with a 900 Mhz-compatible HSPA chip instead of the model with the 850 Mhz-compatible chip I should have got for my provider. I had to live with EDGE for several weeks due to the small 50 Mhz difference between the bands.
Today I was reminded of the same issue. Here in Norway we have perfect LTE floating all around us (in the 2600 Mhz band), yet we hardly can use it except for a couple of special models and USB-adapters for our computers. The iPhone 5 looked promising, but it still remains just a 3G phone for most Europeans with LTE access.
Why can't a antenna chip simply support all the bands? Or atleast - how can an antenna chip support 700Mhz and 2100Mhz, but not the bands in between?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zs79y/eli5_why_cant_cell_phone_antennas_support_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The cell phone is trying to pick up a *very* weak signal. The circuit that picks up the radio wave that is used to transmit the phone call information has to be \"tuned\" to that particular frequency so that it will resonate with it. It's kind of like making a tuning fork; it's very hard to get one that will resonate well with two different frequencies (unless they are multiples of each other). \n \nIn order for a phone to work with multiple carrier frequencies, it has to have multiple tuned circuits. This is certainly do-able, but it costs a bit more to make. And of course, if you get a subsidized phone from a particular carrier, they don't want to pay to support frequencies that they don't use. And the carriers want to keep the phones as cheap as they possibly can, since they don't make money on the phones themselves, they lose money on them. \n \nThere are also other considerations. The \"modulation scheme\" is the way the radio carrier is rapidly varied to convey the digital information, and there are several different ones. Those generally also need some dedicated circuitry. And on top of the analog-to-digital modulation scheme are other layers of purely digital protocol that can vary. It is possible to pack several schemes into one chipset, but it is also more expensive. \n \nTL;DR - It costs more, and there's no incentive for the phone providers to do it. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1rhdqj
|
why is disney considered an evil corporation?
|
I've heard people mention this before but they never explain why.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rhdqj/eli5_why_is_disney_considered_an_evil_corporation/
|
{
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"cdn9mca",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The power of Disney stretch farther than one would think, (i.e.ESPN & ABC), and Walt may have been anti-semitic. Plus it's fun to imagine the \"happiest place/corporation on earth\" as a secretly dark entity.",
"One of the big reasons I'm aware of is in the [copyright extension](_URL_0_) they lobbied heavily for in the late 1990s.\n\nThis raised—and continues to raise—questions regarding authorship and the value of the public domain."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act"
]
] |
|
e1l1ig
|
why does zyrtec make you drowsy even though its a second generation anti-histamine?
|
Can anyone explain the mechanics and how it interacts with your brain?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1l1ig/eli5_why_does_zyrtec_make_you_drowsy_even_though/
|
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"text": [
"Does it? I haven't found it to make me drowsy, and there isn't a warning on the label about operating heavy machinery or whatever.",
"My anatomy teacher taught us this the other day. A histamine is a neurotransmitter involved in arousal and attention. This arousal response can directly cause an allergy response as the molecule is an excitatory type and responds to foreign particles such as dust and dander. Anti-histamines such as Walzyr or Zyrtec serve to block these histamine receptors.\nAs such, their excitatory roles become inhibited leading to drowsiness.",
"In my experience Zyrtec is one of the softest, didn't ever have a problem with it even when drinking, whereas with polaramine that's another story.",
"The problem comes from the fact that the histamine receptor (H1) targeted decreases allergic reactions and also causes one to feel less alert. \n\nI think it’s generally accepted that you can’t stop allergic reactions without this side effect. There have been lots of attempts, and you can basically draw a line on a graph showing that drowsiness and drug effectiveness are hand in hand. The least drowsy drugs are also the least effective. \n\nTake Benadryl for example. Makes me fall asleep! But it’s very effective in stopping allergy symptoms. \n\nOn the other hand, Claritin is one of the least effective drugs and it doesn’t cause much drowsiness. \n\nChoose your position. Taking my Benadryl with an espresso today...",
"Definitely an individual response. I get extremely dizzy if I take Zyrtec. Like my head is a balloon attached my a string. I cannot take it.",
"It's not a medicine that's even drowsy in the majority of people.\n\nYou're in the minority of this side effect OP",
"More of an ELI10 - Generally in the body, histamine is released in response to an allergen and is involved in the subsequent inflammatory response (what we know as \"allergies\"). In the brain, however, some of the neurons that are involved with wakefulness, also respond to histamine to keep us awake (histaminergic neurons). When we block histamine in the brain, they're less active, hence we get sleepy.\n\nWe generally divide anti-histamine drugs by their selectivity. 1st gen drugs (ex. Benedryl) are rather nonselective and act on both histamine receptors in the brain (making us sleepy) and in the periphery (damping the allergic response). 2nd gen drugs (ex. Clarithin, Allergra, Zyrtec, etc.) are more selective for the peripheral receptors and less so the central ones in the brain.\n\n**The answer to your title question:** in reality, the division is not as black and white, rather more of a spectrum. Some 2nd-gen antihistamines have more central effect on the brain than others.",
"It can still make you drowsy, it’s just more selective for peripheral H1 receptors than 1st gen antihistamines.",
"Which one is Zyrtec? I wish people would say the drug name rather than the brand name...",
"There are 3 places in you body that histamine affects: the acid in your stomach, your allergic reactions throughout your body, and in your brain. Stuff like Prilosec is actually an antihistamine, but it only affects the ones in your stomach because its easy to introduce medication right into your stomach. However for an antihistimine to get to your skin/eye/sinuses from your mouth it has to go by blood, which means it goes everywhere blood goes including your brain. If its blocking histamine in your sinuses, its also blocking it in your brain, which makes you sleepy. The 2nd gen ones are more selective, but they'll still have some side effects.",
"I haven't seen anyone mention the [blood-brain barrier](_URL_0_) which essentially filters what reaches the brain.\n\nAnti-histamines like cetirizine (zirtec) only minimally cross the blood-brain barrier, whereas first-generation drugs cross it very easily, and so more reliably make people sleepy. But the BBB isn't the same for everyone, so some drugs will cross more easily in some people than others.\n\nIn general, any drug that crosses the BBB either increases wakefulness or increases sleepiness. It's also the usual answer as to 'why does this drug make me feel very sleepy / wakeful / happy / sad?' - because it crosses the BBB. This can then lead into a conversation about ionization and polarity, but only if you know a really interesting anaesthetist.",
"Of the popular 2nd gen anti histamines, it crosses the BBB the most. Or so an old pediatrician told me. I haven't read about the pharmacology enough to fact check him."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier?wprov=sfla1"
],
[]
] |
|
4u7s78
|
How true is the AK-47 history? Also, what other rifles is it related to? The sks?
|
I recently read about the history of the ak-47. It sounds much too convenient. A farmer cum soldier is fighting in the great war, gets wounded, then says "why does every german soldier have a rifle when only one in four russian soldiers has a rifle, so I decided to design a rifle that would make it practical to make a rifle for each russian soldier". Along with it all sounding exactly like what possibly the most unimaginative propaganda writer would probably reject as being too unimaginative, wasn't the big problem with his design that it needed a milled rather than stamped receiver, defeating his goal, delaying the introduction of the ak-47 by ~5-10 years?
I was also wondering what other rifles from that period shared different features of the ak-47. The gas system, for instance. How similar was the gas system of, for instance, the sks to that of the ak-47. Also, I guess, the reloading and firing system. What other rifles had similar reloading and firing systems? The sks? Stg-44?
Thanks
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4u7s78/how_true_is_the_ak47_history_also_what_other/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d5nslkz"
],
"score": [
14
],
"text": [
"One in four? The common myth is a rifle for every other soldier, spread ever so elegantly by Hollywood. \n\nAs for the AK being a clone of the Stg-44, anyone with any firearms knowledge can tell you they were completely different rifles. You can read [this](_URL_0_) for a detailed breakdown.\n\nContrary to popular belief, Hugo Schmeisser had nothing to do with the AK's design. [This article](_URL_1_) (sorry, Russian only, Google Translate should help) covers the subject extensively, also including a scan of factory documentation regarding what Schmeisser *was* doing for the Russians. That list is not very impressive.\n\n* Box magazine for the PPSh\n\n* Magazine for the Mosin\n\n* Draft project of an 8 mm submachinegun\n\nThe document also complains about a lack of formal education and constant complaining from Schmeisser, specifically noting that he is not familiar with any secret development at the factory. Also, on the AK started in 1943, long before Schmeisser began working for the Russians.\n\nAs for the \"farmer cum soldier\" bit, that's not quite true either. Yes, he was a soldier, but he worked at NIPSMVO (Central Scientific Research Institute Small Arms Proving Grounds) of the Main Artillery Directorate, working on several unsuccessful designs before producing the AK. The idea that he was an uneducated peasant conscript that one day suddenly created a legendary rifle is incorrect."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://shuntyard.blogspot.ca/2012/06/firearms-history-is-ak-47-copy-of-stg.html",
"http://warspot.ru/1788-shmaysser-protiv-kalashnikova"
]
] |
|
2mv0hh
|
What is the energy released during cellular respiration?
|
We've all been in biology lessons in high school. We've been told that during cellular respiration, ATP is formed from ADP and such. During the more detailed lessons, we've been told that during the first phase, when the glucose molecule is broken down into two three-carbon sugars, there is energy released when the carbons are separated, and it comes in the form of ATP.
So my question is, what *is* ATP? I know it's a molecule, but when you speak of energy you think of stuff like heat energy, light energy, and so forth. So how do cells use a molecule for energy? And what kind of energy is it?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2mv0hh/what_is_the_energy_released_during_cellular/
|
{
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"text": [
"It is the breaking of molecular bonds that yields the energy. When ATP is hydrolyzed into ADP + P you get energy from breaking that bond.\n\nATP + H2O → ADP + Pi ΔG˚ = −30.5 kJ/mol (−7.3 kcal/mol)\n\nWikipedia gives a pretty good explanation of it.\n_URL_0_",
"You can think of chemical bond as being similar to putting a spring between two marbles, then pushing the marbles together and tying them to each other with a rubber band. The rubber band pulls them together, the spring pushes them apart, and the two balance each other in a way that depends on the strength of the spring and the rubber band.\n\nWhen you cut the rubber band (that is, when you break the bond chemically), you release the energy in the spring and the balls fly apart.\n\nThat is how chemical bonds store energy, and how breaking a bond releases energy (which, incidentally, is the form of energy called chemical energy).\n\nATP is a molecule that happens to have a bond that is particularly convenient in biological systems.",
"I've provided an [answer](_URL_0_) to this in response to a similar question.\n\nI've also put my answer below (with a few modifications to tailor to this question):\n\nThe short version is that ATP in the cell has the energy to do work because our cells maintain the concentration of ATP extremely far away from its equilibrium potential. \n\n\nThe complete version is:\n\nThere is misconception of the phosphate bond as being a \"high energy\" bond. **It is not**. At least from a biologic point of view the physical properties of the phosphate bond are not what allows the cell to use ATP to do work. ATP is useful in biology because the cells maintain the reaction ATP-- > ADP+Pi very far from its equilibrium constant.\nI will quote Dr. David G Nicholls, who authored the text book \"Bioenergetics,\" and devotes a section of his book to this very issue:\n\"It is still possible to come across statements to the effect that the phosphate anhydride bonds of ATP are 'high-energy' bonds capable of storing energy and driving reactions in otherwise unfavorable directions. However, it should be clear from Table 3.1 that it is the extent to which the observed mass action ratio is displaced from equilibrium that defines the capacity of the reactants to do work rather than any attribute of a single component (note table 3.1 demonstrates that ATP in the cytoplasm is maintained at 1000 fold higher than equilibrium). **A hypothetical cell could utilize any reaction to transduce energy form the mitochondrion. For example, if the glucose-6-phosphate reaction were maintained ten orders of magnitude away from equilibrium then glucose-6-phosphate hydrolysis would be just as capable of doing work in the call as ATP. Conversely, the Pacific Ocean could be filled with an equilibrium mixture of ATP, ADP and Pi but the ATP would have no capacity to to work.**\"\nedit: link added:\n_URL_1_[1]\nquote is from chapter 3, page 39."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate"
],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ldnl7/where_does_atp_synthase_specifically_subunit_beta/",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780125181211"
]
] |
|
7wgjyu
|
How did women live with visicovaginal fistula's(connection between the bladdar and vaginal canal) prior to modern medicine?
|
visicovaginal fistula's tend to occur after child birth due to necrotic tissue between the vagina and bladder causing leakage from the bladder into the vaginal canal. Now women go in to get it repaired but I'm curious as to how it was handled in the past before it was able to be repaired. Did the women have specialized products to deal with this? Did women die from this in the past if it was untreatable/unmanageable?
[image](_URL_0_)
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wgjyu/how_did_women_live_with_visicovaginal/
|
{
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"du0kpje",
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"text": [
"I'm curious, have you found evidence that they *did* survive?",
"Even today, among the best charities for highly effective giving (highly effective charities that get way more value for your money than others), is considered to be the [Fistula Foundation](_URL_0_). \n\nFistula is largely eradicated in developed countries, but continues to ruin lives in the poorest parts of the world where access to maternal care is limited. Women often lose their babies in labor, and without proper treatment, they are stigmatized for their smell and isolated from their communities.\n\nObstetric fistula do not heal on their own. Fortunately though, reconstructive surgery can reverse the damage and repair the birth canal. However, the limited number of trained fistula surgeons in the world means that fewer than 20,000 procedures take place annually. Even where the procedure is available, combined surgery and rehabilitation costs total an average of $586 per woman--far beyond the financial means of most women who suffer from fistula in developing countries.\n\nSo even today we're having a tough time getting everyone this relatively cheap surgery that otherwise excludes people from their communities. ",
"So I checked in a gynecology textbook--Mark D. Walters and Mickey M. Karram's *Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery*--and came up with a chapter on vesicovaginal fistulas (or, more generally, lower urinary tract fistulas). It's not a conventionally \"historical\" source, but it provides a pretty well-sourced, chronological overview of the medical literature. According to Chi Chung Grace Chen and Karram, \"the earliest evidence of a vesicovaginal distula was reported by Derry (1953) in the mummified remains of Queen Henhenit, one of the wives of King Mentuhotep II of Egypt. It tells a pretty coherent narrative of early medical attempts to characterize the problem: Avicenna, an eleventh century physician, noted that \"urinary incontinence after difficult labor was caused by communication between the bladder and vagina\"--but it isn't until the mid-eighteenth century that physicians begin to record successful surgical repairs of fistulas, and it's not until the nineteenth century that gynecologists became particularly adept at the procedure. (602)\n\nWhat this kind of source doesn't give is an answer to what I take to be the social implications of the question, e.g. how did the absence of a viable solution to this problem affect the lives of individual women? So I consulted Robert Zacharin's \"A History of Obstetric Vesicovaginal Fistula,\" published in the *ANZ Journal of Surgery*, which fleshes out some of the details but leaves questions of the lived experience and social response to the problem generally unanswered. One point of interest is that James Marion Sims, a white doctor from Alabama, refined the surgical procedure by operating, without anesthesia, on three enslaved women--Betsy, Lucy, and Anarcha, the latter of whom was \"cured\" after twenty-nine attempts (851-852). This is the guy who Zacharin credits with the \"[enunciation of] the important principles involved,\" which \"to this day [...] remain the standard with very few additions or modiciations.\" (852) We also learn that the \"world's first fistula hospital\" opened in New York City in 1855, a couple of decades after Sims's experiments and relatively close to the spot in Central Park where a statue to Sims still stands (though the city plans to move it to Brooklyn). But there's still scant evidence of how this medical issue manifested itself socially.\n\nSims does offer the following reaction:\n\n > The accident, per se, is never fatal, but it may well be imagined that a lady of keen sensibilities so afflicted, and excluded from all social enjoyment would prefer death. A case of this kind came under my obsercation a few years since, where the lady absolutely pined away and died, in consequence of her extreme mortification on ascertaining that she was hoplessly incurable.\n\n(This quotation is from Sims's \"On the treatment of vesico-vaginal fistula,' *American Journal of the Medical Sciences* (1852), 59-87, quoted in Durrenda Ojanuga, \"The medical ethics of the 'Father of Gynecology', Dr. J. Marion Sims, *Journal of Medical Ethics* 19 (1993), 28.)\n\nOjanuga, who ultimately describes Sims's actions as \"a classic example of the evils of slavery and the misuse of human subjects for medical research\" (30), gives us more substantial information about the social effects of vesicovaginal fistulas, though it is difficult to discern how much of his characterization is speculative and how much is supported with something stronger than intuition. That said, Ojanuga states that \"before the 19th century, European and American women suffered from [vesicovaginal fistulas] and often became social outcasts rejected from society. Suicides among them were common.\" While he concedes that \"statistics are scarce\" in the nineteenth century and earlier, vesicovaginal fistulas were \"a serious problem. The records of the Women's Hospital in New York revealed significant numbers of poor immigrant women suffering from this condition.\" Nonetheless, he maintains that up until the mid-eighteenth century, \"vaginal fistulas were generally unknown to the public at large.\" (28) \n\nNancy Theriot, in *Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-Century America*, concurs with Ojanuga's description of the social ramifications of untreated vesicovaginal fistula, describing vesicovaginal fistula as \"a debilitating birth-trauma injury\" and noting that, prior to the advent of nineteenth-century gynecology, \"women who suffered from this condition were permanent invalids.\" (99) However, I suspect that Theriot might question Ojanuga's claim that the existence of vaginal fistulas was not common knowledge: she makes the argument that the physical agony of childbirth, along with its attendant complications, was be a necessary component of feminine identity--at least prior to the advent of anesthesia. It seems more likely that knowledge of the effects of untreated vesicovaginal fistula was often familiar to women who had experienced childbirth, either personally or indirectly. Certainly, much of the medical profession of the eighteenth century (and earlier) was largely incompetent at treating women--Theriot mentions that many instances of vesicovaginal fistula likely came from doctors misusing forceps during other operations (53)--but the refinement of the procedure was clearly met with a substantial demand from theretofore-untreated women. Historian Deborah Kuhn McGregor agrees, suggesting in *From Midwives to Medicine* that \"when medicine becmae clinical and began to concentrate on female diseases vesico-vaginal fistulas became a focus,\" a concern which \"indicated that there was a higher incidence of the condition than occurs today, at least in many parts of the world.\" (33-34).\n\nAnyway, to your questions:\n\n > Did women have specialized products to deal with this?\n\nOjanuga says that, prior to a viable surgical solution, \"Women with [vesicovaginal fistulas] were left to rely on the use of palliative or other minimal treatment which lessened the dribbling of urine, but did not allow the women to participate fully in everyday life.\" (28). It's not entirely clear what those \"treatments\" would be, though McGregor notes that \"physicians often resorted to using pessaries and sponges for various female complaints\" (34), so those are some clear options. I can't find any evidence of improvised/\"folk\" treatments, though I would strongly suspect they existed.\n\n > Did women die from this in the past if it was untreatable/unmanageable?\n\nNone of the authors I have mentioned above regard the condition as fatal--McGregor is insistent on this point, in fact)--though attempts at treating the issue often carried substantial medical risk (One of Sims's experimental subjects nearly died from blood loss during a botched suturing attempt). The aforementioned quotation from Sims likewise indicates that the condition was generally not going to kill you, though its effects brought so much embarrassment and anguish that the afflicted might wish to be dead regardless. Likewise, Ojanuga indicates that suicide was \"common\" among women with untreated vesicovaginal fistulas.\n\nThere's a lot I haven't mentioned here, but hopefully this works as kind of a primer. I think all of my sources are mentioned in the text."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Vesicovaginal_Fistula.png/300px-Vesicovaginal_Fistula.png"
] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/where-to-donate/fistula-foundation"
],
[]
] |
|
q834w
|
How much do we know about the harm, specifically neurotoxicity of MDMA?
|
There seems to be quite a lot of contradicting information out there about this. My (amateur) understanding is that after enough MDMA has been consumed, the brain's serotonin supplies are essentially depleted, and then a further dose of the drug can therefore be potentially harmful? Am I correct in thinking this is the primary known harm of MDMA, or are there bigger dangers lurking?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q834w/how_much_do_we_know_about_the_harm_specifically/
|
{
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"text": [
"When reviewing the literature, make sure you differentiate studies looking at high-dose MDMA use vs. low-dose MDMA use, the effects can be quite different. [Here's a thread from 5 months ago where I share my thoughts on the subject. ](_URL_0_) ",
"I wrote a 20 page paper on this last year. Here is one of the most useful review articles, from 2010: _URL_0_\n\nSome important points that trended across most studies were the relationships between hyperthermia and high doses with increased damage. While the significance and permanence of neurological effects is still debated, researchers can certainly detect changes in 5-HT activity which become much more evident with hyperthermia, higher and prolonged doses, and antioxidant deficiencies. \nThe primary (negative) effects are likely a result of increased free radicals in the axon terminals of 5-HT neurons. Free serotonin (5-HT) is broken down into oxidative species by MAO, and antioxidants in the neuron prevent these from doing damage under normal conditions. \n1) Hyperthermia reduces antioxidant activity.\n\n2) Higher or longer doses can exhaust the antioxidant supply (more serotonin released-- > more broken down), which leaves serotonin's products to assert oxidative stress on the surrounding cell.\n\n3) Low antioxidant supply in the first place allows lots of oxidative stress.\n\nI can link more specific papers to support these claims if you wish. It'll just take some digging up.\nedit: linked the wrong paper"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kb7n7/is_mdma_really_harmless/"
],
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19373443"
]
] |
|
10k8ya
|
beer bellies.
|
I've heard some things recently about beer not actually giving you a beer belly. I drink a ***lot*** of beer regularly and have a beer belly. I assumed this made sense until I started hearing these things.
If beer does cause beer belly, then why does it all go into the belly? Why is it that people who eat tonnes of food get fat all over, whereas myself, who drinks tonnes of beer, only get a fat belly?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10k8ya/eli5_beer_bellies/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6e67rq",
"c6e7cgj"
],
"score": [
12,
2
],
"text": [
"It's called a \"Beer Belly\" because it's associated with people who drink a lot of beer. Think about your drinking habit. Do you have a single beer and then go on about your day? Probably not.\n\nAdults tend to have a beer and then follow it up with 6 more. This is because drinking is super fun and beer is super delicious. Beer is full of calories, about 150+. If you consume 8 beers thats like 1200+ calories on top of your breakfast lunch and dinner. That's a lot of calories. Old people can't use all those calories up so the body stores them as fat. It's not just beer that causes a belly. If a 40 year old with a slowed metabolism and a crappy exercise regimen drank 8 sodas a night and then passed out he or she would probably develop a soda belly. \n\nAs for why it's in your belly? Men and women store fat differently, women in their entire body (poor things) and men mostly in their guts. \n\nBut you are 5 and probably have a pretty decent metabolism. Just don't go drinking 10 ecto coolers before bed time and exercise regularly and you'll be just fine.",
"There have been several scientific studies done with results that have shown that the amount of beer that you drink has very little to do with having a beer belly. As long as you have a relatively healthy lifestyle (eat healthy, get regular exercise, etc.) the amount of beer you drink doesnt impact your weight all that much. A male getting a beer belly instead of getting fat all around has more to do with genetics than regular consumption of beer.\n\nSource: _URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.cracked.com/article_19293_the-5-most-ridiculous-drinking-myths-you-probably-believe.html",
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3175488.stm",
"http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n10/full/1601678a.html"
]
] |
|
2eyi8n
|
Will frozen gasoline burn?
|
I have some dry ice and gasoline handy, so naturally... you know.
Unless the gasoline is very pure (which I doubt mine is), it should be able to freeze. I will put a small amount of gasoline in a container and place that container on my block of dry ice. Once it is frozen I will remove the gasoline from the container and attempt to ignite it. Maybe set up a fuse trail in case the gasoline ice cube shatters when it ignites. Will this work?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2eyi8n/will_frozen_gasoline_burn/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck47ksy"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Gasoline only burns as a vapor. The term flash point means the temperature at which a substance forms a flammable vapor at its surface. Below the flash point, the material cannot be ignited.\n\nHowever, if you introduce a heat source, you can warm part of the material, produce a flammable vapor, and ignite it. If you've produced enough extra heat to warm more of the material, the reaction can become self sustaining.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_point"
]
] |
|
3zx0hf
|
how come some people get rich during stock market crisis?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zx0hf/eli5_how_come_some_people_get_rich_during_stock/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cypnslm",
"cypp7qe"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"You can short sell stocks, which means that you borrow stock from someone who owns it, sell it on the market at the going rate, keep the cash, hope the stock falls in price, buy the stock back, and return it to the original owner. \n\nIf the price does fall, then you'll be selling stock you don't own for a high price and buying it back to cover your debt at a lower price for a profit.\n\nThere are probably other ways to profitably trade in a falling market too.",
"Here are a few ways:\n\n* Put options: You see a $10 stock. You think the price will fall. You pay me $1 for the right, but not the obligation to sell the stock. If the price drops to $5, you can buy the stock for $5, but still sell me the stock for $10. When you subtract the dollar you paid me, that is $4 in profit. If the stock rises to $15, you don't have to buy or sell the stock, but you lose the $1 you gave me.\n\n* Futures contracts: You own a $10 stock. You think the price will fall. I think it will rise. You agree to sell me the stock in 1 year for $10, no matter what. If the price drops to $5, then you can still sell it to me for $10 and make $5. If the price goes up to $15, you lose $5.\n\n* Short selling: You borrow a $10 stock from me. You sell it. Then the price drops to $5. You buy it back and return it to me. You make $5. If it rises to $15, you lose $5. If it rises to $1000, you lose $990. \n\n* Inverse exchange traded funds: You buy a stock in a fund designed to bet against an exchanged traded fund like the S & P 500. These funds use the techniques I described above to bet against a particular group of companies. If the 500 biggest companies in America lose money, your stock will rise in value. The advantage is that most you can lose is the amount you paid for the inverse ETF. Short selling has potentially unlimited losses."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2zhbl5
|
why do some people hate being in photos?
|
Never fully understood this- any suggestions /ideas?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zhbl5/eli5_why_do_some_people_hate_being_in_photos/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpivsbx",
"cpixtev"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Cause they have low self-esteem / confidence and feel ugly in said photo.",
"I don't like being in photos, not the best looking guy don't like the way I look. That being said - that's not my biggest issue with having pictures taken. For starters; people take waaaay too many pictures and it's tiresome; you look like an idiot with a selfie stick; I feel awkward posing for an indiscriminate amount of time with a fake smile in a unnatural pose and my biggest problem is, instead of living in the moment, you're stopping and posing for a picture ie. People with their backs turned to the bellagio fountains instead of watching, enjoying and experiencing them.\nAlso native Americans believe it steals your soul"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2n7bbe
|
How did Arianism become so prominent among the Germanic tribes?
|
I know that the early christian missionaries to the Germanic barbarian tribes were Arianians. But Niceanian Christianity doesn't seem to have taken any root among them.
Why was it that to the extent that the Germanic tribes were christian, they were Arianians?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n7bbe/how_did_arianism_become_so_prominent_among_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmb53sn"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"A few reasons.\n\nFirstly, initial mission efforts among the Germanic tribes you are thinking of (Goths, Vandals, etc.) was conducted by non-Nicene faction during the 4th century (aka ‘Arians’). This was done during a period where the whole ‘Nicene’ question was hotly contested, so their conversion and allegiance to a non-Nicene version of Christianity also became an element of Christian and ethnic identity. \n\nSecondly, and related, The Nicene debates were conducted primarily in Greek, primarily in the eastern half of the Empire. So the *developments* of that debate rarely impacted the Germanic tribes directly. They were not going to be swayed by the ins and outs of Greek theological arguments because they had little access and little interaction with that ‘world’.\n\nThirdly, the Germanic tribes, even when to some extent ‘inside’ the Empire, were also very much ‘outside’ the Empire, and so their relation to Imperial power and policy differed significantly from the Christian church within the confines of the Empire.\n\nAttempts *were* made to Nicene-ise the Germanic groups, with more or less success. Chrysostom, while bishop of Constantinople, made active efforts to bring them into the Nicene fold. The Visigoths abandoned Arianism in favour of Nicene Christianity at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2b7hy5
|
why dont all movies go to the theatres? why decides they'll go right to dvd?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b7hy5/eli5_why_dont_all_movies_go_to_the_theatres_why/
|
{
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"text": [
"The distributor will make a determination on that based on the quality of the movie, and they market at the time. Many movies are destined for DVD from the outset. Some may go straight to DVD based on what that studio and others have released at that time.\n\nThe movie studios have to keep the exhibitors (that is, your local movie theater) happy. And that means providing movies that fill the theaters with people who will purchase popcorn, candy and sodas. If a movie won't fill many seats, then even if they get some theaters to show the movie, it won't last past the first week.\n\nWhen a movie is sent to theaters, the distributors spend a lot of money on advertising. It's much more expensive to market a movie in theaters than it is to market a direct-to-dvd film. So, when they send a movie to the theaters, they have to back it up with a lot of money for advertising, so they don't want something that the theater owners will yank out after a short time.",
"Because they're bad, usually. Putting something in a theater requires movie theaters willing to gamble on your movie, and as theaters make such a tiny cut of the profits, they're very risk-averse. So often sequels that will have a rabid fanbase but no widespread support will go straight to video, where the margins are a little more forgiving, and the studio can still recoup some of their losses for such a bad product.",
"There are some fairly substantial marketing costs associated with releasing a movie in theaters--TV ads, internet ads, print ads, that sort of thing. These can be in the tens of millions of dollars. \n\nBefore the studio commits to spending that kind of money, they hold test screenings of the movie--basically they fill a theater with people who get to watch a free movie in exchange for answering questions afterwards. If these people hate the movie and the studio can't think of an affordable way to fix it, they won't spend the money on marketing. The idea is that they don't want to increase the losses they've already incurred by financing the movie in the first place.\n\nAlso, as other people have pointed out, a lot of times the movie is made with the idea that it will go straight to video--a lot of horror sequels are like this. It's known from the outset that the fixed costs of a print/TV ad campaign could never be recouped in theaters because not enough people have interest in the movie. However, the relatively small cost of producing a low budget horror movie (Phantasm III / IV springs to mind) might well be covered if there are enough horror nerds willing to shell out for the PPV or buy the disc or whatever."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2gq1qi
|
why do subreddits need mods? isn't the point of reddit that content is either voted up or down by all the users?
|
I seriously want the answer to this. With all the mod drama that goes on, I've always wondered why mods are even needed on a website that is suppose to be run by the votes of users. Having that extra layer seems unnecessary.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gq1qi/eli5_why_do_subreddits_need_mods_isnt_the_point/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cklgql6"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Often times a subreddit has rules that go against what the average user will vote on. Before a subreddit hits \"eternal september\" (a point at which there are too many new users each day for the existing users to train how to behave), it could absolutely exist without moderation. But for a subreddit like ELI5, where thousands of new users join each day, there are *many* who don't know the rules that have been put out by the moderators, and even more who don't follow them.\n\nImagine /r/AskScience without any moderators. It would have turned into /r/AskReddit very quickly. Jokes everywhere and very few legitimate scientific claims.\n\nThere are also instances where users dox (release personal information) each other. In this case the moderators will be quicker to react and delete the post than admins could."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1ysr3g
|
Why was England's pre-decimal money system so complicated?
|
Or does it just seem complicated because I'm so indoctrinated with the decimal system?
* *1 pound (L) = 20 shillings (s)*
* *1 crown = 5 shillings*
* *1 shilling = 12 pence (d)*
* *1 penny = 4 farthings [[source](_URL_0_)]*
Why was a pound 20 shillings, but a shilling is 12 pence? Why wasn't it the more obvious 24/12 or 20/10, which seems more logical?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ysr3g/why_was_englands_predecimal_money_system_so/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"The reason why it would appear complicated would have to be that simply you're not used to the system. It makes sense to me in that I know how it works and I see no issue with it. So the system itself has nothing wrong with it, the people understood it, not just in the UK but throughout Europe where other countries used the same/similar system, such as the Dutch Guilder (divided into 20 stuivers, 16 penningen/stuiver (320 penning for each guilder)). It wasn't decimalised until the Guilder was reintroduced after liberated from Napoleon.\n\nSo pound sterling was split into £.s.d (pound/shilling/pence) with 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pence per shilling as you've said, so 240 pence to the pound. Come 1971, it was finally decimalised like the other European currencies, with the shilling now representing the decimalised value of the modern-day five-pence coin (old coins were used after decimalising, with shilling coin(s) being valid until the 1990s).\n\nThe coins of the pound were based on silver, with one pound of silver being split into 240 subunits of pennies.\n\nI just refreshed the page to see that naryn has also commented on this and added extra details and providing tradition as an explanation. Along with the usage of 12, which is present strongly in the pence system. 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, 12 divides well into the pound through 240 pence.\n\nFor an extra bit of information, following the practices of banking in providing interest based on my dad's experiences when he worked at the bank through training, along with books about interest on sums of £.s.d and other training stuff from Lloyds, to work out the interest for bank accounts, the sum was done in its pence form. It is difficult in itself to work out what 5% interest on £1 13s 7d would be at face value, and so you would convert the amount into pence then work it out like that (this was also something taught in schooling, as they still do with percentages).\n\n£1 = 240 pence \n13s = 156 pence \n240+156+7 = 403 pence. \n5% of 403 = 20.15 pence. \n20.15 pence is the interest you would gain at five percent."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
99j3ee
|
Was my grandfather a Nazi? Uniform photographs in post.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/99j3ee/was_my_grandfather_a_nazi_uniform_photographs_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e4oavql"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Well he was wearing a swastika on his uniform so he definitely served in the German forces under the Nazi regime. I don’t know the history of Latvia. Both my great grandfather and my great great uncle were Germans who fought in WW2 for Nazi Germany. \n\nTheir terrible actions and choices coerced or not do not have to define you. Learn that they were human just like you and what they were susceptible to you could be also. As you study fascism in Latvia you see how it developed and you are better able to spot it before you step into that trap today. To go a step further actively become a part of something they fought against. By your limited actions make the world better and set things right in your family history and legacy in the world. \n\nI hold no sympathies for the cause of my ancestors and eventually you can come to terms that you are your own man and not determined by their actions. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
euv6o7
|
why do the back wheels of a cart go over a bump easier than the front wheels?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/euv6o7/eli5_why_do_the_back_wheels_of_a_cart_go_over_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ffrqofb"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Leverage. When the front wheels of a cart go up, the cart turns into a lever and the front wheels want to go up and back. Whereas the back wheels go up and forward because the cart is pivoting on the front wheels. \n\nSo pushing the back wheels of a cart up a bump is also pushing it forward."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
j37va
|
If I had a scientific hypothesis, what should I do
about it?
|
I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about time travel paradoxes. And I've came up with an answer that solves the problem.
I'd like to show it to someone who is smarter and wiser then me, and put it up for some constructive criticism. It is very likely that either my hypothesis is not worth anything or someone came up with it 100 years ago. But what if it is something of value, I put it on reddit, and someone steals it to publish it and gives me no credit? I know I am very full of myself to think that I've came up with an idea worth stealing but I am actually quite scarred of that vision that it prevents me from posting it in here.
Could wise people of askscience explain me why my fear is ridiculous and why should I share the idea that I have?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j37va/if_i_had_a_scientific_hypothesis_what_should_i_do/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c28r8cx",
"c28r8ww",
"c28r9x0"
],
"score": [
2,
4,
8
],
"text": [
" > It is very likely that either my hypothesis is not worth anything or someone came up with it 100 years ago.\n\nBecause of this :)\n\nThis isn't really physics because it's not really something you can test, and this is a subject that philosophers have beaten to death. So you can bring it up here or with your friends & have some fun discussing it, but don't worry about anybody trying to publish it.",
"Why not write it out in detail and then publish that article/paper? You could just publish it online, or you could send it in to a journal. It doesn't matter if they don't decide to publish it, the point is you're creating clear evidence that this is your idea. After you've done that, tell it to whoever you like, you can always point to that first paper if they try to claim it as their own. The most likely thing is they'd just cite you.\n\nGood scientists give credit, and don't hoard information.",
"1) If someone came up with it already, chances are you will find it. Do a thorough literature search before, so to save any embarrassment. Even if nothing exactly identical comes out, chances are that a lot of interesting stuff related to your potential solution will come out, leading you to revise your thinking.\n\n2) After the above, and after you're quite sure it's not terrible BS, write it down as a PDF with your full name, contact details etc. and put it online. Then share with us. This way, you have widely-exposed proof that you are the author. If someone else publishes it without giving you proper credit, then tar and feathers will be on them, not you.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
5vrr4j
|
What determines sexual maturity in animals?
|
Female Green Sea Turtles don't begin to mate until they are around 45 years old, and they can live up to 100 years old. Large breed rabbits begin to mate at six or seven months old, but they only live about 10 years. Humans reach sexual maturity in their teens, with a life expectancy hovering around 80.
Does sexual maturity have everything to do with life expectancy? What other factors determine it?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5vrr4j/what_determines_sexual_maturity_in_animals/
|
{
"a_id": [
"de57hwu"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I believed that is was basically down to an r/k selection strategy, which is a bio-mathematical way of saying \"does the species benefit by maximizing quantity of young or quality of young?\" However, r/K selection is not really current science at this point, and I've got some additional reading to do.\n\nThe analysis, where it may be helpful, was thus:\n\nA later sexual maturity naturally limits the quantity of young, and also maximizes the quality of parent, which in turn can be invested in the young.\n\nThe obvious problem is that Sea Turtle leaves her many young in a clutch of eggs on the beach, after having prepared for so long to be physically able to have them.\n\nSo, for what it's worth, r/K doesn't seem to explain it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
cd2xr7
|
what’s the difference between white smoke and black smoke?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cd2xr7/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_white_smoke_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"etr2smt",
"etr2u2t",
"etr4s0s",
"etr8fyq",
"etr9f8p",
"etraq9j"
],
"score": [
25,
3,
2,
10,
7,
2
],
"text": [
"White smoke can often mean material is off-gassing moisture and water vapor, meaning the fire is just starting to consume material. White smoke can also indicate light and flashy fuels such as grass or twigs. Thick, black smoke indicates heavy fuels that are not being fully consumed.",
"What the smoke is made up of. Black smoke (cars, black powder guns) is carbon-rich, giving it that coloring.",
"When it comes to burning buildings or houses where you can only see the smoke, you can indicate if the fire is still there or not anymore.if the smoke is white, thr fire is done...if the smoke is black, it is continuously burning.",
"White smoke often contains condensing vapors, such as water or unburned fuel.\n\nBlack smoke contains soot, which is mainly carbon, in various forms. It indicates inefficiency in burning, usually because the fuel to oxygen ratio is too rich.",
"White smoke means the Roman Catholic Church has elected a new pope. Black smoke means their latest vote failed to find a winner, so the conclave will keep voting.",
"This can be demonstrated by watching the smoke while starting up an old diesel motor with no glow plugs.\n\nFirst white smoke while cranking but before the motor has started - heated fuel is boiling off but not burning. The white smoke is diesel \"steam\". In a wood fire, it is \"wood steam\", all of the light chemicals boiling off but not catching fire.\n\nThen comes black smoke as the motor catches and burns rich. The black smoke is carbon particles from having too much fuel and not enough air to burn them completely. \n\nThen the exhaust clears up as the motor warms and reaches equilibrium, and the fuel is burning completely to CO2 and H2O."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
atjvzy
|
I am a young, unmarried noblewoman in the Middle Ages and just gave birth to a bastard. What will happen to me and the child?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/atjvzy/i_am_a_young_unmarried_noblewoman_in_the_middle/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eh56p01"
],
"score": [
18
],
"text": [
"Things do not necessarily look good for you. Chastity was an important aspect of virtue for a young English noblewoman in the later Middle Ages, as it was even as far down the social scale as the urban middle and servant classes. There are numerous examples of men being prosecuted for seriously slandering young women's sexual behavior or for being caught in a premarital relationship, because of the damage done to their reputations. When Robert Chew deflowered Isabella Alan, both in the upper ranks of the peasantry in the mid-fifteenth century, he paid her the great sum of twenty marks in recompense - equivalent to a year's income for a gentleman, or the cost of a nice house and furnishings - because the hit to her reputation and future marriageability was so severe. If the father (or another man) married you after the birth, your baby would still be a bastard and not eligible to inherit his property according to Common Law, though the church would have allowed them to be legitimized. If the father with the king, though, he could grant a child lands to derive rent (as a dowry if a girl, with a title if a boy), and arrange for a good marriage. In non-royal families, there was still usually an attempt to set up an illegitimate son with some sort of land to live on and an illegitimate daughter with some form of dowry. But the vast majority of these examples involve women ranked below the aristocracy - members of the peasantry or bourgeois classes, or servants who had children with their employers. The amount of money and land that was involved with aristocratic marriages and inheritances made it extremely unappealing for a nobleman to wed a woman who had already fallen short of the one-sided, misogynistic standards of sexual continence: who was to say that she wouldn't cuckold him and bear children that weren't his? As a result, noble families were serious about keeping their daughters from having procreative sex before marriage.\n\nHowever, Europe saw changing standards of the concept of legitimacy and illegitimacy between the ninth and thirteenth centuries (the late Early and early High Middle Ages), so it really depends where exactly you're situated in the period. In many cases, maternal and paternal lineage mattered more than the parents having a religiously sanctioned marriage in terms of whether or not children could inherit property. The Carolingian and Ottonian royal dynasties cared more about whether or not a child's mother was of high status than whether a religious wedding ceremony had taken place between its parents or whether such a marriage had been annulled; William the Conqueror was recognized as his father's heir despite his parents being in no kind of formal relationship, and his mother's low birth seems to have been a bigger deal to his contemporaries than that. All of these situations required that the father take some responsibility for his children, though, and be of pretty high status himself - it wouldn't really work going the other way."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
8d8gsr
|
Where exactly does the LHC get protons?
|
I want to a talk recently that stated that the LHC accelerates protons to relativistic speeds, and I was wondering where they get the protons? I was under the assumption that they create a positive hydrogen ion, leaving just the proton - is this correct? And if so, how is it done?
Thanks!
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8d8gsr/where_exactly_does_the_lhc_get_protons/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dxl7sm9"
],
"score": [
30
],
"text": [
"From a bottle of hydrogen gas (if you Google it, there are pictures). To accelerate a beam of particles, you have to make them electrically charged. You can either create ions by stripping electrons off the atoms, or adding extra electrons to them. Both techniques are used at various accelerator facilities.\n\nFor the LHC specifically, see [here](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.proton_source"
]
] |
|
1npiah
|
When did a stigma become attached to drunkenness?
|
I was reading about the [Gin Craze](_URL_0_) on Wikipedia where the government promoted production of gin, and the people of England were on average drinking 2.2 gallons of gin a year in 1743. It also mentions elsewhere that there was little stigma attached to drunkenness previous to this.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1npiah/when_did_a_stigma_become_attached_to_drunkenness/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cckt9oq"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Ever since alcohol was created there was a stigma behind it, even in ancient egypt there was a stigma for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but pharaohs didn't drink alcohol since they believed it brought out the demons from inside us. \n\nAlso another example are the Aztecs, who forbade people from drinking until you were of old age. (This is from the book simply called \"Aztec\")\n\nOn my mobile at work, no time for souring, but I hope this encourages you to further look into it."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze"
] |
[
[]
] |
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