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an2s49
|
what are the differences between an exempt and non exempt salary employee?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/an2s49/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_an_exempt/
|
{
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"efq9ufv"
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"text": [
"Exempt employees are \"exempt\" from overtime pay. That means you are not required to be paid overtime, ever. Exempt employees are generally white collar workers in management or professional (usually educated) positions and almost always paid on salary basis. If your position is primarily management and you're salaried, there is a quite good chance you're exempt.\n\nNon-exempt employees are your standard employees and all overtime and minimum wage requirements apply, even to salaried employees (who must get paid overtime, yes even in excess of their salary). You get paid overtime, meaning you get paid for every hour you work, no matter what. Non-exempt employees are the \"catch all\", its everyone who is not *specifically* an exempt employee. Its the exempt people that are the exception, the non-exempt person is the standard."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
zz7l2
|
Why Do We Experience such events when traveling near the speed of light?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zz7l2/why_do_we_experience_such_events_when_traveling/
|
{
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"c6903zo"
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"text": [
"There are several effects at work here. Your field of vision becomes narrowed due to [relativistic aberration](_URL_1_). When travelling a significant fraction of c, the speed of light, the light you emit & recieve is biased towards the direction you are travelling in.\n\nThis is tied to another effect Sagan mentions, becoming compressed in your direction of travel; [length contraction](_URL_2_). As something (like a spaceship) travels quickly by a stationary observer, it appears to the observer to be contracted in the direction in which it travels.\n\nEven more confusingly, remember that in relativity, motion of relative. So from the point of view of the spaceship, the observer seems to be contrated; but from the point of view of the observer, the spaceship is contracted. A paradox! However, if spaceship & observer change their speeds to be going at the same velocity as each other, everything works itself out.\n\nAs you travel quickly, things in front of you appear bluer because of the [relativistic doppler effect](_URL_0_). Light can be considered to be a wave, with peaks and troughs, and the apparent colour of light is dictated by it's frequency; how rapidly those peaks & troughs reach you. The more rapidly the peaks & troughs reach you, the bluer the light appears to be. So if you're travelling really quickly, and some light is heading towards you, the peaks & troughs of that light reach you more rapidly than they would if you were stationary. Hence you observe the light as having a higher frequency; it looks bluer. The opposite effect is seen if you're moving away from incoming light; it looks redder.\n\nTo answer in an overall sense why these strange-seeming effects occur... The one thing that relativity is built upon is that light must seem to travel at the same speed from all frames of reference; no matter which direction or how fast you're moving. Ultimately, when you work through the maths, these effects appear, because they are necessary to preseve the constant speed of light.\n\nSource: I'm an astrophysicist."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_aberration",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction"
]
] |
||
70s5om
|
What would happen if only your arm and nothing else was exposed to a vacuum?
|
Let's assume you had a vacuum chamber with a hole somewhere in the wall you put your arm through which sealed it perfectly
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/70s5om/what_would_happen_if_only_your_arm_and_nothing/
|
{
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"text": [
"You'd be ok. As opposed to popular belief the human body does not explode in a vacuum, blood does not boil. The question implies you're still breathing in a pressurized environment so you don't have to worry about asphyxia and won't feel your saliva boiling.\n\nAs air presses your arm into the vacuum chamber you may feel a very strong force. According to [this page](_URL_0_) the average guy has a 13'' biceps circumference unflexed, so if my math is right that would be a force of 870N - comparable to the weight of an average adult. It might hurt in the point where skin touches the borders of the hole and you might not be able to pull it out without repressurizing the chamber.",
"A follow up if it isn't too late. Some science fiction stories have had astronauts cover a tiny micrometeorite hole by sticking a thumb on it or dropping trau and sitting on it. The stories mostly give the hero a blood blister and perhaps a bit of frostbite. Is this in any way accurate?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/bigger-biceps"
],
[]
] |
|
enbf50
|
how do the membranes on tide pods (and the like) dissolve in water but not because of the liquid inside?
|
Tide pods and other laundry pods, popping boba, bath oil beads, etc... When they sit in water for a bit, the membrane dissolves and the liquid inside is released. How come that liquid inside doesn’t dissolve the membrane first?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/enbf50/eli5_how_do_the_membranes_on_tide_pods_and_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"The membrane is made from something that is only water soluble, so the liquid inside, not being water, doesn't dissolve the membrane."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
7evhg3
|
How in the world could a particle have a 1/2 spin value?
|
“All particles have a property called spin, having to do with what the particle looks like from different directions. One can illustrate this with the pack of playing cards. Consider first the Ace of Spades. This looks the same only if you turn it through a complete revolution, or 360 degrees. It is therefore said to have spin 1.
On the other hand, the Queen of Hearts has two heads. It is therefore the same under only half a revolution, 180 degrees. It is said to have spin 2. Similarly, one could imagine objects with spin 3 or higher that would look the same under smaller fractions of a revolution.
The higher the spin, the smaller the fraction of a complete revolution necessary to have the particle look the same. **But the remarkable fact is that there are particles that look the same only if you turn them through two complete revolutions. Such particles are said to have spin 1/2.**” – Stephen Hawking, *The Universe in a Nutshell* pg. 48
-
How is this even conceptually possible?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7evhg3/how_in_the_world_could_a_particle_have_a_12_spin/
|
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"There probably isn't a good way to answer this \"conceptually\", but mathematically, the rotation operator for some angle Θ goes like exp[iΘ/2] for a spin-1/2 particle with zero orbital angular momentum.\n\nIf it were exp[iΘ], it would have a period of 2π radians (360 degrees). But the 2 in the denominator means that the period becomes 4π radians (720 degrees).",
"The best analogy I know:\nThink of a Möbius strip (you can actually make one made of paper so that you feel this). Put an object on it (like your finger) and move it through a full rotation. It won't return to the same spot. I will be located on the other side (the negative side since exp[i360/2]=-1). Now give it another ful rotation and it is now back to where it started.\n\nThat is something that needs two revolutions to be back where it started.",
"First, try to imagine how to represent a rotation geometrically : we can use a vector, the direction giving us the axis of rotation, and the magnitude of the vector giving us the angle of rotation. So the group of rotation can be thought of geometrically as the set of points in the ball of radius pi, the corresponding vector being attached from the origin and having its tip at that particular point. There is only one catch, and it is an important one : a rotation of pi in one direction is the same as the rotation of minus pi in the opposite direction. Therefore, the points diametrically opposite on this sphere are identified.\n\n*The group of rotations is represented by points in ball such that the sphere at its boundary has diametrically opposite points identified.* It is worth thinking about this a few times.\n\nNow consider what happens to an object when being rotated *as an operation* applied on the object. We can \"build up\" a *finite* rotation by incrementing *infinitesimal* ones (the generators of rotations). That means a point in the \"rotation ball\" now has a path attached to it from the origin. Imagine building up a rotation of 2 pi in this manner : you start from the origin, make your way along the path to the surface of the ball, magically pop out on the opposite side of the sphere, and make your way back to the origin. Now consider a rotation of 4 pi : your path again starts from the origin, reaches the sphere, back to the origin, back to the sphere, back to the origin. \n\nImagine now what happens when you try to *deform* those paths. The rotation of angle 2 pi corresponds to a path which crosses the sphere only once, when it reaches the angle pi (which is the same as the angle minus pi). If you look at the path in the ball, it seems to touch the sphere in two diametrically opposite points, but those are really only one point. On the other hand, the rotation of angle 4 pi touches the sphere in *two* separate points, corresponding to pi and 3 pi. You can deform the corresponding path by moving those points close together, merge them, and turn your path into a trivial loop which does not intersect the sphere at all. The rotation of 4 pi can therefore be deformed into no rotation at all, but that is not the case for the rotation of 2 pi.\n\nI cannot recommend enough reading the first chapter of the first volume of \"Spinors and Space-Time\" by Penrose and Rindler. ",
"Hold a teacup normally in one hand. Now turn in (slowly) in towards you, carefully keeping the cup level. Watch the handle. When you have the turned the cup the whole way around once your arm is sort of twisted up. The state of the cup is the same, but the state of the universe is different. Keep turning until the cup revolves once more and your arm is untwisted. Two turns to get everything back to the same state."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
1kgxzc
|
if i put a 1 gallon jug of water on my chest, it feels heavy, but when i swim at the bottom of a pool, i don't feel crushed. why?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kgxzc/eli5if_i_put_a_1_gallon_jug_of_water_on_my_chest/
|
{
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"Cause when you're at the bottom of a pool, the weight of the water is pressing on you uniformly, from all directions.\n\n(You *do* feel it on your eardrums, however.)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1c2ljt
|
I am a German Officer in a 1945 British POW camp. What is my life like?
|
What do I do, what do I eat, how am I treated by the British guards? Do I have entertainment? Am I put to work, and is being put to work a violation of international treaties?
Lets assume I am not going to be tried for any war crimes, I'm just your average major.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c2ljt/i_am_a_german_officer_in_a_1945_british_pow_camp/
|
{
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"c9cm5te"
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"text": [
"For one thing, as seen in *Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying* by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, you were probably at some point put in a room filled with secret microphones and given someone to talk to, either a fellow prisoner or a British agent in disguise as a fellow prisoner. Often times they were given current newspapers, since their reactions to articles about the war could lead to valuable intelligence. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
7isrua
|
Was Hitler completely responsible for the Final Solution?
|
Since the Nazi administration revolved around Hitler's deputies acting based on their interpretation of the "Fuhrer's Will", did his deputies (e.g. Himmler and Heydrich) persecute the Jews more than what Hitler had in mind?
Furthermore, were there instances of mass persecution/extermination during the implementation of the Final Solution which Hitler was unaware of/ not responsible?
I thought of this question after reading this excerpt from "Hitler's War" by David Irving:
"In October , even as Himmler was disclosing to privileged audiences of SS generals and gauleiters that Europe’s Jews had been systematically murdered, Hitler was still forbidding liquidations – e.g., of the Italian Jews in Rome – and ordering their internment instead. (This order his SS also disobeyed.) In July , overriding Himmler’s objections, he ordered that Jews be bartered for foreign currency or supplies; there is some evidence that like contemporary terrorists he saw these captives as a potential asset, a means whereby he could blackmail his enemies. Wholly in keeping with his character, when Hitler was confronted with the facts he took no action to rebuke the guilty; he would not dismiss Himmler as Reichsführer SS until the last day of his life."
Thank you! If I have missed out anything important, please let me know (This is my first post on this sub)
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7isrua/was_hitler_completely_responsible_for_the_final/
|
{
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"dr16dpm"
],
"score": [
9
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"text": [
"Hi there,\n\nNot to preclude further discussion, but you may be interested in the following answers regarding Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust, largely by /u/commiespaceinvader:\n\n- [\"What is the concensus on the \"Weak Dictator\" theory of Hitler and the cause of the Holocaust.\"](_URL_2_)\n- [\"Did Hitler know about the Holocaust?\"](_URL_6_)\n- [On the \"Written Order\" for the Holocaust](_URL_3_)\n- [On Hitler's personal responsibility](_URL_1_)\n\nIn addition, you should be aware that _Hitler's War_ has been [comprehensively debunked](_URL_7_) as a serious historical work, and demonstrated to be a misleading, dishonest, extremist work. To that end, you should be extremely suspicious of any claims which it makes, including its use of quotes and documents, which have been demonstrated to be riddled with forgeries and inaccuracies. David Irving is himself a conspiracy theorist, a racist and a Holocaust denier, and you can find discussions about him [here](_URL_5_), [here](_URL_0_) and in our excellent Monday Methods piece on Holocaust denialism [here](_URL_4_). \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1edlrq/how_unreliable_was_david_irving_as_a_historian/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60mb24/to_what_extent_do_you_guys_think_hitler_was/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fcte0/what_is_the_concensus_on_the_weak_dictator_theory/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59mnlx/how_do_we_know_that_hitler_himself_ordered_the/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57w1hh/monday_methods_holocaust_denial_and_how_to_combat/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5r20nm/was_david_irving_ever_taken_seriously_has_a/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4q3ep5/did_hitler_know_about_the_holocaust/d4q4l5m/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd"
]
] |
|
18kfcm
|
why are cuban cigars such a big deal? why are they illegal?
|
Are they just really good or something? What makes them good???? Why are they so valuable?
Edit: Thanks for taking the time to answer. To all you who guffawed like "OMG, YOU DON'T KNOW THIS?" fuck you. You're not helpful at all.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18kfcm/eli5_why_are_cuban_cigars_such_a_big_deal_why_are/
|
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"We have an embargo against Cuba. Meaning all trade with the country is off limits. It's got nothing to do with the cigar and everything to do with Cuba.",
"Cuban cigars are illegal because of a trade embargo imposed by the United States on Cuban products. They are valuable because they are seen as a \"forbidden fruit\". There is nothing that makes them significantly better than cigars you can buy legally.",
"What they said. If you bar-tend in Cuba, you'll notice that rum is hardly worth anything but coke will be expensive as hell. Same idea but vise versa; Cuba cannot trade with the United States so Coca Cola is very hard to come by.",
"To add: Cuba was and is famous for making cigars, so the fact that they're illegal adds to their rare luxury status",
"People tend to think of Cubans as the best cigars due to movies, also the embargo makes people want what they can't have. Most of the best cigars in the world now come from other locations, like Nicaragua and Dominican Republic.",
"As an avid cigar smoker, /r/cigars, and an Aussie, I can tell you that cuban cigars are so desirable because of their quality. That isn't to say that Nicaraguan, Dominican republic, or Honduran cigars aren't good, in fact they are great and are steadily becoming better and better and a Nicaraguan/Honduran brand called [Padron](_URL_0_) are easily my favourite smokes. \n\n But Cuban cigars have an edge quality wise. They smoke almost perfectly almost every time. The flavours are clearer and much thicker. The smoke on an aged cuban is like velvet. \n\nOh, and they are only illegal in USA.",
"There are plenty of great answers here but I just want to say as a Canadian (which has access to stuff like Cuban cigars and Kinder Surprise eggs) having bought a few for celebratory purposes after basic training, they're okay. Nothing to write home about. The flavor is a bit stronger and they come in a lovely packaging but that's pretty much it. You're not missing much. \n\nEdit: oh and they go for about $7.50 to about $14.99 for the nice pretty fat ones. Which is reasonable for their reputation. I'm interested if anyone can give me a little insight on what they cost over stateside?",
"Trade embargo from the cuban missile crisis days. \n\nThey aren't illegal here in China, I have smoked quite a few and actually MUCH prefer Dominican. \n\nCuban Rum however, is the absolute best!",
"Why are they a big deal? They are that good. Ideal climate and generations of perfectionists creating the finest possible product. No doubt some of the hyperbole is due to their forbidden status in the USA, which makes them badass.\nWhy are they illegal? After the revolution, Castro nationalized the cigar industry - basically stealing all of the companies from the owners, thus the embargo on these products was legally justifiable (not just an anti-communist move). \nI'm an Aussie, so I don't have any problems with the legal status & I happily pay more for the quality. ",
"Did you know Cuba is one of the two only countries in the world that Coke doesn't sell to?",
"[Here](_URL_0_) explains all the sanctions around the world that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) enforces.",
"You're my friend and Johnny is my friend. Johnny was mean to me, so I don't play with his toys and I don't want you to play with his toys either.\n\nJohnny=Cuba \nI=USA \nYou= USA Civilian\n"
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.padron.com/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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],
[]
] |
|
5rcn3w
|
As you approach the speed of light, does the CMB in front of you get blueshifted?
|
And similarly redshifted behind you?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5rcn3w/as_you_approach_the_speed_of_light_does_the_cmb/
|
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"Approach the speed of light relative to what? Depending on the direction you are traveling / looking you will see either red or blue shifts yes.\n\nMost interestingly, there is a frame of reference (locally) in which the CMB looks uniform across the whole sky rather than having a dipole moment. If you were comoving with this reference frame (moving at the right velocity on the right direction) you would see a uniform CMB up to the natural fluctuations. ",
"I'll try to expand slightly on the existing answer.\n\nAs /u/somedave explained, \"approaching the speed of light\" is an ill-defined thing as your speed depends on the referential. The CMB as we observe it has a [dipole anisotropy](_URL_0_), meaning that it looks hotter in one direction than the opposite, and this is exactly the blueshift forward/redshift backward you are asking about. Measuring this primary anisotropy allows us to infer the speed of our solar system with respect to the CMB to be 370 km/s. By subtracting the measured velocity of the solar system in the galaxy, we can also determine that the velocity of the galaxy with respect to the CMB is 620 km/s. This seems to be the correct interpretation of this anisotropy as this is the typical velocities we observe in individual galaxies moving about inside galactic clusters.\n\nAn interesting question would be the typical interaction cross section for a high energy particle moving through the CMB. This has been studied in the past and is related to the [GZK limit](_URL_1_), which is a theoretical limit on how cosmic rays can be energetic: at very high energies, they would scatter off the CMB so much that they would not be able to travel far, meaning that we should not be able to see cosmic rays coming from far away with energies above that limit."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#CMBR_dipole_anisotropy",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin_limit"
]
] |
|
62k0ti
|
Accurate books on Pirates and Sailing?
|
Hello Historians,
I am currently researching for a novel which will involve pirates (i.e. Golden Age, 17-18th Century) and a good deal of sailing. I want to be as "true" as possible when writing about my characters and the realities of their lives.
So in light of this, I'm looking for book recommendations to help me really understand the truth of pirate life, but also to get a good feel for the life at sea and learn about the technicalities of sailing. Is there a book you can recommend that combines all this?
Just as a disclaimer, I have actually sailed as part of a crew a couple of times in the English Channel, but it was in my youth and I'm assuming a lot of the terminology and technique will be different.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/62k0ti/accurate_books_on_pirates_and_sailing/
|
{
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"dfn8xy7"
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"text": [
"From my user profile: \n\n* N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649: The first volume of Rodger's multi-volume naval history of Britain, this book covers seapower from the earliest days of \"England\" until the end of the second English Civil War. He includes passages on non-English British navies, though the research in that area is still incomplete and spotty. The series the first comprehensive naval history of England/Britain in nearly a century. Rodger divides his books into four types of chapters: ships; operations; administration; and social history. The books can successfully be read as a narrative straight through, or each chapter can be read sequentially; I have done both. Replete with references and with an excellent bibliography.\n\n* N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815: The second volume of Rodger's history covers operations, administration, ships, and social history through Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.\nN.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy: An earlier (than the two previous citations) and arguably more accessible introduction to the navy of the mid-18th century, while still providing substantial detail. Establishes Rodger's interest in organizations and organizational history as a way to drive the conversation about navies and their successes or failures.\n\n* Patrick O'Brian, Men-of-War: Life in Nelson's Navy: A slim volume but replete with illustrations, this was intended as a companion to O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, about which more below. Useful to understand details of daily life, ship construction, rigging, etc.\n\n* King, Hattendorf and Estes, A Sea Of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O'Brian: Meant as an atlas and glossary for the O'Brian novels, it's a useful companion for all sorts of naval reading.\n\n* The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649, edited by Cheryl A. Fury. A series of essays on the social history of English seamen from the Tudor period onwards. Includes a very interesting chapter on the archaeology of the Mary Rose.\n\n* Royal Tars: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy, 875-1850 by Brian Lavery. A social history of the lower deck (common crew/sailors) of English and British ships.\n\n* Able Seamen: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy, 1850-1939 by Brian Lavery. The follow-up to his Royal Tars, covering the British navy during its transition from sail to steam and the run-up to World War II.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
33pexe
|
law of large numbers
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33pexe/eli5_law_of_large_numbers/
|
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"text": [
"It is pretty simple. The average of whatever experiment you are doing (flipping coin/rolling dice) should approach the expected value the more times you repeat the experiment.\n\nFor example, if you are rolling a die, the expected value is 3.5. If you only roll the die a couple times, you might have averages pretty different than 3.5. However, if you roll the die 1000 times, your average should pretty close to 3.5.",
"The Law of Large Numbers is often misunderstood, and there's a good chance I'll get it wrong so of other people correct me that's a good thing.\n\nSay you have a 'fair coin', which means if you flip it in the air you have an equal chance of getting heads or tails. Flip it 10 times. How many times did you get heads? Well nobody can predict that perfectly, it's a random chance after all. You might have gotten five heads, or zero, or even ten. However, chances are the number of heads you got was close to five. 5 heads out of 10 flips, or 50%, is what is called the \"expected value\" of the experiment. When you flip a fair coin you expect to get heads 50% of the time.\n\nWhat the law of large numbers says, is that the more times you run the experiment, the more closely your overall result will 'stick' to the expected value. Large deviations from the expected value become so improbable that they are practically impossible.\n\nSay you flip the coin 10000 times instead of 10. You might get 5000 heads, or 4993 heads, or 5070 heads. But the possibility that you will get 9000 heads is so low I can safely say it will never happen.\n\nThe misunderstanding arises because people seem to think that the law helps predict what will happen on future coin flips based on previous ones. Suppose you 'know' (and I put know in quotes because the knowledge is irrelevant), that you are 5000 flips into your experiment and you've only gotten 2450 heads. Does this mean that the next flip is more likely to be heads because heads 'are due'? No, it does not. The coin flips are 'independent events' so past history cannot predict future results.",
"Imagine you have a dice. The odds that you roll, say, a 3 is 1/6. But if you roll the dice three times, you might never get a 3. Even if you roll it ten or fifteen times, it might be the case that 1/8th or 1/4 of your rolls will come up 3, rather than the expected 1/6th. \n\nBut, if you rolled the dice a large number of times, hundreds or thousands of times, or millions. then you'd expect it to get closer and closer to a 1/6th of your rolls being threes. **That's the law of large numbers: the more times you do something, the more closely your results are likely to approach what you'd expect by chance.**",
"You want to know the average of how many people that eat breakfast every day in your city so you bring 10 people in for questioning and give them a survey asking them this question. Lets say that there are 100 000 people living in your city. That means you're asking 0,0001% of that population, which is quite small. The more people you ask the more accurate your average number gets. If you ask 100 people it gets closer to the **actual** average, yet 1000 gets you closer, so on and so forth. If you ask 100 000 which is 100% you have the average (not taking lying and such false premises into account).\n\nTL;DR: When looking for average answers of something you get more accurate the more people you have. So when that Wednesday comes you can predict with great (not 100%) accuracy that < average answers > will eat breakfast in my city today."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2h083u
|
If wood does not conduct electricity, why are trees struck by lightning so often?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2h083u/if_wood_does_not_conduct_electricity_why_are/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cko7p19",
"cko9mps"
],
"score": [
13,
3
],
"text": [
"To give a short answer, pretty much anything can conduct electricity if you put a high enough voltage difference between the two ends. Their shape (long and pointy) makes them an easy point for electricity to go from cloud to ground.",
"How well something conducts is relative. Wood may not conduct well compared to a metal structure, but in this case the path that is \"competing\" against the tree is most often air. Air is an even better insulator than the tree, so you will see more current running through the tree."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1w411l
|
why is it harder to breathe when it's cold outside?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w411l/eli5_why_is_it_harder_to_breathe_when_its_cold/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceyhkke"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The cold air makes the bronchi constrict because its not use to it and and not let as much air go through to the bronchioles \n\nafter getting use to the cold you bronchi will relax and you will breath easy \n_URL_0_ this picture will aid what im saying"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.teachpe.com/anatomy/respiratory_system.php#a"
]
] |
||
g3bty
|
Is density of energy flow the current best measurement of complexity in a system?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g3bty/is_density_of_energy_flow_the_current_best/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c1knnwq",
"c1knuuk"
],
"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"You're going to have to be more specific with your terminology.",
"You will have to define complexity. If you're referring to the set of rules required to produce the system, then you'll want to take a look at [Kolmogorov Complexity](_URL_1_). If you're referring to the difficulty of perfectly describing the current state of the system, you'll probably want something like [Entropy](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity"
]
] |
||
484ov0
|
why do cereals and yogurts have a list of the colors used on the packaging?
|
I mean it can't possibly be helping anyone, I couldn't imagine any regulation that enforces this, plus nearly no food items use this, only a few random ones.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/484ov0/eli5_why_do_cereals_and_yogurts_have_a_list_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0h50h2"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"**Edit:** I'm assuming that OP is talking about the dots printed on packaging (where there's one dot for every color used in the printing process) and not about the list of artificial colors in the ingredients.\n\n > nearly no food items use this, only a few random ones.\n\nAlmost all of them have it. It's just usually hidden under a glued flap somewhere. It's used during the printing process when they print the designs onto the packaging to make it easy for computers with cameras to inspect every single package that comes off the assembly line to see if all the colors are printing properly, and if not, precisely which ones are faded/missing."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
p2yrt
|
How bad is reading on a moving vehicle for your eyes?
|
I always heard that it was bad for your eyes because the book will keep moving back and forth which would affect the muscles in your eyes somehow but is that true?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p2yrt/how_bad_is_reading_on_a_moving_vehicle_for_your/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c3m2iqj"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"Reading in a vehicle is not \"bad\" for your eyes. When reading, your eyes are constantly moving in order to bring into focus different areas of text, regardless of wether the object is perfectly fixed or not. You're obviously more likely to get motion sickness, which is where I think some of the confusion comes from, but you're not going to somehow physically damage your eyes by reading in that environment."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6orwau
|
Medieval combat strategy in the TV show 'Game Of Thrones' [Season 6 spoilers]
|
During what is dubbed the battle of the bastards in season 6 episode 9, John Snow is in battle with the Boltons. Outnumbered 2:1 the fight goes about as expected, John Snow's army is surrounded by pike men and are almost defeated until Sansa and the knights of Vale ride in and save the day.
My questions are:
Firstly, was the surrounding of Snows army with pole arms and a wall of shields a valid strategy used during the medieval period. (Examples If possible)
And if so; what could be done to overcome such a strategy, or prevent them from being surrounded in the first place, without the help from additional cavalry.
Tl;dr: Could Snow have won the battle without the help from the knights of vale.
I'm on mobile so apologies if this comes out as one big chunk of text.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6orwau/medieval_combat_strategy_in_the_tv_show_game_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dkjqy6e",
"dkk8wu5"
],
"score": [
4,
5
],
"text": [
"Not to discourage further answers, but u/Valkine, u/Iphikrates, and others, already discussed the Battle of the Bastards here.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHope this helps!",
"I wrote a long analysis of the battle [here](_URL_0_). I still need to get around to rewriting the section on cavalry warfare and it's very informal in tone, but you may want to check I out.\n\nAs for whether or not Jon could have won without the Knights of the Vale, I don't think so. He would have needed much higher quality troops and probably a good many more archers."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4oyr35/how_realistic_was_the_recent_game_of_thrones/?st=J5EKML1O&sh=ef6530cf"
],
[
"http://imgur.com/a/1iOMi"
]
] |
|
17x46q
|
Does any animal posess a sense that humans don't have? How would we know?
|
Bonus: How do we measure the strength of a sense? The amount that accounts for a larger portion of the brain?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17x46q/does_any_animal_posess_a_sense_that_humans_dont/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c89q7cg"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Just off the top of my head:\n\n* Some birds, fish, and insects (maybe even some humans?) can see in additional ranges of color that most humans cannot: _URL_5_. The basis for this is that they have versions of cone cells (light receptors) that we lack, and we can test their eyes' responsiveness to different wavelengths of light as well as isolate their behavioral responses to stimuli in only those wavelengths.\n* The platypus has a sense of electrolocation, whereby it can sense the electrical signals in other animals' muscle contractions, in order to locate its prey: _URL_0_. FYI, it also produces a painful venom, lays eggs (despite being a mammal), and has a duck-like bill and a beaver-like tail. Evolution, go home - you're drunk!\n* Several animals are suspected to have a sense of magnetoception, i.e. they can sense the earth's magnetic field for navigation (like a built-in compass): _URL_6_\n* Several animals, most notably bats, whales, and dolphins, but also a few more surprising ones, can sense their surroundings using echolocation instead of light, which is helpful in low-light conditions: _URL_8_\n* The star-nosed mole has a bizarre set of organs on the front of its nose that are riddled with touch receptors, which wriggle around at incomprehensible speeds to locate prey through the earth, and home in on it and eat it in a fraction of a second: _URL_4_, _URL_1_\n* Most mammals have a much stronger sense of smell than humans do. They have far more odor receptor proteins and much more brain volume devoted to it, e.g. the rodent brain has a huge protrusion in the front that is just the olfactory bulb: _URL_7_. We can see how humans lost their ancestral sense of smell by looking at the genome: most olfactory receptor genes, which are generally all copies of each other with minor changes that make the proteins they encode sensitive to different compounds, still have enough of their sequence intact for us to find them, but have lost crucial parts that would allow them to make functional products, probably due to a loss of selective pressure on maintaining those genes (it stopped being so important to be able to smell those things): _URL_3_. In fact, there is even some genetic diversity among humans who have or lack certain receptors: _URL_2_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus#Electrolocation",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0PMcXK6XA",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylthiocarbamide",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_receptor#Diversity",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star-nosed_mole",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception",
"http://kaylab.uchicago.edu/images/rat_brain.png",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_echolocation"
]
] |
|
im7u6
|
How do some people continue to accept fringe/pseudo science as accepted science?
|
This can apply to all fringe sciences but I'll narrow it down to The Electric Universe model as oppose to the current standard model of the universe. I have a feeling it's a hatred of modern science or something like it.
Main example is the reddit user [Freckleears](_URL_0_) who goes as far as not believing in fission along with a strong belief of the electric universe. I've been talking for a couple months now and I don't understand how much evidence is necessary to nudge them but I can understand that since I'm only a Physics/Astro undergrad that I'm probably not that proficient enough in the subject.
Also my first post ever :)
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/im7u6/how_do_some_people_continue_to_accept/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c24vof7",
"c24w9bp"
],
"score": [
7,
2
],
"text": [
"Other subreddits that may help you are /r/neuro or /r/cogsci, where this sort of phenomenon is discussed often. \n\nThere are a number of reasons for the appeal of pseudoscience, or antiscience. One of them is the [Dunning-Kruger Effect,](_URL_1_) which correlates competence with the ability to recognize competence; essentially, we don't know what we don't know.\n\nAnother reason is simply the way human brains are put together; objectivity and rationality don't come naturally to us. Before ever encountering ideology, children will anthropomorphize the world. A flower is \"for smelling pretty,\" lightning is \"angry,\" that sort of thing. [This TED Talk](_URL_0_) describes the phenomenon much better than I could hope to.",
"One reason I've noticed in my life is people who are very bitter about the environmental damage being inflicted on the planet can sometimes blame science and dismiss it as a damaging, soulless, calculating, male worldview with no understanding of matters of the spirit. Spiritual worldviews often have arguments against *certain aspects* of 'science' which are very compelling, if you don't know a whole lot about science. Generally I'm not talking about creationism or anything like that, more occult stuff to do with auras and energy.\n\nAlso, some people literally do see auras around other people and sometimes around plants. It would be hard to convince yourself that you're not seeing what you're seeing, especially since there's a huge body of pseudo-science out there explaining what these auras are."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/user/Freckleears"
] |
[
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T_jwq9ph8k",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect"
],
[]
] |
|
43fsfy
|
why is the cost of groceries still high when the price of gas has fallen back down?
|
I remember a while back, when gas was absurdly expensive, that reports were stating that grocery prices were high due to an increase in gas prices. I've noticed that over the last few years, as gas has maintained a mostly steady lower price, the cost of groceries hasn't come back down to with it. Was this never a correlation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43fsfy/eli5_why_is_the_cost_of_groceries_still_high_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"czhvpwu",
"czhzlum"
],
"score": [
7,
9
],
"text": [
"Fuel isn't the only expense. A huge one is water, and in California in particular, a lack of water for agriculture has resulted in higher prices (either as a result of paying more for water, or having smaller yields with the same demand, or both).",
"What /u/Teekno said, water, is a huge part of it, and not limited to just California - reports were that last summer was so dry in the midwest that grains and corn were also going to have a much smaller crop this past fall, on top of the pork shortage, and this past winter [has killed over 30k dairy cattle,](_URL_0_) which will lead to milk/butter/cheese shortages as well. \n\nIn short: Blame the weather : < \n\nBut also, as they raise prices, folks get used to them, and even if the base costs went back down, that doesn't mean that manufacturers/grocers have to lower the prices back down, it just means that they can profit more."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/03/how-a-freak-blizzard-wrecked-texass-dairy-industry.html"
]
] |
|
23qftl
|
do antivirus programs such as avg and norton actually work or am i throwing away my money by purchasing one?
|
Are modern computer viruses too complicated for these programs?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23qftl/eli5do_antivirus_programs_such_as_avg_and_norton/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cgzkkw8",
"cgzlo6s",
"cgzmmbv",
"cgzsowj"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"They \"work\" in the same way that a safety net will *probably* save your life. If you happen to fall where there *is* a safety net, and it's designed right, you won't die.\n\nIf some new virus comes along that nobody has seen before, you're screwed. If the detection algorithm fails to detect it, you're screwed.\n\nIn short, it's better than not having one (particularly if you run Windows), but it doesn't give you carte blanche to visit whatever site you want and assume that you won't get infected.",
"Most Anti-Virus programs work. Just as people create new viruses, the companies that make antivirus programs also find new ways to counter it. There are review sites for AVs such as _URL_0_\n\nThere are some decent free options out there.",
"ive used microsoft security essentials for years...its free and has worked great for me",
"No, modern virii aren't too complicated for the anti-virus and they can be worth paying for. \n\nMost virus detection (largely) works off fingerprinting malware it finds on one system, then distributing this fingerprint database to you via updates so you're protected if you ever run across it. Malware authors can alter their programs to a point where it's so unlike anything else it's undetected (what they refer to as FUD [fully undetectable]), but it will often only stay like this for a short period of time (a couple of days depending on how it's distributed). \n\nA commonly held perception is that \"safe browsing\" or \"not visiting porn sites\" etc will protect you from malware. This is straight out incorrect in the same way that pulling out during sex is effective birth control - it might work most of the time but it really sucks that one time it doesn't. Malware can easily be spread through compromised sites (i.e. they hack your favorite news website and now if you visit this 'safe' website you're infected) or via malware in advertisement. Although youtube are certainly much better at stopping this than many other companies there are examples where malware has been served up in ads on youtube, so even visiting sites typically as 'safe' as that can put you at risk. \n\nELI5 - TL;DR - Yes they can be worth it, yes you can get malware even if you're not visiting 'dodgy' sites or opening l33t_keygen.jpg.exe\n\nSource - Computer security nerd who enjoys reverse engineering things, writing exploits etc. \n\nEdit: I suppose I answered more of a \"is it worth running anti-virus\" rather than \"is it worth paying for anti virus\". For that there is no straight answer, it all boils down to how valuable money is for you and how valuable your data is that you're protecting. Check out benchmarks here - _URL_0_ \n\nIn /general/ paid solutions perform a little better, but it's up to you if it's worth it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.av-comparatives.org/dynamic-tests/"
],
[],
[
"http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-8/novdec-2013/"
]
] |
|
8028sh
|
Why is the level of Carbon-14 (approximately) constant?
|
My understanding is that Carbon-14 is converted from Nitrogen-14 in the Atmosphere by Cosmic Rays. It then slowly breaks down by beta-decay back into Nitrogen-14. Also, I've seen it stated numerous places that the level of Carbon-14 is assumed to be fairly constant over time (i.e. the rate of breakdown is equal to the rate of production).
However, why, under normal circumstances, would the rate of production be in any kind of equilibrium with the rate of decay, such that the total carbon-14 in the atmosphere is assumed to be constant? The two processes (production via cosmic rays and breakdown via beta-decay) are completely independent and do not feedback on each other.
Carbon-14 dating assumes that the level of carbon-14 is (relatively) constant throughout time, correcting for various anomalies like supernovas etc via tree rings and other sources.
Shouldn't there be either a slow accumulation or a slow depletion of the Carbon-14 in the atmosphere over time (ignoring the nearly impossible coincidence that these two independent processes happen to be exactly balanced)?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8028sh/why_is_the_level_of_carbon14_approximately/
|
{
"a_id": [
"duspf3p"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The assumptions are that cosmic rays hit the Earth at a constant rate, and always have done., and that the N2 in the atmosphere has remained largely constant too. As carbon dating is only useful for 50,000 years or so, we don't need to worry about the atmosphere billions of years ago, and it seems a fair assumption that cosmic rays have not had any sudden changes in rate.\n\n\nThe rate of decay of C14 is proportional to the amount of C14, that is one definition of a half life. Therefore the amount of C14 will be at equilibrium as soon as the decay rate equals the production rate.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1amgx7
|
I stand accused of witchcraft. How do I beat the rap?
|
Witch craze Europe or those whacky Salem fellows, either one.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1amgx7/i_stand_accused_of_witchcraft_how_do_i_beat_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c8yyhyy",
"c8yymt7",
"c8z070g"
],
"score": [
24,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"I can speak to Salem, not so much to the European witch hunts, though I believe they share traits.\n\nThe interesting thing about witchcraft accusations during this time period is that there was a fundamental difference between the way that ordinary people understood witchcraft and the way that theological scholars understood it. There was a tradition of \"witchcraft\" that dated back centuries that involved small efforts at divination, warding off diseases and misfortune, and other such concerns. This type of magic was generally acceptable to ordinary people in Salem - there aren't really any accusations against people who were performing \"helpful\" types of magic. However, it was believed that this type of magic could also be used with ill intent, in order to exact revenge upon a neighbor. This is referred to as \"maleficium\" and shows up frequently in the accusations, generally following this form: the accuser and the accused have a disagreement, the accused demonstrates anger or frustration, and shortly thereafter the accuser suffers a misfortune (such as the death of a cow).\n\nOn the other hand, theological scholars - the type of people who were sitting as magistrates during the trial - defined witchcraft as a contract with the Devil. This is where we see the infamous \"spectral evidence\" of the Salem trials. Unlike maleficium, this type of witchcraft was very difficult to prove with physical evidence. Also, the ordinary people weren't as concerned with it - they were much more worried about a witch killing their cows than attending the Devil's Sabbath. However, since the people doing the lawmaking and judging were more concerned with members of their community contracting with the Devil, that's what was needed for a conviction. \n\nIn order to convict a witch, the authorities needed proof of such a contract, preferably by getting the accused witch to confess. These trials were not run like modern trials - there were no attorneys, the defendants were questioned directly by the magistrates, who frequently badgered them into confessions. The afflicted girls sat in on the trials, and frequently claimed that the specter of the accused was moving about the room, invisible, and tormenting them. This evidence was nigh incontrovertible. \n\nAs an accused witch, your best option would be to confess to the charges and then start accusing everyone you could think of. Cooperators were thrown back in jail, but most of them escaped execution. There was, however, no way of knowing this at the time. Everyone expected confessed witches to be executed. Your second best option would be to have enough money and connections to pull off an escape - the merchant Philip English and his family used their connections to get themselves put in jail in Boston and then to slip out of custody when they were being transferred.\n\nAs to fighting the charges, you most likely would have failed in this regard. Rebecca Nurse, for example, was a beloved grandmotherly figure in the community. When she was taken into custody, something like fifty or sixty people signed a petition recommending her good character, piety, and history of devotion to the church. She was executed.\n\nOn the other hand, you could choose to go down in history as a total badass, like Giles Corey. According to the laws of the time, if you were found guilty, all your property reverted to the court. This couldn't happen, however, if you never entered a plea. Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft, and was savvy enough to know he wasn't going to come out on top. In order to protect his wife and children financially, he refused to enter a plea. The court wasn't too happy with this, so they sent some officials out to \"press\" him into entering a plea. This meant that they went out into his field, laid him on a big boulder, and starting piling rocks on his chest. Corey, who was *eighty-one years old*, let them add so much weight that he was crushed to death, and the only words they got out of him were \"more weight!\"\n\nSources: Richard Godbeer, *Devil's Dominion* (fascinating read on the concept of magic in colonial New England); Boyer & Nissenbaum, *Salem Possessed*; Boyer & Nissenbaum, *Salem-Village Witchcraft*\nIf you're interested in further reading, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have done impressively extensive research on the subject based on surviving trial records, which are compiled and organized in *Salem-Village Witchcraft*. You can also peruse the trial records [here](_URL_0_) - read the transcript of Tituba's trial for an example of stories the accused woul make up to try to cooperate, or the transcript of Rebecca Nurse's trial to see how far defending your innocence would get you.\n\nSorry for the wall of text! Hopefully it helps!",
"My glib answer would be \"confess, repent, and sell out your friends and neighbors,\" but I'm also interested in the actual particulars - how did the procedures and standards of evidence differ at different places and historical periods, examples of people acquitted, etc. I recommend reading some actual inquisition transcripts - I've only ever studied the Inquisition in Spain, so I don't know about other sources, but one class I was in used a collection called \"Inquisitorial Inquiries\", and I recently came across another collection on _URL_0_ called \"Records of the Spanish Inquisition\", not in copyright, published 1928, which I'm reading right now and is quite captivating - the defendant in the first case is accused of eating bacon on the incorrect day - and there's quite a lot of paperwork going back and forth - seems very comprehensive - it would probably give you quite a good idea of how these cases were conducted.",
"There was a town in the Netherlands called Oudewater where you could have your weight measured (Witches were thought to be unnaturally light) and then get a certificate of not being a witch. The weighting house is now a [museum](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/tei/BoySalCombined"
],
[
"archive.org"
],
[
"http://www.heksenwaag.nl/web/en/home/"
]
] |
|
fa9154
|
How many art/artifacts in museums are the real deal?
|
Sorry if this is the wrong sub, not sure where else to put it.
I recently visited Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, which made me think: Are all these pieces the real deal? Someone could just destroy the piece easily..
So is everything in a museum a replica, or are there genuine pieces that are displayed inches away from public without glass in between us?
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AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fa9154/how_many_artartifacts_in_museums_are_the_real_deal/
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"It's impossible to answer for every museum, because every museum is different, but typically an art or history museum that focuses on exhibitions will not have *any* replicas or reproductions. Replicas would take up storage space that could be used to house unique artworks and artifacts, and would be unlikely to be actually indistinguishable from the originals - so visitors would not get the same effect in viewing them. Museums also rely to some extent on the authenticity and rarity of their collections to bring in visitors: people will wait in ridiculous lines to see the Mona Lisa in person at the Louvre, despite the portrait being one of the most widely-reproduced portraits out there, because there is something that they get (or want to get) from standing in front of the original canvas painted by Leonardo da Vinci.\n\nThe one major exception is living history museums, especially those with a thriving community of artisans. \"Living history\" means that the interpreters dress in period costume and *do something* in a workshop, domestic, or farm situation. Living history museums require way more artifacts than regular museums, or at least more of the same artifacts (a farming museum might want to collect one bucket to represent all buckets of that type; a living history museum needs multiple buckets per building), and because the artifacts are generally being used, there's a danger of losing unique historic items to breakage or theft. So they will either purchase reproductions or have them made in-house. In the museum where I work - which has both exhibition and living history stuff going on - we've purchased replica pottery from Denise Keegan Carpentier and Connor Prairie (another, larger living history site) and textiles from Rabbit Goody (an expert with the best name); we also have someone working in one of our barns making buckets and tubs, a weaver, a broom-maker, and a bandbox maker (but unfortunately the focus of production here is for putting on sale in the gift shop rather than for fitting out the houses and barns).",
"This is a good and much more challenging question than it seems on the surface. As a rule, it's bad policy to allow forgeries and reproductions to stay on display unless they serve an educational function, in which case they are usually clearly labeled as reproductions.\n\nIn general practice at large national museums, what you see in the exhibits are authentic historic artifacts and works of art *insofar as we know*. Scientific and historic analysis of art and artifacts takes many forms, and like every other discipline new methods of verifying authenticity develop over time. Without detailed, recorded archaeological contexts or other forms of documentation (sale records, mention in historic texts, etc), it's often difficult to ascertain things like date, place of production, or, yes, authenticity. Even archaeological context can be faked or interpreted loosely to increase the value of the art or artifact, and artifacts can be wrongly associated with historical texts and other documentation. Our understanding of an object's origin can change over time as we develop new ways to study them, and sometimes that means we discover that an object in a museum isn't what it appears to be.\n\nThere are many documented cases of well-known objects in museum collections turning out to be fakes. This was especially the case when museums invested in conservation and research science departments and introduced materials analysis technologies, starting in the late 1970s and continuing into the present. To give you an example from my own research on medieval metalwork, there was one object in a museum in Baltimore that was used for years as a kind of \"linchpin\" in a number of historic arguments about this particular type of metalworking. In the late 1980s, samples were taken and analyzed and it was discovered that the chemical makeup of the object could not be medieval. It was a 19th-century forgery made for sale on the art market. This analysis forced historians in my field to drastically reconsider our understanding of this type of object. The object itself was removed from display and placed in the museum's storage.\n\nAlso in my field is a large body of counterfeit objects that were modeled upon authentic objects and share many characteristics with them. For years these counterfeits were on display in museums all over the world, including in the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are still on display in some smaller museums, despite being soundly debunked in the 1990s. I still receive questions about these fakes from museum staff from time to time, and they still turn up in high profile auctions described as authentic.\n\nThis is an ongoing challenge that museums face, and museums are constantly researching their own collections. Most are honest when they come across replicas and fakes, and some even display their fakes to educate the public on how our understanding of artifacts changes over time. For example, the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, DC, is home to [a sculpture long believed to be Aztec](_URL_1_). The iconic sculpture was used in exhibits, on book covers, and in many academic arguments. Over time, scholars determined that it too was likely a 19th-century fake. The sculpture remains on display in the museum with wall text discussing how our understanding of it changed over time.\n\nI do have to disagree with the previous poster. Every museum I have ever worked with (and I have worked with very large collections worldwide) has housed TONS of fakes and replicas. They aren't usually on display, but they are very often kept in storage. They are used for education, as controls for the study of genuine objects, and sometimes even exhibited themselves. There are even \"teaching museums\" that display replicas prominently and use them for education in conservation, archaeology, and other types of hands-on study. The [RGZM](_URL_0_) in Mainz is a great example of a museum that predominantly houses replicas and uses them in exhibitions.\n\nIn short, museums do their best to ensure the authenticity of the objects and artwork they display. However, we can't always be certain, and even replicas and fakes have their uses.",
"While I like and understand OP's question, \"real deal\" and not the real deal can have lots of different shades of meaning. \n\n* So there is the 100% real item thats be tracked over time (provenance) and is undisputedly the item. Thats most common for individually famous items i.e., there is one Mona Lisa, one Picasso's Guernica, one hope diamond.\n* Then there are things that are thought to be real but turn out to be fake. Currently there is a DiVinci called Salvator Mundi thats a hot topic of debate - it might be painted by Divinci, or one of his students and that affects the price and significance greatly. (Similarly, I actually just published on an item owned by a famous museum that is supposed to be from the 15thc, but I'm convinced is actually from the 1700s, still making it old, but not as old as the item is said to be) \n* Then there are items that were absolutely real, but they got damaged a bit and someone fixed them, went a little nuts, fixed them too much and they hardly represent the original now. But the base item is \"real\". One example is Ecce Homo, which is that painting of jesus that someone \"fixed\" and it now looks like an awful monkey. \n* Then there are various distinctions of copies. The ancient Romans remade Greek statues, so they're \"real\" ancient but they aren't the originals.\n* Cast collections are exact duplicates of a sculpture (from casting with molds) that were popular in the 17th and 18th century and allowed people across Europe to study things found in other countries. These aren't real per say, but they aren't fake. They're also explained when they are on display as being casts.\n* Similarly, artifacts under scientific study are often modern day casts (exact replicas) so you might see the same ancient human bones in multiple places (for example, Lucy bones are cast from the original, but the original stays under study in Ethiopia) \n* Sometimes, for animal (dinosaur) skeletons, some of the bones are on display but over time, an incomplete skeleton has been found so there are real bones and hypothesized bones on a single model. Sometimes the not real bones are a different color or texture. \n* For taxidermy, sometimes its just the hide that is \"real\" over plastic or metal forms. So the inside isn't flesh, but at the same time, the outside isn't synthetic. \n\nThere are a lot of grey areas when a layperson says \"the real deal\", which is understandable because most people aren't taught these complexities. Sometimes, the object labels will say what is \"real\" and what isn't but thats very dependent on how updated the museum is (which is in turn dependent on how much $ they have) and how much they want to go into details. Often words like \"this cast of a dinosaur...\" can give some clues. \n\nIn general, I would say that nearly everything in an accredited museum has a strong degree of \"real\" because the accreditation system wouldn't allow somewhere without integrity and too many fake things to be admitted. But there is a lot of gray area."
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[
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"https://web.rgzm.de/",
"http://museum.doaks.org/Obj23088?sid=493970&x=796766&port=2660"
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1ygr46
|
I know the Romans had no conception of race, but did they view Black Africans any differently than they did the Persians, Libyans, or Celts?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ygr46/i_know_the_romans_had_no_conception_of_race_but/
|
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"Can anyone tell me where this concept of the Romans not having an idea of race is coming from? Never heard of this before.",
"You are right in the sense that there was no conception of race as there was when the Atlantic Slave Trade began.\n\nTo start I would have to object a bit to how you framed your question. The Romans did not view the Persians, Libyans, and Celts the same so it would not be right to lump Black Africans into a category of essentially unlike things. We are talking about massive civilizations with both the Persians and the Carthaginians. Barbarian (Foreign) civilizations, but nonetheless civilized. The Celts however were the giant tribesmen to the north. Fierce, truly barbaric people half a foot taller than the average Roman.\n\nWhat I think you are leaning to is the question: Were Blacks considered just another set of barbarians or were they considered less or more?\n\nTo this question I would say that we have no evidence of Blacks being considered sub-human in the time of the Romans. Contact with Africa outside of the Mediterranean was tenuous. It would be safe to assume that Blacks were viewed as lesser than the Greeks and Romans, but for no other reason than that they were not Greek or Roman.\n\nThere is not a ton of literature on the topic here's a bit of [further reading](_URL_0_). It is kind of a painful read, but I figured I might put something explicitly academic to back me up."
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[],
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"http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V1N4/thompson.html"
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1mkkl1
|
Tuesday Trivia | AskHistorians Fall Potluck: Historical Food and Recipes
|
[Previous weeks’ Tuesday Trivias.](_URL_0_)
Welcome to the /r/AskHistorians first annual fall potluck! And in our usual style, all the food has to be from before 1993. Napkins, plates and cutlery will be provided. **Please share some interesting historical food and recipes!** Any time, any era, savory or sweet. What can your historical specialty bring to the picnic table?
**Next week on Tuesday Trivia:** Riots, uproars, and other such rabble: we’ll be talking about historical uprisings and how they were dealt with.
*(Have an idea for a Tuesday Trivia theme? That pesky ban on “in your era” keeping you up at night with itching, burning trivial questions? Send me a message, I love other people’s ideas! And you’ll get a shout-out for your idea in the post if I use it!)*
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mkkl1/tuesday_trivia_askhistorians_fall_potluck/
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"Opera, being an Italian invention, has a rich and lively food tradition. Although now at the opera you’re generally limited to a slammed back cocktail during intermission, eating during opera was totally normal during its baroque and classical heydays. The most typical foods to nosh on during the opera were wine and sorbet, which were sold by vendors and you were welcome to get up at any time and go buy them and bring them back to your seat (like a baseball game!), but if you owned a box it was also totally acceptable to bring covered dishes from home, or even small braziers to cook on, so you can conceivably eat whatever you want during opera and be historically accurate. (Opera weenie roast might be pushing it though.) \n\nAlthough this snacking at the opera died in the mid 19th century or so, there later emerged a trend of naming recipes after celebrities, many of whom were opera stars, giving us a new set of “opera foods.” Lots of these recipes sound pretty good to me on a read-through today but nevertheless fell by the wayside, but three of them became household names: \n\n* [Peach Melba](_URL_7_): Peaches and ice cream with a raspberry sauce, one of the loveliest summer desserts. Named for Dame Nellie Melba, powerhouse soprano of the 19th and early 20th century, and an early famous Australian! \n\n* [Melba Toast](_URL_6_): Also named for Dame Melba. She apparently really liked this style of toast one time when she was sick, and so the name stuck. Now a staple of the cracker aisle, you may wish to get hard core and make it from scratch. \n\n* [Chicken Tetrazzini](_URL_4_): You may know this one best from a certain infamous Maury clip, but it was named for Luisa Tetrazzini, famous soprano of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and her dish is now a famous user-up of leftovers. Amusingly, her life might be Maury-worthy: she had 3 husbands in her lifetime, died in relative poverty, and had a feud going on with Melba from above. Serve these dishes together one night and let the sopranos battle it out in your stomach from beyond the grave. \n\n*And the Also-Rans:* \n\n* [Caruso Sauce](_URL_0_): Much less of a household name than the three above, but still relatively common, and I love the little origin story to this dish, because it was named after Caruso about 30 years after he died ...and in *Uraguay.* Nice evidence for how much Enrico Caruso really cemented his enduring global celebrity by being one of the first opera singers to enthusiastically embrace recording technology! \n\n* [Tournedos Rossini](_URL_3_): I guess this one it didn’t make it to a kitchen-table staple because of all the ritzy ingredients, compared the humble Tetrazzini and Caruso up there. Truffles, Medina, *and* foie gras? Tournedos Fatcat more like. The exact origin of this dish is contentious, but apparently these were all an assortment of things Rossini really liked to eat. Coincidentally perhaps, he was [not the picture of health](_URL_5_). \n\n* [Poires Mary Garden](_URL_2_): Pretty obscure, it was hard to find the recipe, but it’s just pears with cherry-raspberry sauce. Invented about the same time as Peach Melba by the same chef. Named for Mary Garden, a Scottish soprano who went on to do a couple of silent films in addition to a long successful opera career! \n\n* [Poularde Adelina Patti](_URL_1_): So obscure this was the only recipe I could find. Yet another soprano diva chicken dish, named for Adelina Patti, probably one of the finest opera singers who ever lived, and also probably also one of the biggest *really not nice ladies* who ever graced an opera stage. \n\nAll these soprano dishes have me feeling bad for the contraltos, my favorite voice type. Where is the Chicken Marian Anderson? Perhaps this weekend I will invent a recipe for Ewa Podles, who is a Polish contralto of the first class, her early interpretations of Handel are amazing. It would probably involve something Polish and something wonderfully smokey. Perogies with barbeque sauce? Results most likely to be posted to /r/shittyfoodporn. ",
"Nineteenth-century biscuit companies in Britain made and marketed an almost infinite variety of biscuits. The most unpalatable one I've seen was...\n\n\"Meat Wafers\"\n\nYum.",
"You'd better put a seatbelt on your tongue; whatever you're having is going to be served with '[garum](_URL_0_)', the ubiquitous fermented fish sauce popular throughout the history of Rome.\n\nRecipes for garum vary, but the constant theme is that fish blood and guts would be combined with salt, left to ferment in the sun for several days, and the resulting mixture would be bottled. Other ingredients like herbs and so forth could be added for flavour. Apparently it goes well with everything, so you've no excuse not to try it.",
"Some fun food trivia, as everyone is *pretty* well aware, the tradition of a grog ration in the navy was a pretty big thing back in the day. \n\nGrog was basically watered down rum with some lime or lemon juice added to it. And for obvious reasons, very popular. While the Royal Navy kept the rum ration going all the way until the 1970s, the US Navy did away with it during the American Civil War.\n\nDuring WWII, the grog ration was the envy of many an American sailor... but one thing the Americans had that the British lacked was ice cream! Larger ships would have a steady supply of it, and by the end of the war, the Navy had an entire ship dedicated to the production of ice cream to distribute to the crews of smaller vessels. Apparently, when an American warship met a British one, it wasn't uncommon to see American sailors trading their ice cream for rum with the Brits!",
"By a remarkable coincidence, it is currently \"historical food\" day over in /r/RedditDayOf. Anyone still hungry after this thread is welcome to go check it out.",
"One of the earliest recorded recipes appears in a Sumerian hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of beer. It's a somewhat imprecise recipe for beer, outlining the process of making it more than the quantities of items required. A translation and some background appear here:\n_URL_0_.\n\nAnd there's always Jean Bottéro's classic [Textes Culinaires Mésopotamiens](_URL_1_) (despite the French title, parts of the book, including the translation of the recipes, are in English--I believe an all-English edition is also available, though not online). You'll be cooking amursânu-pigeon in no time!",
"The year is 52 BC, and the location is Gaul. Julius Caesar wins the Battle of Alesia. As was the custom, there was a celebration after the victory. Caesar's chef, inspired by the laurel wreaths worn by victorious Greeks of days past decides to make a salad. Instead of wearing a wreath for an afternoon, the sign of victory would be consumed and be part of the victors for as long as they lived. The chef, named Mendacium, combined field greens, olive oil, toasted bread, the ubiquitous garum, and some cheese to make what would later become known as Caesar's Salad.\n\nOf course, all of the above is bullshit. Fiction. Mendacium even means falsehood in Latin.\n\nThe real invention of Caesar's salad happened in 1924 in Tijuana, Mexico. Caesar Cardini's restaurant was packed and he needed to have something that could be prepared quickly and used as a main course. Originally finger food, the salad was made with romaine lettuce, olive oil, croutons, Worcestershire sauce, and Parmesan cheese. It was an immediate hit, and the International Society of Epicures in Paris named it the \"greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years.\"\n\nThe source for the first paragraph is my overactive imagination and immature sense of humor. The last paragraph is sourced from John F. Mariani's *How Italian Food Conquered the World.*",
"I particularly love wartime \"mock\" recipes, where they're trying to disguise massive amounts of vegetables as... Well, as tasty. They get pretty ingenious with what they've got. \n\nMock Goose \n\n1 1/2 lb. potatoes\n2 large cooking apples\n4 oz. cheese\n1/2 teaspoon dried sage\nsalt and pepper\n3/4 pint vegetable stock\n1 tablespoon flour\n\nMethod: Scrub and slice potatoes thinly, slice apples, grate cheese. Grease a fireproof dish, place a layer of potatoes in it, cover with apple and a little sage, season lightly and sprinkle with cheese, repeat layers leaving potatoes and cheese to cover. Pour in 1/2 pint of the stock, cook in a moderate oven for 3/4 of an hour. Blend flour with remainder of stock, pour into dish and cook for another 1/4 of an hour. Serve as a main dish with a green vegetable.\n\n\n\nBeetroot Pudding\nHere is a new notion for using the sweetness of beetroot to make a nice sweet pudding with very little sugar.\n\nFirst mix 6 oz wheatmeal flour with 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Rub in 1/2 oz fat and add 1 oz sugar and 4 oz cooked or raw beetroot very finely grated.\n\nNow mix all the ingredients to a soft cake consistency with 3 or 4 tablespoons of milk. Add a few drops of flavouring essence if you have it. Turn the mixture into a greased pie dish or square tin and bake immediately in a moderate oven for 35-40 minutes. This pudding tastes equally good hot or cold. Enough for 4.\n\n\nMock Duck\nCooking time: 45 minutes Quantity: 4 helpings\n\n1 lb. sausagemeat\n8 oz cooking apples, peeled and grated\n8 oz onions, grated\n1 teaspoon chopped sage or 1/2 teaspoon dried sage\n\nMethod: Spread half the sausagemeat into a flat layer in a well greased baking tin or shallow casserole. Top with the apples, onions, and sage. Add the rest of the sausagemeat and shape this top layer to look as much like a duck as possible. Cover with well greased paper and bake in the center of a moderately hot oven.\n\n\nNot sure of the etiquette of blog spam here, but... if there was ever a time... [Time Travel Kitchen](_URL_1_) \n\nGreat resources available at [Project Gutenberg](_URL_0_), [Feeding America](_URL_0_) and [Medieval Cookery](_URL_2_)\n",
"What a fantastic coincidence. Just this week, Kodiak's Alutiiq Museum finished the Alutiiq Wild Foods project, a National Park Service-funded project to recreate and revive recipes centered around 12 wild foods found in the Kodiak Archipelago.\n\nThe DVD and cookbook [are available for free from the Alutiiq Museum](_URL_0_) (though you may have to pay shipping).\n\nOne of the best Kodiak recipes is the Perok, a salmon casserole that dates to the 19th century.\n\nFilling ingredients:\n• 2 cups cooked rice\n• steamed vegetables \n• 6 carrots (peeled and shredded)\n• 1 large rutabaga (peeled and shredded)\n• 1 large onion (chopped)\n• 1 head of cabbage (chopped)\n• 2 salmon filets (salt and pepper to taste)\n\nPie crust ingredients\n• 3/4 cup cold water \n• 1 1/2 cup butter\n• 3 cups flour\n\nThe filling can be layered in any order in a 9x13 pan, but this is one suggested by Amanda Miles:\n\n• Pie crust\n• rice\n• Veggies\n• fish\n• veggies\n• rice\n• pie crust\n\nBake at 400º for about 15 minutes. Turn down to 385º for about 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown.\n",
"I'll share a few interesting recipes for traditional Dutch foods that were served in New Netherland and by Dutch descendants in New York and the Hudson Valley. These foods were often tied to customs popular for generations. As is incredibly evident, the Dutch loved their sweets, and it is not unlikely the origin of the word bakery was the Dutch word *bakkerij*, as the English counterpart in the 17th Century was known as a bake shop or bake house. The recipes are modified from the cookbooks of Dutch descendants but were often carried down through the generations from familiar names in New York City and the surrounding area (Van Cortlandt, Rensselaer, Lefferts, etc).\n\nThe recipe for oly koeks (oil cakes) often called for massive proportions (i.e. 1 pound of sugar, half pound of butter) to feed a lot of people, something also seen in many other recipes associated with socializing such as the New Year’s cakes. Krullen (crullers) were a different type of oly koeck, slightly lighter and crispier and made into a corkscrew shape. Doughnuts were first described by Washington Irving in his 1809 *History of New-York* as “balls of sweetened dough fried in hog’s fat,” giving a much more descriptive and popular name to the oly koeck. \n\n**Oly Koecken**\n\nIngredients: 1 ¾ cup raisins, 1 cup citron, ½ cup brandy, 3 packages of dry yeast, ¼ cup warm water, Pinch of sugar, 8 tablespoons butter, 2 cups milk, 1 cup sugar, 3 egg yolks, 3 egg whites stiffly beaten, 6-8 cups flour, ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, Oil for deep frying \n\nThe day before you make the oly koecken, combine the raisins and citron with the brandy and let the mixture soak overnight. Sprinkle the yeast on the warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle with the punch of sugar. Let it stand for a moment then stir to dissolve the yeast. Warm milk and butter. Stir to dissolve butter and cool. Beat together the egg yolks and the butter and milk mixture and yeast; stir I more flour, a cup at a time, to make a soft dough. Let it ruse in a warm, moist place until double in bulk. Add more flour if the dough is very sticky. Drain the fruits and pat dry. With well-floured hands, punch off a portion of dough the size of an egg. Poke a hole in the dough ball and insert some fruit in the middle, closing it. Deep fry the dough balls in hot oil until golden on all sides. Roll in confectioners’ sugar before serving. Can be served hot or cold. \n\n**Krullen** (this is from a Dutch cookbook that only survived in fragments)\n\nIngredients: 9 tablespoons butter, 1 egg, 1 2/3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons heavy cream\n\nCream the butter until light and fluffy. Add the egg and incorporate. Add the flour a little at a time. If the dough is too stiff, add some cream. Roll to a thickness of 1/6 inch and cut into strips. Twist around the handle of a wooden spoon to make a corkscrew curl. Gently slide off the handle into hot oil. Fry until golden brown and slightly puffed. Drain. Sift confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon over each curl before serving. \n\nThe following recipe is a modification of a much larger (e.g. 28 pounds of flour, 10 pounds of sugar, etc) one from the handwritten cookbook of Maria Lott Lefferts (1786-1865). Greeting neighbors on New Year’s Day was a tradition brought over from Europe, one that persisted through the 19th Century. The men went out, and the women stayed home, giving each visitor thin cakes known as *niewjaarskoeks*. Over time, these New Year’s cakes were combined with the gingerbread dough from the Saint Nicholas celebrations to become harder confectioneries, similar to the cookies we are familiar with, the Dutch word for which was *koekje* (little cake). \n\n**Mrs. Leffert’s New Year’s Cakes**\n\nIngredients: 4 cups all-purpose flour (sifted), 1 cup light brown sugar, ½ tablespoon salt, 8 tablespoons butter, 1 egg (lightly beaten), ½ cup milk (use more if needed), 1 tablespoon caraway seed (crushed), grated zest of one orange\n\nSift all dry ingredients into a large bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture looks like a coarse meal. Beat the egg and milk separately, mix into the flour and butter mixture and add the seeds and zest. If stiff, add more milk. Knead the dough until it comes together, store and cool overnight. Roll out the dough and slice it into thin cookies. Bake on a buttered sheet until pale brown and crisp (about 30 minutes). \n\nThe people of New Amsterdam often served cookies and waffels with both sweet and savory custards and jams. Here is a recipe for a delicious Apple Custard. \n\n**Apple Custard**\nIngredients: 2 ½ pounds apples, ½ cup dry white wine, ½ cup water, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 cup coarse fresh bread crumbs without crust, 5 egg yolks, ½ teaspoon ground ginger, 4 tablespoons sugar\n\nPeel the apples, core and slice into thin pieces. In a pan, combine the wine, water, butter and apple pieces. Cook until the apples are soft. Mash the apples and stir in the bread crumbs and mash them against the pan. Whisk in the egg yolks, ginger and sugar and cook over a low heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens (about 3-4 minutes). Serve at room temperature or chilled and accompanied by cookies. \n\nFor those interested in the culinary legacy of the Dutch, I highly recommend two books by Peter G. Rose, [The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World](_URL_0_) and [Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch](_URL_1_), in addition to [Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops: The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages](_URL_2_) by Nicoline van der Sijs. Rose's books have many authentic Dutch recipes carried down through Dutch families and van der Sijs's book goes at length into both the history of the Dutch in New Amsterdam and the etymology of significant words that entered the English language.",
"This is not much of a recipe, but I always thought it was an interesting diet:\n\n > _[Vannevar] Bush arrived at [Harry] Hopkins' office at 3:30. He found himself confronted by two able men, each of whom wielded great influence because of his close relationship to a national leader. There was Hopkins—sick, emaciated, but still quick and sharp of mind. With him was Frederick Lindemann, now Lord Cherwell. He was a big man with rather heavy features, the son of an Alsatian father and an American mother. To look at him, Bush never could have guessed that **he subsisted entirely on egg whites, stewed apples, rice croquettes, cheese (only Port Salut), and startling quantities of olive oil.** Since the latter was virtually unobtainable in wartime Britain, one of the headaches of the Washington Embassy was to see that a case for the Prof went forward each week in the diplomatic pouch._\n\n > – Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson, Jr. _A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume I: The New World_ (1962), 272.\n\nI don't think I consume \"startling quantities\" of anything, much less straight olive oil. I love that it had to be smuggled in via diplomatic pouch. It's a good thing to be a friend of Churchill's. ",
"What was actually served at the first thanksgiving? ",
"A classic of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine is Gefilte Fish. It's a fish, usually carp, that has the meat of the fish is ground and either stuffed inside the fish skin, made into a loaf, or shaped into balls. it's mixed with bread crumbs or matzah meal, which is accompanied by flavorings which vary by location (pepper in Lithuania, sugar in Southeastern Europe) poached, chilled, and served with horseradish. \n\nIt serves a few functions. First, to provide the most possible bang-for-buck with fish. Second, it avoids religious issues with removing fish bones from fish on the Sabbath. And third, it's delicious.\n\nAmong first-generation immigrants it was common to buy a carp at a market and raise it in the bathtub for a month or two, then prepare it at home for the best and freshest gefilte fish. There are lots of references in texts from the era about throwing some bread into the tub for every bathroom trip, and with families sharing showers because of the carp residency in one.\n\nAnother tasty one is gribenes. It's one of the products of making shmaltz (chicken fat, used in many recipes, most importantly matzah balls, but also for other fried foods, such as latkes). Essentially, it's chicken skin and onions, all fried in chicken fat. It's a very tasty snack on bread, that uses cooking processes already in place without using expensive meat.\n\nOf course, there's challah. It's a braided egg bread, mostly for consumption on the sabbath. It is traditionally torn apart, rather than sliced, and can be used in any sort of sandwich or with dips. Since the establishment of Israel it's been integrated into Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine, where it is usually used for dips and other spreadable dishes."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Tuesday+Trivia%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all"
] |
[
[
"http://southamericanfood.about.com/od/maincourses/r/Uruguayan-Pasta-With-Caruso-Sauce.htm",
"http://books.google.com/books?id=KCbkcXHj7qoC&pg=PA488&lpg=PA488&dq=poularde+adelina+patti+recipe&source=bl&ots=FzArKGMND7&sig=VEPoMlgPvYLmCpMxf6ffzLcb1H8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O0UmUsfXHe7O2QWGv4DQCg&ved=0CCkQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=poularde%20adelina%20patti%20recipe&f=false",
"http://www.medadvocates.org/celebrati/february/feb_20.htm",
"http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/4756/Classic-Tournedos-Rossini.html",
"http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chicken-tetrazzini-recipe/index.html",
"http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/kunst/etienne_carjat/gioacchino_rossini_1792_1868_f.jpg",
"http://www.food.com/recipe/melba-toast-24802",
"http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/peach-melba-recipe/index.html"
],
[],
[
"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/garum.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/nn132.pdf",
"http://books.google.com/books/about/Mesopotamian_culinary_texts.html?id=sggKDtJMsLgC"
],
[],
[
"http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Cookery_%28Bookshelf%29",
"http://www.timetravelkitchen.blogspot.com",
"http://medievalcookery.com/etexts.html"
],
[
"http://alutiiqmuseum.org/latest-news-topmenu-102/924-cooking-alutiiq-style.html"
],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Sensible-Cook-Dutch-Foodways-World/dp/081560503X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379441020&sr=1-3&keywords=peter+g.+rose",
"http://www.amazon.com/Drink-Celebrations-Hudson-Valley-Dutch/dp/1596295953/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379441056&sr=1-6&keywords=hudson+valley+dutch",
"http://www.amazon.com/Cookies-Coleslaw-Stoops-Influence-Languages/dp/9089641246/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379441146&sr=1-1&keywords=cookies+coleslaw+and+stoops"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2cv2yp
|
why any time i let a device download the updates it wants to, it runs slower and less reliably than before.
|
Seriously. I'd love to know. I have a Sony Xperia that is turning into a progressively shittier phone every time it downloads something.
Seen the same thing with laptops and PC's though.
Why don't the updates make it better?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cv2yp/eli5_why_any_time_i_let_a_device_download_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"The updates make that one device run better... IF there wasn't any other software that depends on it. \n\nWith most device drivers, auto-updating is ok. Ideally, you would save the updated file first, uninstall the old device driver and clean up any traces in your registry [Windows], remove dead links, shared libraries, and other stuff that gets left behind. Restart clean, then install the updated driver. \n\nOn your phone, it is part operating system issues ( registry clutter, old files & links) and part using extra space in RAM. ",
"Too also add, the more space that's utilized on a storage device (hard drive, memory card, SSD, etc.) the slower the device becomes. This is caused by the 1) more information on the hard drive that the file system has to manage and memorize for read/write operations (e.g. when you open, modify, or delete a file) and 2) the operating system (OS) has less space to use when performing operations, this is known as SWAP or virtual memory. Basically virtual memory is when the OS uses the storage device in conjunction with the RAM modules to complete tasks at a faster and more efficient rate than using RAM modules alone. \n\nAs another user said, updates \"add\" to the operating system and some updates can push the needed system resources that the operating system needs past what the hardware can provide, causing slowness overall. Put it this way, waking up is fairly easy for the average human being who gets enough sleep. Now imagine that after an \"update\", you now have to solve 43 moderately complicated math problems before you can wake up.\n\nOr in the case of a security update, for example, say you go down stairs for breakfast, but first you have to check every door (internal and external) and window, verify they are locked, and if not, write a report on why they're not locked, then lock them and write another report about it, then reverify everything you just did, and the write a final report on the tasks you just did, then you can have breakfast, but you're still monitoring the doors and windows. ",
"Depends on what kind of changes are in the update in question.\n\nSometimes there are added features and services, which means more things for the device to run, so it takes more resources. But sometimes it may just be bug fixes, optimizations, etc ... Which can make the device run better.\n\nAlso depends on the way the device updates itself. Maybe it's coded by an idiot, and the update process keeps every single update package on the device's storage, which means, in time, slower storage access, which makes it run slower sometimes.\n\nIt could also be that the manufacturer has badly made software that gets more bloated each and every time ...\n\nThere's no one simple rule, in the end. Very much like \"How come my computer is slow ?\", usually.",
"Most updates are to fix a specific bug or security flaw.\n\nAs an analogy, let's say that each bug or security flaw is like a chip in the drywall in your house. And each update is the spackle+texture+paint that you fix it with. The more holes you patch with spackle, the shittier your wall is eventually going to look. If you have to patch 5 holes you can probably do it without anyone knowing. If you have to patch 500 holes over the course of 5 years then it probably is going to look worse than the original, right?\n\nLots of other updates are to add new features. Let's say you have a blender. It works OK, but you can't blend bricks like you see on YouTube. You go to the manufacturer's website and they sell a new model of blender with a heavier blade that can cut bricks. The new model of blender is $450, but the blade is only $50 and it uses the same mounting system as your current blender. So you pick up just the blade, and install it on your blender. Now your blender is slower, because you're trying to use a heavier blade with the same power. The new model of blender has more power to help it use the heavier blade. The heavy blade may technically work with your blender, but not as well because it wasn't designed to. Same thing with the updates: they are designed for the latest hardware, not the old stuff.",
"A lot of updates, especially on phones, make things look prettier, add features and make tasks simpler to perform. All of these things demand more from the hardware which hasn't changed since you got the phone so the result is that things take longer to load and the overall experience becomes sluggish. \n\nSometimes updates aren't very well made and leave old files and stuff behind meaning that the phone or computer has even more to deal with making it slower.\n\nI usually wipe my phone at least once a year so that any old bits and pieces from updates are gone and it is running the latest version. This makes a huge improvement on speed and battery life."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
aa8wia
|
- why does a new song sound amazing on multiple plays the first day only to sound oddly bad and repetitive the day after?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aa8wia/eli5_why_does_a_new_song_sound_amazing_on/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ecpwvh3"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"I feel like this depends on the type of songs you're listening to. What music are we talking about?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
azkyw4
|
what does an audio file consist of?
|
For example, every photo we take with our cameras, are only consist of little pixels.
So lets say, If I just open paint and put 1920x1080 amount of perfectly placed dots, it will be the same as the original 1920x1080 picture. Because that picture is ONLY consist of pixels, nothing more. What I'm saying is it's probably almost impossible to do, but TECHNICALLY it's legal and its working.
& #x200B;
But what about the voice recordings? Let's say I have recorded my sound for 10 seconds.
But now I want re-create that sound with a program/software. What info do I need? I just want a TECHNICALLY working solution for imitating my voice.
Hope I'm clear, sorry for the english.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/azkyw4/eli5_what_does_an_audio_file_consist_of/
|
{
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"ei8i3rd",
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"text": [
"Sound is pressure waves. A microphone detects the pressure changes and outputs electrical currents depending on how much the pressure changes. A sound card will detect the voltages that the microphone creates on the wire. It does this by periodically \"sample\" the signal and converts the voltage reading into a binary number. Compared to an image a sound file also consists of \"pixels\" or rather \"samples\". Because instead of an X and Y axis you have a time axis. And instead of colors for the pixels you have the pressure value in the sample, or potentially several values for stereo or surround sound. And just as an image have a resolution and a color depth an audio file also have a sample rate and different depths.",
"A sound is just a sequence of amplitudes against a time axis. You can create a file of the sound pressure value for a set of time intervals equivalent to the pixels on a picture. The sound data is a lot simpler than the picture. It's a single dimension, time, instead of two, x and y, and a single value for each point, amplitude, instead of three colour coefficients, R,G and B for instance.\n\nA real file contains a litte bit more information than the raw data though. Resolution of the picture or time division of sounds for instance. If you then add factors like data compression, it adds more complication to the file structure.",
"When you use an audio editor to zoom in on the recorded waveform, you will see that it’s a graph. That graph shows the actual back and forth movement of the microphone’s membrane as it was shaken by the air when you spoke. It’s the footprint of your voice. \n\nSound is, after all, just something shaking back and forth, and sound recording is only a matter of mapping that motion as accurately as possible. \n\nIn theory you could certainly draw that graph manually in the same way as you could recreate a photo pixel by pixel. I’m just not sure why you would."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
21980b
|
wouldn't it be cheaper for insurance companies to cover lasik surgery once, instead of a lifetime supply of contact lenses/eye doctor appointments?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21980b/eli5_wouldnt_it_be_cheaper_for_insurance/
|
{
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"cgat5w0",
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2,
2
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"text": [
"Lasik or PRK doesn't preclude never needing to see an eye doctor again -- most people will need multiple corrections over their lives, or will simply need to start wearing glasses again.",
"Only if they're sure you'll be a customer long enough. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
8evav0
|
why do so many languages, even when some use a completely different alphabet from english, use the same punctuation at the end of their sentences?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8evav0/eli5why_do_so_many_languages_even_when_some_use_a/
|
{
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"dxycs5k",
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"score": [
9,
85,
3
],
"text": [
"¿Está usted seguro de eso?",
"Western influence.\n\nSome languages have independently invented their own versions of various punctuation. For example, there are several different variations of the period. However, Western influence is causing some cultures to forego their traditional full-stop mark for the period as we know it in English.\n\nFor some other characters where the concept previously did not exist in the language (like the question mark in Japanese), they just purely imported it from English.",
"I live in Thailand, the language here as no punctuation nor does it have spaces between words"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2z8shu
|
how/why do celebs insure parts of their body (i.e . taylor swift's legs for $40 million)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z8shu/eli5_howwhy_do_celebs_insure_parts_of_their_body/
|
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"text": [
"Taylor Swift believes that her legs are a big part of how she earns her living: people find them attractive and she uses them for dancing. If they were to be damaged or become less attractive, she would lose out on potentially millions.\n\nSo if an insurance company is willing to take on that sort of risk, she gets a policy opened up on her legs. There will be all sorts of provisions in that policy like \"We won't cover any damage due to aging, or you getting fat\" and \"We won't cover you if you do something stupid, like jumping out of a window to try breaking your leg on purpose.\" People make good money to figure out what is excluded from the policy, and I'm sure Swift's lawyers fought to get as many possibilities covered as possible.\n\nThen it's just like any other insurance policy. Swift puts up some money or pays in installments... Let's say $5-$10 million over 10 years. For all I know, it's way less or way more. If her legs stay good, the insurance company made a good bet. If they don't, the company will pay out $40 million, to make up for the fact that Swift is losing out on leg-based income.",
"Take models for example, if something would scar their legs they probably wouldn't get any jobs for photo shoots anymore. This is why they get insurance for a certain body part. At least that's what I always assumed.\n\nMost celebrities probably don't need to, but they have the money, so...\n\nAlthough I don't know what insurance company you need to get an insurance like that.",
"That Taylor Swift comment was a joke just FYI. But other celebs have done it because their body parts are part of their livelihood. ",
"How? Seek out an insurance company, establish a value, discuss conditions, sign a contract, remit premium, and that's that. LLoyds of London is famous for insuring body parts and other difficult to insure items (cigar collections, classic automobiles, flowers, etc).\n\nHow *legally*? Any asset is insurable against loss, especially profit producing assets like businesses, machines, and key personnel. In the case of a performer, they are the asset, their body is what earns them a living. Because of this, they can insure against the loss of income due to the loss of use or disfigurement of a body part. \n\nWhy? Because crap happens. Argument's sake, Ms. Swift is in a car accident and loses her legs. She can no longer earn money by performing on stage. That $40m insurance covers the estimated value of lost money from performances she would have earned over the rest of her life. Not to mention, lost opportunities to be a spokesperson (for instance, she's a spokesperson for Keds Shoes and L.E.I jeans). The insurance company and Ms. Swift agreed this is a reasonable estimate of income, and agreed on a reasonable premium to protect against this risk.\n\nMany people at this point ask, \"what about the other stuff? Cancer or hearing or other medical issues and accidents?\" Performers of this caliber usually have \"disability insurance\" to cover accidents that make them unable to work, \"critical illness\" insurance to cover against things like cancer. This type of key item coverage is usually the final step to get big dollar coverage in case the unexpected happens."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
5qfgbc
|
boomerangs
|
How do they actually work ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qfgbc/eli5_boomerangs/
|
{
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2
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"text": [
"Oddly enough, they were never originally meant to \"come back\". They were hunting tools, and the returning effect is just a product of improved aerodynamics. \n\nThere are two things happening. The boomerangs shape is similar to that of a planes wing, creating high pressure on one side, and low pressure on the other, generating lift. Secondly, when the blades are spinning, they \"want\" to spin about their central axis. \n\nThe end effect meaning it acts in a similar way to a gyroscope. As gravity pulls on one side, the boomerang will either arc to the left or right, depending which way its thrown, and the lift generated will \"usually\" be enough to carry it in a circular motion till it returns to its point of origin (Hopefully you're not still standing there when it does though)",
"OP, if you type that exact question into Google, you will find your answer. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
b2ma7z
|
Men's Victorian Era Clothing.
|
I'm trying to study victorian era clothing. I can find tons of information on women's clothing and even visual guides to the different styles and designs. However, I cannot find any reliable about Victorian Men's Clothing. Most of my information says that it didn't change much, but I can't find visual guides or anything very detailed or reliable.
Does anyone have a reliable source that I can use?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b2ma7z/mens_victorian_era_clothing/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eiuasuq"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The absolute most helpful book for you is Joan Severa's *Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans & Fashion, 1840-1900*. It's incredibly detailed, and, of course, lavishly stuffed with copies of historical photos and daguerreotypes. The only thing I ever have to complain about in it is the loaded language used to describe corsetry.\n\nAnother very useful source for your purposes will be Norah Waugh's *The Cut of Men's Clothes*. It's more about patterns and making suits, but Waugh gives a lot of information about different styles and changes over time.\n\nI feel you, though! There is *so* much more written about the sequence of women's fashion in the Victorian era than about men's."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
28n8u0
|
if explain like i am five is for complex topics why can i google 90% of the answers?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28n8u0/eli5_if_explain_like_i_am_five_is_for_complex/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cicidz1",
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],
"score": [
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"text": [
"First, I'll just say that you have a good point for some of the questions here.\n\nHowever, ELI5 isn't so much about topics that you can't find an answer on Google as it is about topics that you can't find an answer *that you understand* on Google. It can be difficult to get a good explanation of something like black holes or photosynthesis from the typical Internet resources. Comments on ELI5 usually explain topics in a variety of ways, which can greatly enhance the process of understanding a subject, especially for someone with no background in the topic.",
"There are multiple circumstances that I use to explain this phenomenon.\n\n1. Some people are just bad at researching information on the internet. They literally don't know how to use google right. They don't type in the right thing to search\n\n2. Laziness. I think some people don't want to sift through links in the search results and then look through all that content for the answer. So they just post it on here and wait, hoping some bored redditor will answer their stupid question.\n\n3. Upvotes. I think some people even post ELI5 questions they already know the answer too. Just to get some comment karma.\n\n4. They are from the American Midwest\n\nThat is all I can think to explain this breakdown in human intelligence you speak of.",
"I'm removing this because it's actually asked pretty frequently.\n\nThat said, I also want to to give you an explanation coming from a mod.\n\nThe long and short of it is that this is an educational subreddit for *any* issue, no matter how simple it may seem to *some* users. ELI5 is nothing if not a haven for thick skulls, slow wits, and those of us who didn't pay attention in high school.\n\nWith that in mind, google/wikipedia don't always produce easy-to-parse explanations. What one person might be able to pick up quickly from the 'pedia might absolutely stump someone else. Even if 99% of people understand the google-able answer, there's 1% that doesn't. ELI5 is meant to be—among other things—an accessible environment for that 1%.\n\nPeople also like to give their own explanations, which may offer different insights than those available elsewhere on the internet. We want to give those people a place to contribute to the discussion as well. We want to foster those contributions as much as we want to field users' questions.\n\nAt any rate, we've considered the \"google first\" rule on *numerous* occasions, and decided against it pretty unanimously every time. Setting aside the fact that it's not easily enforceable, we feel that it's more or less understood that a person asking a question here has looked to other sources and failed to find or understand them.\n\nPlus, some of the explanations we get in here are *waaaay* better than those you'll find elsewhere.\n\nAnyway, I hope that gives you some insight."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4fkwzi
|
Was there ever such a thing as an professional group of secret agents for rulers?
|
With secret agents I mean spies and professional assassins. I distinctly remember that the persian king (or his evil advisor) in the prince of persia movie had control over an entire school of trained killers.
Is that just a hollywood trope or does it have some truth to it?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fkwzi/was_there_ever_such_a_thing_as_an_professional/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d29ycjp"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Are you talking about a secrect police force or some form of guardian force that remains anonymous? I've watched a lot of novices with secrect agencies and they vary heavily between movies."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4kpiwr
|
When did large penises become desirable? (Considering Greek/Renaissance art often depicted small penises as being aesthetically pleasing) [NSFW]
|
Hi,
So I recently came across some articles which claimed that smaller penises were seen as more culturally superior and noble, especially seen in Greek statues (e.g. Michelangelo's Statue of David), and in renaissance art.
I'm really curious as to why this opinion died out. Could it have something to do with the liberalisation of sexuality? Particularly in regards to what women desire?
I have yet to find any particular pieces of art which showcase larger penises, without it being seen as demeaning or 'animalistic'. That being said, I don't know all that much about art history. Other similar thread responses focused solely on old art history as a representation, but I've found little about the shift in view regarding this.
Would be great to hear some opinions,
thanks!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kpiwr/when_did_large_penises_become_desirable/
|
{
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"Congratulations, OP. Thanks to you, I now have 'large penis' all over my search history.\n\nYour articles are correct, as far as they go. Certainly, in classical Greek and Rome, abnormally large penises were seen as crude, barbaric, and/or amusing ([this AskHistorians thread](_URL_3_) has examples and citations). There was a general belief that large penises were sexually pleasing for those being penetrated, both men and women (there's a fragment of Roman comedy, concerning which my google-fu has failed me, in which a well-endowed slave gripes about the constant state of exhaustion his horny masters leave him in; some of the [Priapus poems](_URL_1_), e.g. 25, feature the phallic god offering similar complaints), but, in context, this wasn't 'manliness'; classical ideals of manliness focused on self-control and moderation, and sexual excess was seen as weak - even, strangely to modern manly mores, effeminate.\n\nAs to the modern interpretation: [this not-particularly-scholarly article](_URL_4_) suggests that the modern idea, that large penises correlate with manliness, is linked to the mainstreaming of pornography (for the screen, the bigger the better) and men's self-comparison to those long and long-lasting porn performers. Certainly, giant swinging dicks are not common in modern *art*! I would guess that 'what women desire' has little to do with it, since women report that [size has little to do with their satisfaction](_URL_5_). Interestingly, that article suggests that men may be more affected by *comparative* penis size than with *objective* penis size, agreeing with the idea that seeing giant porn penises has intensified the link between penis size and masculinity. I would also note a further possible connection: in the sad history of 'racial science', many white scientists (and moralists) promulgated the myth of the ['macrophallic black beast'](_URL_2_), the idea that black men were closer to animals than human, as demonstrated by their aggression, strength, and giant penises. Those tropes are still present today (as one can easily check by browsing /r/all), but it would not surprise me if, as [20th century men struggled to redefine manliness in ways that didn't involve the subjugation of non-whites](_URL_0_), the same set of traits came to represent manliness in general.\n\nIf you can find a copy of [A Mind Of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis](_URL_6_), it might well be worth reading on this.\n\nEDIT: I just realized that I didn't really talk about the aesthetic question, to which I'd respond that penises in general, large or small, aren't generally considered *aesthetically* pleasing in modern art, due to, I think, the more general cultural rejection of 'heroic nudity' and moral concerns about aesthetic appreciation of nude male bodies. Think superhero comics, and what body parts the Spandex *doesn't* perfectly outline, or how movies, up until recently, got R ratings for full frontal female nudity but NC-17 for dick. (I blame the Victorians.) Large penises may be desirable sexually, or in terms of masculine representation, but they're still not aesthetically approved. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=656",
"http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/priap/priapeia.htm",
"https://books.google.com/books?id=DatW--n7CfoC&pg=PT42&lpg=PT42&dq=macrophallic+black&source=bl&ots=7UKMUvahU8&sig=84OymRf7ktMyakA3y_hYkHaR6-Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib7_r4q_HMAhVESlIKHeNaDqYQ6AEIODAJ#v=onepage&q=macrophallic%20black&f=false",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/162tis/how_has_penis_size_been_regarded_across_times_and/",
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201411/how-women-really-feel-about-penis-size",
"http://dfred.bol.ucla.edu/LeverFrederickPeplau-2006PMM-PenisSizeSatisfaction.pdf",
"http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/09/highereducation.booksonhealth"
]
] |
|
1idyq3
|
american pragmatism
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1idyq3/eli5_american_pragmatism/
|
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"I'm going to assume you mean the *philosophical school* of pragmatism, which originated in America, and not the watered-down idea of \"pragmatism\" which is used to mean \"willing to get along with others\".\n\nAround the beginning of the 1800s, a German man named Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy. Kant had been working to solve a philosophical problem that had been growing for centuries: the dispute between the Rationalists and the Empiricists. This dispute was about a seemingly simple question: what is the ultimate source of our conceptual knowledge?\n\nThe Empiricists took what I think you will agree is the position more in accord with common sense. They believed that knowledge begins with the senses. You see a certain shape that moves in certain ways and makes certain sounds; let's say that its shape gives it four legs and a tail, and it barks.\n\nThe Empiricists say that, when you are born, you are a blank slate (tabula rasa): you have no idea what this thing is. But, they say, you see a multitude of creatures that resemble it during the course of your life, and to organize your knowledge you ignore (or \"abstract from\") all the differences between the different creatures and mentally focus only on what is similar. Thus, you have mentally created a *concept* by abstraction from particular creatures. You will now give a name to that concept and call all such creatures \"dogs\".\n\nThe Rationalists take issue with this. When you say that you are going to ignore all of the differences between the individual dogs, what do you mean? If you ignore height, weight, shape, color, and sound, because all of these things vary between individual dogs, what are you left with? Something that has no legs, no weight, and makes no sound is certainly not a dog. Besides, your senses are human and fallible: how do you know a dog really has four legs, and that you did not just imagine it was that way, as naive people think a stick bends in water? With these and other arguments they purport to prove that one could never acquire concepts this way. And even if they grant that you could do it with the concept \"dog\", how are you going to get \"justice\", \"good\", or \"God\"?\n\nInstead, the rationalists say that we are born already with the seeds of our conceptual knowledge within us. Some, like those who more closely follow Plato, say that we experienced them in a past life, and that if we study particular objects in this world long enough, we will suddenly remember these concepts. Others claim that God directly inspires people with conceptual knowledge.\n\nBy the time of Kant, though, the two sides had pretty much succeeded in demolishing each other. The Empiricists had shown that theory of innate knowledge was full of holes: whatever knowledge you might have from your past life has no relation to this life. Concepts say nothing about the particulars. And the Rationalists had destroyed the arguments for abstraction, so that there was no way to get from particulars to universal concepts. David Hume, an Empiricist, had ended up admitting that no firm conceptual knowledge was possible, throwing logic, cause-and-effect, and God out the window.\n\nKant wanted to restore not only logic and its orderly natural world but also \"God, freedom, and immortality\". To go over it in extremely brief terms, he said that the problem comes from thinking that our mind is some kind of passive mirror in which reality is reflected. Rays of light from reality hit the mind (or so people think), and therefore we see it.\n\nNo, says Kant, the mind does not perceive reality, *it creates reality*. Now, it doesn't create true reality the way God does, but it creates our own personal reality, which he called the \"phenomenal world\". It is this world to which logic, causality, mathematics, science, etc. apply. And we know that the laws of logic will always apply to this world because they are the rules the mind uses to create the world. It's just like if you use a black pen to write an essay, you know that the essay must be black and not red, no matter what you write about or in what language. But, says Kant, there is another world, the \"noumenal world\", which is the true reality we can never experience. That is God's domain, and we can't say anything about it.\n\nLike I said, Kant totally changed the philosophical world. However, people after him saw some problems. First of all, how do I know that your \"phenomenal world\", the reality created by your mind, follows that same rules as my reality. Some, like the Marxists and the Nazis, said that it doesn't. There is \"bourgeois logic\" and \"proletarian logic\" or \"Jewish logic\" and \"Aryan logic\", and even if you prove capitalism is right in bourgeois logic, it's still wrong in proletarian logic.\n\nAlso, there is supposed to be this \"noumenal world\", but we can't say anything about it. What good is it, then? Most people said to get rid of it, so we now have only the subjective reality created by our own minds, and maybe that is not the same between you and me.\n\n**Here (finally) is where the Pragmatists come in.** They look at all this and say, \"Why are we worrying about phenomenal worlds and noumenal worlds and all that? Let's be practical.\" Their idea of being practical was to say that the job of the mind is not to comprehend reality (that is impossible) but to enable us to accomplish our goals. When do we start thinking about things? When we have some kind of problem that is blocking us from progress. Thinking is a \"*dis-ease*\". Therefore, we shouldn't start with a grand scheme of the most basic truths about reality and proceed from there, but just take off from wherever we have a practical problem.\n\nFor Pragmatism, truth is literally defined as \"what works\". That is, the usual relation of truth to effectiveness is reversed. It is not the case that we learn, for example, what oxygen really is, and then we come up with a method that works to produce oxygen because we know that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen. Rather, the only \"truth\" is that if you want to breathe underwater, you had better go through this series of steps that we call by the name of \"producing oxygen\" and then fill a tank with it. But you must not imagine that you have really identified \"oxygen\" as something apart from the human mind.\n\nOr take the question of free will. Some say that man must have free will because we all experience a feeling of being able to choose our actions, and we hold others responsible for bad actions. But others come right back and say that if we have free will, then we are saying that there is no cause of any of our actions; we could be in the exact same situation and do one of two different things with no apparent explanation. Furthermore, it violates the laws of physics because we are, after all, just made of matter, and matter always acts the way it has to based on external forces. So, we too act just the way we have to based on external forces, and free will is an illusion.\n\nNow, the Pragmatists say that you're never going to get anywhere with this. Just look at the practical consequences of the debate. If we go with the people who say free will is an illusion, are they going to repeal all of the criminal laws? Are they going to stop rebuking people who do bad things? Are they going to stop failing students who give the wrong answers on the test? No, they say: even though people have no free will, rewards and punishments are what keep them acting in ways beneficial to society. Okay, say the Pragmatists: there is no real difference between the position that free will is true and free will is false. The debate is pointless, and we dismiss the question.\n\n**Wow, that became really huge. If you want the shorter version, just take it from the part in bold.**"
]
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[] |
[] |
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[]
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||
3d0zxk
|
Does the human eye see in pixels?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3d0zxk/does_the_human_eye_see_in_pixels/
|
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"In a sense yes in that you have a [mosaic](_URL_10_) of [photoreceptors](_URL_7_) that are sensitive to photons much like the sensor in a camera (see also [this](_URL_11_) and [this](_URL_2_) image). However, the photoreceptors do not send signals directly to your brain. In front of them (i.e. closer to the front of your eye) are several layers of other cells including [bipolar cells](_URL_0_), [horizontal cells](_URL_1_), and [ganglion cells](_URL_8_) all of which modify and process the signal from one or many photoreceptors. \n\nSo the output of the eye that gets sent out the optic nerve is actually nothing like a pixel-like representation. First, there are varieties of photoreceptors with variable sensitivities to different wavelengths, meaning that [parts of your retina may be more or less sensitive to color (central vision near the fovea)](_URL_6_). Second, the amount of [pooling of signal from photoreceptors](_URL_5_) also varies, with greater pooling in the periphery, meaning that ganglion cells in the periphery have larger receptive fields (are sensitive to light from a larger area) than those in the fovea (see also [this](_URL_3_) and [this](_URL_9_) image).\n\nAddendum: I was just writing up a quick answer, so it is by no means exhaustive. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, in addition to photoreceptor variety and signal pooling, there are many other factors that contribute to the complexity of the signal that leaves the eye including the many different types of retinal ganglion cells that perform quite complex computations, including ones that are sensitive to motion (change in luminance over time).\n\nEdit: [here](_URL_4_) is a cartoon of the structure of the retina. [Here](_URL_10_) and [here](_URL_11_) you can see an electron microscope image of the photoreceptor mosaic. Also, I've added wiki links for everything.\n\nEdit2: I was traveling most of the day and missed a lot of questions after I made the initial response. I will try to get to all of them tonight and tomorrow.",
"The human eye does not see in pixels. We have photo receptors that are dots on the back of our eye but our eyes gyrate around to pass the light onto these receptors in sweeps and flashes utilizing the composite structure of our eye's back surface to build impulses our brain has tuned to. Those are built up by our optic center and brain into a composite vision through several stages. Its due to the composite nature of our vision and the hard-wired memory and deeplearned aspects that optical illusions and false impressions of colours occur. \n\nIt may be attractive to say \"the retina is composed of point-like receptors of a similar size to pixels\" but that obviates all the other optic processing and autonomic muscle responses that help build the picture. Spy satellites also see by a type of point based receptor but the picture is built up in sweeps through multiple wavelengths. No one says that satellites see in pixels.",
"In my sensation & perception class, we are taught that our vision is really made up of a bunch of big and small circles, which we call \"receptive fields\" (RFs). These circles correspond to retinal ganglion cells. The bigger the circle (RF), the more sensitive to motion it is. But it also is less visually detailed. The smaller the circle, the greater the visual resolution. \n\nThese circles are also broken into a center area subregion and surround area subregion, where the center is a circle within the surround like a circle within a circle. Visual illusions arise from center/surround activations, and it's fascinating. You can read more about it all [here](_URL_0_).",
"If you want more interesting details, here is a [video](_URL_0_) about eye resolution by Vsauce.",
"Related question: Is there a way of making a computer process or display images in a more true-to-life way?\n",
"Follow-up question: Why does our technology not emulate this mechanism? \n\nUsually we emulate nature but in this case it seems like if we have its only in a very shallow way... is it just a matter of complexity maybe? Or are we missing pieces of the equation that makes it impossible? Or, is the purely pixel-based approach better in some way? ",
"hopefully i still have my flare.\n\nalright yeah, as the top post mentions theres a PR mosaic. However its worth mentioning perception of vision is broken down into different parts. \n\ncolour\n\nform(shape) \n\nmotion \n\ncontrast \n\ndepth \n\nare all encoded with different circuitry even at the \"pixel level\". \n\nill have a go at explaining how each system works:\n\ncolour: color specific receptors known as cones are connected in pairs Red-Green and Blue Yellow, they opponent and there is a cell called a ganglion cell which sees the output of these channels and code colour\n\nform(shape): shape is even more interesting. small connections between receptors are known as local. theses connections pool together to form global connections i.e. the whole image. but what is a punch of signals to a chemical brain? so in the brain, it pulls together informations from many local connections and links it to the part of the brain responsible for memory -- > meaningful perception of the object seen. but to make things harder, more complex forms are processed at different levels. e.g. a black circle is process on a lower level then something like a silhouette of a person.\n\nmotion:\nmotion in its VERY MOST BASIC FORM is encoded by the fact 2 adjacent cells one firing off are another at a certain delay = we perceive it to move at that speed and direction. imagine like a flip book if you don't flick through it fast enough it just looks like a series of images. some people with heurological defects experience life thsi way.\n\n\ncontrast: also looks at information from 2 cells but looks at the difference in the out put. it serves the basis for formation of edges\n\ndepth: your eyes are horizontally dispalced so that means your eyes see different things. this triggers off a cell in your brain to say, okay lets try best to merge to provide zone merged vision. a consequence of this is that it will also code depth. depth in vision is a massive study area and i probably do it injustice by saying any more. ",
"The biggest difference between the eye and a camera is that we only have good resolution in a tiny part of the retina, right in the middle of our field of view. We hardly notice thus because our eye moves quickly toward what grabs our interest. That's why we cannot just stare at a whole page to read a text. Instead, we must scan each line with this narrow high resolution area.",
"The human eye can theoretically see a single photon, but it does not really see in pixels, like you know them from PCs. The human eye has basically 4 colors it can see: Red, Green, Blue and some sort of grayscale value, which is weak for red colors and stronger for blue colors (that's why we like to paint the night blue).\n\nOne photon can cause a reaction, but this reaction is not always transmitted to the brain - it depends on how sensitive your eyes are. What this reaction is, depends on where it hits your eye.\n\nHow many photons reach your eye, is hard to tell exactly, as the light that reaches you is made of many wavelengths at different intensities. You can be sure it is a relative huge number (I would estimate about 3000 per second).\n\nThe question of how a picture is formed in your head does not depend on the eyes, but more on the brain. your eyes see a lot more stuff, as your brain finally shows you as picture after a long series of filtering and processing. That's why you don't see in picture cells (pixels) - what you see is a construct of many many points of different light sensitive cells. ",
"This has always been of interest to me because I experience a phenomenon know as [Visual Snow](_URL_0_). It is like I am aware of the pixels in my vision - almost if there is a background \"noise\" of very tiny pixels of colors that form the images I see. I have always wondered if this was something that was a normal part of vision - but my brain wasn't filtering it properly. ",
"I've got a follow up question that I'm hoping someone can finally end the debate that the human eye can't see more than 24fps.\n\nI know i can easily differentiate from 30fps to 60fps to 96fps to 120fps with some difficulty. (I have a high framerate display) the difference for me is like night and day. ",
"The back of your eye (the retina) has receptors lined up next to each other. Some see colors and the others see B & W or light intensity if you prefer. Pixels are fixed in place and mean definite resolution, the eye instead sees in nuances of intensity of light and with a resolution down to the photon. The impulses your cones and rods generate mostly tell the brain of the differences between them and the ones next to each other. Images are not formed by stimulation of a particular pixel or receptor in a certain place but by comparing its stimulation to the cells next to it.\n\nSo no the eye does not see in pixels, it sees in nuances of impulses and sends that information to your visual cortex which is able to make pictures from those nerve impulses. A better analogy would be that seeing in pixels would mean a fixed resolution when the eye does not have a resolution per say at it is technically able to notice a single photon...think how small that would be",
"There is one very important difference from the point of view of signal processing:\n\nPixels are regularly spaced on a grid, and thus are subject to the [Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem](_URL_1_) and associated difficulties.\n\nPhotoreceptors are more irregularly spaced in a radial pattern with varying densities depending on their position. Brain image processing is thus more similar to [Compressed sensing](_URL_0_) and Sparse reconstruction techniques, which have an other set of less restrictive properties.\n",
"I study the patterns of signaling molecules inside neurons. Lots of math involved and I see it more through that lens. Since \"see\" really implies the whole path from eye to the brain we don't really see in pixels. Even starting with just the neurons in the eye the refractory period of the neurons combined with continuous movement of the eye precludes a predetermined pixel. But the whole process has a pixel like quality and that's where the math comes in and is the way I see it. The signals are pixels of a sort. The path and strength each signal takes can be seen as approaching a set of finite limits. Neurons are oscillators; they very rarely fire a single click. Assemblages of neurons, formed by past association, will tend to fire together. From neuron to neuron and group to group thousands of signaling molecules make a trek across the synapses. Each jump is full of probability, as is the timing of jumps up the chain of neurons. [Watch this](_URL_0_). See how there is a slow movement and then a fast transition to the next geometry? The only pixels I can imagine are the boundaries between geometric states. They're fuzzy and they change but there they are in greater and greater assemblages until you see something. \n\nOr you could just look for the smallest thing you can see, label that your pixel and call it a day. :)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_neuron",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_horizontal_cell",
"http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/retina/retina-slides/Slide21.jpg",
"http://what-when-how.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/tmp15F58.jpg",
"http://book.bionumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/130-f3-EyeRetina-12.png",
"http://webvision.med.utah.edu/imageswv/KallSpat26.jpg",
"http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~avery/course/3400/vision/rod_cone_distribution2.jpg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_ganglion_cell",
"http://droualb.faculty.mjc.edu/Course%20Materials/Physiology%20101/Chapter%20Notes/Fall%202007/figure_10_39_labeled.jpg",
"https://cis.uab.edu/curcio/PRtopo/Fig1Revised2010.jpg",
"http://webvision.med.utah.edu/imageswv/conemos.jpeg"
],
[],
[
"http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/ganglion/ganglion.html"
],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I5Q3UXkGd0"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem"
],
[
"https://youtu.be/GtiSCBXbHAg"
]
] |
||
88tvca
|
how does the planet recover from radioactive containment?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88tvca/eli5how_does_the_planet_recover_from_radioactive/
|
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"containment or contamination?\n\nRadioactivity by default just goes away. it is the result of decomposing unstable particles. They have a half life and basically dwindle into nothing-ness (well given off as energy).\n\nSo it recovers primarily by waiting, we have remediation tactics and technologies as well that can help clean up very radioactive areas.\n\nIt is worth noting that the earth is radioactive by default, its the dose that makes the poison.",
"The planet doesn't, but it also doesn't need to.\n\nA large portion of the Earths heat comes from radioactive decay in the mantle.\n\nLife in general though, well the Earth it's self is radioactive, so life has evolved to survive small doses. Large doses can be hazardous to a population of animals or a large area of land, but most studies show that radiation is mostly beneficial, until it reaches fatal doeses, or your species lives long enough to develop cancers from exposure.\n\nLong term though it's not an issue. Only a local problem really. On the timescales of continental drift it has little to no impact (due to weather etc, and the fact it's not a huge disaster to begin with).\n\nA nuclear war would be a different story, that could, in theory sterilize the Earth, so life would have to start again."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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||
2pbqh9
|
How come we can focus on stars?
|
Why is it that no matter how far away two stars are, we can still see them the same way with the same plane of focus? (Not sure how to tag this)
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2pbqh9/how_come_we_can_focus_on_stars/
|
{
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"Stars are so far away that the light that enters our eyes from them is essentially parallel rays. Such rays will all require the same amount of bending by the lenses of our eyes, regardless of how far away each different source is. Thus, our iris dies not have to deform the lens anew for each star we look at.",
"There is a distance beyond which the focus will make no difference to the clearness of an image. At short distances, there is more work for the eye to do to focus, the lens changing from 1 meter focus distance to 50 cm focus difference needs much more change in the lens than from 1 meter to 100 m.\n\nBecause of [depth of field](_URL_1_), there is a distance beyond which everything is in focus. This is called the [Hyperfocal distance](_URL_0_).\n\nFor the human eye with a length of 24mm and a pupils size of 5 mm, this works out at 98 meters.\n\nThat is to say, an object an infinite distance away and an object 100 meters away would both appear equally clearly focused within the resolution of the eye.\n\nMost stars are also so far away that they all appear to be less than 1 minute of arc, which is the smallest angle the eye can resolve.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field"
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|
18iu5t
|
can someone please explain "foot pounds of torque"
|
Tried reading the wikipedia article and just can't wrap my head around it
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18iu5t/eli5_can_someone_please_explain_foot_pounds_of/
|
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"Torque is force applied at some distance from a thing's center of mass. Imagine a wheel balanced horizontally so it can rotate freely. If you give it a shove at its center of mass, the wheel won't turn. Depending on how it's fixed, either it'll just *move* away from you, or it'll stay put and you'll accomplish nothing. But if you give it a nudge at an angle from the center of mass, the wheel will turn.\n\nQuantify torque by measuring how hard you push and how far the point you're pushing on is from the center of mass. Pounds of force times feet of distance gives you foot-pounds of torque.",
"Think about it like this:\n\n1 foot pound of torque means you've got precisely the amount of power needed to lift 1 pound on a 1 foot lever. 100 foot pounds of torque means you've got the power to move 1 pound on a 100 foot lever, or 100 pounds on a 1 foot lever. Of course you need to ignore the weight of the lever in this thought experiment.\n\nIt's simply a measure of how much work something can do, as opposed to horsepower which is really a measure of how fast that something can do the work.\n"
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
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14pvln
|
What was the cause of the My Lai Massacre?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14pvln/what_was_the_cause_of_the_my_lai_massacre/
|
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"This is a very difficult question to answer, but I will try. To really give you a comprehensive answer, we would have to explore everything from the psychology of counterinsurgency on the common soldier to events that happened a mere days before the massacre. Unfortunately, I am currently in South America and do not have access to my usual reference material.\n\nThe causes were several however: The men, in a briefing before going in, were told that there were going to be VC combatants in the area. There are different versions of what Cpt. Medina said during this, but most of the accounts seem to support the idea his words were hostile and supported an aggressive posture. The men were also rather effected by now by the psychological burdens that counterinsurgency brings on to you. For example, a soldier from the company had recently been killed by a planted mine. A thing like this brings immense frustration because you are killed by something that is seemed as \"cowardice\". You don't see the enemy, you are unable to do anything to defend you. Hence, you get angry and frustrated at this fact and you begin channeling all your anger on the only target available: the civilian population. \n\n To read more about this and other American war crimes during the Vietnam War, I would very much recommend German historian Bernd Greiner's book *\"War Withouts Fronts: The USA in Vietnam\"*."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2vm3v2
|
why is death such a morbid concept to humans, even though it is a biological process for every living thing to die?
|
All things die. But for humans it is very tragic when other humans die, even though it will eventually happen to everyone. Things like genocide, rape, or cancer are terrible things that can happen to people and should be grieved over. But because everyone will die, wouldn't you think it would be painless for others if the deceased went peacefully at an old age?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vm3v2/eli5_why_is_death_such_a_morbid_concept_to_humans/
|
{
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"The fact of not knowing exactly what is going to happen afterwards, jumping into the unknown can be terrifying to most but others may find it intriguing. If people knew what was going to happen it may be more accepted. For example: My greatest fear is the ocean, only because i have no idea what is down there and i don't know what to expect, and I wont go anywhere on a boat. If I knew exactly what was down there I would be more excepting of it and i may not be so afraid to do anything in the ocean",
"Because its an unknown and we miss people when they're gone. ",
"Just because something happens to everyone doesn't mean it's not bad. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1w8qh7
|
Why are pixels square?
|
Would the quality of an image improve if pixels were instead triangular or circular?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1w8qh7/why_are_pixels_square/
|
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"text": [
"Pixels are typically square or rectangular because we want to be able to reference them in a simple manner using (x,y) coordinates. This divides the plane into a tiny rectangular area for each pixel.\n\nPixels don't have to be square. There are plenty of other [pixel geometries](_URL_0_).\n\nPicture quality isn't dependent upon pixel geometry in the same way that it is on pixel size, contrast, and brightness (and response times for video.)",
"Short answer: pixels are **not** little squares. Geometric-based computer graphics tend to portray them as such because they make certain problems easily solvable (typically, how do you achieve 100% fill rate of a rectangle? fill it with rectangles!) by making that simplifying assumption.\n\nLong answer: read [this paper](_URL_0_).",
"The question gets asked a lot and there is often confusion in the answers because of inexact terminology, so let's approach this carefully.\n\nThe word \"pixel\" typically means an effective x-y location that the software writes image date to. But that does not mean there is a literal, single, physical light element at each x-y location. The problem is that to create a color image additively, you need *three* different light emitting elements (red, green, and blue) at different locations in order to create a single point of image information. If we call the software image data elements \"pixels\", then we should call the physical light emitting elements \"sub-pixels\" to avoid confusion. It is the job of the imaging hardware to translate pixel data to corresponding sub-pixel data. This is not as trivial as it sounds, because different you can optimize different display properties (e.g. contrast, smooth text rendering, color saturation, efficiency) by tweaking the sub-pixel geometry. There is actually a lot of ongoing research being conducted into how to best optimize sub-pixel geometry for certain applications. \n\nWith that in mind, \"pixels\" (the software coding of an image) are typically square because graphical elements in an image are typically rectangular (windows, drop boxes, widgets, menus, icons). You can get better image clarity for the same resolution using square pixels to represent a dominantly rectangular image than using hexagonal or triangular pixels. \n\nIn contrast, \"sub-pixels\" come [in all shapes and sizes](_URL_0_), according to how the designer tries to optimized the imaging process."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pixel_geometry_01_Pengo.jpg"
],
[
"http://wwwnew.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall00/cs426/papers/smith95b.pdf"
],
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Pixel_geometry_01_Pengo.jpg"
]
] |
|
775jbq
|
The earliest gospel, Mark, ends with the apostles discovering the empty tomb and fleeing in terror. Do we know whether the resurrection was already an overt part of the christian tradition of this time?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/775jbq/the_earliest_gospel_mark_ends_with_the_apostles/
|
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"The undisputed part of Mark you are referring to does mention a risen Jesus.\n\n\n > ^1 When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ^2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ^3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” ^4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. ^5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. ^6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. **You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here.** See the place where they laid him. ^7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that **he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him**, just as he told you.” ^8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.\n\nMark 16:1-8, taken from the ESV.\n\n\nAs you can see, a risen Jesus is clearly testified, and it also states that he is moving around and talking to the disciples after the resurrection. Having established that the passage in Mark does in fact demonstrate a belief in the resurrection, I do not think there is any evidence to suggest it was not a key motif of the early Christian cult. Mark is the earliest evidence probably written in the late 60s AD, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s, both of which very strongly identify with the resurrection tradition, so precluding additional MSS or other evidence appearing, it is unlikely that there is a good argument for the resurrection playing a less significant role in early Christianity.\n\n\nThe question then becomes are the earliest MSS right to leave out the passage 16:9-20, while some other early MSS have it in. Ultimately it is impossible to say what the archetype would be like, and it is possible that the author (or someone close to them) sent multiple copies of the letter with some variation. The contents of this passage is repeated in the other parts of the NT, apart from one line about drinking poison, so it is reasonable to say that the exclusion or inclusion of 9-20 is not that big a deal.\n\nFor further reading, anything on the manuscript tradition of the gospels would be worth a read, but try and be aware if it is theological in nature or whether it is purely a textual commentary. A relatively readable and recent edition is Collins' 'Mark a commentary', but your best bet is to see what your local academic institutions and libraries have available.\n",
"There's a lot of debate over the ending of Mark, to say the least. There's three main options:\n\nA) The \"longer ending\" (16:9-20) is authentic and original.\n\nB) That verse 8 is the original ending intended by Mark and the rest is a later addition.\n\nC) There was originally a longer ending past verse 8, but somehow it was lost (or Mark did not intend to end there but was somehow prevented from finishing) and the current verses 9-20 are a later reconstruction.\n\nYou'll find scholars arguing for any of the three options. However, option A is very much the minority position and not taken seriously by most, including many conservative scholars. You'll certainly find defenders for option B, but I think option C is the most likely. Verse 8 ends in an unnatural way to be the intended ending of the book, with a conjunction γαρ. It's not strictly grammatically impossible, but it's quite unusual and, to me, not very sensible.\n\nTo the broader question: was the resurrection a part of the earliest Christian tradition? To that I give an emphatic \"yes\". First is the writing of Paul - authorship of some of the epistles is debated or dubious, but some are widely acknowledged to be authentic Pauline 1st century texts; namely, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippans, and 1 Thessalonians. These are enough to establish the belief in Jesus' resurrection in the 1st century church, as Paul explicitly writes especially in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 6.\n\nProbably the best contemporary scholarly work on this subject is N. T. Wright's *The Resurrection of the Son of God*. If you're interested in an incredibly in-depth demonstration of the resurrection in Christian tradition, that's it.",
"Among scholars today, pretty much everyone agrees that Mark is written at some point between 65 and 75. There have been some attempts to date it earlier (most notably Casey's *Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel* and Crossley's *The Date of Mark: Insights from Law in Earliest Christianity*), but most agree upon 65-75. \n\nMark likely ends with 16:8, as Lightfoot showed over a century ago. It used to be popular to suggest a lost ending (most recently defended in Croy's *The Mutilation of Mark's Gospel*). Wright's *The Resurrection of the Son of God* gestures towards a lost ending, but doesn't go all the way in that direction. To answer the question, however: \n\nThe first mention of the resurrection appears in 1 Cor. 15:3-8, which is a pre-Pauline creed that likely dates to the mid-late 30s (c.f. Craig's *The Resurrection of Jesus* or Allison's *Resurrecting Jesus,* probably the best total treatment of the topic). So, to answer your question, it appears as though there is at least a significant portion of the early Christian movement who believes in a resurrection. Notably, the language seems to imply a bodily resurrection (there's a recent article in *NTS* about this, I can't remember its title, but I think it's Tour). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1sk4ba
|
what is happening when i "walk off" a minor injury?
|
I jumped off a ~5 foot wall earlier today and landed awkwardly, twisting my ankle a little bit. It hurt really bad right away, but after walking for 5 minutes I barely felt it at all.
What is happening in those 5 minutes to cause such severe immediate pain to go away very quickly?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sk4ba/eli5_what_is_happening_when_i_walk_off_a_minor/
|
{
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"Relevant article: \n_URL_0_",
"Wow okay lots of speculative answers here. Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about want to chip in?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2013/07/22/after-a-sprain-dont-just-walk-it-off/"
],
[]
] |
|
4lcudj
|
During internal bleeding where does the blood leak to?
|
I was always under the impression that blood vessels where more or less packed in surrounded by muscles and organs which wouldn't really leave much room for blood to pool into even if a vessel was ruptured.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4lcudj/during_internal_bleeding_where_does_the_blood/
|
{
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"d3mousv"
],
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"text": [
"Instead of being packed tightly together, most of your tissues have a little bit of fluid separating cells, so there's a little space there for blood. In addition, some organs are located within a membrane-bound cavity. Either way, blood will follow the path of least resistance and find a place to settle. In certain parts of the body, this isn't a big deal, but in others it can massively interfere with normal organ function.\n\nA bruise is a very simple example of this, where blood will just spread out in the tissues underneath the skin, not causing many problems. Your lungs are held in a sac called the pleura, which can become filled with blood and interfere with your breathing. A similar thing can happen with the sac that your abdominal organs are held in. If you start bleeding into your brain, then it will increase the pressure and push the brain against the surrounding skull, possibly causing serious damage."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
281s5m
|
Why did Robert E. Lee order Pickett's Charge during The Battle of Gettysburg?
|
I've visited the Gettysburg battlefield and also seen that superlong movie Gettysburg, but I still can't understand why. Most historians seem to agree that Lee was an amazing general, so why did he make such a big blunder at Gettysburg? What inspired his confidence on the third day to make such a daring (and in retrospect, horrible) decision? If I'm not mistaken, the Confederates were not in a favorable position on the second day. The Union had the high ground, and the Confederates were repelled from Little Round Top on the second day. How would a frontal assault, walking uphill across an open field with Union cannons firing from ahead and the sides, have worked? Could it have worked for the Confederates differently at Gettysburg? Thanks in advance! I've wondered about Pickett's Charge for years.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/281s5m/why_did_robert_e_lee_order_picketts_charge_during/
|
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"text": [
"While Lee was a good general, I would not descibe him as amazing. In all his battles, he lost a higher percentage of his own forces than he managed to cause the enemy, making his campaigns unsustainable in the long run.\n\nAs for Pickett's charge, it was not enitrely an unwise decision, however, it was poorly carried out.\n\nThe Confederates had attacked on the Union flanks on the first two days of the battle, and since Stuart and his cavalry had arrived, it looked like another attempt to flank the Union line was going to come on day 3. Meade had reinforced his flanks and thus the centre looked relatively weak.\n\nThe intention was to silence the Union artillery in the centre and place a Napoleonic grand battery style barrage on the Union centre to hinder movement of reinforcements and disrupt the Union formations. Pickett's division, supported by Pettigrew's and Anderson's would charge straight ahead, not stop to fire and charge the Union position with bayonets.\n\nAt the same time Stuart and his cavalry was to flank the Union line and disrupt it, inserting itself between the Union lines of retreat and the Union forces.\n\nIf successful the attack would have broken the Union centre and more or less surrounded the Union right (northern) flank, hopefully causing an army-wide rout and a huge victory for the Confederates, with Stuart's cavalry in an excellent position to force fleeing Union forces to surrender, capture artillery and supply trying to retreat and so on.\n\n[Map of the attack](_URL_0_).\n\nNapoleon had done something very similar at the Battle of Austerlitz 1805 - feigning an attack on the flank of the Austro-Russian Army and breaking through its centre.\n\nSeveral things went wrong. The Confederate artillery proved unable to best its Union counterpart, and had to move its ammunition supplies back to now risk having them hit as the Union artillery engaged in counter-battery fire. This reduced the rate of fire for the Confederate artillery and locked them in an artillery duel with the Union artillery instead of dominating the terrain around the Union positions.\n\nStuart's cavalry got embroiled fighting the Union cavalry and was never able to get in behind the Union line.\n\nAt the same time, as you can see on the map, Pickett's division realised they had advanced along the wrong axis and decided to wheel and march towards their original target - which was probably a cruicial mistake. Such a manouvre takes time when done with large amounts of men in formation, and the Confederate forces were under artillery fire from the Union artillery the whole time.\n\nOnce Pickett's division did reach its original assigned point of breakthough, the vast majority of men refused to charge home with bayonets despite specific orders to do so, and instead stopped and started exchanging rifle fire with the defenders, perfectly positioned in the killing zone of the defenders' rifle and canister (case) shot fire.\n\nOnly a few hundred men charged home - those that did carried the position but were thrown back by a Union counterattacksince their flanks were exposed by the other men not advancing.\n\nOverall, the original plan was sound, but the Confederate army lacked the resources to carry it out properly. The artillery was unable to do what it was supposed to do, the cavalry got stuck fighting the Union cavalry and the infantry of Pickett's division arrived with enough casualties to deter them from charging home as per their original order. Thus the attack failed.",
"vonadler has summarized the situation and so far Lee had not lost anything and came from a couple of years of beating the Union over and over, the most recent one in Chancellorsville which was a total shame for the Union once again. Lee always excelled at reading the opponents mind and taking some bets and risks, and so far it worked for him. He was an excellent General, specially at tactical level.\nFurther important considerations:\n\n- Civil War armies fought hand to hand so this mean they were really close to each other once they collided, even camped near by, within a mile sometimes. Doing nothing on the 3rd day would not be an option, you had either to attack or retreat and disengage. The attack we know how it ended but the retreat could have been far worse. You have to turn your back on your enemy while a rearguard tries to keep them at bay, very risky business, normally any sensible General would fall upon your rear and strike, you have no order of battle and may be defeated in detail. And if you retreat, where do you go from there? Back to Virginia? back to a defensive position to try again? how to supply your troops in the meantime? No easy choice.\n\n- Lee was there, with limited supplies and no chance to get any from his base back in Virginia. He had to force a decisive battle, if the Union Army gave way there he would be likely to gather quite some stuff from the Federal train (as he usually did) and create quite a lot of mayhem both militarily and politically but this is \"what if\" stuff that I do not favor as historian, but Lee surely weighted his options. A potential Union defeat of withdrawal would have set the Northern public opinion very nervous feeling Philadelphia and potentially Baltimore under threat, what about if the remaining of the Federal Army could not stop him in a last ditch battle? would the doors being open to these cities? should peace be negotiated? would European powers recognize the Confederacy? Lee never had time to write his autobiography but I am sure he put all this in the balance. \n\n- The Union was in a very favorable defending position, I'd not say impregnable but certainly a good one. Lee had to know this, he had found himself in the reverse back in Fredericksburg last winter and managed to repel the Federals under Burnside but he still though that they could be dislodged if sufficient pressure could be exerted. It proved otherwise but Lee took his chances.\n\n- One of the longest, hardest and hottest debates of Civil War experts still turn around this 3rd day at Gettysburg. As vonadler says the Confederate artillery was ineffective (they suffer a constant issues along all the war in terms of ammo reliability) and is believed that in fact many rounds actually hit areas well behind the Union main line at the center. In Civil War times once you fired the 1st salvo all became hidden by the smoke and fine tuning for the gun crews was very difficult. \n\n- Longstreet, to me one of the best Corp Commanders of the entire war in both sides, was made a scape goat in the years after the war for his fellow generals and the so called Lost Cause, but part of his criticism to Lee and reluctance to execute Lee's orders can only be seen as accurate now. I think he clearly smelled the flaws in the plan for the 3rd day and in my humble opinion he clearly assessed that the force assigned tot he assault was insufficient.\n\n- One last thing, unfortunately one that can't be proved, is how confident Lee felt those critical 3 days. He came from defeating or repelling the Union Army and his long list of commanding generals over and over in the last 2 years, especially the last 6-8 months. Why he would not be able to gain the upper hand once more? He had taken bigger risks in the past, dividing his army prior to Antietam and still survived, he entrenched in Fredericksburg and repelled the union assaults causing thousand of casualties and provoking Burnside relief from command, he had divided his army once again in Chancellorsville to take the offensive against Hooker and prevailed once again. He had read the mind of all those commanders and anticipated their moves and prevailed, why not once more?\n",
"Vonadler makes some great points, as do many other contributors. I would like to hammer home one point that historians now heavily discuss, the fact that the question about the third day always tries to explain why the Confederates lost, rather than why the Union won. Though the Army of the Potomac had the same name, it was by no means the same army that Lee had bested over the past year. Incompetent commanders were increasingly sacked, untrained volunteers were now battle hardened veterans, troop dispositions were far more tactically/strategically sound, and Union officers were more aggressive and independent. \n\nBoth Lee and Meade's army suffered under the strain of incompetent commanders who owed their positions to political intrigue. Though these still existed in the Union army, Union commanders were now more inclined to remove these men from positions where they could do untold damage. Furthermore, Lincoln himself had a penchant for removing officers from all levels of command, resulting in an army of professionals. As it so happened, General Hancock's command was at the center, arguably one of the best division and corp commanders the Union had. \n\nOfficers were not only becoming professionals, but so were the volunteers in the army. These men, particularly the ones in the center of Meade's line on the third day were battle hardened veterans of some of the toughest regiments the Union had to offer. Furthermore, they sensed the moment, many testified to it at the time. They recognized how critical this day was and each man felt the weight of their nation's fate on their shoulders. Combined with the steadfastness of their commanders, their determination and grit shown that day in the face of the massive assault.\n\nThis determined defensive line was well chosen. The ground was in their favor and the placement of artillery was impeccable. It is easy to say that \"this is good ground,\" but you still need to know how to use it to your advantage, which the defenders clearly did. \n\nLastly, Union commanders were more aggressive and independent than before. Vondaler is right that Stewart's attempts to get around the Union flank were thwarted. Why was it thwarted? Because of numerous near suicidal charges by Union cavalry, led in part by none other than George Armstrong Custer. Custer's cavalry, though outnumbered, stopped the Confederates dead in their tracks, allowing reinforcements to be brought up and alerting Meade to the turning movement. It was the aggressive and independent action of Union cavalry that helped win the day. In the past, Confederate cavalry reigned supreme in nearly every encounter with Union troopers, this one could argue was the beginning of the end of that dominance. \n\nSo to sum up, this was a different animal that confronted Lee on the Third Day. Though the Confederates blundered, it was the actions of Union soldiers and commanders at every level that won the day. As one historian put it, rather dryly, why did the Confederates lose that day? The Union army had something to do with it. :-). (Source: Gary Gallagher, Lee and His Generals in War and Memory. Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Gary Gallagher, The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. (Editor and co- author))",
"Thank you everyone, one last comment, if anyone wants to know more the last work on Gettysburg by Allan Guelzo \"The last invasion\" is a great account of the whole battle and the events that led to it. Highly recommended.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Pickett's-Charge.png"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Gettysburg-Invasion-Allen-C-Guelzo/dp/0307594084"
]
] |
|
6p8pms
|
What are my chances of getting heads at least once from two coin flips?
|
If I have a quarter and I flip it twice, what's the chances that I'll get heads at least one time? I have two 50% chances of getting heads so I should have a 100% statistical chance of getting heads at least one of the times, right?
However even if the coin is completely fair, it's expected that it's possible to get tails both times, so clearly I don't have a 100% guaranteed chance of getting at least one heads from my two flips.
What is the real chance of getting heads one time from two coin flips? In other words, what are the chances the coin behaves the way it should statistically? Is there a way to refer to this rather than pure statistical chance?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6p8pms/what_are_my_chances_of_getting_heads_at_least/
|
{
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"There are 4 outcomes out of two coin flips:\n\n1. heads & heads\n2. heads & tails\n3. tails & heads\n4. tails & tails\n\nThe outcomes which land at least once heads are 1, 2, 3. The probability of that event is, therefore, 3/4.\n\nEquivalently, the \"at least one X*_outcome_*\" wording allows you to simplify the determination of probability for any arbitrarily large numbers of flips. If you flip a coin _n_ times, and want to know the probability of getting at least one head, note the outcome of getting all tails is the \"complement\" of the set of outcomes in which you get at least one head.\n\nThe probability of getting all/only tails, when flipping a coin _n_ times is equal to: 1/2^(n)\n\nprobability of getting at least one head = 1 − P*_0 heads_* = 1 − P*_all tails_* = 1 − 1 / 2^(n)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1zf9y1
|
How Different was Isaac Newton from his time? Compared to what was happening at that time, how significant was his work?
|
Basically I want to understand a little better really how much ahead he was from his time if he was at all.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zf9y1/how_different_was_isaac_newton_from_his_time/
|
{
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"text": [
"I'm not sure I can answer the how different was he question for you. Certainly others were interested in similar questions, be they optical, alchemical or astronomical/mechanical. Afterall it was only after prodding by his contemporaries that Newton ultimately looked at the question of what sort of orbit a body would take due to an inverse squared force. Certainly his mathematical ability was unique and it helped him pioneer new ground and solve problems that people like Hooke were woefully ill-equipped to approach. I'd personally point to the methodological approach in the Principia as his single greatest departure from the natural philosophy of the time, as well as his most lasting legacy, particularly among the so-called 18th century Newtonians. The fairly biting objections raised from followers of the mechanical philosophy on the continent also give some indication of exactly how different his approach really was (although some have characterized it as something of a throw-back to prior \"occult\" philosophies). Reading Newton's laws of reasoning really doesn't give you much insight into his methods, and it's not as if all Newton scholars agree on exactly what his methodology was, but personally I'm inclined to side with G. Smith's view. It's a bit complicated but if you're interested I'd pick up a copy of the Cambridge Companion guide to Newton (Smith is also an editor) and read his essay \"Newton's Method.\" You could crudely describe it as moving from phenomena to a mathematically characterized force and then to a physically characterized force that accounts for the specific phenomena. Shapiro's piece in there about Newton's optical work might also be of interest.\n\n\nThere's really so much to say here but perhaps this will be enough to convince you of his central importance in the history of physics."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a4m87s
|
the difference between a legal and an illegal war.
|
Yes, I know there are numerous treaties and conventions governing conduct in war but is war itself legal and is there a distinction between a legal and illegal war?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4m87s/eli5_the_difference_between_a_legal_and_an/
|
{
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"text": [
"Legal wars have a declaration of war before people start shooting. Most other things that we colloquially call \"war\" are \"police actions\", \"peacekeeping\", or \"nation building\".",
"In just war theory we can distinguish between *jus ad bellum* (right to war) and *jus in bello* (right in war). The first concerns itself with what are justifications for going to war, and the second with proper conduct when in war. Together these can be seen as the law of war. Over time there has been a number of sources for \nlaw of war, most famously the Geneva convention. \n\nOne of the biggest concepts in international politics is sovereignty. All states have sovereignty, which means that whatever happens within their borders is their own concern, and other states can't violate this sovereignty.\n\nCurrently, in international law there are two main reasons when going to war is seen as legal and thus acceptable to the international community. First is self-defense. Second is if the UN Security Council permits it. Since the 1990s there is also the introduction of the concept of Resonsibility to Protect, which means that the international community should intervene in gross human rights violations, even if those are happening within a country and thus intervention violates the sovereignty of that country. R2P however is not something that states can unilaterally invoke, it should go through the United Nations.\n\nBecause of this, any act of war that is started without Security Council clearance and that is not committed in self defence is illegal under international law.",
"\"Legal war\" is basically defined as one where your neighbors decide that it was an acceptable idea. The crusades were \"legal\" because the rest of Europe decided that they were justified in their reasoning (wanting to retake Jerusalem) and thus didn't get angry about it.\n\nWhen you have multiple sovereign states that exist near each other, and all of them have armies, they have to trust that their neighbors won't attack them. If a country only goes to war for specific reasons (you invaded me, you kidnapped my queen, you have a different religion than me) then their neighbors can feel confident that by avoiding these actions they can avoid being attacked.\n\nIf the country simply goes to war because they feel like it, or because of things that you can't control (I kill you because you have non-aryans) then it is declared an illegal war. When a country declares a war illegal, they are asking other countries ti help them stop it.\n\nFor instance, Ukraine is saying that Russia's aggression towards them is illegal. This doesn't necessarily mean they are breaking the law (they are breaking international law but that is not really something that can be enforced) but rather that Ukraine is saying \"they are bad dangerous people who can't be trusted to not attack their neighbors. Please help me beat them up so they will stop attacking their neighbors\".\n\nThis also explains why we sometimes care about illegal wars (nazi Germany) and sometimes don't (Darfur). We only really care if a country is dangerous if they are dangerous to *us*. If not, then our concern over whether the war is legal or illegal is pretty small.",
"War is illegal, with 3 exceptions, as stated in the Chapter VII of the UN Charter.\n\nYou can declare war if you are going to get attacked imminently, war can be allowed by the UN Security Council, and you can engage your troops in a country that requested assistance and has accepted your intervention.",
"Going for the real ELI5 prize here.\n\nMost of the world uses a thing called \"Just War Theory\" to decide what is a legal war and what is an illegal war. For a war to be legal, it has to abide by three sets of rules: one set of rules covers what happens before the war starts, one set covers what happens during the war, and one set covers what happens when the war ends.\n\nThe set of rules before a war is made up of six rules: 1) **you must be a state** to have a legal war, so the United States or North Korea can have a legal war but something like a company or a church or just a big group of people can't have a legal war, 2) **you must tell everyone**, including who you're going to go to war with, that you're going to have a war, 3) **your goal must be to create a better, more peaceful world by going to war**, so your goal could be to stop terrorism or genocide but not to gain more land or resources, 4) **you have to have a good chance of winning the war**, 5) **you can only use a \"proportional\" amount of violence in the war** so you can't just bomb everything, everywhere, you have to limit the violence only to what is absolutely needed to win, 6) **you can only go to war after you've tried everything else**, so you have to try all other non-violent options first like talking to your enemy to try to find a compromise.\n\nOnce you've done those things, you're ready to go to war! There are five rules to follow during the war for it to be a legal war: 1) **you can only attack the enemy and no one else**, so you can't attack people that aren't in the enemy's military and you can't attack them if they've already given up or have gotten too injured to keep fighting, 2) **your attacks have to be only as rough on your enemy as is fair based on what the enemy has done**, so you can't just use huge weapons unless the enemy is doing such bad things that that would be an equal response, 3) **you can only do things against your enemy if it helps to win the war**, so blowing up a factory that makes weapons for your enemy is okay but blowing up just a plain old office building is not, 4) **you have to treat people from your enemy's military that you capture or that give up to you fairly**, 5) **you can't use evil methods**, so you can't use things like rape, forcing your captured enemy soldiers to fight against your enemy, or certain weapons like nuclear bombs or poison gas. \n\nNow that you've done all that and you've defeated your enemy, it's time to end the war! There are five rules left: 1) **you have to have a good reason to end the war**, so either you accomplished your goal you set in rule #3 of the first set of rules or you have decided you aren't going to be able to accomplish that goal legally, 2) **your plans for ending the war can only include things like an apology from your enemy and getting your enemy to pay only for things that they messed up**, so you can't just get whatever you want and take revenge on your enemy, 3) **you and whoever you make the agreement with to end the war have to be the leaders of both sides and you have to tell everyone about your agreement**, 4) **you have to make it clear who was involved in the war and the causes of the war and who wasn't and you can't punish those who weren't involved**, 5) **your punishment for the enemy has to be equal to what they did wrong**.\n\nIf the world believes you have done these things, the war was legal, and if you don't, then the world will see it as illegal.",
"TBH it comes down to who wins the war. We do have treaties and conventions determining what does and does not count as a war crime, but if you break those rules and decisively win it's not like anyone is going to be able to punish you for breaking them without going to war.",
"The notion of legality between states is just a construct that doesn’t really mean anything. There is no court of law that can judge a state and send it to jail for behaving badly.\n\nThat being said, there are many international treaties and organizations that have agreed to behave a certain way and have contrived punishments to others that don’t stick to that behavior. The United Nations is one such organization. The Geneva accords is another such treaty.\n\nBut in practice, a state can just do whatever\nthe fuck it wants as long as it is willing to suffer through temporary economic sanctions from other states. An example is Russia annexing parts of two neighbors including military invasions. Nobody even blinked an eye. \n\nIf a leader is savvy enough and has the right leverage, he can manipulate the international treaties and alliances in such a way to basically allow his country to get away with any “illegal” war. Hitler did it. Putin’s doing it. The Brits, French, Italians did it. The Chinese are annexing large swaths of ocean right now.\n\n"
]
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3sos05
|
Since a Muslim cannot enslave another Muslim, most of the Ottoman Janissaries were kept Christian. Why didn't they convert to Islam to win their freedom?
|
I've been doing some reading on the Ottoman Empire and found this to be an odd historical quandary. From what I read, most of the Janissaries were taught Islamic law and culture but never converted to Islam, presumably so they could stay slaves. Why didn't the Janissaries just convert to Islam (or lie about converting) to win their freedom via a loophole?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3sos05/since_a_muslim_cannot_enslave_another_muslim_most/
|
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"I think you have a slight misunderstanding. Muslims can absolutely *have Muslim slaves*. The Mamluks for whom the Ottomans' predecessor empire was named started off as, yup, Muslim slaves. The famous \"singing girls\" of the medieval Islamic courts from al-Andalus to Baghdad were almost all slaves. ~~Muslim children of Muslim slaves are still slaves.~~ *(This only ends up true in rare cases; see discussions below.)* The issue is that a Muslim cannot *enslave* another Muslim, that is, they cannot take a free Muslim and make him or her into a slave. \n\nThe janissaries were indeed typically taken from the Orthodox Christian population (until the corps became prestigious enough that Muslim families volunteered their sons freely); however, their education amounted to a forced conversion. (Of course their teachers would have maintained conversion was simply the natural result of good moral instruction and perhaps peer pressure.) For example, 16th century janissary Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was Serbian Christian by birth but eventually became grand vizier, and in his extreme wealth he founded/patronized mosques all over the Empire."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
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putpx
|
Is there such a thing as genetic memory?
|
Is there any science behind genetic memory, a la Dune?
Is it possible that "information" is passed to the fetus from the mother during pregnancy?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/putpx/is_there_such_a_thing_as_genetic_memory/
|
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"text": [
"Epigenetics is the closest thing you'll find.",
"According to my Neuroscience textbook from last semester, there is such a thing as \"Phylogenetic Memory.\" According to the book, \"A category of information storage not usually considered in standard accounts is memories that arise from the experience of the species over the eons, established by natural selection acting on cellular and molecular mechanisms of neural development...These 'memories' are no less consequential than those acquired by individual experience and are likely to have much underlying biology in common with the memories established during an individual's lifetime.\"\nPhylogenetic memory can lead to some very complex behaviors, which is most thoroughly studied in hatchlings. An example of this would be hatchlings would be exposed to a silhouette of differing shapes, and would only react (by cowering) to silhouettes of that species' specific predator(s).\nIt then goes on to propose that \"...[phylogenetic memory] is probably the most important component of the stored information in the brain that determines whether or not an individual survives long enough to reproduce.\"\n\nPurves, D et al. Neuroscience. 4th edition. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc; 2008 (793)\n\nedit: formatting",
"Short answer: not in anything like the way you're thinking, no.\n\nSlightly longer answer: first of all, the only truly genetic information the fetus gets from its mother is in the DNA of the egg, which actually forms while *she's* still in her mother's womb - she just has one batch of oocytes for her whole life that she doles out one by on for a few decades. She could get cancerous mutations all over her body, but they wouldn't be inherited because they wouldn't affect the DNA in the oocytes. \n\nNow, there are some known ways that information from the mother's womb can leave an imprint on the fetus for the rest of its life, even though they're not strictly genetic. It's starting to look like intrauterine environmental stimuli like hormone levels and food shortages can cause permanent epigenetic modifications to the fetus' DNA that will change its hormone responses or metabolism long into its adult life. If you want to consider this information transfer from the mother, that's not wrong - it's just not genetic, not information passing from her genome into the fetus' genome.",
"To clarify what others have said, epigenetics is theory that deals with methylations of the genome and the way histones (proteins around which the DNA winds itself, in order to stay compact) bind to the genome.\n\nIt's a theory because modern scanning methods require the DNA be denatured, ie unbound from histones; and usually replicated in a process called polymerase chain reaction which produces more copies of the genome. These copies usually contain a different number of methylations than the original genome, not to mention histones will not be present in the mix.\n\nSo we cannot truly identify why these phenotypical changes occur. The reason why we know these changes are not genetic is because identical twins (they have identical dna) can have different lateral preferences and sexual orientations. So the only way we can explain these changes is not through nucleotide sequence, but in the way DNA binds itself to histones and the way in which methylations modify enzymatic activity on the genome.\n\nWhat's even stranger is that methylations and changes in which the way DNA binds to histones, change over a lifetime. Stranger still is how these changes can be passed on to future generations. For instance, famine during a person's teenage years, increases the risk of diabetes in their grandchildren by quite a significant amount.\n\nAs for information being passed to the foetus during pregnancy, it is possible and it is known as the maternal effect. Maternal effect can be seen in certain species of insects, where if the mother carries 2 recessive genes, proteins in the egg will be made using those genes. If the father carries 2 dominant alleles of the same gene, the larvae will be born expressing the recessive trait. Eventually though, as they grow older, they start synthesising their own proteins and will eventually show the dominant phenotype. Same thing goes for certain snails' shell helix direction. Only in this case, they will display the same helix direction throughout their life (clockwise or counter-clockwise) as the one expressed by the allele contained in the mother snail's egg. Why? Because you simply cannot go back, destroy the old shell and start building a new one in the opposite direction. It's easier to just keep going."
]
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[
[],
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[]
] |
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1cdb88
|
What is the mesh made of that is used for hernia repair? No medical advise.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cdb88/what_is_the_mesh_made_of_that_is_used_for_hernia/
|
{
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"text": [
"Wikipedia has an article on [inguinal hernia surgery](_URL_0_) with a section on [meshes](_URL_0_#Meshes). Sounds like you may be getting a type of [biomesh](_URL_3_). \n\nThese are still an emerging technology. [Cook Biodesign](_URL_6_) has very interesting resources on their own product. If this turns out to be the one your doctor suggests they are using for your procedure, it would be made from the [small intestinal submucosa](_URL_5_) of a pig.\n\nThere are four major layers of tissue comprising normal gastrointestinal tracts: mucosa, submucosa, muscular stuff, and the smooth outer serous layer. Producers strip out everything but the submucosa and end up with a rigid, sturdy material full of [collagen](_URL_1_). They sterilize it before providing it to doctors in various shapes and sizes.\n\nPigs are used because it they are generally accepted as the best non-human donors for us for a variety of reasons. See [xenotransplantation](_URL_4_).\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inguinal_hernia_surgery",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inguinal_hernia_surgery#Meshes",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomesh",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation#Potential_future_animal_organ_donors",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_intestinal_submucosa",
"http://www.cookbiodesign.com/procedures/hernia-repair"
]
] |
||
rgnxc
|
A few questions regarding common phenomena on the molecular level.
|
I've always wondered what happens at the molecular level when something like a burn occurs. My understanding of temperature is that it simply increases the energy of a system so molecules will move more quickly; what aspect of this causes cellular damage? I've also wondered what happens in chemical burns. I've learned acidity relates to willingness to donate a proton so if something is acidic (donates hydrogen) why does this cause burning or damage to human skin? Finally I was wondering about the sanitizing qualities of alcohol. I've read that alcohol causes dehydration on the molecular level but does this lead to cellular death of bacteria and if so, how?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rgnxc/a_few_questions_regarding_common_phenomena_on_the/
|
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" > what aspect of this causes cellular damage? \n\nHeat causes chemical bonds to break and proteins to denature.\n\n > something is acidic (donates hydrogen) why does this cause burning or damage to human skin?\n\nThe acid can react with various compounds and change their properties and again, a change in pH can cause proteins to denature.\n\n > I've read that alcohol causes dehydration on the molecular level but does this lead to cellular death of bacteria and if so, how?\n\nAlcohol doesn't kill by dehydration really, it kills mainly by denaturing proteins."
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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6apkpv
|
why australia is allowed to participate in eurovision?
|
I just honestly don't understand it, and I myself am Australian! I just don't understand how a non-European nation can participate in something that has Euro in the name. I get that initially it was because of us being the biggest broadcast thing outside the EU, and because it was the 60th anniversary, but from the research I've done, we would've only been allowed back if we won, which we didn't. Am I missing something here?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6apkpv/eli5_why_australia_is_allowed_to_participate_in/
|
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"Regardless of what it is being said I believe it is political. Australia is not the only non-European country in Eurovision, Israel is in Eurovision too but Greece and Turkey are no longer in it despite being part of Europe. And I think this year Russia is not compete ",
"They asked nicely. \n\nSince it's a TV show, more viewers means more money from ads. If Australia wants to participate, and thus have the show run in their country too, the creators profit.\n\nI'd also imagine that since us Americans are well.... our usual hyper-patriotic selves, Australia has a hard time hanging onto our coattails. ",
"I think they added them as a kind of \"joke\" at the anniversary of the ESC and sticked with it since everybody think its hillarious. ",
"There are also strong historical associations between Australia and European pop music. It was where ABBA first blew up in a major way, so much that it's become part of the culture, after ABBA's Eurovision victory put them on the map. The Australian pop scene has delivered many great bands too. It's just more in tune with the Europop sensibility.",
" > On 10 February 2015, the EBU announced that in honour of the 60th anniversary of Eurovision, it had invited Australia to participate in the finals of the contest, represented by Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). SBS had been a long-time broadcaster of the event, which has had a large following in Australia\n\nA quick wikipedia search on EuroVision '15 gave me this.\n\nBasically it's a show that is watched a lot in Australia, a honor guest for the Anniversary."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
fe1yae
|
Should we think of the Japanese Emperor as more akin to the Pope than a Caesar?
|
I occasionally read about Japanese History and I am admittedly rather clueless on that area. One thing I consistently see, however, is the idea that the Emperor was more a figurehead than a real political force. The Shogun was the real leader. However when I investigate further I by and large read about what sounds like a religious head than a political one.
I can't help but think, should we view the Japanese Emperor as more of a pope than a monarch? Granted, an hereditary papacy. But given how medieval popes behaved, I can't help but see similarities?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fe1yae/should_we_think_of_the_japanese_emperor_as_more/
|
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"**Short answer:**\n\nJapan has a political history with both real and superficial parallels to other polities, but in general analogies are more trouble than they're worth. Treat Japanese political terms and institutions as their own thing and they'll be easier to understand. Whatever European parallel you think you see . . . is often too simple.\n\n**Discussion:**\n\nYou should think of the Japanese Emperor as a distinct institution, and understand his changing role in the context of Japanese history. Japanese Emperors have had considerable temporal power at times. Analogies typically obscure more than they enlighten; you'll find medieval and renaissance commentaries that analogize the Caliphs of Islam to Popes . . . does that tell you much? Courtly Japan can be understood in universal terms: it's a struggle for power. And that struggle for power takes place over a remarkably complex and historically specific landscape of political and religious institutions, over a backdrop of clan rivalries and personal ambitions that have to be understood as the people who lived them understood them.\n\nJapanese Emperors had real power, they substantially lost it in the 13th and 14th centuries, but it's much too simple to say \"the Emperor is a puppet\". There are all kinds of complexities, including \"retired Emperor\". Indeed, you have on occasion political battles \\_between\\_ retired Emperors.\n\nIt's also worth noting that there were Popes who had considerable temporal power, or they were allied to those who did, and pontiffs who had no temporal power often had (and continue to have) substantial political power . . . so they're politically more powerful than, say, the Emperors of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The religious role of the Popes is also quite different: to a great extent the Emperor's religious role are the ceremonies he performs, and although there are specific religious institutions associated with the Imperial family, the Japanese Emperor didn't \"run the religion\" in the way that that Popes do and have done.\n\n > \"The Shogun was the real leader.\"\n\nSometimes, sometimes not. Japan has a history of veiled power, of regents and Shogunal regents. That is, not only on occasion do you have an Emperor without much power, you actually have periods where the Shogun didn't have much power either, and a third figure actually ruled. There's a title that's less known, the Shikken ( 執権), the Shogun's regent. This occurs during a period known as the Shikken Seiji -- the rule of the Shogunal Regents, during the Kamakura period.\n\nAll of this is fascinating material for folks looking for a baroquely complex \"Game of Thrones\"; none of it is made any easier to understand by analogy to Europe and in particularly to European religious institutions that really don't parallel Japan at all.\n\nTo understand Japanese history and institutions, its best to take them as they are. The Japanese Emperor doesn't even track all that closely to the Chinese Emperor in terms of who he was in the society. As you dig into Japanese court politics, you find categories of influence that are specific, for example the role of the *menoto*, the wet-nurse; she and her family had a connection to her milk-child that was often of great influence. Wet nurses themselves give rise to important courtly clans.\n\nSo with Emperors, imperial regents, retired Emperors, Shoguns, Shogunal regents, and more -- the specificity of Japan's political arrangements demand that you treat it as its own thing to gain any understanding. Whenever foreigners look at Japan and draw analogies \"well, the Samurai are like European feudal knights\" -- well, they are . .. and then again, they're not. It's better just to say \"daimyo and samurai\" rather than to worry about just how the relationship does/doesn't map to the Counts of Anjou.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSee:\n\nBauer, Mikael. “Conflating Monastic and Imperial Lineage: The Retired Emperors' Period Reformulated.” *Monumenta Nipponica*, vol. 67, no. 2, 2012, pp. 239–262.,\n\nSpafford, David. “Emperor and Shogun, Pope and King: The Development of Japan's Warrior Aristocracy.” *Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts*, vol. 88, no. 1/4, 2014, pp. 10–19.\n\nJeffrey P. Mass, Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu: The Origins of Dual Government in Japan (Stanford, CA, 1999)\n\nConlan, Thomas D. “Thicker than Blood: The Social and Political Significance of Wet Nurses in Japan, 950-1330.” *Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies*, vol. 65, no. 1, 2005, pp. 159–205."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[]
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|
6b83a3
|
Does charging your phone slower, by connecting it to a pc by usb-a, makes the battery last longer than connecting directly into a outlet?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6b83a3/does_charging_your_phone_slower_by_connecting_it/
|
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"The low and slow methods are less stressful on the battery because the heating is related to the square of the power (P=I^(2)*R) and some will overheat until you don't really want to hold it in your hand or shutdown entirely. Thermal expansion and contraction flex a battery that doesn't want to be flexed, but most batteries compensate and slowly degrade instead of catching on fire. Quick chargers are best when you can swap batteries at the end of life",
"Your phone regulates its charging on its own based on the temperature of your battery and your power source. So it will self regulate. Assuming your phone doesnt have this software (they all do, if it has a USB charging option), connecting to a weaker charger would be better. But this mechanism is what prevents your phone from lighting on fire. ",
"It is more about battery temperature, more than anything else. Slow charging reduces the amount of heat the battery is exposed to, which helps it last longer in terms of lifespan.\n\nIf you can keep the phone's battery temperatures down, fast charging shouldn't really do anything to the battery lifespan, but that's mighty difficult to do. "
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[],
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gzt26
|
How much do vitamins actually help? My family is very pro vitamin and I feel like they're wasting hundreds a year.
|
Someone was asking about it in r/answers and it sparked my interest to find some evidence to back all of this up. Thanks r/askscience
_URL_0_
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gzt26/how_much_do_vitamins_actually_help_my_family_is/
|
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"[some stuff ~~deleted~~ per \"no medical advice\" rule]\n\nYou'll often hear reports of how \"a study found xyz to be beneficial to your health, because xyz deficiency may increase your risk of Redditosis\", but this rarely translates to \"you, random person on the street, with no signs of xyz deficiency or Redditosis, should take xyz anyway\". \n\nResearch is frequently misinterpreted, especially by the popular media. They like to take the short cut, and equate \"beneficial in studies\" with \"everybody should take it\", but that's simply not true. It's like going from \"research shows that running is good for you\" to \"everyone should run 2 hours a day!\" Something to think about next time you see an article or news segment about \"new medical discoveries\". (\"Are you getting enough XYZ? The answer may surprise you. Tune in for news at 11.\").\n\n\nNow to the nitty gritty part. Tl;dr folks will want to stop here.\n\nIt's not enough for xyz to be beneficial. This is because there is an inherent difference between clinical guidelines and research. Clinical guidelines take an epidemiological perspective, and goes beyond the \"is supplementing xyz beneficial?\" question. It asks:\n\n1) Is supplementing XYZ beneficial? *(if not, why take it)*\n\n2) Are there a significant portion of the population that is deficient? And are they easily identifiable? *(no point in dosing everyone if only an identifiable subset is deficient)* \n\n3) What is the risk and how severe are the problems caused by deficiency? *(for pregnant women, folate deficiency can cause major problems with the fetus.)*\n\n4) What are XYZ's adverse effects? *(yes, hypervitaminosis is an issue; too much of anything is harmful. As an interesting side note, some vitamins have adverse effects - i.e. increased cancer risk - even at normal levels; it's just that the side effects of deficiency are worse.)*\n\n5) Weighing XYZ's adverse effects vs benefits, is there a net positive outcome in having the population at large supplement their diet with XYZ? *(Keeping in mind that even if the net gain is very small or zero, we don't do it.)*\n\nSometimes even something proven to be beneficial isn't something that we would suggest everyone take.\n\nSo what does this epidemiology have to do with you? When we don't know who you are and what your medical history is, we assume that you are a generic member of a population, and use the generic profile of the population to represent you. So the \"should I, random person with no sign or risk for xyz deficiency, take supplement xyz\" then becomes an epidemiological question: \"Should everybody take supplement xyz?\" Both questions will have the same answer.\n\n[some other stuff ~~deleted~~ per \"no medical advice\" rule]\n\n**EDIT: Dietitian got back to me.**\n\n* On the matter of dosing all patients, \"no, the guidelines have not changed.\" (Meaning **there aren't any supplements that we recommend to everybody**, vitamin or otherwise.) \n\n* On the matter of dosing large groups: \"Recommend folate supplements for women of childbearing age. Vitamin B12 and vitamin C/D/calcium combination for elderly patients.\"\n\n* Other than that, \"encourage improvement in the patient's diet for mild deficiencies\" *on an individual basis*, and \"supplement as indicated\".\n\nWith all due respect to herman_gill and his treasure trove of research, in terms of clinical protocol, I'm gonna take our hospital's dietician's word on this one. \n\nThat's not to say herman_gill's citations' research are wrong. What will probably end up happening is normal lab values will be changed for some compounds, and people who weren't previously considered deficient will be reclassified and treated. But this is *not the same* as suggesting a supplement to everybody who walks in the door just because \"[it] has been shown to be beneficial for a slew of stuff\". ",
"In the developed world, there has been no evidence showing any benefit of vitamin supplementation, with the following exceptions:\n\n* \nFolic acid in women in early pregnancy.\n* \nIron in those with anemia, particularly women with heavy menstrual flow.\n\n* \nVitamin B12 in strict vegans.\n\n* \nCalcium and vitamin D in those at risk for osteoporosis.\n\n*note: this is from memory, I may be forgetting one or two*\n\nIn other words, multivitamins don't appear to be doing much.\n\nA grain of salt for this discussion: clinical studies regarding vitamins are VERY difficult to do. If vitamins work, we expect them to have slight effects over many many years. So any study looking at their effectiveness will need to have a lot of people taking vitamins for a long time (i.e. EXPENSIVE). The studies have other problems as well, including many types of bias.",
"Does anyone have responses to magazines likes *Life Extension* or others that advocate using vitamins for essentially any issue you're having instead of conventional medicine?\n\nAre studies claiming that vitamins are (generally) not worth it looking at how much the body can absorb or just FDA Standards?",
"The body has relatively hard limits (which **can** be modified leading to toxicity) on how much it will absorb when it comes to most vitamins and micronutrients. I can dig up hard numbers if you want, it wouldn't take me very long.\n\nFor example Cromium(III) absorption is between 0.4% to 2.5% of what you intake and the daily recommended amount is 25 - 35 *micrograms*, which is one millionth of a gram. The body's total amount of zinc is between 2 - 2.25 *grams*. That's 2,000 - 2,500 milligrams which is what a lot of vitamins list their ingredients in. The body doesn't go through zinc that fast, so you really don't need much of it. \n\nIn general we get enough of these micronutrients from our diet as ThePluralOfAncedote said. Straight up, you absolutely are not absorbing very much of those really expensive pills. \n\n",
"Where would fish oil capsules fit into this discussion? ",
"Just a reminder \n > **Do not give or take medical advice.** "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/gzcgp/when_someone_takes_a_vitamin_pill_such_as_oneaday/"
] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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] |
|
cw7u6g
|
how do barcodes work when the same item is sent to different places with different register systems, different prices assigned, etc.?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cw7u6g/eli5_how_do_barcodes_work_when_the_same_item_is/
|
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"The bar code is just another way of writing a number, which is also printed directly below the barcode.\n\nWhat happens is that the manufacturer says \"this bar code number corresponds to this product,\" and all of the stores list it in their systems under that number.\n\nIt doesn't communicate any information about price, however. So the store is free to assign \"UPC X = $Y\" in their own system totally independently of any other store's systems.",
"Barcodes, in general, are just a specific way to encode an ID number. There's a specific way to read them. For example, this energy drink I've got in front of me has the barcode value of 610764863375. If I owned a store, I would have a system that I would need to enter all of the items I carry into. I'd enter this energy drink, with its description and barcode. When I scan the code, the system does a lookup for that number. It finds the energy drink record and outputs that price.\n\nThe barcodes don't tie back to some other system in any way - it's just a specific way to identify that item.",
"Lots of folks mentioning that bar codes are just number formatting, but there are international standards. A bar code does not have to be registered. Someone can manually enter any information that they like. But most bar codes are registered, so that the same number means the same information no matter who scans it.\n\nGS1 is the big organization which is most widely used. You pay an annual fee, depending on how many bar codes you need. It isn't some crazy high number either. If I'm remembering correctly, my place has 100 numbers and it costs us a few hundred a year.",
"Fun fact scanners scan the \"spaces\" (white part) not the lines (black part) of barcodes. Learned this by working at an Amazon return center where if the labels were covered we had to use Clorox wipes to rub off the top labels to get at the original ones and if the ends were covered you could still scan it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
c485h8
|
do subprime loans hurt credit score?
|
Would future lenders look with scorn at it?
Would it lower my credit score in the long term?
EDIT: I am yet to take out this loan.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c485h8/eli5_do_subprime_loans_hurt_credit_score/
|
{
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"text": [
"Subprime loans are reported by business name. They don't say Loan, subprime 1 of 1. They report the name of the issuer and your payment history, loan amount, and paid off/delinquent/etc."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a6l6wy
|
How do we know there were giant insects back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth?
|
Obviously dinosaurs left bones and sharks left teeth. Insects didn’t leave fossils, so how do we know?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a6l6wy/how_do_we_know_there_were_giant_insects_back_when/
|
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"For one thing, they didn't live at the same time as the dinosaurs, but in the Carboniferous period about 100 million years prior to the appearance of dinosaurs. For another, they can indeed leave fossils. They had tough exoskeletons, and even soft body parts can be preserved under ideal conditions.",
"Insects actually did leave behind fossil evidence! During the Carboniferous period almost 400 million years ago, there are dragonflies and cockroaches recorded within fossils. The most fascinating part of it to me is that because there was said to be an extreme excess of oxygen in the atmosphere at that time, these insects grew to be feet long! \n\nCheck out these articles if you’re still curious: \n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n",
"Lagerstatte is a word used to describe fossil beds of much higher than usual preservation - either through number of organisms, by the outstanding quality of the preservation, or both. \n\nThe [Mazon Creek Lagerstatte](_URL_0_) is known for its preservation of soft parts and sorts of organisms that rarely fossilise, including large insects from the Carboniferous. A recent review of all the stuff in it analysed with modern methods was [published this year](_URL_1_). ",
"Just to add to the good answers here already - those bugs in amber in Jurassic Park? That's a real thing. We most definitely have tons and tons of insect fossils - and in some cases the whole animal, frozen in amber. \n\n_URL_0_\n",
"1. fossils\n2. extrapolation - we know from contemporary biology that the limiting factor of insects' size is inefficiency of his perspiratory system - it can't keep up with bodies larger than what insects have.\n\nbut we also know that back then, proportion of oxygen in atmosphere was much higher, so the same inefficient system was good enough even for much larger bodies.\n\nboth of these meet at the same conclusion: huge insects."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/news/2011/08/110808-ancient-insects-bugs-giants-oxygen-animals-science",
"https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/prehistoric-insects"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazon_Creek_fossil_beds",
"http://jgs.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2018/09/24/jgs2018-088"
],
[
"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-order-insect-found-trapped-ancient-amber-180961968/"
],
[]
] |
|
rn80n
|
How do trees have flowers if trees existed before flowers did?
|
This question has been bugging me for a while now. How can there be trees with flowers and ground plants with flowers?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rn80n/how_do_trees_have_flowers_if_trees_existed_before/
|
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"text": [
"and how can there be birds with wings and insects with wings? "
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1uexfr
|
When did drinks like beer switch to being served almost exclusively cold?
|
Was it a slow process?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uexfr/when_did_drinks_like_beer_switch_to_being_served/
|
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"Hopefully our sub's alcohol expert will stop by, but meanwhile, here's an old post to get you started \n\n[When did cold beer start being commonplace?](_URL_0_)",
"I just want to jump in and say that beer is not, and should not be, exclusively served cold. Different styles of beer are best at different temperatures - for example an Imperial Stout or a Double IPA should be served \"warm\" (14-16℃), an IPA or a Saison should be \"cellar temperature\" (12-14℃), or an American Pale Ale or a Pilsner should be \"cool\" (8-12℃). \n\nOnly beers you don't want to actually taste should be really cold. Mass produced, cheap beer is served ice cold because that hides the fact that it tastes like arse, rather than because that is the temperature beer \"should\" be. If you go to nicer bars, or buy boutique beers (and follow the instructions that are probably on the label as to drinking temp) a lot of the beer you drink will be at, or only slightly below, room temperature.",
"As vontysk points out, beer aficionados (geeks) rightly realize that not every beer should be or is served ice code, but the reality is most humans drinking a class of beer in contemporary times will expect it to be far cooler than room temperature so I think this is a legit question.\n\nWidespread use of mechanical refrigeration only became common within the last 100 years so we can trace the practice to that era. That said however, in Europe especially, drinking establishments and those will a basement would often keep their barrels in a cellar and thus the beer could often be served \"cellar temperature\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m504p/when_did_cold_beer_start_being_commonplace/"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
36g64y
|
every now and then i'll lay down to go to sleep and my tv (that's off) makes a loud popping sound. what is that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36g64y/eli5every_now_and_then_ill_lay_down_to_go_to/
|
{
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"text": [
"Sometimes after watching TV for a while the internal heat makes the outer plastic expand and then it falls back into place as it cools down."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2auxhp
|
zen buddism
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2auxhp/eli5_zen_buddism/
|
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"A very very long time ago, Buddhism started up in India. As time passed, many people started thinking many different things about it. One of these schools was called \"Mahayana.\" Some people who followed this school went to China. In China, many more people started thinking even more different things about it. In the 500s, a group of people developed a set of beliefs about buddhism they called \"Chán.\" It combined Buddhist thought from India with other ideas from China, including Daoism. \n\nIdeas of Chán (a character pronounced \"zen\" when read in Japanese) reached Japan shortly after, but it never really took off until a school was founded by a guy named Nōnin in 1189. A bunch of his students traveled to China, brought back different philosophies from Chinese Chán masters, and founded the different branch schools of Zen Buddhism that you'll see around today.\n\nIn the 1960s, a guy named D.T. Suzuki came to America and published several books in English about Zen (his books are a great place to start if you want to know more about it yourself), becoming extremely popular with the hippy and new-age movements. This is one of the big reasons that popular American conceptions of Buddhism largely mirror Zen thought, even though Zen is practiced by only a tiny fraction of Buddhists in Japan, much less worldwide.\n\nGenerally what Japanese Zen philosophies share is a much lessened focus on special secret rituals, memorizing multitudes of heavens and buddhas, or other things that the wealthier, older Japanese buddhist schools like Tendai or Hosso focus on. It also doesn't focus on the things that much more popular jodo or jodo shinshu sects do, which is salvation by praying to the Amida Buddha. \n\nInstead, Zen focuses inwards on the notion that it's possible to \"awaken\" a \"buddha-nature\" (ability to think like the Buddha) inside yourself. The way to do this is to realize truths about the universe that, at first, seem to be nonsense. The ultimate goal is to truly understand how the entire universe is found inside of emptiness (which is supposed to sound like nonsense to the layperson). \n\nYou realize these truths by meditating. Meditating in zen is (stated very simply) a process where you sit and focus your mind as much as possible on nothing. The goal is perfect concentration and freedom from the distractions of all the things that go on in the world, with the ultimate goal of understanding what's going on beyond the world. Once this happens you will not suffer anymore. \n\nOne way to help this is to focus your meditation on phrases that seem like they make no sense called \"kōan.\" Some of these have become famous in popular culture in the west, such as \"what is the sound of one hand clapping.\" ",
"Buddhism pretty much is the pursuit of enlightenment which is pretty much the realization of the nature of reality. It is thought that the reality we experience is false - not in the sense that we live in the matrix - in the sense that raw experience is pretty much \"ruined\" by thinking to such an extent that what we experience is basically illusory.\n\nSo Zen is a school of buddhist thought which pursues enlightenment like any other.\n\nIt is well characterized by it's Koans, which are short phrases meant to provoke the mind in some way, usually by providing a seeming contradiction, impossibility, or other sort of difficulty. The solution is usually not important because it is a good tool to meditate on. The most famous one is probably \"If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it still make a sound?\" So you might say all kinds of things about physics or perception or whatever. A more interesting koan is on the wikipedia page: the japanese character for emptiness.\n\nContemplating nothingness and emptiness is big in Zen. It is considered important to come to understand the relationship between the mind and the environment. As a person contemplates themselves, existing, experiencing, or whatever kind of meditative practice they're doing, if they do it honestly, they are supposed to come to certain realizations about the nature of existence, namely, that there is no self, it is a construct of the mind, and that the ego and all that is sort of a self-perpetuating thing that has limited use and has overstayed its welcome.\n\nZen in popular culture has come to mean slow paced, unhurried, repetitive, calming, centered, grounded, and all these terms that mean different things to different people, but which basically mean chill.\n\nZen is a lot of \"Just look at what your mind is doing and don't succumb to your own bullshit. You won't believe how much bullshit there is, but you must act accordingly. What is the right way to act? Just look at what your mind is doing and don't succumb to your own bullshit.\"\n\nA human body\n\nSometimes farts.",
" > Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling relentlessly.\n\n > Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a delicate silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.\n\n > \"Come on, girl,\" said Tanzan at once. Lifting the giggling maiden in his arms, he carried her over the mud and set her down again on the other side.\n\n > Ekido was troubled, but did not voice his concern until that night, when he and his companion reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. \"We monks aren't supposed to go near women,\" he told Tanzan, \"especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?\"\n\n > \"I left the girl there,\" said Tanzan. \"Why are you still carrying her?\"\n\n[That's zen](_URL_0_).",
"The Buddha figured out, and taught others, that we suffer emotionally and mentally in life because we try to mentally \"hold on to\" things that aren't permanent -- the greatest of which is our own sense of self. His suggestion to relieve that suffering was to act and think in ways that help us live without mentally \"grabbing onto\" things all the time.\n\nAs a school of Buddhism, Zen teaches that the best way to achieve that is to practice a form of seated mediation, although it also incorporates walking meditation and encourages extending that manner of thought into daily activities as well. The Zen form of mediation has been described as \"sitting quietly doing nothing,\" which is a lot harder than sounds! Usually our minds are so busy flitting from one thing to the next, or obsessively pursuing one train of thought, that we rarely have a real sense of perspective about ourselves and the world around us. One goal of Zen meditation (or \"practice\") is to train yourself to be able to live with a healthier mental perspective so you can reduce that mental suffering. A second goal in some forms of Zen Buddhism is to reach enlightenment suddenly through mediation, what I paradoxically think of as strenuous non-effort.\n\nIn the U.S., \"Zen\" is often used colloquially to refer to a feeling of being \"in the zone,\" acting natural without a lot of conscious thought.",
"Like all things, Zen is best understood in context. Buddhism had already been around for about 1000 years when Zen emerged in China. Before writing became common, it was really tough to preserve the Buddha's teachings from generation to generation. Everything was taught orally, and many mnemonic devices like lists (\"the three jewels\", \"the eight perfections\" etc.) and repetition were used to help people remember.\n\nEventually things got written down as the technology became more common. This was particularly so in the advanced civilization of China, which even had academics and literature. Over time, people started focusing perhaps too much on the written words themselves. Some started to worship the words (much as they still do today with the Bible and the Quran) and the ritual over the content.\n\nZen was a reaction against this state of affairs. The assertion was that enlightenment actually isn't found in books, it's in the direct experience of life itself. Zen schools actually did still use a lot of books, but most of the famous Zen ideas like \"no words, no sutras, no mind\" are intentionally overstating their case. Anytime you're going against the prevailing wisdom of the day, you tend to try to make a splash to get noticed.\n\nIn Zen, the shock value of \"making a splash\" became highly prized as something of a shortcut to enlightenment in and of itself. This is why you hear of Zen masters doing and saying outrageous things. Their goal was to say or do something that was in such sharp relief to what you would expect the normally stern head of the monastery to do, that it would instantly free your mind from its regular habitual patterns of thought (which in Buddhism cause needless suffering). \n\nThese days, we're used to people in prestigious positions saying irreverent things for comic relief, so the effect might not be as strong. Nevertheless, you can see how freeing it would be if your culture was much more strict. The goal of comedy is to \"crack up\" and give us a break from our regular mental nervousness. In that sense, it's really not that different from what these Zen masters were doing. There's even a classic story about a Zen master making a fart joke during an intense doctrinal debate between some monks. It was considered a perfect expression of enlightenment.",
"come to understand your relationship to what you think you 'need', and how it makes you feel. then act towards your happiness.",
"## Zen Starts in China, [*right here*](_URL_0_)\n\nSome guy named Bodhidharma gets off a boat in China in 500 CE and begins explaining to all the Buddhists in China that they are misinformed. Generations of teachers after him people mostly don't understand what it's about, everybody decides to call Bodhidharma and his followers, \"Zen\". \n\nZen isn't a religion because there is no truth or sin or \"good and evil\" or anybody that can purify you or save you or teach you anything that to believe in. There is no code of conduct. There is no religious \"practice\" or any other kind of method for living or enlightenment. \n\nZen isn't a philosophy because there is no idea that is better than other ideas or even a belief in ideas at all. Zen isn't nihilism because Nihilists believe in not believing in things.\n\n## Zen Comes To America, kind of \n\nA Japanese guy named Dogen went to China around 1200 CE to learn Zen but instead Dogen went back to China and invented a new Buddhism. He called his new Buddhism \"Zen\" so it sounded cool and in Japan the other names were already taken. The new Buddhism was very popular and nobody knew anything about Zen so why not call their new Buddhism by the name \"Zen\"? Japan has a few Zen Masters like a guy named Bankei who is famous for getting sick from sitting meditation and telling people not to do it.\n\nLater in America in the 60's some guy named D.T. Suzuki wrote about what Zen Masters teach and hippies thought it sounded cool and nobody understood it. Then Suzuki died and there weren't any Zen Masters around so the Buddhists (Asian Buddhists from the Soto church or activist Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh) showed up and told everybody that sitting meditation and quiet and kindness and being \"in the moment\" was Zen and now people think that.\n\nAnybody who [reads about Zen](_URL_1_) will quickly notice that there isn't any of that stuff in Zen, especially no meditation and quiet and kindness. \n\nInstead there is a bunch of yelling and hitting people and cutting cats in half with swords and asking questions that stump religious people, sometimes questioning priests so persistently that they literally die of embarrassment.\n\nThere are also lots of jokes, lots of arguing about stuff, more questions with answers that make no sense, silly dances, more jokes, writing poems about stuff, making fun of each other and some juvenile pranks. All of it is very serious though.\n\n## Zen is not Buddhism\n\nThe word \"Buddhism\" is a Western invention, like \"American Indians\". Just like Indians are from all sorts of different tribes that don't agree about stuff, Buddhists are from all sorts of different churches that don't agree about stuff. Calling all the tribes \"Indians\" makes it sound like they agree about something, calling all Buddha worshiping churches \"Buddhism\" makes it sound like they agree when they don't. For example, getting these \"Buddhists\" to agree on what \"Buddhism\" means is like getting all the Indians to agree on what the name of their one tribe is.\n\nSince Buddhists all believe in something, some \"good\" or some \"right thinking\" or some way of \"helping\" people (by converting them to Buddhism) or something that everybody should say is true, all the Buddhisms are religions. \n\nZen doesn't teach any of that stuff, so Zen is not a religion and thus Zen is not a form of religious or philosophical Buddhism.\n\n## What do Zen Masters teach then?\n\n1. *The Four Statements of Zen*: Not reliant on the written or spoken word; A special transmission separate from scriptures; Direct pointing at one’s mind; Seeing one ‘s nature, becoming a Buddha, a free person.\n\n2. Zen makes mind its foundation and \"no gate\" its gate.\n\n3. To unify and pacify the mind is Quietism and false Zen. \n\n4. To affirm something is to be bound in chains.\n\n...and so forth. I mean Zen Masters *say* that words aren't true but they talk and talk and talk. They won't shut up about it."
]
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[] |
[] |
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[],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/101ZenStories/"
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[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/lineagetexts",
"http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm"
]
] |
||
1pystx
|
why are the poverty guidelines set so low?
|
I've posted this before, but I only really got one less-than-complete response to it. I figured I'd try again today.
So it's come to my attention that these are the figures one would have to dip under to be considered to be living under the famed "Poverty line":_URL_0_
Yet, currently living right around it, it's quite clear that the amounts listed are nowhere near enough to sustain the amount of people listed. The question has already been asked, so I eagerly away your responses.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pystx/eli5_why_are_the_poverty_guidelines_set_so_low/
|
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"The problem is that these guidelines are set using Census data, which is of all Americans, across the entire state.\n\nSo a family of four would absolutely not survive in NY at 23K a year - but if you drop them into Utah, chances are they could make do because the cost of living there can be much, much, much lower.\n\nI can't find a lot of state-based poverty guidelines, possibly because they are just relying on the federal guidelines - but in general its going to be because at those levels, there are places in the US where you can survive and still feed your family. They might not be *nice* places, but they *exist*.\n\nwhich is why basing policies wholly on statistics can be a problem - you apply an extremely wide net to cover an equally wide range of situations."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12fedreg.shtml"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
1kb3ke
|
If I have a mirror and point it at the sun, will the light make it back to the sun?
|
Or will it just get scattered? I was looking at my reflective windshield protector and begain to ponder.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kb3ke/if_i_have_a_mirror_and_point_it_at_the_sun_will/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbn85l6",
"cbnmpca"
],
"score": [
13,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes.^1\n\n^1 There will be a lot of dispersion in the atmosphere, assuming the mirror is in the atmosphere, and so it is unlikely that the reflection would be visible to the naked eye to an observer in space. But likely at least a few photons will be directed towards the sun.",
"Most likely not. You can compute this using Beer's Law and the attenuation coefficient of air in the atmosphere. \n\nI'm at work right now so I can't give you any numbers, but to compute the probability that at least one photon will exit the earth's atmosphere you will need to compute/estimate the following information:\nfluence rate of incident photons from the sun at your current location (photons/area/time),\naverage energy of the aggregate photons (can probably estimate that as the middle of the visible light spectrum, but it's actually probably a bit higher),\nmass attenuation coefficient of \"air\" (a mix of nitrogen, oxygen, etc.),\nmean density of air (it's not quite constant with elevation),\npathlength through the atmosphere before reaching vacuum,\nsize of your mirror and how long you're holding it up for,\nreflectivity (percent) of the mirror--can assume 100% for the sake of convenience.\n\nwith these values, you can then compute the number of photons you're reflecting back to the sun and the probability that each one will successfully propagate through the atmosphere. If this probability is much less than the inverse of the number of photons you're reflecting, then it's likely that your photons will never even make it out of the earth's atmosphere (first order approximation).\n\nEven if it's much larger, there is space debris and the 1/R^2 reduction in flux, where R is the distance the \"beam\" travels after reflecting from your mirror. This would require even more calculation and if you're curious I can write that out as well, after I get out of work.\n\nWithout estimating the numbers, though, my money's still on \"no\".\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer%E2%80%93Lambert_law"
]
] |
|
1hf4it
|
How populated with life is an ocean?
|
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, or even if there is an answer to this question, but after thinking about what it would be like to be stranded in the middle of the ocean I was wondering what the chances would actually be that you would run into life? Is the ocean as populated as a jungle or a desert? If I found myself randomly transported to a point in the pacific, what would be the chances that there would be life near me?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hf4it/how_populated_with_life_is_an_ocean/
|
{
"a_id": [
"catsdhb"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"To specifically answer your question... the chances of you finding life in a random point in the pacific is 100%, provided you have the right tools. \n\nThe ocean is at least as populated as desert or jungle - just not necessarily by macroorganisms (fish, mammals, molluscs, etc.).\n\nWhile it depends on which zone of seawater you test (how deep in the ocean it is), you could reasonably expect to find > 10^5 microorganisms (bacteria, plankton, etc.) per mL of seawater. \n\n*Edit - [here](_URL_0_) is a pretty cool chapter from a book that I found online and skimmed through if you are interested in some reading "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.garlandscience.com/res/pdf/9780815365174_ch01.pdf"
]
] |
|
a3dpn8
|
how do underwater speakers work?
|
I’m a swimmer and I’ve never understood how underwater speakers work. I get that sound waves travel at different frequencies in the air than in the water, but how do they get sound to travel the correct way so you can hear music in the water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3dpn8/eli5_how_do_underwater_speakers_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eb5aqee"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
" > I get that sound waves travel at different frequencies in the air than in the water\n\nNot at different frequencies, different speeds. Different frequencies produce different tones in air or the water, so sound can travel at all different frequencies in both.\n\n > but how do they get sound to travel the correct way\n\nThere is no \"correct way\", it is just \"the way\". Pressure waves move through the medium, there isn't any other way it can happen."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
14plil
|
Basic question on HVAC
|
If a server room full of computer equipment uses, for instance, 15KW of electricity, would that mean that there would be 15KW of heat that needs to be removed from the server room?
All the electricity used by the equipment turns to heat in the end, in accordance with the First Law of Thermodynamics, doesn't it? Do even the photons emitted by the LEDs also eventually turn into heat energy?
I think this is correct, but I wanted to make sure before asserting this and potentially making a fool of myself.
EDIT: This question is posed theoretically, assuming a closed system, with no air/sound moving outside it, and perfect heat insulation.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14plil/basic_question_on_hvac/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7fcdhn",
"c7fdkpj",
"c7fjqxo"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Everything will eventually turn to heat. Note that just the amount of heat in kW does not describe the situation well, you need to know the temperature it's available at. If the temperature difference with the outside is big enough you could potentially extract energy from it.\n\nedit: source: Chemical Engineering MSc.",
"I mean....if we are talking conservation of energy here, wouldn't some of that energy be converted into electrical energy running out of the DataCenter by way of cat5/6, or light energy by way of optical?",
"Yes, 15 KW is the rate that heat will need to be removed from the room. At 3517 W per ton of cooling, you will need 4.27 tons of cooling to break even running at 100% duty cycle."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
48zhnv
|
if we americans strive to separate church and state, why are so many polling locations in churches?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48zhnv/eli5_if_we_americans_strive_to_separate_church/
|
{
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"d0nupdt",
"d0nuq2f",
"d0nuynl",
"d0nv103",
"d0nxfv8"
],
"score": [
10,
2,
9,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"Why cant they be?\n\nThe separation of church and state just means that there can be know government endorsed religion. It does not mean that politicians cant be religious or that government functions couldn't be held in a church etc.",
"I have not seen this - where are you? -- as far as party caucuses and primaries I guess I can see this since this is not really a federal issue - but do you REALLY have official polling places in churches?",
"Because churches are large buildings that are empty on Tuesdays. That's really all there is to it. It's available space that most churches are happy to make available for the civic good.",
"Because churches are on every corner, they are generally under-utilized on polling days, etc... basically, they're convenient and free (I assume the ones used for polling do it for free)\n\nI'm a strong advocate of separation of church and state, and this doesn't bother me at all",
"Churches don't have to pay taxes, so the least they can do to \"pay the government back\" for that privilege is to is provide polling locations."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
44a9hy
|
Plasma: how can the same phase of matter seem so eclectic in its behaviour?
|
Are different types of plasma as uniquely behaved as they seem, or is their apparent broad categorization justified? I don't know if this question is naïve, and I am a layman. Lightning, stellar surfaces, fire, aurora, etc. are all categorized as types of plasma, or at least partially so, but behave and appear quite differently. Does this mean that the phase is just a general term for ionized energetic gases, or that they're more similar than they seem to the untrained eye, with concise explanations for the different behaviours?
For instance, why doesn't lightning ever follow the convection rules of how fire spreads, or why doesn't fire get conducted into bolts? Shouldn't all plasma transfer energy similarly?
The question stems from other phases: liquids and other phases have recognizable and consistent patterns of behaviours. Plasma seems to be more indie.
Sorry for the long post. It feels like I'm just missing one or two simple pieces to make sense of it. Searching the Web just led to overcomplicated papers or TV sales.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/44a9hy/plasma_how_can_the_same_phase_of_matter_seem_so/
|
{
"a_id": [
"czoor16",
"czou1x3"
],
"score": [
11,
4
],
"text": [
"The definition of plasma is straight-forward: it is a gas of charged particles, typically free electrons and positively charged ions. In principle, you can get exotic plasmas (I've heard about electron-positron plasma, and you can also get 'cold' plasma), but I will not discuss those further here.\n\nPlasma can exist in a wide variety of physical conditions, which means you can get a lot of different behavior and phenomena, as you point out. Plasma can be low-density (e.g., interstellar space) or high-density (stars). Plasma is very sensitive to electric and magnetic fields: it conducts electricity very well (as we see in lightning), and it interacts strongly with magnetic fields (it can be confined, like in the stellarator that made news recently, or it can drag magnetic fields with it, like in the solar wind). The physical processes that occur can change a lot depending on whether there is a strong electric or magnetic field, how hot the plasma is, and how dense.\n\nIn plasma physics (which I've taken a few courses in, but don't consider myself a true expert), there are several key parameters that are used to determine what processes are important. The one I know most about is called 'plasma beta', and is defined as the ratio of the thermal energy/pressure to the magnetic energy/pressure. If beta is large, there is more themal/kinetic energy than magnetic energy, so the motion of the plasma will control the magnetic field. If beta is small, then the magnetic field is strong and can confine and control the motion of the plasma. There are similar parameters that compare the plasma to the electric field, or compare the large-scale motion to the thermal energy, etc. With these parameters, plasma physicists can immediately estimate what processes will be important in a given situation. For example, if the electric field is weak compared to kinetic energy, we can immediately know that the electric field will not dominate the behavior of the plasma.",
"The term 'plasma' refers to an ionized gas where the kinetic energy of the particles far exceeds their Coulomb potential energy. This seemingly innocuous property leads to a lot of complexity in behavior, as *collective* processes, involving large numbers of particles acting in concert and interacting with the self-consistent electric and magnetic fields, dominate the dynamics. \n\nComplexity also derives from plasmas being able to support a large number of different normal modes (waves). These waves can interact with one another as well as with groups of particles in the plasma (wave-particle interactions), whereby some plasma particles can \"surf\" on the waves. \n\nBecause 'plasma' refers to a vast array of different media, the behavior can be widely different depending on the setting. It can depend on, e.g., the ratio of kinetic energy of the particles to the energy of the magnetic field (a quantity called \"beta\"), the ratio of plasma collision rates to the frequencies of the different modes, the ratio of the thermal velocity of different groups of particles to the phase velocities of waves, the ratio of the plasma particle thermal speeds to the speed of light, etc. \n\nThe upshot is that calling something a plasma doesn't really say much with respect to figuring out how the medium will behave. You need to specify quite a bit more. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
fy45ua
|
At what point in the digestive journey are gasses produced? And can the gas overtake solids in the tract?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fy45ua/at_what_point_in_the_digestive_journey_are_gasses/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fmznxc0",
"fn3psoq"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Gases are formed due to the gut flora breaking down the chyme in your intestines into simpler chemicals, so that they can be absorbed through your intestinal lining.\n\nFor example, you get so gassy if you eat dairy while lactose intolerant, because you lack the proper enzyme (lactase) to break down the lactose in dairy in the stomach. So, your gut flora in the intestines breaks it down instead and produces a LOT of gas in the process. Same goes with beans, although I don't know the specific chemical involved that makes you so gassy.",
"The *majority* of digestive gas is produced in the small intestine. Prior to the colon, the contents of the gut isn't solid, it's more of a... Slime. So gas can pass through that slime without too much difficulty. Once in the distal colon, fluid is removed from gut contents and goes from slime to poop. Once solid, gas can pass around your poop.\n\n\nAnd once more for posterity..... Poop. Hehe"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
43c1ky
|
Historical Fiction for the Historian?
|
I love history and historical fiction (among other genres) but I feel many historical fictions not just a fictional plot but a fictional history. Do historians recommend any fictional writers as being truer to the facts? If so what should I pursue and what should I avoid?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43c1ky/historical_fiction_for_the_historian/
|
{
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"czh71qz",
"czhazvq",
"czhi243",
"czhiju2"
],
"score": [
5,
7,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"I would recommend contemporary novels from the time you're interested in if you're concerned about historical accuracy. Let me be the first to suggest Jane Eyre, Don Quixote, Les Miserables or Oliver Twist.",
"I personally love Alejo Carpentier's historical novels. *The Kingdom of this Earth*, about the Haitian Revolution, is still widely considered one of the best works of literature of the 20th century. I personally feel that the better work is his novel Explosion in the Cathedral, which both looks at how the French Revolution impacted people living in the late 18th century Caribbean and (more generally) how people change during revolutions, turning from idealistic radicals to hardened pragmatists who do what they must in order to survive the constantly changing governments in the capitol. \n\nI would also highly recommend Mario Vargas Llosas' The War of the End of the World, which deals with the Canudos rebellion in late 19th century Brazil and (on a theoretical level) the problems with eye witness accounts and how people will often see the same thing but interpret what they wanted to interpret. His more recent work, The Dream of the Celt, about the Irish born British official, activist, and later subversive Irish revolutionary, Roger Casement, is also a very interesting book (though his best will always be War of the End of the World).\n\nBut, in the end, I think /u/jevoislavieenrose/ has the right idea. Novels by contemporaries are often the very best way to go. In fact, a passing reference in a novel is what answered one of the minor conundrums of my undergraduate thesis.\n\nEngels once wrote in a famous 1888 letter that he learned more from Balzac's fiction about contemporary French society than \"I have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together.\"",
"If its on the fictional that stay as close to historical facts as possible I like Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose, and maybe The Pillars of the Earth of Ken Follet (but be wary of some minor inconsistencies between reality and the book). And as /u/ThucydidesWasAwesome and /u/jevoislavieenrose/ said, any novel that it's contemporary to the time you're interested will give you a general idea, at least from one point of view, of the era. ",
"The seafaring novels of Patrick O'Brian are quite good, although they reflect a bit of the historiography of the 1970s and 80s, when they were first published. (He wrote at least a couple of non-naval novels, as well as biographies of Picasso and Joseph Banks.) \n\nI also quite enjoy Mary Renault's historical fiction, but I do not have any expertise regarding its authenticity. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
7adt1b
|
why is it 2017 and with all these crazy technological advancements, a phone call still sounds like you’re dragging your phone through gravel underwater.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7adt1b/eli5_why_is_it_2017_and_with_all_these_crazy/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dp94s6e",
"dp94sq0"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Honestly sounds like something is wrong with either her mic or your speaker.\n\nBeckground noise will always be a thing, and your phone can't filter it out without listening to your conversation, which it can't do real time. So I would actually see if it happens will all phone calls, or if its just yours...",
"Cellular or landline? VoLTE and a few new codecs have done a lot to improve cellular coverage and quality, not all carriers support it. \n\nLandline, there are often local issues. At my parents house, there is only one provider, and it is clear that the infrastructure around their neighborhood is poor: frequent outages, significant line noise, etc. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
bzn2s7
|
How do underwater rivers work? And why do they exist?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bzn2s7/how_do_underwater_rivers_work_and_why_do_they/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eqwmvvb"
],
"score": [
21
],
"text": [
"A river, as we'd conventionally define one, is essentially just a significant amount of water confined within a channel, flowing downhill (i.e. driven by gravity). In particular, if you consider the cross-section of a river, there are two kinds of boundary: a channel (a solid/fluid interface) and the free surface (a fluid/fluid interface, since the atmosphere is also a fluid). \n\nAll of the above applies to underwater rivers, the only difference is that instead of the fluid/fluid interface at the free surface being between freshwater and the atmosphere, it's instead between two water masses with different densities (in turn a function of salinity and temperature). It's a _little_ big more complex than this in reality, but essentially, the physics between the two situations is very similar, even though the different parameters (different density contrasts and viscosity) can result in slightly different behaviour. You can see this visualised in this [lab experiment](_URL_0_), where two fluids of different densities are allowed to come in contact with the other, and the denser fluid flows below the lighter fluid. Just as you'd expect with water flowing on the Earth's surface, you get lots of similar physical phenomena like waves, it's just that some of the parameters (like wave amplitudes) are different. \n\nAs for why particular underwater rivers are where they are, it really depends on what river you're talking about (and what you define as an underwater river, e.g. do submarine currents count?). But essentially, whenever you've got a source of dense (salty/cold) water flowing into a lighter (freshwater/warmer) water mass and there is a downhill slope, you have the potential to generate an underwater 'river'."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFiriyuqoeY"
]
] |
||
o4qx8
|
Considering the path of evolution, how long do you think HIV has really been around aside from its discovery in 1986?
|
Product of evolution which has been around for centuries or man made virus? & #3232;\_ & #3232;
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o4qx8/considering_the_path_of_evolution_how_long_do_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c3ed499"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Molecular clock analyses date the origins of the HIV-1 M group (the largest and most genetically diverse and therefore the most likely candidate for the oldest subtype) somewhere at the beginning of the last century.[[1931 (1915-1945)](_URL_0_)][[1908 (1884–1924)](_URL_1_)]\n\nDefinitely not man made, all types of HIV are jumps from other apes. HIV-1 M & N are jumps from chimp, O & P are jumps from gorilla and HIV-2 appears to come from sooty mangabey monkeys."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/288/5472/1789.abstract",
"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/full/nature07390.html"
]
] |
|
1jclor
|
Possible to cook an egg on top of the Mt. Everest?
|
If you google around, most sources will say "no, it's not possible". However, I am not convinced because of my following findings:
* Water boils at [around 71 °C](_URL_2_) at that altitude
* The main proteins of egg white are [Ovalbumin (coagulation: 71.5 °C) and Conalbumin (coagulation: 57.3 °C)](_URL_1_). I don't know about the egg yolk.
Those 2 facts would point towards "no" or "partly". However, then there is this [experiment from Bill Nye](_URL_0_).
So does it just take a very long time? Lowering the pressure (and such the boiling temp of water) extends the time it takes to cook an egg. Is the temperature too low on Mt Everest for it to work at all or are people just saying "it doesn't work" because nobody wants to wait 30mins or longer for their hard boiled egg?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1jclor/possible_to_cook_an_egg_on_top_of_the_mt_everest/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbdgcvz"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It's possible to cook an egg at the top of Mt. Everest.\n\nFirst, I assume you mean \"Is it possible to hard boil an egg...\" because you could obviously fry/bake/cook by any other means and it would be pretty much the same as cooking at sea level.\n\nIt's possible to cook eggs at 70 °C, however. [Here's](_URL_0_) a page that correlates cooking time and temperature for slow-cooking eggs to a particular texture. [Here's](_URL_2_) a recipe linked by the previous page that instructs \"17 minutes @ 70 °C\" to get hard yolks.\n\nAs you stated, the white hardens at lower temperatures. [Here's](_URL_1_) another page that shows that normal boiling times at 70 °C give you tender solid whites and soft solid yolks."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.billnye.com/so-hot-you-could-fry-an-egg/",
"http://ps.fass.org/content/60/9/2071.abstract",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_point"
] |
[
[
"http://blog.khymos.org/2011/04/18/perfect-egg-yolks/",
"http://blog.khymos.org/2009/04/09/towards-the-perfect-soft-boiled-egg/",
"http://www.eatfoo.com/archives/2009/11/corned_pork_belly_hash_egg_yol.php"
]
] |
|
9shys5
|
Was Saladin jealous of the crusaders?
|
I was listening to an Islamic history podcast and at one point the speaker claimed that Saladin was frustrated and jealous of how the crusader states were able to amass such a large force after the capture of Jerusalem but the Islamic world barely answered his calls for aid.
Any truth or sources on this?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9shys5/was_saladin_jealous_of_the_crusaders/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e8q0s3l"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"It's not entirely wrong, but I wouldn't agree with the framing of it. There's a big caveat here that we can't truly know what Saladin thought or believed. He left very few written documents in his own hands - and none of them are introspective diaries or anything that provides a deep insight into his inner thoughts. Instead we have to construct his opinions by biographies written by individuals who were generally either very hostile to him or falling over themselves to praise him. \n\nThat said, it does seem that Saladin was frustrated with his fellow Muslims around the time of the Third Crusade. Some context is important. Despite Saladin's reputation as a foe of Christianity and the Crusader States he spent far more of his life fighting Muslims instead of Christians. Upon the death of his uncle Shirkuh Saladin had taken control of Egypt - at the time the richest province in the region - and looked like he was about to rebel against his lord Nur al-Din. There's some debate as to whether this was a genuine rebellion or if it was a case of a misunderstanding going to far, but it all became a bit moot because just as he was summoning an army to crush Saladin Nur al-Din died, leaving a teenage son to inherit. Saladin then began a war of conquest to take over all the territory that Nur al-Din had ruled - ostensibly arguing that he was doing so to preserve the lands of Nur al-Din's son and to save him from Nur al-Dins' \"treacherous advisors\" who were acting as regents. This is pretty standard dynastic disputes and conflict. Saladin was reasonably successful in his conquests and when Nur al-Din's son died some years later Saladin was well positioned to take over all of the Syrian lands that had once belonged to his master. It was only after this point (and some conquests in Yemen and North Africa as far west as modern day Tunisia) that Saladin turned his focus to the Crusader States and Jerusalem (it's worth noting that Saladin had clashed with Christians periodically during this earlier period, it was just never his primary focus and had little lasting impact on either side). \n\nWhen Saladin took Jerusalem and the Third Crusade began to assemble to retake it he was in a tough spot. He'd been campaigning near constantly for decades and his resources and soldiers were at their limit. Realistically he didn't have much of a chance of opposing a united Christian army - in open battle anyway. He reached out to his Muslim neighbours in search of support, most notably the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia (modern day Turkey) and the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The Caliph offered some token support, but nothing much of substance ever materialised, while the Seljuks pretty much ignored Saladin entirely. There's a lot to unpack to fully explain this response, but the short version is that they saw Saladin as potentially a greater threat to them than the Crusaders and weren't particularly worried about seeing him taken down a few notches. Neither faction was so opposed to him that they would consider supporting the Crusader armies, but they were happy to not interfere if they could get away with it (the Caliph was far enough away geographically to be safe, the Seljuks were largely spared involvement since the Third Crusade arrived primarily by ship rather than marching through Seljuk territory from Byzantium). \n\nIn the end, the death of Frederick Barbarossa en route to Crusade probably spared Saladin some of his greatest risk (Frederick's army was reported to be enormous) and also spared the Seljuks from having to decide whether to get involved or not (Frederick would have had to march through Seljuk held territory to reach the Holy Land). It's also worth noting that Christian unity wasn't all it was cracked up to be, Richard I and Philip II did not get along and Philip II didn't linger in the Holy Land but rushed back to France to continue his campaigns to undermine the English king's rule over French territories. There's still endless room to debate if Richard I could have beaten Saladin had he tried (as I mentioned Saladin was in a rough spot in terms of finance and man power) but in the end he never attacked Jerusalem so we won't know. \n\nI would agree that Saladin was frustrated with some of his fellow Muslims over their failure to support him, but I don't really agree with the framing that he was envious of Christanity - I think that makes it seem like he was petulant or felt himself inferior to them (but maybe I'm reading too much into this). I would also add that at this time Saladin ruled over a huge proportion of the Muslim world - so it's not really fair to say that he lacked the support of the Islamic World, in many ways he practically was the Islamic World (at least in Western Asia and North Africa), it was instead his political rivals who didn't support him. Saladin's own territories were very supportive of his wars. \n\nAnne Marie Edde's biography *Saladin* is excellent and goes into lots of detail on Saladin's relationships with other Muslim rulers and Christianity in general. It's probably not a great entry level book, though, and I'd recommend reading something more general like Thomas Asbridge's *The Crusades* before tackling it. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2lfobp
|
what difference does it make it the universe is slowing down in expansion or accelerating? what does this mean for humanity?
|
Bill Nye recently said that the universe is accelerating in it's expansion and that was the most important discovery in the last 10 years. Now that we know this, what does this mean to us?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lfobp/eli5_what_difference_does_it_make_it_the_universe/
|
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"Entropy will forever increase, and then nothing.",
"Probably won't mean anything for humanity if we could travel faster than light its a big galaxy loads of planets and resources. If you really wanted to stretch your expectations it would just keep taking longer and longer to reach different galaxies",
"The discovery of the expansion of the universe leads us to answering some of the most fundamental questions like, how did the universe form, and what is matter. If we can come to understand that, we can come to understand our place in the universe and what we can do within it. That way, we can work with things like matter and anti-matter, fusion, neutrinos, dark matter and create things like the microwave-powered EmDrive.",
"We don't know the difference yet or what it means because we don't yet understand *why* it's accelerating in its expansion. This discovery is completely contrary to everything we (thought we) knew about the universe, its creation, and basic properties of matter/energy/gravity. So we can't really explain what new discoveries or implications this will lead to, but this fact will likely be the precursor to a major shift in the way we understand the aforementioned topics. It's like when we shifted from the geocentric model to the heliocentric model of the solar system - if nothing else, it's a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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|
3zmjr5
|
why do diseases spread through pigs and birds more so than other animals?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zmjr5/eli5_why_do_diseases_spread_through_pigs_and/
|
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"text": [
"Because of humans relationship with specific mammals and poultry through domestication and even more so now industrialization, the odds of animal pathogens mutating to spread to humans increase greatly.\n\nTl:dr It's a numbers game and we like chicken and beef and pork, so the odds are in our disfavor."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
axoo6q
|
how does nuclear fusion work on the atom-level?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axoo6q/eli5_how_does_nuclear_fusion_work_on_the_atomlevel/
|
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"Nuclear fusion is, by definition, on the atomic level. Nuclear fusion is when you smash together 2 light elements to get a heavier element. For example, smashing together 2 hydrogen atoms (each with one proton) gives you a single helium atom (2 protons).",
"There are four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force (SNF), and weak nuclear force (WNF). You are probably familiar with the first two, and WNF can mostly be left out of this explanation.\n\nThere is a huge amount to this, but you could generalize by saying that SNF is an *extremely* strong force of attraction, but only over an *extremely* short distance. Contrast this with gravity, which is quite weak but has a very long \"range\". When two atoms approach each other, they are initially repelled (or sometimes stabilized) by electromagnetic force. If you push them close enough together, SNF kicks in and the two can basically merge together. Again, there's a lot more to this but this is an ELI5 explanation.\n\nAtoms don't like getting that close together, so it takes a lot of energy to pull this off in the form of pressure and temperature. That's why it's so hard to perform energy-effective, sustainable fusion on Earth, but it readily happens in the core of stars. ",
"Let's say you've got a forest. If you break the forest in half, each half is still basically a forest with trees, just smaller. But at some point this will stop being true.\n\nLet's fast-forward. You've broken your forest down to just two trees. You break it in half again, each half is still the same (one tree). But now, when you break the one tree in half, you've got two different things (maybe one half is the roots and one half is the trunk). So, in this case, the tree is the atomic unit of the forest and, when you try to break it, things get weird.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAtoms are the \"atomic unit\" of matter, they are the smallest building blocks of matter that we can reliably work with and, under normal circumstances, they are quite stable. One atom does not just turn into a different kind of atom. Nature, however, if full of fun exceptions. Nuclear fusion is one of them!\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDespite being the atomic unit of matter, atoms are made of multiple parts\\*. For our purposes, we'll only worry about the core of the atom (the nucleus). This core is made of protons and the number of protons tells you what kind of atom it is. Hydrogen has one proton, helium has two, etc (you've probably seen this before on a [periodic table](_URL_1_)).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nNuclear fusion is when the nuclear core of two atoms fuse together to become one, new, heavier atom. This is weird. You wouldn't expect that you could bang two trees together and get single, new, bigger tree (weirdly enough, this is [actually kind of a thing](_URL_2_)). So, now you've stuck two hydrogens together. Each had one proton. Your new atom has two protons, so it is a helium. In the process of fusing together, a tiny amount of the mass is converted directly into energy (mass contains a LOT of energy when its directly converted). This energy comes in the form of heat and light. It is the basis for how all stars work.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\*If you want to get fancy, subatomic components are themselves made of even smaller things called quarks. Quarks are extra weird (although some are [just strange](_URL_0_)) and I would probably not explain them to a five year old.",
"Heat is just the energy of atoms vibrating. \n\nHeat stuff hot enough and it will melt. Hotter and it will boil and vaporize. \n*Hotter* and it will become plasma: the electrons that normally surround the nucleus of the atom get loose and turn into a kind of electron soup shared by all of the nearby atoms.\n\nNow, if you squeeze this plasma and heat it enough, then some of those atoms-without-electrons are going to vibrate hard enough actually run into each other. And, if they hit each other hard enough, then, like two bullets that run into each other in midair, they can *stick together* and form a *single, larger* atom. \n\nWhen you go from very small atoms to slightly larger ones, the amount of energy that it takes the two smaller atoms just to *exist* is more than it takes for the one slightly larger one to exist. And when the two smaller atoms stick together to form the one larger one, then that extra energy is released and can be used to boil water, turn a steam turbine and generate electricity."
]
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2pzjvv
|
why passwords made on websites with requirements (i.e. exactly 8 characters) make a password 'more secure' if it decreases the total amount of possible combinations.
|
And if it doesn't make it more secure, why do websites still do it?
Edit: Well, that escalated quickly...
Edit 2: Ok, I think I've found some good explanations. Thanks, guys!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pzjvv/eli5_why_passwords_made_on_websites_with/
|
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"I've never seen 'exactly 8'. And it would not be secure.\nLength is vital. Complexity is important. Not using the same password on different sites is vital.",
"It doesn't make the password more secure. Here's what I found in a search:\n\n_URL_0_",
"They don't make it more secure, and you can use the rules to narrow down the possible combinations. Forcing people to use special characters may however be advantageous because it vastly increases the search space.\n\nThese requirements are usually implemented because there are a large number of people who would choose 'password1' or '123456' if you let them, and the restrictions are designed to force them to choose something more secure.",
"Bad programmers are implementing bad security practices causing bad leaks. There's no excuse for password length limits anymore. It's really that simple.",
"It doesn't.\n\n > why do websites still do it?\n\nBecause it costs a lot of time and money to update some of those larger systems to make them support more.",
"I haven't seen a satisfying answer, so...\n\nThe general rule of thumb with passwords is that random is better and longer is stronger.\n\nAn 8 character password has only about 42 bits of entropy. ASCII only uses 7 bits (127 different options) and 35 of those are non-printable characters and can't reasonably be used. 42 bits is actually slightly stronger, but we're splitting hairs now. In any event, modern password crackers can brute force an 8 character password very quickly.\n\nThere are only three reasons I can reasonably think of that 8 character limits would be enforced.\n\n1. Ignorance. Someone just plain doesn't know any better. This one is the scariest because by now everyone should know better.\n\n2. Hashing function limitation. Believe it or not there are some hashing functions (e.g., ancient crypt()) that only recognizes the first 8 characters. You can enter more, but only the first 8 are checked. So if your password were \"password1\", that's 9 characters so simply entering \"password\" will let you in. In this case it's better to enforce an 8 character input limit so that you don't get a false sense of security with your 40 character password when 32 of those are ignored.\n\n3. Rigid database. Many (especially older) databases use fixed sizes for fields and once the table is created it's difficult, time consuming or impractical to resize them. If you have millions or billions of rows it could take hours or days to resize a column, during which you can't make changes to the table (effectively halting your business). Basically it requires every byte in the entire table to be read and written to a new location to make room. Modern databases have ways of avoiding that but many financial institutions or telecos still use the mainframe as their primary data store.\n\nIn either 2) or 3) there's a technical reason that I find understandable, but in any case it is inexcusable. Even when working with such a obsolete system these limitations can be avoided. It necessarily adds complexity and takes time. But it isn't that it can't done correctly, it's that nobody with the right authority is making it a priority.",
"I can't believe people are passing off wild guesses as answers.\n\nThe most common reason for these kinds of restrictions is compatibility with legacy systems. For example, restricting the character space to the letters, numbers, and symbols on a keypad so the password can be used with an automated phone system.\n\nAnd you're absolutely correct. Such restrictions are a major hit to password security. Some programmers know better but don't have the influence to make the system better (businesses are loathe to spend money and create disruption on systems that work). Others programmers don't have knowledge or have bad knowledge on how modern password attacks occur and subsequently make botched attempts at security.",
"Some sites are using A LOT of old code and changing it is often prohibitively expensive. Sometimes they will try to make changes within their limitations to try to increase protection. \n \nBesides, limiting passwords to eight characters is still not a problem IF people use randomly generated passwords (a password vault like LastPass and KeePass will help) AND the website locks down the account if too many wrong attempts are made. If say a website locks an account after 10 attempts, a randomly generated password is incredibly unlikely to be hacked in 10 attempts. ",
"There are a few things you might be talking about here. Broadly, you want to imagine that in order to crack a password, we're having your kid brother type in every possible combination of characters until he hits on the right one. Your kid brother is probably going to take a shortcut and try all the words in the dictionary first, but ultimately he'll fall back on trying \"aaa\", \"aab\", \"aac\" etc. Keep that in mind. So here are the kinds of requirements we see:\n\n* must include at least 1 symbol, number, capital letter, etc. These are good things, because they expand the total number of characters your kid brother has to try. If he knows that the password system only takes numbers for example, he's only got 10 possible choices to iterate through for each character of the password. But if it's caps, lowercase, and numbers, he's got way more work to do.\n\n* must be at least X characters long. This is also a good thing, because with each extra character in the password, the number of possible combinations that your kid brother has to type grows significantly. So we make sure that the password has a certain minimum number of possible combinations required.\n\n* cannot be more than X characters long. This is bad because it limits the number of possible combinations you might have. Your kid brother is happy to see that number, because it tells him the worst case scenario of how hard this password will be to crack. But it belies a much worse problem in the way the password information is being stored.\n\nSee, when you're storing information in a database - as most every contemporary web application does - you write the information into tables, which you might imagine like excel sheets. You structure each table (sheet) in advance to be ready for the kind of information that will go into each column. For example, you'll have a \"username\" column that will store up to 32 characters of text, and you'll have a \"last logged in\" column that will store a date/time. The same applies for the password column; in the case of the sites with a character limit, someone defined the password field as being X characters of text, so they make sure you can't make a longer password than that. The problem is, this is only an issue at all if you're storing the password in plaintext. \n\nIn grown-up password implementations, you never store the password. Rather, you use a (more or less) one-way mathematical function called a _hashing algorithm_ to create a seemingly random combination of characters BASED on the password. We call that output set of characters a \"hash\". Hashing algorithms are consistent, so you if you put in the password \"correcthorsebatterystaple\" one hundred times, you will get the same hash back every time (for example, cbe6beb26479b568e5f15b50217c6c83c0ee051dc4e522b9840d8e291d6aaf46). That means that you don't have to store the actual password, you can just store the hash. When the user enters their password, you run it through the same hashing algorithm, and if the hash matches, the password must have matched, too. We do this so that if someone steals a copy of the database, they don't get a list of all our passwords... they just get the hashes. And as I mentioned above, the hashing algorithm is one-way - ie it's effectively impossible to go from cbe6beb26479b568e5f15b50217c6c83c0ee051dc4e522b9840d8e291d6aaf46 to \"correcthorsebatterystaple\".\n\nOne of the cool things about hashing algorithms is that they can return a fixed number of characters. For example, the hash I did above for \"correcthorsebatterystaple\" produces a 32 characters long hash. You'll get 32 characters no matter what the input is. This means that in your database, you can store the password as \"32 characters long text\", no matter what length your users choose.\n\nTL;DR: a grown-up password implementation is characterized by a minimum number of characters, sometimes a minimum number of symbols/numbers/capital letters, and no limit on password length. Any time you are given a limit on the number of characters, you know that it is being stored in plaintext and is therefore extremely vulnerable to being stolen. ",
"It doesn't make it more secure, but it might make it more compatible with legacy systems. \n\nAll you need to know (as a layman) about password security is [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_). This is in a nice and easy comic-format, but it is very much valid. Just don't use correcthorsebatterystaple as a password everywhere...",
"Dan Goodin at Ars Technica has several excellent introductory articles focused on passwords and cracking that I think everyone should read:\n\n* _URL_0_\n* _URL_1_\n* _URL_2_",
"Another common reason for 'only 8 characters' is interoperability with ancient systems. Some old mainframe it is using for a datasource somewhere in the process limited passwords to 8 characters, so they can't go beyond that until they get rid of that system... so everyone gets a password that is insecure, yay",
"Requirements can sometimes increase the strength of your password and sometimes decrease it depending on whether or not those requirements result in a password that is, on average, stronger or weaker than what the user would have came up with already.\n\n* Exactly 8 characters long\n\nThis would inherently weaken any password it is given because attackers would know only to search strings that are 8 characters long (no more or less). With lowercase+numbers, that's a search space of 2.8 trillion, which sounds like a lot but it could realistically be cracked in a matter of a few seconds with any decent offline attack. \n\nUnfortunately even including upper, lower, numerics, and punctuation doesn't help you a whole lot against a pure brute force. At 8 characters, even the strongest password would fall in minutes. \n\n* Include upper case and punctuation\n\nThis is an example of a rule that, on average, increases the strength of the password. When creating passwords most people simply don't tend to include these characters. By enforcing this rule, attackers would know that every password they crack has these characters in it, which does decrease the complexity of the search a bit. But the tradeoff is substantial.\n\nUsing only lower case letters at 12 characters, a decent offline attack could take a week. Add numbers, and that number goes up to a year. Add upper case, it goes up to 10 centuries. Punctuation: a hundred thousand years. Welcome to exponential space.\n\n* No common words\n\nThis substantially increases the security of your password because it protects against dictionary attacks. \n\nA typical english dictionary might have around 50,000 words in it. You can imagine how quick it would be to even try 2 or 3 length permutations of each word considering an offline attack can be in the billions of guesses per second. \n\n* Password must be between 8 and 16 characters long\n\nThis is one you want to watch out for, not because it makes your password less secure, but because its indicative of an insecure method of how they store your password on their servers.\n\nThe most insecure systems in the world would simply store your password in their database exactly as you type it in. If a hacker got a copy of their database, your password is gone instantly.\n\nMore secure systems hash the password using a deterministic hashing algorithm. Like encryption, a hash algorithm takes some text and turns it into something crazy looking. Unlike encryption, hash algorithms are 1-way; there's no way besides brute force to go backward. So a SHA-256 hash of \"password123\" is `ef92b778bafe771e89245b89ecbc08a44a4e166c06659911881f383d4473e94f` but \"password124\" is `33631376724e5d5480fa397dfcf03b66ad47b934ab495174d7058c38f2bb0087`. Completely different despite the originals being kind of similar.\n\nThe most secure systems use hashing, but they don't *just* hash your password. They also throw in some other (deterministic) characters, like your email. So maybe they store the hash of \"[email protected]\", which produces a hash totally different than password123. \n\nThis is secure because (in the case of #2) if a couple people have the same password they produce the same hash. Attackers might first search the compromised database for anyone with the same stored hash, then focus the attack on those people because (A) they clearly have a weak password given they're using the same one, and (B) he gets multiple accounts for the price of one attack. Throwing in the email throws off the hash and adds protection. \n\nIf the website clearly specifies they don't accept passwords longer than something reasonable, like 16 characters, it might be because they are storing the password in plaintext in their database and their database is set up only to store things that are that long. But it doesn't guarantee this. Websites like google max out at like 128 characters not because its insecure, but because its just practical. \n\n* But all of this only matters\n\nin offline attack scenarios. Brute forcing someone's password on a live website, *even* if the website doesn't lock you out after fifty attempts, can only be done at a rate of like 1-20 attempts per second. All of the figures I listed above assume a rate of like 100 billion guesses per second. Even an insanely weak password like \"mittens01\" would take centuries to brute force online.\n\nThe end result of this is thus: Using strong (unique per website) passwords wherever you can has no downside. That being said, your security might be out of your control. Even the strongest password means nothing if they have access to a plaintext database. \n\n* That being said\n\nSecurity is such an interesting field because while it might seem like requiring users to use punctuation always increases security, it doesn't. Maybe the user has one password they use for all websites (\"Mittens99\") but requiring punctuation means they have to create a new password, which means they write it on a post-it note and stick it to their computer. Not so secure anymore.\n\nOr lets look at biometrics. Great. Your account is secured with your fingerprint. Whoops, your email provider's database was just compromised and they weren't storing your fingerprint properly. Now your bank, which *was* storing your fingerprint properly is *permanently* insecure, because... you can't change your fingerprint like you can change your password.\n\nOr you use 1Password to store your passwords so you can create super strong ones that are unique for every website. This is a good idea. But, its not foolproof. Are you using a decent master password? Remember that, if compromised, your 1Password database isn't inherently a *tenth* as strong as an enterprise account database. [Make sure your password is good enough](_URL_0_) to withstand even trillions of guesses per second. Are you syncing the database with Dropbox or iCloud? Do you trust [iCloud](_URL_3_)? How strong is your Dropbox/Apple password, because that's an attack vector. Do you sync to your phone? Is your phone encrypted?\n\nAlso, [use 2 factor authentication wherever possible](_URL_2_). \n\nAnd even if you do everything right: [Your security is not in your own hands](_URL_1_), because even huge companies like Amazon and Twitter simply don't fully comprehend the possibility behind high profile or targeted social engineering attacks. ",
"'Exactly' 8 characters sounds like it is talking to some ancient backend system that has a 8 character fixed-length field that can't deal with anything shorter , and has other ancient systems talking to it such that it can't be changed to deal with anything more complicated such that longer passwords could be hashed down to something that fits.\n\nIn some cases it'll say it has to be a X digit number to deal with old bank-by-phone systems.",
"I never understood why some sites forbid the use of spaces in passwords. ",
"If a website tells you to make a password exactly 8 characters don't use that website. That's a complete disgrace to Security..."
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33470/what-technical-reasons-are-there-to-have-low-maximum-password-lengths"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://xkcd.com/792/",
"http://xkcd.com/936/"
],
[
"http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/",
"http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/",
"http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/how-the-bible-and-youtube-are-fueling-the-next-frontier-of-password-cracking/"
],
[],
[
"https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm",
"http://hackticool.com/post/75171875746",
"https://www.authy.com/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_photo_leaks"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
b4rn4n
|
Cicero, Letters to Brutus, i. 16
|
I am writing an essay behind the motivations of Julius Caesar's assassination and I have to read through a variety of ancient source documents, but I am having trouble understanding what exactly Brutus is talking about in his letter to Cicero. As in, what exactly was Brutus so mad at Caesar about that would cause the assassination? Can someone please provide an explanation of what Brutus is saying in his letter? thank you!
edit: spelling
& #x200B;
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b4rn4n/cicero_letters_to_brutus_i_16/
|
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"_URL_0_\n\nM. Brutus's letter to Cicero, linked above, is decrying Cicero for supplicating the mercy of Octavian, not Julius Caesar, if that wasn't clear to you.\n\nHis anger at Cicero stems from his belief that this undermined his virtuous purpose in slaying Julius Caesar. Asking for clemency for Brutus presupposes both that M. Brutus was wrong to slay Caesar (though clearly that was intended... Antony deified Caesar and gave his actions the color of law, thus opening Octavian's path to power as the heir designated in Caesar's will) *and* that Octavian was legitimately vested with the power to decide M. Brutus's fate. In other words, because Cicero liked Octavian more than Antony, somehow Octavian's tyranny was legitimate where Antony's wasn't.\n\nThat is all--with the exception of the parenthetical--stated explicitly in the text of the letter. All things considered, he appears to be an idealist--he cast down Caesar as a tyrant, went to war with Antony for the same reason, and now rejects even attempts to secure him clemency with another tyrant who came up on the coattails of the tyrant before him.\n\nM. Brutus touches on his motivation for killing Caesar in that letter as well--for the sake of liberty. He also expressed this in his speech to the public the day after the assassination, which is accounted in multiple histories of which you can take your pick. \n_URL_6_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_3_8\n\nSince this is a homework question, I will point you in a direction that you should explore further: Brutus was *gens Junia*, which had something of a reputation for tyranicide. Plutarch's Life of Brutus describes this legacy and its importance to Brutus (_URL_3_) but you can get closer to the source by looking at Cicero, who frequently brought this up to and about M. Brutus himself (_URL_2_).\n\nLastly, M. Brutus minted coins both before and after the assassination. _URL_1_\nThe coins after the assassination commemorated his act, but there were two coins minted long before that, the first commemorating his alleged ancestor through his father--the first *Junii* who ended the Roman Kingdom by exiling Tarquin and becoming the first consul of the Republic--and the second commemorating his alleged ancestor through his mother--S. Ahala, who killed Maelius for conspiring to make himself a king. This would at least seem to support Plutarch's and Cicero's narratives that Brutus was motivated by a sense of familial legacy to cast down tyrants."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/30072802?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents",
"http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/acans/caesar/CivilWars_Libertas.htm",
"http://www.attalus.org/old/brutus1.html#53",
"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Brutus*.html#1",
"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/2*.html#120",
"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Brutus*.html#18",
"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/44*.html#21"
]
] |
|
35548g
|
if i invest $100 into stocks and they drop, will i owe money? or just lose my $100
|
Actually can anybody just explain stocks to me as simple as possible?
I've read about it but clearly it hasn't stuck because it's still very confusing to me, I wouldn't even know where to go to make an investment.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35548g/eli5if_i_invest_100_into_stocks_and_they_drop/
|
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"text": [
"You just lose your $100 (or more likely, a portion of it).\n\n > Actually can anybody just explain stocks to me as simple as possible?\n\nBuy low, sell high. The art is in knowing *when* they're high and *when* they're low, when they'll go up and when they'll go down. Everything else is more or less window dressing on that.",
"You can never lose more money than you put in on the stock exchange (inflation ignored)\n\nExample: I have $100. Shares are going at $1 each. I buy 100.\n\nI have $0 and 100 shares. Share prices drop to $0.9 each.\n\nI have $0 and 100 shares. I need some cash for a new video game so sell half my shares at $0.9 each.\n\nI have $45 and 50 shares. The price then drops to almost no money at all, the company is going bust and shares are worthless. I sell my 50 shares at $0.01 each.\n\nI decided not to buy the game so have $45.50 and no shares\n\nA shit turnover, but I haven't gone into debt.\n\n---\n\nThe risk comes when people borrow money to invest in stocks which is a super risky game but can pay off well",
"Thanks everyone. Definitely grasp it a little better now.",
"If you buy 1 share of a stock for $100, you own a very small fraction of the company. \n\nSay on Monday you buy 1 share for $100 of Acme Incorporated, on Wednesday some bad news about Acme's product comes out, and the share price drops to $50. You still own that 1 share. If you sell it, you'd sell it for $50, and lose $50 on your initial investment. If you kept it, maybe the stock price will eventually go back up above $100. (ignoring inflation in this example)\n\nLet's say you keep it, and the company goes bankrupt. That 1 share you purchased for $100 might become worthless. But you'll never owe additional money in this example. \n\nIf you buy stocks on what's known as margin. You ask the bank to loan you some additional money, so you'd put in $75, and the bank loans you $25. Now if the stock goes to $50, the bank might declare a margin call, meaning they want their money back now. In that case you might be forced to sell at $50, pay them back $25, and you'd keep $25. In other words you'd lose $50.\n\nAnother way to trade the stock is known as \"short selling\" a stock. Let's say I think Acme's new product will be a flop. Or maybe I think they won't meet their earnings estimate. I can borrow a stock from the bank for $100, immediately sell it, keep the $100 (minus the fee to borrow the stock), with the promise to buy it back later on, and return it to the bank. But let's say I'm wrong, and the new product is a success, now the stock is at $150. I still owe the bank that 1 share. So I'll have to buy it at $150, and give it back to the bank.\n\nFinally there are option trades known as \"call\" or \"put\" In those two situations, you can find yourself owing far more then your initial investment. But a novice investor should stay away from margin trading, and options trading."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1wrc71
|
If space is a vacuum, how are things able to travel (light, data from satellites, thrusters) without anything to push against or move through? I always thought there needed to be matter for stuff like that to happen
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1wrc71/if_space_is_a_vacuum_how_are_things_able_to/
|
{
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"cf4ooxw",
"cf4purx",
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"score": [
13,
3,
3,
10
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"text": [
"Newton's first law says that objects in motion retain that motion unless acted upon. No push is required for motion to continue.\n\nIn addition, there is no need to push against an external object in order to initiate motion. All you need to do is throw something in the direction opposite to the desired motion. (This is Newton's third law.) That is the reason that guns recoil against the motion of the ejected bullet. That's also how rockets work. The rocket moves in the direction opposite to the ejected gas.",
"You should read on the Michelson-Morley experiment which was an attempt by physicists to try to detect the presence of some \"ether\" through which everything had to travel. They found in this experiment that light was not affected by this supposed ether which lead to the disproving of the need for it. This realization lead later on to Einstein's postulates on special relativity.",
"If a thing has a mass, it cannot move at the speed of light. If a thing doesn't have mass, it must move at the speed of light (in a vacuum). All radio and light are photons, which are massless particles that also act like a wave. As for thrusters, /u/xxx_yyy explained it pretty well.",
"Well, light and data from satellites are basically the same thing, an excitation of the electromagnetic field. \n\nIt's hard to understand when you're first being introduced to it, but modern physics looks at the small scale universe in terms of fields. There are many fields and their interactions are what we see as matter/energy. light is an excitation of the EM field, mass is related to the Higgs field, etc. _URL_0_\n\nSo anyway, the point of all that is that there IS a medium that the light travels along(kind of) It's just something that is sort of poorly understood by laypeople, usually. \n\nthrusters would need to push to get going, but will not need constant thrust.(It would in the atmosphere because drag would slow it down and it would crash otherwise.) They move opposite the direction of their exhaust. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_field_theory"
]
] |
||
dlsmbv
|
what does the wattage rating on a light bulb package mean?
|
For example, I have an LED bulb. Package says it is 60 Watt equivalent. But also energy effecient (9W). And the lamp I am screwing into says maximum of 100 watts. So why would the package even bother saying it is 60 Watt equivalent if the only thing that matters is that it is less than 100W (which it easily is at 9W)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlsmbv/elif_what_does_the_wattage_rating_on_a_light_bulb/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f4u1mio",
"f4u43ih"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Aka the light bulb emits an amount of light similar to that a 60-watt incandescent bulb would put out, while only using 9 watts.\n\nThe lamp fixture is only designed to handle loads and the resulting heat from a device consuming 100 watts of power or less, which is clearly not an issue using your choice of light bulb",
"Until the 90s, just about every bulb was an incandescant so people were calibrated to how bright a 40W, 60W, and 100W bulb were. If you had a fixture with 3 60W bulbs it would light a fair sized space, while a 100W lamp was still fairly bright on its own. LEDs were marked with an incandescent equivalent to let you know roughly how bright it is because there are old 9W LED bulbs that are 40W equivalent and newer 9W 100W equivalent bulbs\n\nNow for older incandescent bulbs, only 2% of the power used turned into light and the other 98% became heat which was a problem for a lot of fixtures. Putting 3 100W bulbs into a fixture meant for 3 40W bulbs could start to burn your ceiling and start a fire.\n\nModern LED bulbs are significantly more efficient(~20%) so they have much lower total power ratings while giving off the same light so you don't really need to worry about lamp wattage.\n\nTLDR - 60W equivalent is for brightness, the 100W max rating on your lamp is worrying about heat, they aren't worried about the same thing"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
38b838
|
why do animals prefer running water to standing water
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38b838/eli5_why_do_animals_prefer_running_water_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crtqhjl"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"They naturally know that still water is more dangerous than running water. It is more likely to have bacteria, molds, algae, or other things that can kill or make them sick. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1ayymm
|
What makes one polity a civilization and another a state?
|
I'm thinking more in terms of Antiquity here, but even as late as the 17th century you see terms like the Swahili *civilization*, as opposed to a specific state -- say, the Sultanate of Oman -- and you still see other states arbitrarily referred to as Empires, like the Aztecs. What determines the historical terminology for things like this?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ayymm/what_makes_one_polity_a_civilization_and_another/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c922fje",
"c9239hy",
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"score": [
2,
6,
2
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"text": [
"A civilization is a group of socially and culturally similar people. A state is a political geographic territory. Some states contain several civilizations (such as the Roman Empire at its height containing many different civilizations), while some civilizations encompass multiple states (such as the British civilization encompassing the states of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland).",
"There isn't really a perfectly defined rule here. A \"polity\" is just a political unite, used when other, more specific terms (empire, state, city-state) may be misleading. An empire is usually thought of as a polity that encompasses multiple ethno-cultural areas, usually gained through conquest. A \"state\" is essentially analogous to \"polity\", although the term implies more political unity and centralization. \"Civilization\" implies certain cultural aspects.\n\nIn truth though, the actually usage is almost entirely dictated by convention and endogenous terms where possible. Hence why we don't talk about the Chinese or French empires, even though they encompassed multiple ethno-cultural zones, but we do talk about the Athenian empire, even though it was almost entirely Greek.",
"Well, \"civilization\" is an extremely slippery and loaded term. I don't know about the historical world, but in anthropology and archaeology we have basically stopped using it. Where it is used, though, is to describe a large base culture that is shared across many distinct, independent, but related cultures and societies (sometimes it is used to describe a culture that is governed by a single political entity, but is still multi-ethnic and diverse). European or Western Civilization is a good example: there are many, many individual, unique societies and cultures within Europe, many with their own languages, many politically autonomous groups, but they all share something that is distinctly *European* (a shared philosophy, similar staple foods, shared art, shared religions, shared architectural canons, etc). There's a ton of diversity in all these things, of course, but they all have something that you can point to and say 'ah, that's European;' something that sets them apart from other \"civilizations.\" So civilization, when it is used academically, really refers to a shared base culture that spans many independent and unique groups. More popularly, though, it's used for anything and everything (just look at how it's used in this subreddit). \n\n\"State\" refers to a specific form of governance (or socio-political organization, if you want to get fancy). Even though it's specific, there's no agreed-upon definition of what makes something a state. Generally, a society is considered a state (in anthropology, at least) if it is organized by class rather than by kinship, has multiple levels of hierarchy, and where the leadership of the state has the authority and legitimacy to delegate power (i.e. the king doesn't tell people what to do directly and they listen, he tells his subordinates what to do and trusts them to carry out his will, and they can delegate power downwards still, etc.) This is the bureaucracy which, as shakespeare-gurl said, is one of the essential definitions of a state. There is no end-limit for a state. Empires are highly-complex states. Modern states are different from pre-modern states, but are still distinctly states (and every nation today is a state, and many are made up of multiple states within the larger state, e.g. a provincial and national government in a federalist system). So the calling the Aztecs an empire is not arbitrary; they are a state that went out and conquered independent states and other polities, and that makes them an empire.\n\nThis definition of state really serves to oppose chiefdoms, which are complex societies that have permanent kings/chiefs, but that are relatively small, the chief doesn't have a great deal of power and authority and can really only give it directly because there is no bureaucracy (so chiefdoms can't be very large), and are organized along kinship lines rather than classes. The chiefdom is also a slippery and loaded concept that is still widely-used in anthropology, but is being met with strong opposition. I expect that we will stop using it in the next 20 years. But states and people's relationship to the state is one of the key things we study.\n\nAnd \"polity,\" while it comes out of the specific Greek term for city-states (correct me if I'm wrong, classicists), is used really to refer to independent political groups with some sort of defined independence and leadership structure (so egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands don't count), but without making any assumptions as to the exact level or nature of that group's political organization. So it allows us to talk about independent groups without having to use terms like chiefdom, city-state, state, or empire, because those refer to specific things and we don't always know the specific political structure of the groups we study."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1ghnve
|
nutrition labels: what does each category mean, and how does each category affect your health?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ghnve/nutrition_labels_what_does_each_category_mean_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cakj71l"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"I am not sure what exactly you want to know, but I will write something!\n\nThe main categories on a nutrition labels are:\n\nEnergy (kcal/kJ)\n\nProtein\n\nCarbohydrates\n\nFats\n\n\n**Energy** is measured in calories (kcal) or joules (kJ). One should eat around 2000 kcal per day (woman) or 2500 per day (men). When you eat more than this you will gain weight. When you eat less, you will lose weight. It is very simple like that! It will vary slightly from person to person, of course, depending on how much muscle and fat one has. But those amounts are a good rule of thumb.\n\n**Protein** is like building blocks for your body. It is used to build a lot of things. Big things like muscle are primarily protein, but also tiny things like enzymes are protein! You get protein from different things, primarily meat. Vegetarians might get proteins from beans. One should get approximately 0,85g of protein per kg bodyweight per day, if you are not excercising (sorry for the units - I am not American). If you are exercising and want to build muscle you will need to eat more than that. Proteins are also good at making you feel full, so if you want to lose weight it can be good to eat some protein, so you wont feel so hungry. \n\n**Carbohydrates** are the things like sugars, bread and potatoes. They are the easiest form of energy for you body to use. The easiest of all being pure sugar. Some things are made of long chains of sugar, which will need to be broken down to single-sugar units in order to be used. Some carbohydrates can not be broken down by humans at all! Those are important too! They help you with your bowel movements. Those are called fibers. It's easy to get too many carbohydrates. There are a lot of them in things like soda and juice. Those are especially \"dangerous\", because they don't really make you feel full at all! When you eat too many carbohydrates, you will have to much energy and the excess energy will be stored as fat. That's why it's good to cut sugary drinks out of ones diet, if you want to lose weight! You should primarily get your carbs from vegetables. They are also filled with vitamins and minerals which are good for you!\n\n**Fats** are the most energydense of these categories. One might want to avoid eating too much fat, but it is VERY important to get at least some! Most of our brain is made of fat. All of our cells are composed of fat. We need some fat to function. But there are different kinds of fat. There are both butter (made of dairy) and oils (made of vegetables) and the kind you find on your meat (animal fat). People strongly disagree on which types are the healthy ones and which types are bad for you. For now I will just say, that you should vary your diet and not only eat one type of fat.\n\nThe most important thing is: Everything in moderation! It is okay to have some soda once in a while, but it doesn't really benifit you in anyway nutritional. ½ a liter of coke is 210 calories (~ 10% of your daily caloric intake). If you drink one per day for a month that is 210*30 = 6300 kcal which corresponds to almost 1 kg of fat! That's like 10 kg a year!\n\nWell. That is all I have for now. Feel free to ask."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
31fkqr
|
with tesla being banned in some states what does it mean to go across state lines and buy the car? do you not just order online?
|
Wouldn't you address still just be from the state its banned in?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31fkqr/eli5_with_tesla_being_banned_in_some_states_what/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cq12co0",
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],
"score": [
5,
6
],
"text": [
"Tesla is banned from having their own dealerships in those states. Traditionally auto manufacturers are not allowed to own car dealerships.\n\nThe cars themselves are not banned from these states.",
"The cars themselves aren't banned. Just dealerships. Because they don't fit the legal description of a car dealer, since the parent manufacturing company is selling them direct. \n\nYou can still buy one elsewhere and own it in that state."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
a6sgrb
|
Why was the 60 B.C.E consular election so important for Julius Caesar?
|
He had just been awarded a Triumph by the senate, but they decided to award it after the deadline for announcing one's run for consul so Caesar couldn't run that year. In response he renounced his generalship and triump and ran for consul anyways. Why couldn't he just wait a year?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a6sgrb/why_was_the_60_bce_consular_election_so_important/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ebxomxz"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"This is pretty simple, though someone unfamiliar with the period wouldn't know it.\n\nThere's a prestige reason and a tactical reason. The prestige reason is because of age restrictions in place (certainly since Sulla reformed the government ~82 BCE, possibly earlier) 60 was the first year Caesar was eligible to stand for the consulship. Winning the first year you are eligible was the most prestigious way to become consul. Not winning that year amounts to a failure on some level.\n\nTactically Caesar wanted to run because his soldiers were there and could vote, and he was popular with them, and he was returning to Rome a war hero. The next year the soldiers might not be in Rome to vote, or their motivation might have cooled, and the people in the city might have forgotten the victory of a year ago. Caesar had a huge advantage in 60 he couldn't count on in a later year.\n\nIn addition he had things he needed to accomplish ASAP like getting Pompey's settlement of the East ratified and getting Crassus his tax break. \n\n60 was the year Caesar was supposed to win, the year he was positioned to win, and the year he needed to win to get stuff done."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1v7k64
|
In the pre-war years of the 30's while he was out of government and watching Chamberlain appease Hitler repeatedly, what did Churchill think ought to have been done?
|
What did he specifically advocate? I know it's a little controversial just how badly Chamberlain bungled things (or didn't), but I'm curious if Churchill called for rearmament or actual military action against Nazi Germany when they seized half of Czechoslovakia, or reoccupied the Rhineland, or even annexed Austria.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1v7k64/in_the_prewar_years_of_the_30s_while_he_was_out/
|
{
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"cepimv7",
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],
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9
],
"text": [
"Churchill wasn't out of Government, he was still an MP, he sat on the backbench calling for action, while the Conservatives, who hadn't really trusted him since he defected to the Liberal Party, even though he had been the post war Chancellor of the Exchequer, ignored him. He had been badly politically damaged by the disastrous return to the Gold Standard and thereafter, the Abdication crisis. He remarks repeatedly in his autobigraphy and his History of the Second World War that he called for early rearmament and the enforcement of international law, especially vis a vis Germany. ",
"Throughout the decade, Churchill watched Germany building up its military and armaments, and called for Britain to build up its own armaments in kind. He believed that Britain had to rearm in order to deter Germany from starting a war. Yes, he criticized the appeasement policy at Munich, but that was already 1938. However, it was Churchill’s “early and often” warnings about Germany’s military buildup that made him the obvious choice to replace Chamberlain after the invasion of Poland. When they finally declared war after Poland was invaded, Britain realized how exposed they were due to inadequate defenses. This was a result of not rearming, not a result of allowing Hitler to walk into Czechoslovakia. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
24aaj5
|
How did people 500 years ago entertain them self inside of Europe?
|
With no electronic media and even mass produce books still a novelty, how did the common people and the elite entertain them self in the 16th century? How expensive were plays, how often would a circus pass through a town or village. Did mass produced board games still exist?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24aaj5/how_did_people_500_years_ago_entertain_them_self/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ch54ftv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"hi! more information is welcome; meanwhile, get started on this section of the FAQ*\n\n[What did people do for fun?](_URL_0_)\n\n*see the link on the sidebar or the wiki tab"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/entertainment#wiki_what_did_people_do_for_fun.3F"
]
] |
|
16fl6n
|
Considering String Theory has hit some bumps, is there an alternative physics theory that could be a step forward to The Theory Of Everything?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16fl6n/considering_string_theory_has_hit_some_bumps_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7vkiio"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Therea are lots of different alternative theories. \n\nJust listing of some alternative approaches:\n\n1. [Grand Unified Theory](_URL_3_)\n1. [Loop quantum gravity](_URL_2_)\n1. [Causal dynamical triangulation](_URL_1_)\n2. [Kaluza–Klein theory](_URL_0_)\n4. [Causal Sets](_URL_6_)\n6. [Superfluid vacuum theory](_URL_4_)\n5. [Technicolor](_URL_5_)\n\nThere are much more, but I think each of these pursued more than one person. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein_theory",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_dynamical_triangulation",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluid_vacuum_theory",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor_%28physics%29",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_Sets"
]
] |
||
lvlq7
|
Evolution as a bodily response to environmental pressures?
|
Involuntarily of course.
Is it possible that another pathway for evolution is the response from the body to environmental pressures (aside from random mutation and gene exchange etc.)?
After learning about Hox genes, I began to wonder if the body somehow 'knew' that it was no longer competing as well for resources, or that it was no longer well adapted to its environment. Furthermore, I wondered if this could lead to the body triggering something which leads to a higher density of mutated gametes, which would spur evolution.
An analogy here would be giving an animal a very calorie restricted diet over its lifetime. The question would then arise: Is evolution more suited to those who are less adapted and therefore less fit?
I suspect that I had this thought after learning that it is pretty rare to find transitional forms in fossils, and after seeing that once a new species is created, in a very short amount of time, it has the ability to dominate the fossil records. Also, some species evolved very rapidly, while others have not changed for hundreds of millions of years (turtles, alligators).
This is all very confusing to me and i'm hoping someone can help. Thanks!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lvlq7/evolution_as_a_bodily_response_to_environmental/
|
{
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3
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"text": [
"No, only populations evolve. Individuals adapt, and if they can't, they aren't selected for. There's no evidence for anything that \"increase\" mutation rate in individuals who aren't competing effectively for scarce resources.\n\nWhere did you get the idea that it's pretty rare to find transitional forms? Sure, finding fossils in general is rare, but we have plenty of fossils of transitional forms.\n\nAlso, \"created?\" & #3232;\\_ & #3232;\n\nWith some species evolving rapidly, this is the main point of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Basically, it says that species will remain in stasis for a long time before a sudden selection pressure causes a rapid speciation event. \n\nThe reason why horseshoe crabs, alligators, and such haven't changed in hundreds of millions of years is because they are well suited to the niche they occupy and haven't really experienced any selection pressures for a long, long time.\n\n\n",
"No, only populations evolve. Individuals adapt, and if they can't, they aren't selected for. There's no evidence for anything that \"increase\" mutation rate in individuals who aren't competing effectively for scarce resources.\n\nWhere did you get the idea that it's pretty rare to find transitional forms? Sure, finding fossils in general is rare, but we have plenty of fossils of transitional forms.\n\nAlso, \"created?\" & #3232;\\_ & #3232;\n\nWith some species evolving rapidly, this is the main point of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Basically, it says that species will remain in stasis for a long time before a sudden selection pressure causes a rapid speciation event. \n\nThe reason why horseshoe crabs, alligators, and such haven't changed in hundreds of millions of years is because they are well suited to the niche they occupy and haven't really experienced any selection pressures for a long, long time.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1h3mug
|
During the Roman empire, who were the most bad ass gladiators that actually won their freedom? Did they have any prior military knowledge and what happens after they were set free?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h3mug/during_the_roman_empire_who_were_the_most_bad_ass/
|
{
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"text": [
"I was originally drawn into this subject when I watched the TV show Spartacus (which doesn't have historical accuracy as it's focus). From what I could find online, it seems like there were many gladiators who won their freedom (rewarded with a wooden sword), but there isn't much documentation. Flamma was famous as he won freedom, but chose to continue fighting as a gladiator. But in general, those who won their freedom used their skills to teach at gladiator schools.\n\n > Flamma was awarded the rudis four times, but chose to remain a gladiator. His gravestone in Sicily includes his record: \"Flamma, secutor, lived 30 years, fought 34 times, won 21 times, fought to a draw 9 times, defeated 4 times, a Syrian by nationality. Delicatus made this for his deserving comrade-in-arms.\"\n\n[Kyle, Donald G](_URL_1_). (2007). Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World. Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22970-1. (_URL_0_)\n\n > Often the rudiarii (these \"retired\" gladiators) would end up as trainers in the gladiatorial schools.\n\nJacobelli, Luciana. Gladiators at Pompeii. Roma: \"L'Erma\" Di Bretschneider, 2003. (_URL_2_)",
"The gladiatorial scene in Rome was built entirely on the military tradition of the state. Prisoners of war, that is, men with military experience, were always in ready supply. Even the gladiator archetypes (Samnite, Secutor, etc.), were taken from the physicality and fighting of style of Rome's many opponents.\n\nIf a gladiator was fortunate enough to win his freedom he was left in a peculiar situation. He lacked the connections and the skills to pursue public office or other civilian occupations. Usually, they would enter a gladiator school as an instructor.",
"I would actually be pretty interesting if someone could post an article, or maybe right one as a self post? About what a gladiator fight actually was, debunking some of the myths. Or maybe someone can link me to a previous question about exactly that?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator#Combat",
"https://www.uta.edu/ra/real/editprofile.php?pid=1529",
"http://books.google.ca/books?id=_PsRfWWigAoC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=rudiarii+gladiator&source=bl&ots=XvpM1j7G5s&sig=Qz3n_JjpB4tqBoSfHWiE6v2CSIk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eQPLUab8G9P84AOQ44HoCg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAzgK"
],
[],
[]
] |
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