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d1jj22
|
It is commonly said that in the colonial era, the colonists used infected blankets with diseases unknown to the natives, making them effectively bio weapons, did the opposite also occur?
|
As the title states, colonialists used diseases such as smallpox or influenza to kill the natives, and quite effectively at that.
However, I'm wondering if the natives used the diseases they have antibodies to(I am assuming there are illnesses native to certain tribes) as a counter the colonialist bio warfare, OR even if such a thing would be possible
Thanks in advance for any responses
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d1jj22/it_is_commonly_said_that_in_the_colonial_era_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"/u/anthropology_nerd has previously answered [When Europeans brought diseases to the New World, how come Europeans themselves didn't get sick from diseases specific to the New World?](_URL_0_)\n\nThis topic was addressed broadly during anthropology\\_nerd's series MYTHS OF CONQUEST for /r/badhistory in the entry [\"Death by Disease Alone\"](_URL_1_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ck97r/when_europeans_brought_diseases_to_the_new_world/cswt3wd/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2u4d53/myths_of_conquest_part_seven_death_by_disease/"
]
] |
|
54pp0w
|
Is there evidence to support that the British Empire manufactured famines?
|
I recently read about the bengal famine of 1943, and I would like to learn more about the level of involvement that the British had in causing that and other famines during their imperial rule.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54pp0w/is_there_evidence_to_support_that_the_british/
|
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"text": [
"Thanks for this reply.",
"Irish writer and historian, Tim Pat Coogan has written a great book about Britains role in the Irish famine, The Famine Plot. Although some points are disputed by other Irish historians, most of the book is well cited and sourced. I don't have it at hand but it goes into great detail about how Britain contributed to the Irish famine even going as far as to argue that Britains policies in Ireland constituted genocide under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. \nAlthough Coogan writes from a strongly Irish nationalist perspective, this book is factual and is a great read. \n_URL_0_",
"Somebody has already cited Mike Davis, I am going to enlarge on a couple of points made there.\n\nWhen there were droughts/large scale crop failures, the British had two primary policies in India which dictated the fate of the affected population: Policy on trade in food material and Famine relief policy. \n\nRegarding government intervention in trade and framing of famine policy Ambirajan's *Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India* (Cambridge University Press) argues that a steady influz of Smithian (Adam SMith) views directly affected famine policy and dramatically increased famine mortality. To summarise his argument, Ambirajan showed how sparse government intervention in the Orissa famine of 1866 saw high mortality. This caused a change in policy with people like John Stuart Mill arguing for a different policy. In the next famine in 1873-74 Lord Temple, Governor of Bengal curbed export of food grain and imported massive quantities of rice from Burma at government cost. This famine saw little to no mortality. However immediately after this the new Viceroy Lytton severely curbed government assistance and intervention in famines. The distressed people had to walk long distances and pass stringent requirements to be eligible for relied. They literally died by the roadside. The Famine of 1877-78 was horrific, and is covered in graphic detail in Mike Davis' book. \n\nThere are a bunch of other things I could talk about, but its very late here. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Famine_Plot.html?id=_cIhmQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y"
],
[]
] |
|
1v5r7h
|
How is the brain protected from damage once a hemispherectomy is performed?
|
During a hemispherectomy half of the brain is removed, so with all the extra room inside of the skull how is the brain protected from head injuries? Are there any extra steps taken or is the one hemisphere perfectly fine sitting there by itself?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1v5r7h/how_is_the_brain_protected_from_damage_once_a/
|
{
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"text": [
"There is a really good answer about this provided by [The Naked Scientists](_URL_0_). There are a lot of factors, including structures, that provide stability to the brain after a hemispherectomy. These include, according to my source, the tentorium cerebelli and the falx cerebri. These two structures help to hold the brain in place and prevent it from moving side to side and up and down. [Here](_URL_1_) is a diagram of those structures. The meninges, the tissues that envelope the brain, provide some support as well. Additionally, \n[this](_URL_2_) image demonstrates that the empty space fills with cerebrospinal fluid. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/2772/",
"http://www.pixelatedbrain.com/images/draw/mening_cisterns/drmen_1_1c.jpg",
"http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel/images/hemispherectomy.jpg"
]
] |
|
2ytlrb
|
What is the history of the cigar?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ytlrb/what_is_the_history_of_the_cigar/
|
{
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"cpdehnc"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"What in particular? The history of the cigar or at least it's origins from what I recall are a tad hard to pin down given that there aren't too many sources that I can find that are reliable. So I'll do my best with my passing interest in cigars and the one book I've read about the history of cigar production.\n\nBut at any rate, by the 16th century with the colonization of America and the Caribbean islands (at least the beginning of it) European empires like Spain and England began to import vast amounts of tobacco. Although tobacco usage in terms of the form of cigars purportedly have originated from the Taino Indians in the Caribbean, it's difficult to trace exactly where the idea of cigars came from. That said, with the proliferation of tobacco in Europe manifested itself in both the custom of rolling cigars or the smoking of the pipe depending on what areas of Europe. But that's the limit of my knowledge unfortunately.\n\nIn terms of the popularity of cigars, cigars would start becoming popular in both America and Europe by the 19th century. By the time the Civil War rolled around a large portion of Cigars in the United States were imported from the Caribbean. Although there was a large amount of tobacco grown in the United States in the strain of tobacco known as \"Connecticut Leaf\" since the late 1700s, it seems that cigar consumption and cigar tobacco came primarily from the Caribbean. \n\nGiven that Cuban Cigar Marcas are the ones with the most information I'll talk more about them. In Cuba, by around 1845-1850 investors from Europe including Germany, England, Spain and France began to start their own marcas based in Cuba. Marcas like H. Upmann, Ramon Allones, El Rey Del Mundo, and Partagas. These would be among the first wave of cigar brands in Cuba that began to standardize and mass produce cigars in their own factories. Practices such as packaging with cedar, the use of aluminium tubes, colored lithography on boxes, and many other practices would be utilized to create the current cigar trends today. Later on marcas like Romeo y Julieta would emerge as the cigar industry began to expand through the Civil War and after until the notable peak in production by the 1920s numbering over 7 billion cigars per annum. \n\nThe main cigar production hubs by 1920 would still remain in Cuba (notably Havana although tobacco was derived from regions like Vuelta-Abajo) and Tampa, Florida where cigar producers had fled to in the 1870s and 1880s due to the onset of conflicts in Cuba. The popularity of cigars would hold steady through the 1920s and 30s only to wane once the Cuban Revolution would happen. Due to the embargo on Cuba and the general reputation of Cuban cigars, the popularity of cigars began to wane until the late 1980s and 1990s where once again a cigar boom occurred. However this time, the hubs of cigar production were focused mainly in Florida with tobacco acquired not from Cuba, but from places like Nicaragua and Connecticut (which was still a prominent tobacco grower even in the 1800s). This \"fourth or fifth\" wave of cigar manufacturing would form the basis of today's cigar production in the United States and the world.\n\nThat said, there is a lot more to discuss since this is just a brief overview of a subject that spans 300 years and formed large economies over time. So if there are any follow ups I'll do my best to answer since this answer is a little all over the place.\n\nSources: \n\nEl Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2gref9
|
How did bilge pumps work in the old sailing ships?
|
I've been looking for information about how bilge pumps worked before there was such a thing as steam or deisel power. Unfortunately, bilge pumps are still very much in use and more modern results have stymied my researches. I'm thinking the age of the great sailing ships (16-1700s?) but I'd be interested in other kinds of ships as well.
I'm mostly interested in practicalities, including diagrams if I can get them. Water obviously came in everywhere, but a pump can't be everywhere. Were there low points in the hull for the water to congregate and the pumps to sit in?
There are references to "elm tree" and "bucket chain" pumps, but I haven't found any illustrations. How were the pipes that carried water made to be watertight and yet still survive the shifting and stress of vessel being acted upon by water and wind? I've also come across some references to valves. It sort of sounded like they were check-valves, (to prevent blowback from the waves) but that can't be right, I don't think? Brass works weren't sophisticated enough for checkvalves, were they?
Thanks for all your help!
I would especially like to see a diagram of the cross-section of a hull to get a feel for how the system was organized, if any such thing exists.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gref9/how_did_bilge_pumps_work_in_the_old_sailing_ships/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cklsbnc"
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"text": [
"I have a book at home which has diagrams, if nobody's posted any by the time I get home I'll get you some pictures. But for now, [this is the best I can find](_URL_0_) (Source: _URL_2_)\n\nElm tree pumps, also known as chain pumps, were one sort of bilge pump used. You can see one in HMS Victory in Portsmouth. Two elm tree trunks, which are long and straight, were bored out to form long tubes. These tubes were placed vertically, side-by-side, running from the lowest point of the bilge to the deck. Then, a long loop of chain was run down one tube, around pulleys at top and bottom, and back up the other tube. At regular intervals on this chain were attached metal discs with rubber edges, which sealed against the inside of the elm trunk tubes. The pulley at the top was turned by manpower with a windlass, causing the metal and rubber discs to pull water up one of the tubes. As each disc reached the top, the water would spill over the top of the elm trunk, and into channels that directed it overboard.\n\nThere were other types of bilge pumps involving a pair of one-way valves and a similar wooden tube, pumped by a handle in a similar way to land-based hand water pumps of the time, but they were less efficient than the elm tree chain pump.\n\nI hope that is clear.\n\nEdit: [This thread](_URL_4_) has some more information and pictures.\n\nEdit: Source is [The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815, Brian Lavery](_URL_3_)\n\n[Relevant bits](_URL_1_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://i.imgur.com/XjkKA5c.jpg",
"http://imgur.com/a/LPucb",
"http://www.history.navy.mil/ussconstitution/",
"https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2016493W",
"http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?155520-Questions-about-historical-bilge-pump-systems"
]
] |
|
68bkmw
|
what causes those static-like patches of white pixels when watching films on a disc that's been scratched?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68bkmw/eli5_what_causes_those_staticlike_patches_of/
|
{
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"Imagine it like this,\n\nYoi stretched out the dvd into one line, here you can see all the code for the laser which is etched into the dvd, if it gets scratched off the laser will see nothing an percieve it as zero and leave the screen white in places.\n\nHowever sometines when scratched the laser can also percieve the scratches as random colors so you also see an array of colors"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
axm5ng
|
Why is Pluto's (and other dwarf planets) orbit so unusual?
|
Every planet in our solar system seems to have a "normal" orbit (I mean that as they are all aligned with each other and the Sun), then sudenly Pluto's orbit is out, like it sliped or something. It also goes through Neptun's orbit and I found that weird.
The same (an unusual orbit) also goes for other dwarf planets.
(I am also sorry for english (it's my second language) and the wording, but I don't know how to express this differently).
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/axm5ng/why_is_plutos_and_other_dwarf_planets_orbit_so/
|
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"One reason is \"chaotic\" gravity. The dwarf planets beyond Neptune (and other objects in that region) can experience tumultuous gravitational influence from the outer planets and from each other. As an example, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Pluto's orbit is in resonance with Neptune's, meaning Neptune's gravity shaped Pluto's motion and for every x times Neptune goes around the Sun, Pluto goes y times and that's unchanging and repeats over time. At this point their orbits appear to be stable but that stability took time and \"chaos\" to achieve.",
"One of the criteria for a planet is that they're large enough enough to clear the area of other bodies. Pluto and the other dwarf planets are too small to collect all of the debris from their orbital path, unlike the planets.\n\nAs for why Neptune hasn't cleared Pluto, it's because Pluto and Neptune are in a nearly perfect 3:2 resonance. That is, Neptune makes almost exactly 3 orbits for every 2 Pluto makes. Because of this, Pluto and Neptune are always in the same relative position when their orbits intersect, and that position is far enough away to prevent Neptune from capturing or ejecting it. Which just came down to luck."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
9t1sh9
|
when someone’s metabolism speeds up where does the extra energy go?
|
So if two people eat 2000 cals a day. If the person with the slow metabolism puts the energy on as fat. What happens to the person with the quick metabolism? Where does it go?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9t1sh9/eli5_when_someones_metabolism_speeds_up_where/
|
{
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"text": [
"The extra energy is used, primarily for movement. People with a fast metabolism tend to be a lot more active.",
"Your body is in a constant state of two processes: \n[Gluconeogenesis](_URL_0_)- the building up of sugar chains in order to store and transfer energy \n[Glycolysis](_URL_1_)- the breaking down of sugar chains to use energy to do work\n\nWhat is important to know about these two processes is: \n1) They are almost exactly the same, just reversed \n2) Some energy is lost in each reaction as heat\n\nFor your example where the metabolism is higher in one person over another (but no additional work has been done); essentially the person with higher metabolism is performing the buildup and breakdown reactions more. As the reactions are performed more and more, more energy is lost as heat.\n\nTL;DR- The body is artificially generating heat."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis"
]
] |
|
1d7q16
|
The history of Feminism.
|
I am in a bit of a bind over an essay that I am currently writing. It is on feminism. I am wondering if there are any feminist historians who would be willing to look at this question?
Feminist history as a part of a political struggle for the place of women, to recover the present place of women as hidden by the dead white European victors who wrote the history.
Why after 2500 years of Western History are the history of women suddenly in demand?
How would you describe the history of these women?
Why did present day scholars need to to find new approaches in writing the history of women?
You "should" look at "sameness vs difference" and the "public and private". The search for patriarchy and matriarchy in history.
What is the concept of gender?
Is it a societal construct? Is this even a problem?
Does it force us to rethink the actual nature of our history and then offer the prospect of writing a new feminised universal history?
Is there any future for the earlier forms of feminist and women's history?
write on the analysis of the ways that a theory or approach addresses or fails to address the significant issues in the making of history. You may illuminate this if you wish by critiquing the use of historians theories in this approach.
How would you approach this essay? It is quite a massive question. I am wondering if there is a starting point from the medieval period to possibly the beginning of the 1920s? The area is so massive to cover. So very overwhelming.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1d7q16/the_history_of_feminism/
|
{
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"text": [
"Well...in the spirit of our rules about homework (since I assume this is a school assignment?):\n\nI would direct you over to /r/askfeminists. They could be helpful.\n\nFeminism is generally recognized by feminist historians as operating in \"waves.\" The 1st Wave were the suffragettes. The 2nd Wave was what was commonly called the Women's Liberation movement. The 3rd Wave was the late 80's/early 90's, and some would say today. Others might say we're in a 4th wave, or just a \"post-3rd wave.\" Perhaps that wave structure might help you to narrow the time period that you're searching.\n\nThis sounds as much a meta-question about history as it is about feminism. It sounds like it might be asking you to inquire about the motivations behind the \"revisionist\" history movement, put forth by people like Howard Zinn. Yes, yes, fellow /r/askhistorians, I know a lot of you don't like Zinn, but his purpose was to write about forgotten and under-appreciated narratives of history, which it sounds like this essay is supposed to touch on.\n\nGood luck!",
"Holy god, the assignment is to compare & critique the historiographic approaches of multiple generations of scholars? Are you a grad student in history or Women's Studies? The problem with writing \"comparative history\" is that you need to be well-versed in the subject matter and the primary writers in the field before you can effectively compare their approaches to it. Can you pick just one question or are you supposed to field them all? (Might check the assignment carefully to be sure about this.) Are you working from a textbook? What's the reading material for the course? I'll be honest with you, this question sounds a bit like \"write my next undergrad syllabus for me.\" That said, I can try to help.\n\n[The rule about homework here](_URL_0_) only says that people won't provide answers for you, but discussing the topic seems valid. \n\nAs for the actual question, hm. Assuming I really had to try to cover all of that ground in a single essay, the way I'd approach it is I'd pick a single feminist historian as a source, and discuss how he/she answers each of those questions. I'd go through the questions one at a time, probably reordering them so that they flow more logically one into the other (for example, chronologically, or perhaps address them in the order my author does). As I got to each question, I'd offer little bits of comparison to different historians who I think had a notably different view from the main source I'm focusing on. \n\nFor instance, if your main text is Mary Wollstonecraft's [A Vindication of the Rights of Woman](_URL_1_) (pdf) (as good a place to start as any), you can work your way through that relatively short document teasing out the parts where she talks about what \"history\" is, who writes it, and the need to rethink it & recover women's role in it, about gender roles in her time alongside her theory about the \"natural\" roles of men & women. You can also discuss her interlocutors briefly; Talleyrand in the dedication, writers in her time who offer demure advice to 'ladies' (i.e. the *Cosmo* of her age) she mentions in the introduction, etc. You'd also want to pick 1-2 writers of a later era to sketch in their approaches to each question with that of Wollstonecraft. And perhaps offer your own point of view. Wollstonecraft was one of the first European writers to take seriously the question of women's role or lack thereof in politics, history, the arts, etc., but that doesn't mean later feminist thinkers agreed with everything she wrote. \n\nI was hoping to find a clear, concise summary of feminist history in a popular magazine, like New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc. I think the magazine format would probably give you the best insight into how to cover such a broad question in so few pages. But I wasn't able to find a good one, maybe someone else can help. \n\nJudith Bennett has [a superb short overview of feminist history](_URL_2_) (pdf) on her USC page, to give you a more academically rigorous example of how to approach the topic. Good luck!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules",
"http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/wollvind.pdf",
"http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~judithb/femhist.pdf"
]
] |
|
117vvb
|
Hi, Historians! Can you please tell me what the diet was like of an average person of your respective eras of expertise? I have so many questions!
|
What ingredients were available at the time? How were these ingredients sourced? What was really trendy or popular? What sort of lengths did people go to to get spices and so on? What sort of preservation techniques were being used? How were meals formatted? Has it always been a standard three-meal day type of thing? What did common people eat? What did nobility eat? What was eaten because of it's supposed positive or restorative properties? What sort of beverages were being consumed, alcoholic or otherwise? Etc., etc...
I want to know everything! Just give me a knowledge dump! Do you have any good links to resources of this type of information? Books to recommend?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/117vvb/hi_historians_can_you_please_tell_me_what_the/
|
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"text": [
"Pork and Rice! And a whole lot of it. These were essentially the staple foods for the lower and middle class.\n\nThe upper class in the Song Dynasty (in case the tag didn't make it clear which time period I am referring to) were able to import all kinds of food from around China, and neighbouring countries. They would have had a much more varied diet, and since restaurant culture began in the Song Dynasty, they would have gone out to eat a lot as well.",
"The Aztec diet was more like hunter-gatherers than you might expect, in part due to the lack of domesticated animals that could be exploited for meat and milk. It was heavily biased towards a wide and diverse fruit/veg base, with animal protein being a more incidental occurrence. That being said, a lot of the foods I'm about to mention are still common in Mexican cuisine, particularly food from the DF and surrounding states. This is going to be less \"menu planning\" than \"info dump\" though. Think of it as the in-depth exploration of the Columbian (fuck that guy) Exchange that got glossed over in school.\n\n\n__*Plants*__\n\n**Grains and Sisters**\n\nThe Aztec diet (and Mesoamerican diet in general) had its staple grain: maize (i.e. corn). Saying this though, is like saying Mosepotamians ate a lot of wheat; it belies the variety of forms the grain took. After [nixtamalization](_URL_12_) of the kernels, the most common preparation was to make tortillas, but maize was also used for [atole](_URL_17_), [pozole](_URL_13_), tamales, or simply made into dumplings that were then prepared in a number of ways. Toasted tortillas, just to end this bit of cornographic material, were the staple food of Aztec armies on the march.\n\nThen there were the other two sisters in \"Three Sisters\" of North American agriculture: squash and beans. Beans include any number of the [Phaseolus](_URL_4_) genus and appears to have had [independent domestication events](_URL_5_) in Meso and South America. Peanuts (*Arachis*), however, are indigenous to South America, though they were known of and cultivated in Mesoamerica. Squash, in this case, is referring to the [Cucurbita](_URL_10_) genus, which includes anything from pumpkins to zucchini. Squash actually provided a multifacted food source and would be consumed at various points along its development, from seeds on up. Squash blossoms, for instance, were common additions to the cannibalistic pozole enjoyed ritually (more on that in a bit).\n\nThere were other staple grains of Post-Classic Mesoamerica though, [amaranth](_URL_6_) and chia in particular. Chia is actually a seed, so that a bit cheating, and was also more of a staple crop in Southern Mexico (this is where the state of Chiapas gets its name). The seeds are also quite oily and would be pressed for that purpose.\n\nAmaranth (*huahtli*), however, was the more popular grain in the NW Highlands of Mexico and was used in a similar way to any other grain, being turned into dough for various purposes. The leaves of the plant would also be used as a \"green.\" My favorite and oft told anecdote is that amaranth cakes mixed with human blood and honey were made into representations of the gods and ritually consumed during Aztec festivals. This connection to the Aztec religion was enough to get growing amaranth banned in post-Cortes Mexico, seeing as how the ritual consumption of the blood and the body of the gods was an offense to the devoutly Catholic Spanish.\n\n\n**Fruits**\n\nThere was a huge profusion of fruits in the Aztec diet. [Cherimoya](_URL_15_), papaya, guava, [mamey](_URL_2_), [zapote](_URL_8_) were all cultivated in Mesoamerica. Other fruits (that we might not think of as fruits) grown were avocados, tomatoes, and tomatillas. Tomatoes are thought to possibly be native to South America and later arrivals to Mesoamerica, but tomatillos were definitely an indigenous Mesoamerican domestication. \n\nThen we have cacti, particularly the nopal cacti, which is featured on the [Mexican coat of arms](_URL_3_). This fruit (*nochtli*) was not only important in the diet, but also symbolically, as it represented the hearts of sacrifices. Once a heart was pulled from a sacrifice, it was literally called \"Precious Eagle Cactus Fruit\" (*tlazotli cuauhnochtli*). Anyway, aside from providing fruit the leaves of the nopal cactus can also be used in a variety of dishes (e.g. [huevos con nopalitos](_URL_7_), yum!) \n\nOther cacti were cultivated but the second most important \"cactus\" was maguey, which is actually an agave. Most people probably know agave as the source of tequila and mezcal (tequila is to mezcal as champagne is to sparkling wine), but the leaves are edible and it also provided a large amount of the fibers that ended up as clothing. A *very* diverse plant! Through a complicated process of removing the flowering root, agaves can be made to produce large amounts of [aguamiel](_URL_9_), which can then be fermented into [pulque](_URL_0_) (pulque is to tequila as beer is to scotch). Don't start envisioning drunken Aztec frat parties though, they prized self-discipline and asceticism; public drunkenness was punishable by death (unless you were the equivalent of a senior citizen, in which case you had earned the right to wander the streets shitfaced).\n\n**Spices/Condiments/Herbs/Etc.**\n\nThe one key element the we've yet to discuss is chili peppers, delicious, magnificent, exquisite [*Capsicum*](_URL_11_) spp., which were common additions to just about any dish. Chilies would be added fresh, smoked, dried, or just about any other way to any number of foods. That human flesh pozole I mentioned earlier, it's other ingredients would be hominy, squash blossoms, and chilies. \n\nOther non-main foods that were would have been a part of the Aztec diet included [epazote](_URL_1_) and [achiote](_URL_14_), which the Aztecs prominently used to dye their cacao drink.\n\nCacao, by the way, is not indigenous to the Aztec core region, being a more tropical fruit than the Mexican highlands would accomodate. Still, by the time of Ahzuiotl's extension of the Aztec Empire down to [Soconusco](_URL_16_), cacao had been established as an elite beverage and (as beans) a form of currency. The best way to experience the bitter Aztec beverage would be for you to go get some unsweetened cacao powder, then mix it with some hot water and beat it until foamy, then drink. Depending on your preference you could add annato (from achiote) to dye it red, honey to sweeten it, ground maize, or even vanilla (*tlilxochitl*, another indigenous plant). In a way, it occupied the same status as coffee in 1600s Europe: an elite, somewhat exotic beverage, with stimulating properties. \n\nThis is going on a bit long so I'll end this post here and move onto meats and such.",
"Since this covers such a staggering variety of cultures for me, it would take many posts to cover each era and region. But essentially, Jews mostly adapted foods from their surrounding cultures. Even in terms of religious staples - the challah was baked as a braided bread in Ashkenazi culture, and as a flat pita in Mizrahi communities. However, they were sometimes prepared differently, adhering to kashrut.\n\nA major difference between cuisine within Judaism is that Sephardis, Ashkenazis, and Mizrahis have different conceptions of kosher. Although the kosher laws are outlined in the Torah, due to longstanding tradition some foods were later accepted as kosher (this includes chicken). For instance, Sephardis eat rice during Passover, something forbidden to Ashkenazis.\n\nFood is an enormous aspect of Jewish culture, so there is quite an extensive \"Jewish cuisine\" (again, mostly a fusion and adoption of local cultures). \n\nI'm quite a fan of Ashkenazi and Sephardic cuisine myself. This includes smoked meat (mostly a 19th-20th century North American trend), blintzes (adopted from Russian cuisine, 4th-6th century CE), burekas (early Ottoman), couscous with cumin, cilantro, and turmeric (North Africa, Medieval period at some point) and of course bagels with cream cheese and lox (15-18th centuries CE Eastern Europe). Be sure to put onion and capers on your cream cheese and lox bagel!\n\nA lot of the really interesting stuff happens in Israel though. There, all the various Jewish worldly cuisines fuse with Arabic cuisine. That includes influences from places as diverse as New York City, Addis Ababa, Baghdad, and Moscow. Chicken schnitzel (an Ashkenazi import) is very popular in Israel, as is falafel, hummus, and the like. Some really interesting fusion cuisine has arisen there.",
"Before \"Columbian Exchange\" products, the Japanese ate your standards. Rice and fish were a large part of diet, but chicken and pork had come there from mainland, as well as beef to very limited extent. (cattle imports were a luxury) Spices are a little harder to define exactly, but there is no reason to think that Japan did not have the same availability to spices as all of the Pacific Asian coast, so essentially anything you could find in the places that produced spice.\n\n",
"Civil War soldiers lived on something called hard tack, which is a big thick, incredibly hard cracker. Sometimes they would cook it with other things they would find, or just eat it plain.",
"Henry Mayhem was a Victorian journalist who made it his life's work to document the lives of the London poor in excruciating detail, as only a Victorian could. His monumental three-volume 1851 work (an extra volume was published in 1861) *[London Labour and the London Poor](_URL_0_)* chronicles the life of the working classes in mid-19th century London with statistics, analysis and personal stories. I can highly recommend it. Though it has a certain condescending slant to it, Mayhew was genuinely interested in the minutiae of his subjects' lives. After reading the whole thing, you will feel as if you personally have lived in Dickens' London.\n\nNow to the food. The diet of the 19th century urban London poor was extremely deficient both in quantity and especially in variety. Moreover, the poor lived hand-to-mouth and often weren't assured three meals a day. A typical breakfast would consist of some tea or coffee and a chunk of bread. Butter if the person was particularly well-off that day. Lunch was often non-existent or consisted of another chunk of bread, or some potatoes. Dinner might be potatoes and herring, or bacon and bread. Rarely are fruit and vegetables mentioned.\n\nI will leave here an excerpt in which Mayhew describes the daily diet of an oyster-seller on the streets:\n\n > he usually had his **breakfast** at a lodging-house—he preferred a lodging-house, he said, on account of the warmth and the society. Here he boiled half an ounce of **coffee**, costing a 1/2 d. He purchased of his landlady the **fourth of a quartern loaf** (1 1/4 d. or 1 1/2 d.), for she generally cut a quartern loaf into four for her single men lodgers, such as himself, clearing sometimes a farthing or two thereby. For **dinner**, my informant boiled at the lodging-house **two or three lbs. of potatoes**, costing usually 1 d. or 1 1/4 d., and fried **three, or four herrings** , or as many as cost a penny. He sometimes mashed his potatoes, and spread over them the herrings, the fatty portion of which flavoured the potatoes, which were further flavoured by the roes of the herrings being crushed into them. He drank **water** to this meal, and the cost of the whole was 2 d. or 2 1/2 d. [...] For \"**tea**\" he expended 1 d. on **coffee**, or 1 1/2 d. on **tea**, being a \"cup\" of tea, or \"half-pint of coffee,\" at a coffee-shop. Sometimes he had a halfpenny-worth of **butter**, and with his tea he ate the **bread** he had saved from his breakfast, and which he had carried in his pocket. He had no butter to his breakfast, he said, for he could not buy less than a pennyworth about where he lodged, and this was too dear for one meal. On a **Sunday** morning however he generally had **butter**, sometimes joining with a fellow-lodger for a pennyworth; for his Sunday dinner he had a piece of **meat**, which cost him 2 d. on the Saturday night. Supper he dispensed with, but if he felt much tired he had a half-pint of **beer**, which was three farthings \"in his own jug,\" before he went to bed, about nine or ten, as he did little or nothing late at night, except on Saturday. He thus spent 4 1/2 d. a day for food, and reckoning 2 1/2 d. extra for somewhat better fare on a Sunday, his board was 2 s. 10 d. a week.",
"Food in Western medieval monasteries was regulated mainly by the [rule of Saint Benedict](_URL_0_). There were one or two mealtimes, depending on the season. Before Easter and Christmas there was fasting. The food is regulated in Chapter 39 of the rule which I quote in full because it will answer most your questions:\n\n > Making allowance for the infirmities of different persons, we believe that for the daily meal, both at the sixth and the ninth hour, two kinds of cooked food are sufficient at all meals; so that he who perchance cannot eat of one, may make his meal of the other. Let two kinds of cooked food, therefore, be sufficient for all the brethren. And if there be fruit or fresh vegetables, a third may be added. Let a pound of bread be sufficient for the day, whether there be only one meal or both dinner and supper. If they are to eat supper, let a third part of the pound be reserved by the Cellarer and be given at supper.\n\n > If, however, the work hath been especially hard, it is left to the discretion and power of the Abbot to add something, if he think fit, barring above all things every excess, that a monk be not overtaken by indigestion. For nothing is so contrary to Christians as excess, as our Lord saith: \"See that your hearts be not overcharged with surfeiting\" (Lk 21:34).\n\n > Let the same quantity of food, however, not be served out to young children but less than to older ones, observing measure in all things.\n\n > But let all except the very weak and the sick abstain altogether from eating the flesh of four-footed animals.\n\nThese rules were applied quite differently over the course of time and church documents complaining about the gluttonous lifestyle of monks abound. \n\nBecause monasteries played an important role in the cultivation of Europe, these rules influenced the diet of the average person as well, esp. when it comes to the mealtimes."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulque",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphania_ambrosioides",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouteria_sapota",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Coat_of_arms_of_Mexico.svg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaseolus",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15655667",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_grain",
"http://www.degustar.com.mx/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Nopalitos-con-Huevo-Dgustar.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manilkara_zapota",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguamiel",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixa_orellana",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherimoya",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soconusco",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atole"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://dl.tufts.edu/view_text.jsp?pid=tufts:MS004.002.052.001.00001"
],
[
"http://rule.kansasmonks.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87:chapter-39-of-the-quantity-of-food&catid=35:26-50&Itemid=95"
]
] |
|
ez8dab
|
where does our bodily energy go when we don't use it?
|
For example if you get really riled up to the point where you look berserk or you're high on some kind of crazy drug that's making you feel like exploding out of your skin then you just stop and sit there or go to sleep, was there ever more potential energy inside your body before you calmed down? If not how does that work? And if so, where does the energy go? Or is the energy simply used to power the involuntary functions of the body?
If energy can't be created or destroyed, where does the energy from someone on cocaine come from?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ez8dab/eli5_where_does_our_bodily_energy_go_when_we_dont/
|
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"You're conflating the physical concept of energy with the abstract human feeling of being energetic. They are not the same at all. Being riled up doesn't mean your body contains more energy, it's just how you feel. Your body isn't a vessel that stores energy until it reaches some peak and explodes. That's not what potential energy is, that's a completely unrelated concept. Drugs don't contain calories so they don't give you any energy, only food does. In fact, stimulant drugs tend to speed up your metabolism which makes you burn energy even faster. You're always using energy from metabolizing food, and if you're consuming more energy from calories than you use, your body turns it into fat."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
19z34c
|
When you record sound on your phone at a concert, why does it pick up the sound of everyone around you over the speakers, but your ears pick up the soundsystem?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19z34c/when_you_record_sound_on_your_phone_at_a_concert/
|
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"Humans have the ability to focus on a single source and mentally filter out background noises. Your phone does not. "
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[] |
[] |
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[]
] |
||
2tkbjm
|
I keep hearing about outbreaks of measles and whatnot due to people not vaccinating their children. Aren't the only ones at danger of catching a disease like measles the ones who do not get vaccinated?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2tkbjm/i_keep_hearing_about_outbreaks_of_measles_and/
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"Sadly, no. Unvaccinated people are indeed at the highest risk, however, while vaccines are very effective, no vaccine is 100% effective. Most childhood vaccines protect between 85 and 99 percent of the population. For some reason, [a small percentage of folks who are vaccinated do not develop immunity](_URL_2_). This hasn't traditionally been much of an issue because with the vast majority of the population vaccinated for a particular disease, we develop \"[herd immunity](_URL_1_).\" The more folks are vaccinated, the harder it is for a disease to spread, and so epidemics become less likely. \n\nAnother issue (though not strictly what you asked) is that some children cannot receive the vaccine. Often this is because they have a compromised immune system thanks to a genetic disorder, or active cancer treatment. While these children cannot receive the protection of the vaccine, they *can* indeed receive the protection afforded by herd immunity. Unfortunately, as more people choose not to vaccinate their children, immunocompromised are put in particularly bad risk. In the case of measles, these children[ have up to a 50% mortality rate](_URL_0_). \n\n**EDIT: Thank you everyone for the extensive and productive discussion, but please remember that personal medical anecdotes are not allowed in /r/askscience.**",
"In addition to small children who can't be vaccinated yet & have an underdeveloped immune system (newborns & infants), you also have the elderly who often have not kept up on their boosters & also have a compromised immune system. Those who cannot be immunized for health reasons rely on herd immunity. ",
"Vaccination isn't a cure, it's about building a global community that's immune to a certain strain of the germ so that it has no more new hosts to infect and no chances of letting the germ mutate to a new strain. Even that's not possible because of a large number of people with compromised immune systems (*think cancer patients including babies and elderly folks*). \n\nBy also not giving any new hosts, you're reducing the chance of the germ mutating to fight the immunity. By not vaccinating the kids, you're letting measles to mutate to a new strain that WILL infect the vaccinated kids because the vaccination is only for certain strains of measles. \n\nThe closest thing you can do to reduce or eliminate a bug like this is to leave it no more new hosts to infect. That's why Eloba outbreak didn't get so widespread, we reacted in time to reduce any more new infections by not giving it any more hosts. \n\nThink about what will happen if measles mutates to a new strain that no kids on the planet will be protected from.",
"summarising everything I know;\n\nLet's say a person who is vaccinated comes into contact with that pathogen.\nVaccines aren't 100% effective but if a vaccine is 95% effective then it means that only 1 in 20 people coming into contact with the disease are likely to catch it which is much better than everyone catching it.\n\nPeople who are immunocompromised for some reason I.E Chemo or a genetic disorder cannot be vaccinated so they rely on the fact that everyone else is vaccinated to be protected.\nChildren under 12 months of age have not had the MMR vaccine also rely on herd immunity to protect them\n\nLet's say an unvaccinated person comes into contact with that pathogen.\nthey have only the basic primary immune response to the disease and will suffer all the negative consequences which may be life threatening and cause permanent damage before their body can fight off the infection.\nin the meantime, the pathogen has replicated many many times and produced and some of those will have varied genetically.\nsome of these genetic variations may change the antigens on the surface of the pathogen (the proteins that your immune system uses to recognise them as pathogens)\n\nThis person then comes into contact with many other people during their miserable day\nbecause the antigens on the surface of the pathogen have changed; vaccinated individuals do not have an immune system that can recognise the new strain of pathogen and so they are not protected and have just had their week ruined.\n\nIn an idea world, everyone would be vaccinated against everything harmful.\nthis would mean that diseases (like measles) have a hard time infecting humans\n\nthis also means that they have a hard time replicating\n\nthis means that they are less likely to develop a new strain that can overcome the vaccination",
"Also, some children are either too young for vaccinations, e.g below 12 months,\nOr children have autoimmune diseases meaning they have to take immunosuppressants (They basically have a suppressed immune system) Therefore those children can contract measles. Which is why it's very dangerous for people who can get vaccinated but choose not to. Not just for them, but for people who CAN'T get vaccinated.\n\nSo, people, VACCINATE!",
"One additional point that a lot of people miss:\n\nPeople who are immunocompromised (due to HIV, some cancers and cancer treatments, certain genetic conditions, anti-rejection drugs, and some other medications) are at elevated risk *even if they have already been vaccinated.* \n\nThis group is usually brought up in the context of 'populations that can't be vaccinated'. Yes, it's true that people who are severely immunocompromised usually can't be vaccinated. But even people who had their shots as kids and developed effective immunity are at risk if they later go on to develop an immunocompromising condition.\n\nAll a vaccine does is teach your immune system how to respond to a pathogen. You still need your immune system to be in good working order when it comes time to actually mount that response.",
"In addition to what everyone else is saying I'd like to add to the fact that when you are born you are not given all of your vaccinations at once. You get some when you're born, then you get some in intermittent time intervals. You're not even completely vaccinated until around high school in most cases. Obviously measles is vaccinated against much earlier, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Anti-vaccine crowd puts other peoples kids at risk who would like to get vaccinated but it is too early. I have two daughters and I think about this every time the topic of anti-vacinators come up, I'd be furious if my child got sick or died before they go their vaccine because someone else \"believes it causes autism\". ",
"By getting vaccinated, you're contributing to herd immunity. Herd immunity means that an infection can hardly spread from one person who isn't immunised to another person who isn't. You could argue that it's egocentric not to get vaccinated, since you're not contributing to herd immunity, but rather increasing the chance of an epidemic. And some people, for various reasons, can't get vaccinated. But if everyone else gets their vaccinations, these few people have little to fear. ",
"There is an extra layer on top of the pure medical science. People that are against vaccination tend to flock together - e.g. villages full of people following specific faith. So the diseases have a good beachfront to establish and then spread because these people don't live in isolation. ",
"The more people catch it, the higher the chance of it mutating into a new form that might be resistant against your vaccination precautions.\n\n[Your body adapts to the vaccinated 'examples' given to you, your body forms a defense that only works against that type and form of attacker]\n\nIf a disease mutates it can eventually change its form and behavior and your own defense wont recognize it was a threat, letting it breed inside you.",
"So you have two kinds of immunity: innate and adaptive.\nInnate immunity just goes around looking for something to fight, when it finds it, it kills it via various mechanisms. It eats it as in the case of macrophages, or it shoots holes in it (literally) via the complement system.\nAdaptive immunity is a really complex system that gets activated when an antigen (usually a protein) is presented to a lymphocyte. This starts off a chain reaction where B-cells in your lymph system begin getting trained to hunt and kill anything with that antigen. These cells hunt down and kill the invading bodies that have that antigen on them. With the help of T-cells, they create a pretty amazing micro-battle with invaders. This is usually a surface protein that exists on the invading virus or bacterium.\n\nThat is how vaccines work, they introduce that antigen to your body so it can build those B-cells which remain in your blood stream ready to attack. You will still get the virus, but when you do, you're ready with primed B-cells that already know and recognize that antigen.\n\nPrimed B-cells remain in your system pretty much for life. But as you get older, your thymus shrinks. It gets harder to produce T-cells, and your immune system gets weaker. You may have other complications to your immune system from getting older; as it's incredibly complex and reliant on a number of cellular interactions that could be interrupted from something like a hip surgery, a blood transfusion, a graft, etc. So even though you're vaccinated, your body may not be able to mount the full on defensive needed to fight off certain invaders.\n\nSo vaccinations protect teens to middle aged people most effectively. But young do not yet have developed immune systems, and older people have immunocompromised systems. These people are most at risk despite being vaccinated. ",
"Vaccines aren't completely effective. Sometimes people can't have them, they don't work on other people, and in some cases the disease can still be transmitted to vaccinated people.\n\nThe important concept behind the way vaccines keep society safe is herd immunity. \nEach individual may not be completely immune to the disease, but a group of (mostly) immunized people is not a viable environment for the disease.\n\nLet's say we have a disease which is contagious enough that for every 20 people that catch it, 19 of them will expose one other person on average, and then every twentieth person will expose two people. (Ie. each infected person infects 1.05 more people).\n\nWe might have a group of 1000 people that have not had it yet.\n\nWe start with 1 person infected, \nThen it goes around 14 people or so (on average), now there are 2 infected, \nThen after 22 more cycles, there are 3 infected, \nAfter 28 more cycles, there are 4, \nAfter 38 cycles there are 10, 52 cycles is 20 and so on. \nAs time goes on the disease spreads and flourishes\n\nEventually the disease starts to die off in the local population because it encounters more people who have had it than people who haven't. Some of these people will move around though, and the disease will spread from area to area, and it will eventually mutate to the point where a new strain can come back to the original population.\n\n\nNow let's say 10 of these people move to a vaccinated area with 1000 more people (who are vaccinated but have never had the disease). And let's say the vaccine only prevents ~10% of cases (most vaccines are much more effective than this, but then most diseases are more contagious too). The disease now infects 0.95 people for every one infected.\n\nWe start with 10,\nAfter two cycles there are only 9 people with it.\nAfter 5 cycles, only 8\nAfter 15, only 5,\nAfter 30 cycles, only 2 people, and so on\n\nEventually the disease dies out in the population, before everyone has even caught it once. If the next population is also vaccinated, even fewer people there get it, and so on and so on until the disease goes extinct.\n\nIn this (rather contrived) example, a 10% effective vaccine can stop the disease entirely. Most real diseases are much more contagious, but a vaccine which is 80-95% effective (I think most vaccines lie somewhere in this range) can be enough to stop the spread.\n",
"Some people have legitimate medical reasons for not being vaccinated, such as the very young and the immune-compromised. These people rely on herd immunity to avoid catching these diseases, and herd immunity is exactly what the anti-vaxxers threaten.",
"Dr Gil Chavez made a quote saying people should not be concerned if they have been immunized. Disney used this quote to say it is safe to come theo their park as long as you have been immunized. Both of these statements would lead you to believe that you are 100 percent protected with the vax. This is not the case. ",
"Firstly, vaccines aren't 100% effective so you need enough people to be vaccinated such that the chances of a susceptible person coming into contact with the pathogen is very small - if 95% of people are immune to the disease, they cannot carry it and so the people who aren't immune will not be exposed to it. This is called herd immunity and is also important in protecting immuno-compromised people who cannot receive vaccines.\n\nSecondly, herd immunity is also important because it prevents a reservoir population forming in which the disease can mutate and evade the vaccination through adaptation. Even if the only people who catch the disease are the anti-vaxxers, the virus can survive within the population and evolve to beat the vaccine that everyone else received. Since vaccines take so much time and money to develop, this could quite easily devastate even the vaccinated population.",
"Not only those who are un-vaccinated, some people have an immunity in their bodies which will fight off the disease and render the vaccine useless. You can check if your vaccine worked by getting a blood check done. ",
"I've read that anti-vaxers cite outbreaks - including their own children contracting whatever it is - as proof that vaccines aren't effective.\n\nIt's like when politicians cut taxes, gut spending on programs, and then point to the programs and say they are inefficient / don't work. These people have essentially created the problem themselves, and on some level intentionally.\n\n\"Herd immunity\" was already referenced, but what I was surprised to learn is that due to people being allergic to the vaccines and some people simply not developing an immunity (vaccine doesn't work on some small percentage of people), it doesn't take that many anti-vax idiots to screw up the system.\n\nRedditors who know more about this - what's the risk of mutation, or some other way in which new outbreaks could really screw over even those of us who are vaccinated? News strains not covered by current vaccines, etc.",
"To explain, there are two factors that determine your susceptibility to infection. Immune response (including vaccination) and proximity to the disease.\n\nWhen unvaccinated children contract a disease, such as measles, they are able to bring it into contact with vaccinated children. Those children then have a chance of contracting the disease anyway, as the vaccine is not 100% effective.\n\nBy increasing the number of vaccinated children, you decrease the likelihood that any one will become sick in the first place, but as soon as one becomes sick, the likelihood of an outbreak grows.",
"Unvaccinated families tend to mingle and live near fellow unvaccinated families. Sometimes they will be carries for a certain strain of a disease, lets call it Toxic. As they all live together, Toxic will actually grow and evolve into a stronger and deadlier strain.\n\nThose who are immunized to Toxic are immune to Toxic strain's 1, 2, 3. The Toxic growing in the unvaccinated community would at some point evolve into Toxic Strain 4. Now Toxic Strain 4 will start killing everyone and medical research will be a bit late passing out the shots. The reason for that couls be that:\nA). Toxic was suppose to be erradicated and doctors now arent trained for a 100 year old virus.\nB). Did not expect it to evolve again so soon and it being immuned to our immunizations. ",
"Outside of countries with good, full coverage healthcare for the entire population, you know places like the US, there are three reasons people go unvaccinated:\n\n1: The very rich will ignore doctors and medicine in favor of their own cultural reasons not to vaccinate. The major case of this in the west is over the unfounded connection with autism. The fact that this has been thoroughly debunked has not stopped these people.\n\n2: The very poor who cannot afford the medical care necessary to vaccinate their children. Thankfully with Obamacare and the mandate to support preventative care this will be changing in this country, but there will always be remnants of this problem as healthcare is formulated now. This also includes undocumented immigrants who for various reasons cannot afford or use healthcare in this country effectively. By making people 'illegal' it creates a false isolation of undocumented immigrants, its like putting people in quarantine for a preventable illness and leaving the door open.\n\n3: They are unable to be vaccinated effectively. This can happen due to various allergies. Or the vaccination did not actually take and so they have had their shots, but they lack the immunity they are meant to confer. So think about how many vaccines you have had, and ask yourself what the chance is that one of those did not work.\n\nNow this isn't too bad. Vaccination gives a group what is called 'herd immunity,' meaning that the chance of unvaccinated people coming in contact with a disease carrier is lowered to the point that the disease becomes rare or eradicated from the population like polio. But if too many people are unnecessarily unvaccinated then this herd immunity is lost, and diseases can circulate through these three populations of people in our society.\n\nIf 3 is the only group going unvaccinated, then we should be fine. But if 1 or 2 are big enough then it can disrupt the herd immunity of your community.",
"In addition, every time a person gets infected their is a chance the virus will mutate. Most of the times the mutation is small and does not produce any noticeable effect. However, it is entirely possible that one of these rolls of the dice will come up snake eyes and the resulting change will reduce the effectiveness of the vaccination in the rest of us. The chance of an individual mutation doing this is unlikely but every new infection is another chance to roll the dice.",
"It's especially dangerous for those who CANNOT get vaccines for whatever reason, those people have historically relied on the vaccinated populous to protect themselves from disease, but now that a bunch of people think that vaccines are bad and aren't vaccinating by their own choice, and now we are seeing an increase in disease. So yes it is dangerous particularly for those who aren't vaccinated, but not everyone who doesn't get vaccinated does it by choice. ",
"You can not get the MMR vaccine until you are a certain age. My - year old son had it recently. \n\nWe live in so cal. If he has contracted measles before he got the vaccine it could have been very bad. \n\nIt may be their choice but they are putting innocent infants at risk by not vaccinating. \n\nYou know parts of Los Angeles have a vaccination level lower than parts of the Sudan?",
"Herd-immunity is nothing more than statistical probability of an encounter with a person carrying a contagious disease. The problem is, everyone can be a carrier of an illness/disease without being effected by it themselves even if they are immunized. Immunization just makes it less likely that the inoculated person will become ill from said illness/disease.",
"Aside from what has been said about vaccines not being 100% effective there is also the fact that with the virus resurging into the population it has note opportunity to mutate and thus thwart out vaccination and making us need to make a new one. (Like how the flu shot is a different recipe every year)\n\nAnd that's just taking about the u.s. population. If one of those viruses starts to come back here in the u.s. and spreads to other parts of the world it would be more devastating than usual. Why? Because we have modern medicine. Our usem of disinfectants and antibiotics in our foods means that any virus that thrives here is almost completely impervious to any of our sanitation methods.",
"Something else to consider is that some people are legitimately unable to get vaccinated for certain stuff. I have a friend who has been put in the hospital by a flu shot twice, so obviously he can't stay up to date on that one.\nSo people who can't get a vaccine for a legitimate reason are put at additional risk by people who just choose not to.",
"I was born in 1984. Properly vaccinated with everything that kids now a days are vaccinated for with the exception of the chicken pox, as a vaccine didn't exist back then. When I went into the medical field they checked my titers and I had no immunity to one of the three parts in the mmr and had to get a booster. \n\nIn fact, most people that I check who are adults in my practice, about half them are lacking the immunity. This is not an official statistic, this is just my observation. ",
"1) The MMR vaccine is not usually administered until the age of 1, leaving 12 months where a human is only protected by herd immunity. \"[A child should receive the first shot when he is between 12-15 months, and the second when he's between 4-6 years of age.](_URL_2_)\"\n\n2) Some people are [allergic](_URL_2_) to certain vaccinations so they cannot receive them.\n\n3) Every single human that is NOT vaccinated is an environment that a disease could potentially infiltrate, [mutate](_URL_1_) (\"evolve\") inside of, then become hazardous to the rest of us that did receive a vaccination.\n\n4) Read up on [herd immunity](_URL_0_). The more unvaccinated people, the less effectively they're protected by herd immunity and the less effective our herd immunity becomes.\n\nTL;DR: Everyone that CAN be vaccinated SHOULD be vaccinated. Anyone that is not vaccinated is a potential threat to our entire species."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseases-and-illnesses/measles/protecting-children-who-cant-be-immunised-against-measles",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity",
"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Genetic_mutation",
"http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/measles-mumps-and-rubella-mmr-vaccine"
]
] |
||
2x1e6b
|
why do cables that plug into phones such as the iphone cable have multiple pins going out but ultimately its a 4 pin usb connection on the others end?
|
I know androids have standard micro USB connections but the iPhone cables and older devices have a 32 pin connection or the new lightning cable for iPhone have 8 pins. The other end of the cable has 4 pins. Why don't all phones just have 4 pins?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x1e6b/eli5_why_do_cables_that_plug_into_phones_such_as/
|
{
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"text": [
"The iPhone dock connector was designed to provide multiple types of control & power. If you plug the phone into certain types of docks, it carries audio data & lets you control the device (play/pause, stop, next/previous track), along with providing power.\n\nWhen you connect it to USB, you're only connecting power & data, ignoring all the other pins.",
"In the case of the lightening connector, the 8 pins aren't used to communicate with the USB port, they communicate with a chip inside the cable. That chip in turn communicates with the USB port.\n\nThat doesn't answer your question, though, of why there are so many pins. The answer is because it allows the phone to work out which way up the cable has been inserted. The phone only looks at the bottom set of pins, not the top set. [This diagram](_URL_0_) shows how the top and bottom set are connected together in such a way that the phone can work out what's going on and communicate with the chip.\n\nIn the case of older Apple connectors, the extra pins were simply to deal with non-USB accessories (as amoeba has described in another post). The lightening connector uses its on-board chip to deal with non-USB accessories as required."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/technologyblog/files/2012/12/2pin-config-4.jpg?file=2012/12/2pin-config-4.jpg"
]
] |
|
1e79j9
|
why do people want obama impeached over the benghazi attack?
|
I'm 14 and I don't have a clear understanding over the situation in Benghazi. All I know is there was an attack that killed some people.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e79j9/eli5_why_do_people_want_obama_impeached_over_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"Actually just covered this in a different thread. It's not necessairly ELI5-ready, but I think I did a good job.\n\n[Link](_URL_0_)",
"The accusation is that Obama used Susan Rice to cover up that there was a terrorist involvement in the Benghazi attack. After the attack Susan Rice's position was that the attack was due to the movie The Innocence of Muslims.\n\nBecause Susan Rice was stating this and she works for President Obama, Republicans are saying that it was ultimately his fault and because Petraeus later said that he had told the President that it was a terrorist attack. They are also angry because those under attack at the embassy asked for military help and were denied that help. Because President Obama is the Commander in Chief they are also laying the blame of that upon his shoulders. \n\nAlso a lot of people think that this is just a huge dog and pony show to destabilize Hillary Clinton's bid for President in 2016, which it most likely is. Regardless, it's pretty hard to impeach a United States President especially one with a significantly higher approval rating than his congressional counterparts. ",
"The scandal originally was about when the attacks occurred the Administration, including Hillary Clinton, blamed it on reaction to some terribly made [anti-Muslim movie trailer](_URL_0_). In actuality it was coordinated effort by Al Qaeda.\n\nThis got the Republicans very upset. And they accused Obama of playing politics by covering up a security failure and Al Qaeda attack and pointing fingers at the movie and implying that Republican extremists were the cause.\n\nInstead of the White House being grown ups and admitting they messed up they have parsed statements and shown that technically they did make some statements blaming terrorists rather than movie critics.\n\nAnd instead of the Republicans being grown ups and getting over the whole thing they have conducted Congressional hearings to look into the thing.\n\nThe congressional hearings today are about how much warning there was before the attack. The Republicans are trying to find something but have no actual evidence the White House did anything drastically wrong.\n",
"There have been arguments in favor of impeaching Obama since shortly after he took office. The reason changes over and over again, and sometimes there is no reason given. A portion of these excuses - claims that he is a socialist, communist, fascist, Arab, Muslim, and/or Kenyan - not only have no proof behind them, but some of them are contradictory to one another or contradictory to facts we know for certain about Obama. These particular excuses are merely euphemisms for claiming he should be impeached for being black, as a portion of his opposition is racist but is trying (and failing) to conceal their racism. While this portion of his opposition might not make up the majority of those who want him impeached for Benghazi, they are most definitely part of that crowd.\n\n(I should note, if it wasn't clear enough, that not all opposition to Obama is from racists. However, some of it is certainly from racists.)",
"Cause they lack an understanding of reality. Any impeachment would be tried in the senate, needing 2/3rds majority to succeed. So an actual impeachment is only possible if the Republicans can convince a significant number of Democratic Senators to go against their own president, or if the Democrats lose every single seat that is contested in the 2014 election.\n\nNeither of those events are very likely to happen. So any call for impeachment is just political grandstanding that will pretty much be a waste of everyone's time.",
"I'm not sure there is seriously anyone calling for impeachment at this moment. There is more information that needs to be gathered before anything like that is possible or appropriate. \n\nPeople here have failed to mention Gregory Hicks, former deputy U.S. Chief of Mission in Libya, who has been referred to by most as a whistle-blower in this case. Hicks, a registered democrat, testified that they were denied reinforcements when requested for an unknown reason. These extra soldiers may have saved people's lives! Hicks said that Lt. Col. Gibson, who we know little information about, was furious when he was told that they were not allowed to help without an explanation being given! \n\nYou see, this isn't necessarily an issue that is just being politicized by the Republicans to bring down Obama. The whistle-blower in the case actually voted for Obama for president. The fact is that the executive branch lied to the people intentionally. The fact that they lied makes people feel like there needs to be more transparency. ",
"I see that the conservatives (if you can call them that) are out in full force. Anything that paints any sort of objective picture here is down voted to hell.\n\nThey're as ridiculous as the congressmen they support. This whole thing is massively overblown and there is no scandal. Fox News hates Obama and wants to impeach him for any reason. This is today's reason. Next month they'll invent another pretend scandal.",
" > Why do people want Obama impeached over the Benghazi attack?\n\nThey watch too much Fox News.",
"Another republican blow up, similar to Whitewater."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1e6rt0/john_mccain_refuses_to_back_impeaching_obama_over/c9xfaa0"
],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjoa3QazVy8&bpctr=1368400752"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
69uosl
|
why is planter's trail mix allowed to use real m & ms?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69uosl/eli5_why_is_planters_trail_mix_allowed_to_use/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dh9hzz7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because they have a deal with Mars. It's mutually beneficial for the two companies since they don't directly compete. If you pay attention you can find this sort of thing all over the snack aisle."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6p11v8
|
why is planting trees so important when farmers plant millions of plants every year?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p11v8/eli5_why_is_planting_trees_so_important_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dklwkd2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Many reasons.\n\nTrees are much larger than what a farmer plants. When they grow they provide homes for many animals and one tree is better for the environment than an acre of a crop.\n\nTrees provide shade, they can live for many years, cleaning the air..\n\nTrees have deep roots which are good for the soil. They reach deep and pull up nutrients and when established the trees don't need watering. To compare most crops have very shallow roots which means the farmer needs to add nutrients to the soil and they may need watering (irrigation).\n\nFarmers crops are mono-culture (one type of plant). Mono-culture environments are sterile and don't support much other life, a tree will soon have a forest around it, including trees of other types, shrubs, moss, and so forth, all creating a nicer environment.\n\nAlso remember farmers crops are short lived - harvested after a few months and often the field is left bare after that and some top soil will even blow away (or get washed off in the rain). So you only have the benefit of the plants for a few months and the plants are pretty small in comparison to a tree and don't do much for reducing carbon from the air like a tree does. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
zz66g
|
why does my voice sounds weird on video/audio?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zz66g/why_does_my_voice_sounds_weird_on_videoaudio/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c68zae5",
"c68zafo"
],
"score": [
15,
4
],
"text": [
"When you speak, you hear two things. You hear the sound of your own voice carried through the air back to your ears (having bounced off the walls or something), and you also hear the sound of your voice resonating inside your own body, in your chest cavity and your sinuses and all that. Both of these contribute to what you hear when you listen to yourself speaking.\n\nMicrophones can generally only record the part that comes through the air. Which, incidentally, is the only thing other people can hear too.\n\nSo microphones hear what other people hear, which is less than what you yourself hear from inside your own body.\n\nPut another way, your voice sounds *normal* when recorded; it sounds weird when you hear it from inside yourself.",
"The voice you hear when you speak also includes sound made by the vibrations in the bones in your head and face, which only you can hear. This makes it sound different to that heard by others, and therefore that heard on recorded audio."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
t716j
|
What can cause a person to change the language they are speaking, mid sentence, and not realize it?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t716j/what_can_cause_a_person_to_change_the_language/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4k4juj"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It's entirely possible that this man has a form of aphasia (language impairment). [Here is an interesting study](_URL_0_) on the effects of aphasia on bilinguals (note: \"L1\" means \"native language\" or \"first language\" and \"L2\" means \"second language\" or \"language learned later in life\"):\n\n > Bilinguals must focus their attention to control competing languages. **In bilingual aphasia, damage to the fronto-subcortical loop may lead to pathological language switching and mixing and the attrition of the more automatic language (usually L1).** We present the case of JZ, a bilingual Basque-Spanish 53-year-old man who, after haematoma in the left basal ganglia, presented with executive deficits and aphasia, characterised by more impaired language processing in Basque, his L1. Assessment with the Bilingual Aphasia Test revealed impaired spontaneous and automatic speech production and speech rate in L1, as well as impaired L2-to-L1 sentence translation. Later observation led to the assessment of verbal and non-verbal executive control, which allowed JZ’s impaired performance on language tasks to be related to executive dysfunction. In line with previous research, we report the significant attrition of L1 following damage to the left basal ganglia, reported for the first time in a Basque-Spanish bilingual. Implications for models of declarative and procedural memory are discussed."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.bu.edu/bilingualaphasia/research/"
]
] |
||
3vyd4x
|
the difference between hate crime and terrorism
|
Thanks for the responses. Pretty much what I thought
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vyd4x/eli5_the_difference_between_hate_crime_and/
|
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"text": [
"The difference is in the intended audience. Terrorism is done in a very public way, in order to terrorize as many people as possible. A hate crime is simply a crime where the victim was chosen because of their race / religion / etc.\n\nSo, for example, here in Pittsburgh a cab driver was shot in the middle of the night because he is Muslim. That is a hate crime. If the shooter had gone to a mosque in the middle of the day and started shooting people, trying to get maximum press coverage, that would be terrorism.",
"edit:formatting\n\n**Hate crime** is targeted at a specific individual(s) and causing harm to those individual(s) solely because they are a member of a legally [protected class.](_URL_0_)\n\n**Terrorism** is an act that targets a group of people broader than those harmed in the action taken. The intent is to cause fear that is felt across a large group of people that were not necessarily directly affected by the violent action.",
"Hate crime: harming an individual(s) because they like apples.\n\nTerrorism: destroying apple orchards or tainting apples because people like them.",
"Hate crime is usually defined in the US by a state's law. It generally requires an investigator to prove that the only reason, or the main reason, a crime was committed was due to the victim's race, gender, sexual orientation etc. Terrorism, however, is usually done to change policy, government, or laws. Whereas hate crimes want none of those and the crime is done because you dislike the targeted aspect of the victim.",
"Terrorism is a tactic used in ~~asynchronous~~ *asymmetric* power situations, by the weaker power, to create fear and incite the more powerful faction to self destruction. \n\nHate crime is a crime whose motivation is hate of a group."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
22q40o
|
Is there anywhere on Earth which has experienced no conflicts in the past?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22q40o/is_there_anywhere_on_earth_which_has_experienced/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cgpby8y"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Well, every place on earth has seen some sort of conflict, military or not.\n\nGreenland was (and still is) a colony of Denmark. In World War 2, Denmark was annexed by Nazi Germany, and Greenland came with it. It was only until the allies established minor bases on it that it was secured by the allies. Although it was never the location of a battle, it was the subject of a minor territorial conflict in the Second World War.\n\nAs for Antarctica and the Arctic circle, they are currently disputed zones, so technically they are seeing conflict right now even though there is no war going on. If you are looking for war zones, I guess you can leave these areas out, but it is important to note that much of it has seen military presence, especially between Canada and Russia in the Arctic.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
50mviu
|
if you throw a die you have a 1-in-6 (16.7%) chance of landing the desired number, but if you throw it six times you don't have a 100% chance of landing it.
|
I know it's theoretical, but what does this look like/what is this called mathematically? This is fucking me up.
I know there are dice with more than six sides, this is just an example.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50mviu/eli5_if_you_throw_a_die_you_have_a_1in6_167/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d75a3ie"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"For independent events like die rolls, probabilities don't add, they multiply. So the chance of getting a 2nd roll the same as the first is 1/6. And the chance of getting a 2nd roll the same as the first AND a 3rd roll the same as the second is 1/6 * 1/6, or 1/36."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
20xblf
|
how instant hot water showers work
|
I'm from a country where they're not hugely common and I have to turn on the water heater for like an hour when I want to have a shower, how do other showers just always have hot water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20xblf/eli5_how_instant_hot_water_showers_work/
|
{
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"text": [
"In the US, at least, we have a Water Heater Tank.\n\nThink of a big tank of water that is kept at a relatively constant temperature. When you turn on the hot water pipe, hot water is pumped out of the hot water tank.\n\nIt's usually electric or gas heated. \n\nIn other countries I've been to, there is sometimes a tankless system where the water is warmed up as it passes through the hose, at the shower area.\n\nI've also been places where you would boil the water in a big fucking pot and pour it over your head. It's almost more fun tbh.",
"There are several different configurations of shower but the main two are as follows.\r\rElectric showers:\rAn electric unit on the wall of the shower heats up cold water as it passes into the shower unit. These are usually cheap as all you need is the shower unit on the wall. They are normally often don't give a particularly powerful water jet as they have to heat the water as it goes and electric heating can be inefficient. \r\rMixer shower:\rThese showers mix hot water from your water heater (in uk these are generally gas powered) with cold water to get a desired temperature. \rThey need a decent head of water (the water needs to fall from above to give enough pressure) so can require water pumps to give a powerful blast.\rMixer showers can simply mix the water and you have to fiddle with them to get the right temp or can be thermostatic which allow you to set a temperature that it tries to maintain.\r\rSource: i worked for a bathroom retailer for a long time",
"In Iceland, were i live, there is no need for in-house water heater, we use geothermal heat and then it is mixed in the bathroom."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
zfukn
|
how do government agencies/big companies track internet usage of users, especially if there are hundreds of people using it at the same time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zfukn/eli5_how_do_government_agenciesbig_companies/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c648vrl"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The places sending you the information have to track you anyway in order to send it. All the government/companies have to do is copy and organize this data; when you have lots of very big servers, that's not particularly hard."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4mlfuj
|
if everyone stopped dying altogether, right this moment, how long do we have before the earth is completely overpopulated?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mlfuj/eli5if_everyone_stopped_dying_altogether_right/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d3wdyoz"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"I believe 14B is an accepted maximum capacity. For every 8 worldwide deaths, there are 19 births (2.375x). Around 55.3M people die every year. Since the population is currently ~7.4B, that means we need 6.6B more, so just under 116 years."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2rpab2
|
why is it that as we get older, we find it harder to enjoy new things (ie. music) and instead focus on things that remind us of the past?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rpab2/eli5why_is_it_that_as_we_get_older_we_find_it/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"I'm not really sure that this is the case. \n\nIf it is, though, I would think the answer is in the question: since the very young have comparatively less of *anything* to remind them of good things in the past, they cling to whatever's current just by default, whereas anyone who's even 20 or older will have (increasingly with age) more and more things that remind them of good things in the past.",
"It doesn't really work that way at all. I'm in my early 40's and LOVE music. I do find it harder and harder to find new bands/artists I really like, but that isn't because I live in the past. I have al;ways liked music from all eras. It's mainly because my standards are pretty high now and the bar for someone new to enter the pantheon is pretty high.\n\n Think of it this way. The first 100 musical artists you listen to are the 100 best artists you have ever heard. Beccause they are all you know. This is why teenagers have the annoying habit of thinking the latest and greatest is also the greatest of all time. It's called lack of context. Now, with a little more time, say you are exposed to 100 more new artists. Now you have heard 200 artists, and to pick a top 100 of all time you have to start dumping the weaker links from the original 100 to make new for the best of the new stuff. \n\n Once you run through that cycle enough times you will have accomplished a few things. For one, you will have acquired a real depth of knowledge about both music in general, and your tastes in particular. For another, when you have heard 1000-1500 artists your top 100 is fairly exclusive, and also of a fairly high quality. \n\n On the negative your tastes do get a little static, and it takes more to knock you out of your comfortable groove. It's also harder to like a lot of new stuff because it starts sounding so derivative, and you will tend to fall back to enjoying the original instead of the new people copying them (in spite of the fact that what was \"original\" to you copied something even earlier). Also, since you have narrowed down your list of stuff you like so many times (and 100 is just an arbitrary number to give an example, of course) something has to really jump out at you to make the cut. It gets harder and harder to find something of that high quality because truly great musicians are fairly rare, and only a handful come along each new decade."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
19ixn1
|
Why was Christianity so widely adopted by Europeans? Is there a reason for why Islam spread throughout the Middle East more than Christianity?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19ixn1/why_was_christianity_so_widely_adopted_by/
|
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"Not sure about the first part of your question (Constantine and his conversion definitely had a part, but how did Christianity even reach him? Trade routes?), but Islam spread through the Middle East because the people who conquered it were Muslims and allowed for easy conversion, at least according to [Fred Donner](_URL_0_). As I said in another thread, the Muslim conquerors allowed for religious freedom but also incentivized conversion: Muslims got better tax rates and were given plots of newly conquered land that had been seized from non-Muslims, which they could then use for farming. I also read that Islam spread faster because it allowed for more social mobility while essentially destroying the concept of a caste system when an Islamic empire finally reached India (the Mughals). ",
"To the first part of your question, a large part of Christianity spreading throughout Europe has to do with the Law. Following the fall of Rome there were large portions of Europe where Tribal Laws ruled the day, these laws were enacted essentially to cut down on 'blood feuds' between clans. When Christianity showed up in the form of missionaries, it was largely confined to Rome and eastern Europe (this is before the east/west schism) Missionaries throughout Europe slowly converted tribes to Christianity and brought with them ecclesiastical law, which focused less on punishment for crimes and more on the absolution of these crimes and therefore was embraced by many people. For a full accounting see Harold Berman's book \"Law and Revolution\"",
"A side note; Christianity was very wide spread in the Middle East before Islam arrived on the scene. It's still quite important in some states today, namely Egypt and Syria. The Middle East was the *home* of Christianity.",
"Pauline Christianity was heavily influenced by Hellenistic (Greek) thought and philosophy\n\nNow consider that the Hellenistic influence in the educational system of nearly the entire Roman Empire was extensive\n\nTherefore it was a natural match, which cannot be said for those areas of Africa and Middle East that so readily converted to Islam in the early stages of that religion\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHellenistic philosophy and Christianity refers to the complex interaction between Hellenistic philosophy and early Christianity during the first four centuries AD.\n\nThe conflict between the two modes of thought is recorded in Paul's encounters with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Acts 17:18, his diatribe against Greek philosophy in 1Corinthians 1:18-31 and his warning against philosophy in Colossians 2:8. However, as Christianity spread throughout the Hellenic world, an increasing number of church leaders were educated in Greek philosophy. The dominant philosophical traditions of the Greco-Roman world at the time were Stoicism, Platonism, and Epicureanism. Stoicism and particularly Platonism were readily incorporated into Christian ethics and Christian theology.\n\nChristian assimilation of Hellenic philosophy was anticipated by Philo and other Greek-speaking Alexandrian Jews. Philo's blend of Judaism, Platonism, and Stoicism strongly influenced Christian Alexandrian writers like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, as well as, in the Latin world, Ambrose of Milan.",
"Christianity was originally spread by Saul (Paul) to the [major cities](_URL_4_) through the (mostly eastern) Roman Empire. Each of these cities became major religious centers for their area and a head Bishop was appointed in each one (setting the stage for the [Great Schism](_URL_0_) much later in 1054). \n\nThe Roman Empire formally adopted Christianity when Constantine converted (his ~~wife~~ **mother** was Christian and he purportedly saw the Christian cross before a battle and prayed to the Christian God before a battle that he ultimately won). I'm not exactly sure how the [Romans converted France, England and Spain](_URL_3_) since those areas had been conquered prior to Constantine's conversion. However I did read that Constantine enacted a major church building program and required the Germans to convert to Christianity as a condition for peace when they were defeated (briefly).\n\nIslam came hundreds of years later and [Islamic Caliphates](_URL_2_) were set up as Islamic armies conquered the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asia Minor, and Spain. The conquering Islamic armies were finally turned back with a decisive defeat in the [Battle of Tours](_URL_1_) in modern day France.\n\nThe Battle of Tours is one of the most historically significant battles in Western Civilization. Had the Islamic army won they may have conquered France and who knows maybe Western Civilization would be Islamic today.\n\nEdit: thanks wedgeomatic",
"Answers to your questions can be derived from numerous eras and fields in history, [such as Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombards amongst other Germanic tribes and 'returning' territory to the papacy](_URL_1_), though I'll focus on the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.\n\nThe spread of Christianity throughout the Europe can be traced to the relationship between church and state under the Roman Empire. Constantine is credited as the first Christian Emperor, though his personal piety is probably overstated. Romans were polytheists and Constantine was no different, was it that difficult for him to adopt another god to worship? However, it is undeniable that establishing the new city of Constantinople in the Eastern Empire granted Christians a new environment to worship more freely and without persecution. [Constantine began the process of monotheism in this city](_URL_2_) and Christianity would continue to spread throughout the empire in the subsequent centuries until Theodosius declared Catholicism as the only legal religion in the Roman Empire. [Obedience to the church became synonymous with obedience to the state](_URL_0_). This relationship between the church and state became a model used for centuries throughout Europe. Following the fall of the Western Empire, many Germanic tribes still regarded Roman culture and law as the height of civility and looked to preserve their traditions and customs as evidenced by the adoption of Justinian Law and the use of Latin in both ecclesiastic ceremonies and administrative affairs.\n\nRegarding your second question, this is not an area that I have looked into with great detail, though I suspect the long standing animosity between the Romans and the Persians (later Byzantines and Ottomans) played a role in limiting the influence of Christianity in the Middle East.",
"Hey, I think you might interested in basically the reverse of this question, which was on here a few days ago: [What determined how far Islam was able to spread?](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_philosophy_and_Christianity"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Age_of_Caliphs.png",
"http://thechristiannewspaper.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/map-of-the-spread-of-christianity1.png",
"http://jesuschristsavior.net/Journeys.jpeg"
],
[
"http://books.google.ca/books?id=8kiJj92F-YkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false",
"http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/mbs201crusades/LectureTwo/EinhardBook2.htm",
"http://books.google.ca/books?id=MNSyT_PuYVMC&lpg=PA561&ots=uKz7bYMdb_&dq=constantine%20polytheism&pg=PA560#v=onepage&q=constantine%20polytheism&f=false"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/195a70/what_determined_how_far_islam_was_able_to_spread/"
]
] |
||
8qjbqp
|
why are viruses so difficult to get rid of? if they mutate too quickly, how do they retain their orignal side effect? (common cold, hiv, herpes)
|
As per title, (resubmitted due to lack of flair), how come it's nigh impossible to get rid of viruses? If they mutate so fast, how do they retain their original effect on the human body?
If they keep on mutating, there should be a chance that some viruses will mutate into something our immune system is good at killing, right?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qjbqp/eli5_why_are_viruses_so_difficult_to_get_rid_of/
|
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"Two different questions, two different responses:\n\nDifficulty of removal could fall into two camps, eradication of a given virus, or clearing of all viruses from a given area. Both are difficult due to different reasons.\n\nViruses aren't alive per se, they need a cell to reproduce (of which they don't have). So with cleansers and what not that are meant to degrade or kill living organisms, viruses persist. You need to degrade the very structures of viruses to remove them.\n\nEradication of a virus is the crux of your second question, regarding mutation.\n\nMutations are *not* \"decided\" by a virus. Evolution works by random mutations showing up. The advantageous mutations (hardiness, virulence, transmission rate and method) are kept, as it allows the virus to flourish. Negative mutations simply die off due to the inability to compete. So over time, the virus gets more capable as its less-capable brethren are weeded out due to competition.\n\nThis applies to all evolution, from viruses to animals, plants and fungi. Humans are constantly evolving their immune systems (innately and in a reactive way, the term \"evolving\" here is literal and metaphorical) to defend from bacteria, viruses and everything else.\n\nThe real reason viruses are dangerous, is that they can \"reproduce\" very quickly and are prone to mutation (for various reasons). This means they can outpace humans in the great arms race of life (immune system features vs. infiltration features of invaders) and always seem a step ahead.\n\nFinally, most viruses that mutate will gain a negative trait (to their fitness and replication) and immediately die off, or the mutation will change absolutely nothing in how they function.\n\n",
"First of all, you have to distinguish between RNA and DNA viruses. Mutations rarely occurs in DNA viruses but are frequent in RNA viruses (just think about the common flu virus). The problem with viruses is that they use the transcriptional/traslational apparatus of the cell for their replication so their life circle would be linked to the one of the cell too. Due to that, any kind of treatment will inevitably affect also the cell. That's why bacteria infections are commonly more eradicable than viruses' and for the latter we prefer prevention (for example vaccines -- exception: some viruses don't have any antigen linked to the disease, like HCV). \n[The most frequent drugs used for viruses have such targets: virus genome, virus proteases or virus polymerases.]",
"So 2 things with your question:\n\nfirst you need to know our immune system fights viruses by having white blood cells that have many different 'hooks' and those hooks catch the surface of those viruses. If a white blood cell catches a virus it hooks get reproduced. Viruses like the Common Cold change their surface fast. So our immune system is not really good against those.\n\nSecond mutation and viruses and evolution. If a virus mutates so we can kill it, that virus doesn't reproduce anymore. And all the other viruses without that mutation (basically the siblings) are still around and reproduce. So evolution screws us over here. But it also makes diseases less deadly for its host species over time, since a dead host doesn't spread the disease around.\n\nTo the original side effects: some symptoms of the common cold are reactions of your body to help fight the virus. Others are effects from the virus (like HIV attacks your immune system) that are caused by parts that don't change as fast as the surface of the virus. \n\nAlso I would guess if the symptoms change too much, we give the disease a different name."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2azizu
|
What are the earliest examples of people putting collars on pets? Was there ever a significantly different way of identifying personal pets?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2azizu/what_are_the_earliest_examples_of_people_putting/
|
{
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"text": [
"Egyptian art from the 4th millennium BC depicts dogs wearing collars and some of those have been discovered by archaeologists. We know the types of names they gave their dogs because of inscriptions on surviving collars. Names like 'Brave One, Reliable, Good Herdsman and North-Wind' \n\n_URL_0_ "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/dogs.htm"
]
] |
||
3ib2ks
|
if one country gets fined by another, how is the fine enforced?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ib2ks/eli5_if_one_country_gets_fined_by_another_how_is/
|
{
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"text": [
"I don't understand. It is impossible to fine other countries. If you are referring to reparations for war, that is different. It if you are referring to fines imposed by a treaty organization (I.e. UN, NATO, etc) that is also different. Can you please clarify."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
e73v6p
|
how do stops in a pipe organ work?
|
Context: I work in a museum with a Baroque-era European pipe organ from between 1670-1770. Every week, some students from a local university’s music program come by and play it. Thing sounds awesome.
On it, there are 10-12 knobs that, when pulled, totally change the sound of the organ, which I now know are called stops. What I don’t know, and have not learnt through Google, is how these stops so dramatically change the timbre of the organ. It goes from sounding like Phantom of the Opera, to a giant flute, to a Beethoven-esque sound... it just does not compute.
Can someone ELI5?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e73v6p/eli5_how_do_stops_in_a_pipe_organ_work/
|
{
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"Those are literally valves that direct air to different sets of pipes. Depending on the material, shape, length, etc., of the pipes, you can get different sounds. If you pull a stop, it opens a valve, and when you push it back in, it closes it.",
"Organs are very complicated instruments. Larger ones have hundreds of different sets of pipes. Each set is keyed to one of the keyboards (there's probably a technical term, but I don't know it) so when you pull out the stop that opens the valve, you can trigger the pipes associated with a particular note across several different sets of pipes. Some organs have semi-programmable buttons where you can engage a group of stops mid-song. This is how you can get such complicated sounds from a single performer. [This](_URL_0_) video gives a nice tour of a large organ. It's really spectacular the effort that goes into such a massive instrument.",
"The reason why you can get such a variable sound by changing the stops is that an organ is quite literally a physical synthesizer.\n\nThe sound that an instrument makes (its timbre) can be decomposed into multiple tones: a fundamental frequency that determines the note that is being played, and a bunch of harmonics at multiples of it (e.g. 2×, 3×, etc). The volume of these parts relative to each other is what makes an instrument sound one way or another. For example, you might have a 500Hz tone, a 1000Hz tone, a 1500Hz tone, etc, at different volumes. Computer synthesizers often work by mixing together tones like this to produce a given sound. Changing which note you play changes the base note and all the harmonics along with it, but the pattern remains roughly the same for a given sound/instrument.\n\nThe stops of an organ literally correspond to these harmonics (or combinations of them). So by configuring them differently you can make it sound closer to a flute, to a violin, etc."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To"
],
[]
] |
|
qydch
|
why are there print and television advertisements for things like cotton, plastic, clean coal or eggs.
|
I don't understand why there are ads for things like this.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qydch/why_are_there_print_and_television_advertisements/
|
{
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"text": [
"Those campaigns are put on usually by lobbies for the entire industry. Their purpose is to influence and raise people opinion of the item in question so that people both buy it more/vote for proposal that they feel are in their interest. That's partially why you'll fine that those ads seem to be more about inspiring people then pushing any particular product.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9xhayc
|
What the heck happened after the American Revolutionary war?
|
I feel stupid for asking this since I studied history in college. It seems like every time I try to look up this period of history it is usually not mentioned. So the American Revolution ended in 1783. Right makes sense so far. Now George Washington was elected the first president in 1789. What happened in America from 1783-1789? If there is was too much that was going on you can just give key dates/ events. Thank you!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9xhayc/what_the_heck_happened_after_the_american/
|
{
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"text": [
"This time is known generally as the Articles of Confederation period. The same agreements that unified the 13 colonies to fight the Revolutionary War pretty much continued, along with the Continental Congress. As the states acted more as independent countries, most governance was within the states- the Congress had fairly little power, and few talented politicians went there, preferring to go into state politics.\n\nThere have been various assessments of this time. The older one ( John Fiske, 19th c.) was that it was a time of crisis, because the weak Congress had a very limited power to conduct diplomacy and a very hard time dealing with the enormous debt of the War. One example of this would be [Shay's Rebellion](_URL_1_) in Massachusetts. The merchants of the Boston were unable to get further credit from their overseas European suppliers- those merchants didn't want to take any more notes and printed money from the Colonies, they wanted hard currency, like gold or silver. That hard currency was scarce in the Colonies, and many - especially in the western regions- were doing a lot of trading with just notes- like IOU's. The Boston merchants managed to get a new law passed that required all public debts ( like taxes) to be paid with hard currency, hoping to wring more hard currency out of people's pockets into the economy. This was very hard on the western farmers: if they couldn't find hard currency to pay their taxes, their farms could be sold by a court to anyone who could. So in 1786 there was a taxpayer revolt, with mobs of angry farmers preventing those courts from conducting business. In this older interpretation, the time of crisis, of course, was resolved by the adoption of the Constitution. Oh, and that Hamilton guy helped a lot after that was ratified.\n\nOn the other hand, there were some useful accomplishments under the A of C, maybe the most important being the Land Act of 1785 and the Northwest Ordnance of 1787 . The Land Act regularized the surveying of the new territories and land ownership, which had been a very large problem in the early Colonies, where deeds were often vague and overlapped each other. The Northwest Ordnance dispensed with all the previous overlapping claims of the Colonies for the new territories in the west and provided the framework for admitting them as new states ( eventually Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan) . It also stipulated that there would be no slaves in those new states. So, some ( like Merrill Jensen) have looked upon the A of C period as one of , well, if not dynamic growth, at least not crisis, saying perhaps the factional democracy of the individual states under the Articles better expressed the radical ideas of the soldiers in the Revolution than the Constitution would in 1787, and that, really, the Constitution should therefore not be considered as inevitable.\n\nThis short period of only several years also gets modern political interest- and bias. Libertarians today embrace the A of C period as something of a hopeful golden age , where true freedom reigned, before Americans were shackled and even crushed by a huge Federal government. Those who worship the Constitution tend to view it as a bumbling, disorganized prelude to 1787, during which everyone was saying, gosh, there's got to be a better way to govern this place let's have a Convention. I confess my own interest in history of technology puts me with the latter. One example of this bumbling would be the misadventures of John Fitch and James Rumsey, who had each invented a steamboat - very different ones. Fitch had vague monopoly patents with some states, including his home of Pennsylvania, and demonstrated his boat first. Rumsey had a vague design patent from Virginia and a claim to have been working on his boat before Fitch ever began his. In 1788 they got into a patent fight. There was no simple way, under the A of C, to have made sure their patents did not overlap before they were granted and to sort out the claims once there was a dispute, and it might have been very handy if the US had gotten a steamboat 20 years before Fulton.... Someone could say that eventually some patent agreement between the States might have been hammered out under the A of C... but the Constitution spelled it out immediately. And so Fitch and Rumsey got the first-ever hearing by the first ever US Patent Commission.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThomas J Slaughter [*Merrill Jensen and the Revolution of 1787*](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/2701951?seq=10#metadata_info_tab_contents",
"http://shaysrebellion.stcc.edu/"
]
] |
|
62x7u5
|
What happens to you physiologically when exposed to radiation from a nuclear bomb detonating? Sources?
|
My biology/english class has us writing narrative "non-fiction" (aka real science, hypothetical situation) relating to some illness, condition, or anything physiological, and I chose to write a story about someone being a nearby when a nuclear bomb goes off. The CDC website isn't very helpful, as I want detailed information, and some papers are behind paywalls. Can anyone help?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/62x7u5/what_happens_to_you_physiologically_when_exposed/
|
{
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"The type of radiation emitted from a nuclear blast is ionizing radiation. These high energy particles interact with the molecules of your DNA and can cause breaks or can cause an alteration of the DNA conformity. Most ionizing radiation you come into contact with is such a low dose that the natural DNA repair mechanisms can cope with the damage. However, in the event of lethal doses of radiation, the repair mechanisms cannot salvage the DNA and the cells may undergo apoptosis, or carry forward mutations in the genetic code. In the case of apoptosis the cells cease to function and die, and in the case of a mutation there may be a loss of function of a specific protein or cell regulatory factor leading to possible malignancy. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a2zq1o
|
During the time of the 13 colonies/Europe what was the literacy rate? And with the population that wasn’t literate, did that understand the concept of percentages?
|
I was looking at the weather forecast and it’s chances for rain, and it’s stated in percents. Made me wonder about the illiterate. Follow up, does whatever your answer hold true today?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a2zq1o/during_the_time_of_the_13_colonieseurope_what_was/
|
{
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"eb2i3q6"
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"text": [
"I'll defer to others regarding the literacy rate in Europe but can speak to the American colonies. Pinning down exactly what we mean by \"literacy\" is complicated and has changed over time. The definition wouldn't be standardized until the late 1800's and the rise of literacy tests for voters. Some government officials in the colonies counted every person who could sign their name. Others asked for self-reporting data (if the person considered themselves literate because they could recite religious passages and sign their name, they'd say yes. As would the tutor who taught Latin at Harvard.) which meant there are discrepancies even in primary sources. You'll often see claims that the American colonies were among the most literate in the world, with rates as high as 95%. This, to a certain extent is true. The number, though, requires some unpacking. \n\nMany of the earlier colonists had a religious motivation for traveling to North America. Several of those religious groups, not all to be sure, saw education as essential to leading a good and spiritual life. Being able to read wasn't necessarily about being educated, it was about keeping Satan at bay. This means there were often uneven rates between the ability to read and the ability to write. While some societies in the colonies advocated literacy for all children, most notably Quakers, others focused only on sons. Meanwhile, those high literacy rates often focus only colonists. \n\nFew white dominated societies attended purposefully to the literacy level of Black or enslaved people so they were rarely considered in the denominator. Additionally, reports of 95% literacy ignore the Indigenous people living in the colonies before, during, and after Europeans arrived. In effect, if you only count 100 white, land-owned white men and 95 of them report they can read contracts and scripture, you get a literacy rate of 95%. If they'd actually counted every person living on North American soil, the percentage would be dramatically lower. \n\nThere's a connection between the literacy rate and understanding percentages, to be sure. Those on American soil who experienced formal education (with a tutor or in a school like Boston Latin or Harvard), mathematics was essential to the curriculum. From a study of the history of teaching Mathematics in America^1:\n > Other topics, also part of the standard abbaco curriculum, were also found in North American cyphering books throughout the 18th century and up to about 1860. Almost all colonial cyphering books that focused on elementary arithmetic included entries on compound operations, currency exchange, reduction, vulgar and decimal fractions, and percentage. \n\nEarly colonial newspapers spoke of percentages (often written as per cent, per Cent, or per-cent) to describe taxes, daily interest, and crop yields. The notion of percents and decimals were common in Europe in the 1600's^2, so it's reasonable to assume the educated men who came over would be familiar. Those men would use the concept with their wives who were often partners on the family farm or at their business or trade. Children were also instrumental in helping their parents so they would pick up the concept, even if they didn't experience formal education. Likewise, the enslaved and freed people who worked for/with them so it's safe to assume that the concept was widespread. \n\nFinally, [this response](_URL_0_) by u/Bodombeachbod provides a different look at literacy through the lense of wealthy white women in the colonies. \n\n___________\n1. Ellerton, N., & Clements, M. K. (2012). *Rewriting the history of school mathematics in North America 1607-1861: The central role of cyphering books.* Springer Science & Business Media.\n\n2. Whitrow, G. J. (1988). *Why did mathematics begin to take off in the sixteenth century? In C. Hay (Ed.), Mathematics from manuscript to print 1300–1600* (pp. 264–269). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8sw0xk/new_england_women_in_17th_century_america_had_one/"
]
] |
|
459jfj
|
the implications of the detection of gravitational waves by the ligo team
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/459jfj/eli5_the_implications_of_the_detection_of/
|
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"text": [
"\"Well, gravitational waves give us another way to observe space. For example, waves from the Big Bang would tell us a little more about how the universe formed. Waves also form when black holes collide, supernovae explode, and massive neutron stars wobble. So detecting these waves would give us a new new insight into the cosmic events that produced them.\nFinally, gravitational waves could also help physicists understand the fundamental laws of the universe. They are, in fact, a crucial part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Finding them would prove that theory—and could also help us figure out where it goes astray. Which could lead to a more accurate, more all-encompassing model, and perhaps point the way toward a theory of everything.\" So. Einstein nailed it. -And not only do we have the data to prove it, but we've also got what we need to take our understanding to the next level, potentially resulting in a working Grand Unified Theory. Aka The secrets of the universe are now within short reach."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
blgeu5
|
How does ingesting sodium/potassium affect the "sodium-potassium pump"?
|
is there a direct correlation between increased levels of sodium/potassium in the blood to differences in HR, BP, and EKG readings?
Would ingesting a similar amount of each counteract the effects of the other?
For example: increased sodium = increased HR/BP
and increased potassium = decreased HR/BP
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/blgeu5/how_does_ingesting_sodiumpotassium_affect_the/
|
{
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"This is only a partial answer to your question but is still worth noting. Increased sodium intake increases your blood pressure because it pulls water into the blood stream from the interstitial space (space in between cells) and other cells. This is why you feel dehydrated after eating a high salt meal, and also why you shouldn't eat too much salty food. \n\nChronic high blood pressure can damage the heart. Physically, chronic high blood pressure has a similar impact on heart muscle as a partial vessel block. The heart has to pump more rigorously to get blood to where the blood needs to go (probably leading to a slight elevation in HR). Eventually those with chronic high blood pressure may develop cardiomyopathy (cardio = heart, myo = muscle, pathy = disease/pathology). Sometimes you might see \"hyerptrophic cardiomyopathy\" which is just a specific form of disease related to an enlarged heart (good for emotions, bad for your body). \n\nI don't think that ingesting other ions would counter the effects of increased sodium intake because ion pumps are already working pretty damn hard to maintain equilibria in cells. Doubling your potassium intake wouldn't double the rate at which a Na/K pump can import 2 K+ and export 3 Na+ if it's already working at its top speed. \n\nI'm not yet familiar with EKG readings so I can't provide any direct information on that."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5u3xwi
|
Vikings are famous for raping and pillaging, and undoubtedly more than one woman must have given birth to a half-Viking child who was a product of rape. How did societies treat these children?
|
Vikings are just one example of what I'm talking about here-- Genghis Khan's armies were famous for the same thing. So did women who found themselves pregnant as a result of an invasion on their village by an enemy usually keep the babies? Were the children ostracized, or treated as equals in their societies? What about women with husbands who already had children? Were their rape babies (for lack of a better term) accepted into the family or rejected?
Adding to that, considering how common rape was in ancient days, how likely is it that I (or you, or anyone) have an ancestor who was the product of rape?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5u3xwi/vikings_are_famous_for_raping_and_pillaging_and/
|
{
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"Rape was the fear, expectation, the weapon, the reward for soldiers, and the terrible reality of medieval (ancient, early modern, *modern*) warfare. And by warfare, we're talking about short raids, longer \"campout\" raids that could last a week or a month, the stereotypical protracted siege culminating with \"taking the city,\" an enemy army passing through a village, a *\"friendly\"* army passing through a village or demanding quarter, or just two feuding lords sending out parties to wreak havoc on the land with an eye towards ruining their enemy and/or claiming it for themselves. It was a given on all sides. In his version of the call to Crusade, Robert of Rheims has Pope Urban say, \"What can I say about the evil rape of women [by Muslims], of which it is worse to speak than to be silent?\" For his part, Ibn Hayyan writes of the rape and plunder by Christian soldiers rampaging through Barbastro (Iberia) in 1063: \"There is no pen eloquent enough to describe them.\"\n\nThis diffidence in the sources is insightful. All sides face first the difficult reality that condemning their opponents as rapists is a quick and dirty way to cast them as barbaric and evil, but their own side's soldiers are just as guilty. (Legal decrees trying to reign in a wayward lord or lord-bishop, and, from the early modern era, firsthand accounts tell us that the accounts of devastation are not just propaganda.) But second, Latin Christians in particular could never quite shake the belief that while being a rapist was proof of a man's barbarity, *being raped* polluted a woman forever. Augustine had argued passionately c. 400 that as long as a woman didn't \"enjoy it\", rape did not pollute her *soul*. But his passion was directed at the argument he was actually making against suicide. Augustine was as concerned with the lives and emotions of women as the 10 commenters and 112 upvoters in this thread who think a question about the experiences of women who were brutally raped, and their children is best answered by *the distribution of haplogroups in the 21st century.*\n\nOn the other hand, Augustine looks postiviely cushy from a modern standpoint next to his sometime-correspondent and translator of the Vulgate Bible. Jerome took the position that virgins should kill themselves rather than \"let\" themselves be raped. The Latin Middle Ages inherited both of these traditions, and...well, they didn't quite know what to do. In theoretical mode as a safely-ensconced university scholar, Thomas Aquinas followed Augustine in accepting that a woman could still be pure so long as her will had remained pure. For vehement promoter of religious women Jacques de Vitry, ranging all over Christendom but always coming back to his beloved acolytes/spiritual mothers in Liege, the dilemma for his flock--and himself as their publicist--was anything but theoretical. And so he could recount with zeal, but also relief, that when Liege was sacked in 1212, the beguines (semi-nuns) of the city flung themselves into sewers and canals to *drown* rather than suffer rape--but, \"miraculously,\" they were all spared.\n\nSo the Western chroniclers of life and war will tell us that the Earl of Buchan led an arm of the Scottish army on a rampage of raping \"women dedicated to God as well as married women and girls, either murdering them or robbing them after gratifying their lust\" (even here, rape is an *afterthought* of the chronicler). They will tell us that Abbess Ebba of Coldingham monastery, knowing her community would be raided by Vikings on the morrow, led her nuns in slicing off their noses and lips with a razor to make themselves too ugly to rape. (Of course, Roger of Wendover continues, the Danes were so upset at having their prizes ruined that they slaughtered everyone--thus averting the theological problem of rape and pollution.) \n\nWhat we *don't* see from the male chroniclers are women's lives *after*. There are a couple of medieval women writers who touch on rape. Margery Kempe (15th century England) is scared to sleep alone at night in a town for fear of intruders; Christine de Pisan (14th-15th century France) describes the aftermath of rape as *grieving*, as mourning the death of a dearly beloved. They don't tell us about the \"after\", either. So can we pull anything out of the sources?\n\nGwen Seabourne and Jeremy Goldberg both make the point that over the course of the Middle Ages, the older practice of \"kill the men and kill or enslave the women and children\" more and more often gave way to \"ransom the men and leave the women behind\", although there are plenty of exceptions. Women who stayed in a town under siege were typically treated as enemy combatants and slaughtered if the town fell, for example. Or women might be seized (*rapio*) and held captive temporarily, for ransom and/or repeated sexual abuse. (To be clear, this is average towns- and village women, not the elite nobility). That sets out some of the guidelines for how sexual violence could affect women survivors of war: captivity and (typically) concubinage/servitude, temporary captivity and possible to probable rape, rape amidst devastation.\n\nWe have hints, first of all, that theological ideas about pollution in the case of rape, or a woman's perceiving \"wanting it,\" had such deep roots they tore apart families. A group of raiders in Chester and Lancaster in 1378 were accused of operating a ransom scheme in which they would kidnap a woman from across jurisdictional boundaries, then demand a ransom from her parents. But it wasn't for the life of the daughter--it was for the life of the *parents*. They would die if they didn't pay. But if they did, they would be \"forced\" to take their daughter back. Let that sink in a moment.\n\nIt's undoubtable that rape would have resulted in pregnancy sometimes. Due to a combination of lack of sources and disinterest among scholars (no, really), we don't actually know that much about illegitimate children in the Middle Ages. There are plenty of articles about the illegitimate kids of an individual noble, or an individual natural child's life. But these are elite nobles. Illegitimacy mattered to the *child* when it came to inheritance, or possibly (for men) becoming a priest. (Although the ban on illegitimate sons taking holy orders had more to do with enforcing clerical celibacy by preventing natural sons from inheriting their fathers' trades, and was basically guaranteed an episcopal waiver anyway). We don't \"see\" illegitimate children on the average level.\n\nOne source I thought of checking was cases of infanticide. Margaret Lewis looking systematically at the more plentiful early modern German cases matches what I observed in reading some secondary scholarship on medieval English records: women just don't talk about rape in the context of infanticide. That obviously doesn't mean it didn't happen (Lewis calls it \"extremely rare\"), but we can assume that women who were raped and found themselves pregnant did not all kill their children (before or after birth), and, statistically, did not all miscarry.\n\nGiven the intense stigma on rape, and the potential for a rape case to turn into an adultery allegation (especially if pregnancy was involved, because there was an association of sex that led to pregnancy and having an orgasm, so being pregnant was often taken as a consent of the will), it seems likely that many rape survivors claimed the child was their husband's, if they were married; or found a husband, if not. The frequency of men's deaths in warfare-type situations may have abetted this. We know, after all, that flurries of marriages after a battle or a period of army encampment were not uncommon, and that this was treated as an especially crucial action for *women*. That would have legitimated a child, reduced *public* (certainly not internal) shame for the woman, and ideally created a more stable financial situation for her and her baby. The prospects for single mothers in medieval (and early modern, where we have more data) Europe were not great. They show up on poor rolls and in poverty-related petitions with sad frequency.\n\nI want to caution against interpreting modern haplogroup percentages and geographic spreads as flat-out indications of rape. Contact, including sexual contact, and including between enemies or \"enemies\", took many forms in the Middle Ages and beyond: trade, raids, cohabitation, open warfare, embassies, encounters on pilgrimage, prostitution. Just looking at Iberia, for example, it's clear that Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women all entered into consensual relationships with men of other faiths despite their own religion's laws against it. Especially with a topic as hard-hitting and *modern* as rape in warfare, we can't let emotionality strip away all agency from women who made choices under differing amounts of pressure, to go to Iceland with that hot Viking or take that job as the crusader knight's \"cook.\" But we also can't ignore the testimony of soldiers like the Thirty Years War's Peter Hagendorf, who threw a lavish wedding for his second wife and went to great lengths to secure an education for his beloved son. Hagendorf noted in his meticulous diary:\n\n > [In Landshut] I got a pretty lass as my plunder. [...] I took a young girl with me from Pforzheim, too, but I let her go...I was sorry about this because at the time I had no wife.\n\n~~\n\nSome Further Reading:\n\n* Jane Tibbets Schulenberg, *Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, 500-1100*\n* Gwen Seabourne, *Imprisoning Medieval Women: The Non-Judicial Abduction and Confinement of Women in Medieval England, 1170-1509*\n* Mary Elizabeth Ailes, \"Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers' Wives,\" in *A Companion to Women's Military History*\n* John Gillingham, \"Crusading Warfare, Chivalry, and the Enslavement of Women and Children,\" in *The Medieval Way of War*"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
8ny8aj
|
do other animals actually have “human” facial expressions (smiles, frowns, furrowed brows) or is it just our minds wanting to see facial expressions in animals?
|
I have seen pictures of frowning bunnies, smiling elephants, sad giraffes, laughing monkeys. It seems like facial expressions are not just human traits but I want to know if there’s any sort of scientific studies to prove/disprove this theory
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ny8aj/eli5_do_other_animals_actually_have_human_facial/
|
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"text": [
"I believe it somewhat has to do with a cognitive phenomena called Pareidolia - in which our brains responds to certain visual stimuli that evokes the recognition of some pattern (like a anthropomorphic expression) where none exists. Please take a look at this article in Wikipedia. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Other apes use facial expressions to communicate emotions and messages. But im not sure if its specific to primates.",
"Sure. A dog will squint different way with either pain or pleasure. We humans pick up on it. ",
"Ok so let me give it a go again. You know how sometimes you look at some objects and you think \"oh, that kinda looks like a smiling face\" or something like that? That is your brain creating an image of something familiar out of some clues you are looking at. This is an ability that our brains have that makes us understand when someone is happy, sad and so on by looking at their faces. \n\n\nWhen you look at an object or an animal, your brain looks for the same clues. So if you see the corners of a mouth (or something that is where the mouth is supposed to be) curled up, your brain says \"smile\". If it is curled down, it says. \"sad\".\n\n We try to give the same meaning specially to animals that have the same face characteristics - mouth, nose, eyes - because it is part of our instinct as well. You don't mess with a dog that is showing its teeth in a certain way because the it clearly says \"pissed off\". And you don't have to be an adult to know that. \n\nHope this one is better?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
558zl3
|
why was the native american code during ww2 so hard to break?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/558zl3/eli5_why_was_the_native_american_code_during_ww2/
|
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"text": [
"Languages are organized in families. English is part of the Indo-European family, so almost all European languages are from that family. There are lots of loanwords too.\n\nThe Native American languages were from their own family, so the linguists in Germany and Japan didn't have experience with them. Also, since pretty much everyone who spoke the language lived in a small geographic area inside the US, that made it even harder for other countries to study it.\n\nWithout the ability to study these languages in context, it's almost impossible to decipher the words, and then what the codes mean.",
"Nobody other than Native Americans spoke the language and it was so different from languages elsewhere as to be nearly impenetrable; you might be able to understand Portuguese a bit if you know Spanish for example, but Navajo didn't have any counterparts.\n\nAdd on that they used different words for units (a bomber might be a vulture, and a fighter a hawk) and it was a very effective and fast form of secure communication.",
"Because the code they talked in was based on their own native languages.\n\nIf you have a simple cipher written or spoken in a well known language that can be broken with a sufficient application of math.\n\nBreaking a code based on Navajo or Basque would involve figuring out and translating the language.\n\nTranslating an unknown language especially one that wasn't very much related to any other language that was known by others is way harder than deciphering a code.\n\nRight now many of the codes used in WWII could be cracked and brute forced by modern computers, Google translate still has real problems with translating from one human language to another though and that is despite actually having access to all sorts of information about the languages.\n",
"Not only are they speaking in a language you dont know, they're speaking in codewords.\n\nThey're not saying \"enemy tank spotted at grid X\". They're saying \"charlie brown hopped fence and fell on X\"",
"The Germans and Japanese had zero experience with Native American languages. They barely new they existed, and didn't even have a related language at home they could study to try and figure it out. It would be like us trying to figure out a Martian language.",
"It's mostly because they are languages that Native Europeans would have never been exposed to. Whereas most European languages share one of a few root languages, Native American languages such as Navajo are based off root languages that never existed in Europe.",
"1. Navajo is a very difficult language to learn because it is a tonal language, different from most western languages. \n2. There are very few speakers of Navajo, native speakers are isolated to certain parts of the USA.\n3. There were few academics who might know Navajo, and it would only be of interest to American academics, not German or Japanese academics, so there was little chance the enemy could find a native speaker in their own ranks. \n4. Beyond the use of a hard to learn language which wasn't known to the enemy, the Navajo code talkers spoke in code (i.e. they didn't say \"Enemy spotted in location X\", they used agreed upon code words and phrases which would have sounded like nonsense to any Navajo speakers who were listening but not in on the code. \n\nThe code was weak from the perspective that there was a 1:1 correspondence between input and output, so encrypting the same message twice would result in the same \"encrypted\" version, which the enemy could theoretically figure out and be on the lookout for in the future. In that sense it was much weaker than strategic codes like Enigma. However it was only used as a tactical battlefield code where messages needed to stay secret for only a short time. There was no way for the enemy to QUICKLY decipher the code. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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||
1pvlfl
|
Why do fabrics become more resistant to tearing when wet, while other materials, like paper, become more prone to it.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1pvlfl/why_do_fabrics_become_more_resistant_to_tearing/
|
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"Simply put because the wetness softens the fibers.\n\nIn a woven fabric, the fibers are basically going the entire width of the item in one strand. So when they become softer, they tend to stretch or slide past each other, and they still need the same amount of force applied to break each fiber, but it is harder to apply that force to each fiber.\n\nIn paper, they aren't woven. They are just laid down in the sheet, pressed and dried. So when the fibers soften, and slide past each other easier, it is that much easier to pull one fiber completely free of its neighbors.\n\nEdit for clarity: In a fabric, they are purposefully woven so that the fibers don't pull free of each other easily, the hems and seams prevent fraying. In a paper product, they aren't.\n\nSo in a fabric you have to break every fiber in the ripped area, in a paper you just have to pull the fibers away from each other."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
42nv43
|
why does windows sometimes estimate copying time super incorrectly?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42nv43/eli5_why_does_windows_sometimes_estimate_copying/
|
{
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"text": [
"It takes longer to copy many smaller files than one large file. Sometimes you may be copying a combination of the two so windows thinks all the files are small and since the average copying speed has dropped copying the smaller files it increases the expected time to complete the rest of the files thinking that the remaining files will copy at the same rate."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
butafk
|
how does air move across a room?
|
I'm sitting in my house and just closed a window - 3 metres away on the other side of the room, the door rattled and then opened as a result of me closing the window. Can someone explain how shutting the window shook and opened the door on the other side?
Thanks
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/butafk/eli5_how_does_air_move_across_a_room/
|
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" > just closed a window (...) the door rattled\n\nThat shouldn't happen, unless you're leaving something out or missed the sequence of events.\n\nUsually, shutting a door can rattle a window, but not the other way around, because doors swing and windows merely close.\n\nIt's air pressure. When a door swings closed, it's pushing air in front of it, which can increase or decrease pressure in a room. That, in turn, affects the ratio of internal and external air pressure on a window, causing it to rattle.",
"Air pressure. My house has really weird pressure. I can close a door on one end of the house, and if the garage door isn't latched right, it'll open and then SLAM shut."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
4humyc
|
how is dubai able to build so much infrastructure so quickly without much political opposition?
|
And in other places it takes years to get infrastructure in place.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4humyc/eli5_how_is_dubai_able_to_build_so_much/
|
{
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"Dubai is an absolute monarchy: there *is* no political opposition. That doesn't mean that the ruling family does whatever they feel like doing without consultation, but they could. The largest property developers have state connections e.g. the founder of Emaar Properties, Mohamed Alabbar, was also a chief economic adviser to the Dubai regime. \n\nIt's also worth noting that outside the city centre, Dubai was pretty much empty desert. All those skyscrapers such as the Burj Khalifa, weren't built over existing infrastructure. ",
"Absolute monarchy. Dubai is ruled by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. There are no elections. All government bodies are run by members of the Maktoum family. There's no debates, no politicking, no pesky journalists, and only minimal voice given to the public (and with in very proscribed bounds). A lot can be accomplished (for good or bad) in such an environment."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1zggyo
|
how do open source projects compete with for profit alternatives?
|
I'll admit that I'm a huge Linux fan. It does everything I need and I can make it look and behave exactly like I want. As much as I would like to convince you guys to use it, that isn't the point of this post. A lot of the programs that I use are free as in freedom. As in not only do you not pay for it, but the code is completely open and anyone can submit a change. And most of these programs are extremely complicated and take a lot of work to keep the project going. And I'm talking about code that would normally be hard work for a corporation that would be able to put a lot of money into the project. And yet some of these projects are even better than the closed source for-profit alternatives.
So my question is can someone explain how these giant, free programs manage to be maintained and improved when there is often times no compensation for the work beyond a big thank you and maybe a handful of donations? (especially Linux itself which is competing with the flagship product that built Microsoft, one of the largest tech companies in the world).
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zggyo/eli5_how_do_open_source_projects_compete_with_for/
|
{
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"text": [
"Poorly. They really cannot advertise, for the consumer market which is mostly free, nor compete much with Microsoft for being included on sold PCs."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1rl7tw
|
if suicide by subway train is prevalent, why don't the subway trains slow down enough to make a quick stop before they get to the platform?
|
It always seems that the trains are at such a speed that they will stop just at the platform rather than being able to stop any time before then. Maybe I'm just used to seeing a lot of train suicides on reddit, but if this was an issue, I would think the subway trains would be designed to slow down enough to be able to stop when the operator sees someone attempting suicide.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rl7tw/eli5_if_suicide_by_subway_train_is_prevalent_why/
|
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"Trains have poor stopping distances. The value of a subway system is rapid mass transit. Slow travel times undermine its use as competition with driving/walking. \n\nSuicide by train is not that common in fact it's so rare that its often international news when it happens. Even if it were a problem, a much more effective and efficient solution is [platform screen doors](_URL_0_).",
"In the past couple years, there have been 70 some odd subway related suicides. You want to change an entire system to save 70 people? You want to spend billions to reinvent the subways when gun related suicides number close to 20,000? Billions use a subway every year without incident, invest money where it would make a real difference. Because people who want to kill themselves always have options I don't think a subway is the one that we should consider removing. ",
"Its not all that many:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThey put the number in \"scores\" (dozens). So you figure with all the trains and subways in service, you have _maybe_ 50-100 people a year using them for suicide. In 2012, there are 35,000 suicides in the US.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo we are talking less than .3%. And thats assuming that all of those people wouldn't use another method.\n\nHaving those stops would really hinder transit, as all the express trains would have to slow down/stop at every station. ",
"They do - the problem is that the only way to go slow enough where someone jumping in front of the train doesn't do anything, is to go *so slow* that it takes several minutes for the train to get into station.\n\nIf they tried that in NYC there would be riots. And there aren't nearly enough suicides where it makes sense to slow down all trains and add significant time to the average train ride just for the occasional jumper.",
"In truth, suicide by train is not super common. If it was, then trains probably would slow down. At this point though, slowing all the trains down would tremendously decrease the efficiency of the railroad, and as of now it's not worth it.",
"There are so many ways for a person to kill themselves, should we get rid of them all? Cars only drive 10 mph so people can't jump in front of them? Bridge height limit of 15 feet so people won't jump off of them? Get rid of one method and they will find another. I don't mean to sound insensitive, I just think it would be an inconvenience with little benefit in the end.",
"they are not THAT prevalent.",
"In Japan they put mirrors up on subway platforms\n\nThe suicidal person was less likely to commit suicide if they could see themselves in the act.",
"1. Trains are very massive and platforms are very long.\n\n2. People jump at the last moment in front of the train, from the platform leaving no time for the driving to react. ",
"I've heard, but I have no source for this, that putting a mirror opposite the platform at the beginning (where the train will be fastest, and most people jump) is a big disincentive to jumping. Apparently something about seeing your reflection makes you rethink your plan, or hesitate long enough to regret it.",
"When someone commits suicide by train, the last thing they'd want is for the potential of it being botched or being stopped, so they give the optimum chance of dying by jumping right in front of the train so it has no time to break at the last second.\n\nTrains can get pretty damn fast too."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Paris_Metro_St_Lazare.jpg"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States",
"http://www.ble-t.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=12603"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6b6th8
|
why does the tail rotor on a helicopter spin on an axis perpendicular to the main rotor on top of the helicopter?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b6th8/eli5_why_does_the_tail_rotor_on_a_helicopter_spin/
|
{
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],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Because the main rotor's spinning generates a net torque that twists the helicopter around. The tail rotor cancels the torque. ",
"The purpose of the tail rotor is not to create lift but to counter the torque produced by the main rotor, which would otherwise cause the helicopter to spin around uncontrollably. The thrust from the tail rotor is angled at 90 degrees to the main rotor in order to counter this tendency to rotate.\n\n\nSome very large helicopters have two main rotors that spin in opposite directions so that there is no net torque. These designs do not need a tail rotor.",
"It pushes against the spin caused by the main rotor. \n\nIt can slow down or speed up / change pitch to allow the helicopter to turn.\n\nChinooks fro example don't have them because their rotors spin in opposing directions to counter each other.\n\nAlso on a side not some helicopters use rotating jets.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's as other here already said: The tail rotor is there to counter the torque of the main rotor.\n\nTo get rid of the tail rotor you can build a second rotor in which rotates in the opposite direction.\nThis has two effects: It's counters the torque so the helicopter doesn't spin around and it has more power to lift.\n\nThe russians perfectioned this technique: \n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.mdhelicopters.com/notar.html"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_rotors",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov"
]
] |
||
3720rd
|
what is preventing us to make more of the drug quaaludes since it doesn't exist anymore? (depicted in wolf of wallstreet)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3720rd/eli5_what_is_preventing_us_to_make_more_of_the/
|
{
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"crj1017",
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"crj26qb"
],
"score": [
2,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"Quaaludes must be manufactured in a lab. The DEA was able to find the labs making it and shut them down. Simple answer it's hard to make Quaaludes.",
"It's mostly been replaced by better, safer, modern drugs. Benzodiazepines (eg - Xanax & Valium) have less problems with addiction, drug interactions & are harder to overdose on. Additionally, there's a wide variety to choose from, with different strengths, onset times & durations.\n\nIn parts of the world, clandestine drug chemists continue to make Ludes for the black market. Apparently, it's quite the thing in South Africa.",
"A lot of people are giving answers that contributed. But there's still one answer that's the real answer.\n\nWhen the US government decided to actively work to stop the production of illicit quaaludes, they did so by restricting the supply of one of the key precursors. Doing so caused the international market to collapse.\n\nSauce\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/faqs/quaaludes.html"
]
] |
||
60k6eh
|
how did "aww" become a standard reply upon seeing/hearing something cute?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60k6eh/eli5_how_did_aww_become_a_standard_reply_upon/
|
{
"a_id": [
"df7psdw"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Perhaps it's because it sounds like what one says when they see or hear something cute. Basically a moan."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2kspe1
|
What will airlines do when fossil fuels run out?
|
"My grandfather rode a camel. My father drove a car. I fly my jet. My grandson will ride a camel." - Old Saudi saying
Baring an unprecedented and totally unforeseen technological advancement, energy in a post-fossil fuel world will be in the form of electricity (generated by nuclear power, solar, wind, etc.) or biofuels, from crops.
Electric cars and buses work fine, but I can't imagine a commercial airplane being powered by electricity. For starters, the batteries would be too heavy.
So, are aviation-grade biofuels possible? Is it feasible/possible to have a jet engine capable of running on 100% biofuel?
Will we return to the days of the 1950's or 60's, when an air trip cost a month or two of salary and rail (coal) or bus (will be expensive too) or ocean liner (coal) may be the transport of choice?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2kspe1/what_will_airlines_do_when_fossil_fuels_run_out/
|
{
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"cloqigu",
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4,
16,
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3,
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"text": [
" > So, are aviation-grade biofuels possible? Is it feasible/possible to have a jet engine capable of running on 100% biofuel?\n\nAbsolutely. It's a huge focus in engineering R & D by all the major aircraft/engine manufacturers. [You can read about it here.](_URL_0_) There have been many commercial flights that used a blend of biofuels and regular jet fuel, as well as some 100% biofuel flights.\n\n > Electric cars and buses work fine, but I can't imagine a commercial airplane being powered by electricity. For starters, the batteries would be too heavy.\n\nYou're correct; a massive improvement in battery energy density would be needed to make this feasible. The propulsion itself (electric fan) is relatively simple and definitely feasible with current technology.\n\nReally, running present-day turbofans with biofuels isn't a matter of scientific possibility, but more just tweaking the design of turbofans (which naturally have been highly optimized for traditional hydrocarbons) to better use biofuels.",
"It's possible to take water and carbon dioxide and turn it back into hydrocarbons. It just takes lots of energy. Where are you going to get that energy? Well, you could get it from a nuclear reactor, like the reactors that already power aircraft carriers. The Navy [has a project running](_URL_0_) to pull dissolved carbon dioxide out of the ocean and simultaneously produce hydrogen, then react the gases into hydrocarbon fuels. So far it's only produced enough fuel to run a little RC model airplane, but it's still early days yet. ",
"This may not be quite the answer you were looking for, but it really is a bit of a myth that we are \"running out of oil\". We may run out of easily extractable, conventional oil in the foreseeable future, but when unconventional sources of oil--such as tar sands, shale oil, natural gas, etc.--are considered, there likely exists more petroleum on earth than humans will ever even come close to using. \n\nNow, of course, it is more expensive to extract these products and refine them into usable fuels. This means one of several things is likely to happen: either there will be technological advancements in the processes to extract and refine these fuels that bring the costs way down, there will be technological improvements in alternative fuels, the price of air travel will go up, or some combination of these three. In any case, the notion that \"we will run out of oil in the near future\" is not really accurate. ",
"It is possible to use electricity to push combustion reactions in reverse, converting CO2 and H2O into hydrocarbons. [Here](_URL_0_) is one company working on it, and there are certainly others. It is also a potential solution energy storage for intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.",
"This is still a bit of a pie-in-the-sky possibility, but Lockheed-Martin recently claimed to have developed a [breakthrough in fusion technology](_URL_1_). As far as I know, their claims have yet to be verified, but they said the design could potentially generate 100MW of power and be small enough to fit in a \"tractor-trailer\". Assuming they mean a semi-trailer, that's a little big, but perhaps possible to fit aboard a large airliner. I *think* 100MW is at least the right order of magnitude for powering a big airliner, but I won't post my attempt to calculate that, because I'm not confident enough in it. Luckily, however, /u/edman007-work [has found a source](_URL_0_) that says to power a 747 at cruising speed takes about 65MW, which confirms we're in the right ballpark. So if Lockheed or somebody else can produce a working fusion reactor, it will probably be possible to have nuclear powered airliners (and who knows, they might even end up being a lot cheaper than they are now).",
"[Hydrogen-powered aircraft](_URL_2_) is one of the options. There are already working prototypes like [Tupolev Tu-155](_URL_1_) and [Boeing Phantom Eye](_URL_0_). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel"
],
[
"http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2014/scale-model-wwii-craft-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept"
],
[],
[
"http://www.hydrogenics.com/hydrogen-products-solutions/energy-storage-fueling-solutions/power-to-gas"
],
[
"http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/propulsion/q0195.shtml",
"http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Phantom_Eye",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft"
]
] |
|
5jxoke
|
why is it that the stock market generally continues to go up forever?
|
Why is it that the stock market seem to go up forever? I understand that there is inflation, but doesn't someone else(an other countries company or government) need to be losing money for other stocks to gain money?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jxoke/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_stock_market_generally/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dbk9fyl"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I run a company. I made some profits. I use those profits to build new factory. I didn't have to go steal that factory from some other country or company, I just **made** it. (Or hired people to.) The stock value of the company I run has gone up, because now I have another factory which is a source of profits.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
26y69f
|
why are certain things interesting?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26y69f/eli5why_are_certain_things_interesting/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chvlk0j"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"My source for this is the book 'A Theory Of Fun' by Raph Koster in which he asks this question to neuroscientists but...\n\nThe human brain is constantly trying to identify patterns in everything, and it rewards us with dopamine for doing so. When we manage to discern a new pattern and get that dopamine hit we refer to it as 'interesting'.\n\nHowever it's not as simple as 'all patterns are interesting', there's a sweet spot in the middle of a trade-off between patterns that are in line with our brain's processing power and patterns that we haven't yet experienced.\n\nFor example, take a game of naughts & crosses. As a child this is interesting because the patterns that you have to discern to win are at your intelligence level and they're all new to you. But as you get older and you've acknowledged all the ins and outs of the game it stops being fun.\n\nLikewise take an action video game. To win you have to discern a pattern of strikes and blocks over a period of time. If the pattern matches your brain's power it's stimulating but if it's too easy the game gets boring. On the other hand if it's too difficult the game also gets boring because the pattern just looks like noise.\n\n\nIf you're 'interested' in this stuff I recommend that you read the same book I did. Also, have a look into the theory of storytelling with this in mind because a lot of the same neuroscience is behind it.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
b9ac1k
|
if an atom is mostly empty space, how are we able to touch anything, and how do atoms combine to make something solid?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9ac1k/eli5_if_an_atom_is_mostly_empty_space_how_are_we/
|
{
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"text": [
"Everything is mostly empty space because it is made of atoms. The nature of protons, neutrons and electrons is that they can't be pushed together more than a certain amount. The reason why is \"quantum stuff\", a bit beyond ELI5, but roughly because they can't be confined into a smaller space.\n\nWhen the atoms of your finger come close to something else, or even the other atoms in your finger, the force stopping them getting closer than the distances allowed by their quantum nature translates to what we call \"solid\".",
"This comes down to a very particular rule called Pauli's Exclusion Principle.\n\nIt sounds complex, and it actually slightly is, but in layman's terms: you can't shove two fermions (protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, neutrinos etc) to occupy the same space. They just don't like it; And no amount of the universe telling them to sit down will make them. Just don't.\n\nThis creates a repulsion field as every fermion pushes against every other. That's what we feel.\n\nWhat you CAN do, is make them take a structured order. The two main methods of doing this is to either make them cold, or squeeze them together. Imagine a bunch of energetic puppies that fly everywhere at whatever they want. You can make a relatively solid mass of puppies by pushing them together in a box or making them cold so they have less energy to run around and huddle together.\n\nAtoms work the same way, the less energy they have, the harder it is for them to push each other away. And pressure can overcome most (but not all) of the repulsive force.\n\nImportant note: Unlike Atoms, squeezing or freezing puppies together will have a preeeeetty high chance of getting an angry animal rights officer at your door.",
"Have you ever held two really strong magnets near each other (same pole)? That's basically what is happening on the micro level. Nothing ever really touches anything else, it's all electromagnetic forces at the human scales.",
"You got some good answers here but those pop science channels on youtube have made videos on this exact question. Search for them if you're interested"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4lhk53
|
Would spraying boiling water over a fire put it out as effectively as room temp water?
|
Was thinking about sweating and water evaporating and somehow my mind stumbled on this question. I can think of a few different reasons why this may just be a bad question but figured I'd ask it anyway! Thought process here is: I guess pouring water on a fire cools it down both by direct heat transfer (water is cooler than whatever it is that's on fire) and by taking energy from the fire and evaporating (maybe this isn't accurate and my understanding of evaporation [and possibly also fire] is shitty?). So if water is already at or near boiling point, it needs less energy to evaporate and doesn't take as much from the fire?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4lhk53/would_spraying_boiling_water_over_a_fire_put_it/
|
{
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"text": [
"The main mechanism of water to put out a fire is via evaporation. There are two reasons for this:\n\n1) The latent heat of vaporization--converting water from liquid to gas at 100 degrees Celsius--requires about 2.2MJ per kg. That means, every kilogram of water on the fire will absorb 2.2MJ of energy from the fire, helping to reduce its temperature. This all happens at 100 degrees. The water vapor doesn't begin to rise in temperature until all of that energy is absorbed. The heat capacity of liquid water is around 4.2 kJ/(kg K). Almost 500 times less than what it takes to convert to steam. \n\n2) Water Vapor is much less dense than liquid water. This expansion will displace oxygen in the region of the fire and retard the flame through oxygen starvation.\n\nSo to answer the question, using boiling water would do just as good a job putting out a fire (that is able to be put out with water) as room temperature water.\n\nOf course, never use water to try and extinguish certain chemical or electrical fires. It'll just make things worse."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4vvkm5
|
How much does Solar Maximums and Minimums affect temperature here on earth?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4vvkm5/how_much_does_solar_maximums_and_minimums_affect/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d61zyro"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"To first order, we can talk about the difference in temperature caused by the difference in sunlight during solar maxima and minima. Note that this ignores more subtle effects, such as a slight increase in cloudy days due to increased particle flux at solar maximum.\n\nWe've observed that the averaged solar flux (i.e. sunlight) impinging the top of the atmosphere is [1365.5 W/m^2 at solar minimum, and 1366.5 W/m^2 at solar maximum](_URL_0_). The affect this has on global average temperature will scale as the fourth root of the ratio of solar flux.\n\nIf the average temperature of the Earth is 288K (15 C, 57 F) during solar minimum, then the temperature at solar maximum would be: \n\n288K * (1366.5 W/m^2 / 1365.5 W/m^2)^1/4 = 288.05K\n\n**TL;DR**: To first order, it's a difference of 0.05 degrees."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://i.imgur.com/L0qDhCm.png"
]
] |
||
3b9xjc
|
how does putting a lawyer on retainer work? what are the advantages of doing this versus just hiring/consulting a lawyer when you need one?
|
Thought about this while watching Silicon Valley. "So..I paid $80,000 just so I could pay them more later?"
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b9xjc/eli5_how_does_putting_a_lawyer_on_retainer_work/
|
{
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"text": [
"TV shows do not represent real life. The reason some gets a Lawyer on retainer is because it is *cheaper*. It is essentially buying in bulk. Someone pays the lawyer to be on retainer so that they can consult with them whenever they want/often. This is cheaper than paying the lawyer each time the person needs legal advice.\n\nNormally this is only done for companies or people with a lot of wealth. ",
"* like any other service, you get a better detail buying in bulk and buying in advance\n* the law firm has an opportunity to familiarize itself with your legal needs\n* the law firm is more obligated to represent you...if you wait, they might not be taking new clients",
"How popular retainers are or how they operate will depend a lot on where you are, since the costs structures for lawyers will be different.\n\nThe general idea of a retainer is that you engage a lawyer for say, a year, and during that time the lawyer will provide a set of services which usually are quite simple or routine in nature.\n\nFor example, a business selling car parts may have a law firm in retainer, and the retainer will include basic services like issuing demand letter for outstanding payments, or other things like looking over simple contracts. More complex things like moving forward with disputes may be outside the retainer and will incur maybe another set or structure of fees."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8zsbk7
|
how do batteries (aa, aaa, b, c, d, etc.) get their names? what do they mean?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zsbk7/eli5_how_do_batteries_aa_aaa_b_c_d_etc_get_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
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"e2lip3e",
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],
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1401,
185,
25,
7,
17
],
"text": [
"Every time you step up a letter, the batteries get bigger. Because we don’t have a letter smaller than A, we repeat the letter.\n\nAAAA < AAA < AA < A < B < C < D\n\nEdit:\nYes, there’s an A battery. Yes, there’s a B battery. No, they didn’t name them after bra sizes. No, that joke you stole from another post about “the louder they scream” isn’t hilarious.",
"To put it simply, Cell voltages are not compatible \n\nThe long answer is A and B exist, or rather existed. These are the battery sizes you're likely most familiar with: D C AA AAA P3(most people call them 9 volt batteries)\n\nThe naming conventions were sort of standardised by two organisations, ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and IEC (International Electrochemical Commission) who tried to herd together the different national and company-specific naming conventions for batteries and try to produce standardised batteries that could be used across various consumer devices and for different purposes.\n\nThe batteries you see above go by many different names (still!), though they are often marketed under a fairly uniform identifier these days. For example, AAA batteries can also be identified as [1]:\n\nBy IEC:\nLR03 (alkaline)\nR03 (carbon–zinc)\nFR03 (Li–FeS2)\nHR03 (NiMH)\nKR03 (NiCd)\nZR03 (NiOOH)\n\nBy ANSI:\n24A (alkaline)\n24D (carbon–zinc)\n24LF (Li–FeS2)\n\nOther marketed names:\nU16 (In Britain until the 1980s)\nMicro\nMicrolight\nMN2400\nMX2400\nMinistilo (Italy)\nPalito (Brazil)\n\nThat's just for AAA batteries. As you can imagine, there are a great many different types of batteries floating around various markets with different dimensions, constituent chemicals, capacities and names. Many were standardised in name only and fell out of favour due to poor up-take or availability. \n\nThis is precisely what happened to A and B (and a host of other) batteries. AAAA batteries exist, though are used only with very, very thin devices like penlights. As one user commented above. \n\nPs. A size batteries are hard to find as well. In fact, I can't even find a picture of one, because they were primarily used in really old laptop batteries. \n",
"[Why are there no B Batteries?](_URL_0_).\n\nSpoiler, there are B batteries, just not very common.",
"I'm not going to answer your question since others have, but I thought you might want to know that in some European countries, some of the cell sizes have funny names.\n\nD = Mono\n\nC = Baby\n\nAA = Mignon\n\nAAA = Micro\n\nAAAA = Mini\n\nN = Lady",
"why are AA/C/D batteries very common but I’ve never even heard of an A or B battery?",
"In Brazil, we usually give them nicknames:\n\n-AAA - Palito (Stick)\n\n-AA - Pequena (Small)\n\n-C - Média (Medium)\n\n-D - Grande (Large)\n\n-9V - Bateria (Battery)\n\n-3V - Botão (Button)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiBrXPe0d-E"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
9z948y
|
glass that is more scratch resistant is more brittle and prone to shattering.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9z948y/eli5_glass_that_is_more_scratch_resistant_is_more/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ea7e1ct"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It is more scratch resistant because it is harder, and in some materials more hardness means more brittleness. You see the same thing in machine tooling, tungsten carbide is well-regarded because it is hard and can cut through many materials, but one bad move and it shatters much more easily than say HSS steel."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1p2t01
|
why do cops use fatal guns instead of tranquilizer guns just like used in animals?
|
I can't understand why not, since these guns would prevent any human error, emotional distress, accidents to end up with peoples lives... Why use real guns to imobilize dangerous criminals (or not) if tranquilizers do the trick by putting them asleep?
The same would apply to any gun sold to civilians, no lethal guns, just tranquilizers, to avoid any *accidents*...
Why not?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p2t01/why_do_cops_use_fatal_guns_instead_of/
|
{
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"ccy7nkd"
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16,
23,
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2,
4,
2,
2,
3
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"text": [
"They carry non-lethal tazers for tranquilizing purposes.\nGuns are for extreme cases, from self-defense to saving others' lives.",
"I would not want to shot a tranquilizer dart into someone and wait 10-30 sec for them to stop shooting a gun at me...",
"Tranquilizing someone is an exact science, which is why anesthesiologists get paid the big bucks. You'd have to know the person's exact height and weight (plus a few other important factors, like if they're a natural ginger) to safely knock them out. If you give them too big a dose they die and if you don't give them enough it's not effective. \n\nTheoretically you could shoot a bunch of darts with a low dose until they pass out, but that would not work in a situation with any sort of time limitation. \n\nTazers are a much better non-lethal option, but they have a limited range. Rubber bullets have a better range, but not much stopping power. \n\nOther non-lethal options (like a sound cannon) are in the works, but thus far we haven't found a viable replacement for firearms. Not to mention that many criminals have their own weapons so arming the police force is, in part, self defense. ",
"Depending ones sex, height, and weight the correct dosage to incapacitate someone and not kill them may be entirely different. Unless you know these things ahead of time you have a very high probability of seriously injuring or killing someone. ",
"Tranquilizers have to be measured out on a case by case basis or your going to still end up with deaths, brain damage, and worse. Tranqs are also not instant, and take time to work giving people the chance to kill the officer or anyone around them. ",
"Tranquilizer darts don't work like they do in movies. If you have ever been under anesthesia for surgery, you can remember that you did not fall asleep as soon as the anesthetic started flowing - and that is with ideal conditions, since it was being directly injected, you weren't full of adrenaline, you weren't trying to resist. A darted animal has ~30sec of consciousness left after getting darted and can injure or kill any handlers that try to approach before it is all the way out.\n\nIn addition, police are supposed to follow a strict continuum of force. Don't quote me, but I think officers are only allowed to use lethal force if it is required to prevent imminent harm to them or another. There aren't many situations where you could use a tranq instead of a gun.",
"Tranquilizer guns do not behave like they do in movies. The drugs used in tranquilizers are adminitered based on weight. Too much, you risk an overdose. Too little, you risk the drug not having the desired effect. The drugs also do not act instantly, so whatever you end up hitting with a tranquilizer may still end up coming after you.\n\nTasers have been successful, but they have a limited range. They are also not 100% guaranteed to do the job, especially if you are up against someone hopped up on PCP. Tasers also tend to be less effective if your target is wearing heavier clothing, especially leather. And they do still have the potential to cause a lot of harm.\n\nFirearms offer a little bit more standoff in extreme cases. And in the case where it is life and death, a firearm will do a much better job at neutralizing a threat than a taser or tranquilizer. Police are also restricted to when they are allowed to use deadly force, and it is usually restricted to an absolute last resort when all other options have been exhausted. The reason why you see police going into houses with their guns up is because 1) they have no idea what's going on in there and 2) people are more likely to not do anything stupid when they have a gun pointed at them. In pretty much any case, a police officer has to be able to justify removing their weapon from their holster.",
"Thank you guys :)",
"In terms of self defense, the purpose of a gun is to *stop* someone from seriously harming you or someone else. Killing is secondary.\n\nTranquilizer darts are bad at this:\n\n* they take time to act\n* they have a very limited ammunition capacity\n* they are not terribly accurate\n* they don't penetrate well\n* they are full of drugs that might be misused\n* they could kill someone, or just not have any effect\n\nFor less lethal weapons, you are better off with tasers and bean bags."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1o2mq9
|
Why are there no "of" or "from"s in English surnames? (Similar to Von, Da, De, Van)
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1o2mq9/why_are_there_no_of_or_froms_in_english_surnames/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cco9jpo",
"ccoa70n",
"ccobcht",
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"cconnym",
"ccop8nr"
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"score": [
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174,
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153,
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"text": [
"Isn't the Irish O' short of ''of''?",
"To clarify your question some: there are location-based surnames in English (for example Sean Salisbury and Thom Yorke) but that doesn't explain why the \"from\" was dropped, when it isn't in other languages.",
"One aspect to consider, is that English language and culture was in a great way shaped by the Normans, and earlier by the Saxons, both of which were not exactly land-centered feudal farmers, who would care about where one was from, but patricentric half-nomads.\n\n\nFor a Norseman/ Germanic Saxon, it would be more meaningful to say:\n\n\n\"Im a Sven, son of Jon\"\n\n\nbecause there's a chance Jon was famous.\n\n\nbut, \n\n\n\"Im Sven , from Cockham\" would be meaningless, unless he *owned* Cockham.",
"In the UK the nobiliary particle \"of\" was only used by high nobility (not by the Gentry), and only as part of their title, not their name (Sir XY, Baron *of* Z). \n\nIn Germany, all nobility would use \"von\" as part of their name. When their priviliges were abandoned in 1919, the nobiliary particle legally became part of their last names (Weimar Constitution, §109.) A person with \"von X\" as last name doesn't necissarily have noble ancestry though, as it was also used as a denomination of origin in parts of Germany.",
"Also important to remember is that family names in English have a large number of very common names whose genesis comes from the head of the household's *job* instead of where he was from. Smith (someone who works with metal), Cooper (someone who makes barrels), Fletcher (someone who makes arrows), Mason (someone who works with stone) etc etc are were very common names and continue to be popular to this day in English speaking countries. Is this as common in other languages?",
"This seems like a question more for /r/linguistics.",
"It depends on how pedantic you get about what qualifies as a \"surname\". For example, [John of Gaunt](_URL_1_), [Charles of Blois](_URL_4_), and [Thomas of Woodstock](_URL_2_). I don't know if this practice was limited to nobility, but it's not too uncommon for commoners to have \"place name\" surnames... just not with \"of\".\n\nEDIT: Works with the ladies too, [Madeleine of Valois](_URL_5_), [Mary of Guise](_URL_3_), and [Margaret of France](_URL_0_).",
"Robin of Locksley.",
"It's not directly related, but in Scotland (just north of England), there is Mac. For example, MacDonald, MacLean, MacKay. The Mac stands for \"son of\". The same goes for Mc which is predominantly Irish).",
"Not a Historian but Mc/Mac is Son of, Notl ocation based but Ancestry at least.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_of_France,_Queen_of_England",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Gaunt,_1st_Duke_of_Lancaster",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_of_Woodstock,_Duke_of_Gloucester",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Guise",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_of_Blois",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_of_Valois"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gkbopp/KINNEY/Research/Variations/mcmac.htm"
]
] |
||
1dgbth
|
how cannabinoid receptors are affected when we consume marijuana
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dgbth/eli5_how_cannabinoid_receptors_are_affected_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9qia1u"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Do you remember the toys you played with as a kid where you would try to put the square peg in the round hole? This is vaguely kind of how neurotransmitters work. The cannabinoids from pot will travel to your brain through your blood from your lungs or stomach and look for places where they fit. Once they reach their destination, they order a chicken quesadilla meal and go to town."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2endzm
|
Did the Italian Establishment, together with NATO and/or the CIA sponsored far-right terrorism to stop Communism during the Cold War?
|
During the 60-80s, Italy lived a period of increasing political violence and terrorism, the so called [years of lead](_URL_0_). There is a theory out there that states that some [politicians](_URL_1_), together with the Mafia, the Church Hierarchy and elements of NATO/CIA, made political use of terrorism (['strategia della tensione'](_URL_3_)) to stop the rise of the Communist party, that at the time was the biggest in the West.
Some argue that this is only a lefty conspiracy theory.
Does anyone know if there are reliable proofs to this theory?
PS: To those who understand [italian](_URL_2_).
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2endzm/did_the_italian_establishment_together_with_nato/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck2t21j"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"To be sure, the \"anni di piombo\" period is usually associated with left wing terrorism, of which the chronicles of the time are full. They culminated with the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro (at the time the head of the major christian democratic party) in 1978, and in the kidnapping and subsequent liberation of the US Army General James Dozier in 1982.\n\nBoth those kidnappings, and score of other killings, wounding, and other crimes were mainly done by an organization called the Red Brigades, and some other minor ones; those were certainly not a creation of politicians, the Mafia or the Catholic Church, but had their roots in the left wing movements that were born after the spring of 1968. Their targets were politicians, cops, journalists, judges and university professors. On the whole, the crimes of those organizations did not target the general populace.\n\nThere were also a number of bombings, killing a big number of civilians. The first was the bomb in Piazza Fontana in Milano, the most famous one is the bomb in Train station in Bologna.\n\nFor most of those bombings there have been not final convictions, so nobody is sure who did make them and why. Anyway, they are usually associated with right wings terrorists, some of which were long be suspected to be in contact with parts of the secret services, the italian ones or the CIA.\n\nAnyway, no direct and provable link has really been found (at least in a judicial setting)."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_lead_(Italy\\)",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Andreotti#Conspiracy_theories",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FX-lgSQlGw",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension#Italy"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
b03j62
|
Why is meat, specifically bacon described as lasting days or up to a week without refrigeration in older books, but these days it’s recommended to throw out bacon left at room temp for more than two hours?
|
Was there a change in the way we cure our meats? Were they eating spoiled meat?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b03j62/why_is_meat_specifically_bacon_described_as/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eiclaow",
"eiepapx"
],
"score": [
146,
2
],
"text": [
"Keeping food over long periods of time was a great challenge in the pre-industrial world, before refrigeration. Even things like ice boxes ( and icemen to fill them) didn't become a common thing until the later 19th c. , after ice was developed as a commodity. The methods were few: but most still exist. Some things could be salted- fish, pork and beef. Some things could be kept in brine and allowed to ferment- ( pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, kim chee) Some things could be dried- fruits, beans, fish, and other meats. Some meats could be smoked. Sugar could be used, as well. And if there was a place that was relatively cool and dry, salted meats could be hung and kept for a very long time. Potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, wood ashes and even lye could be employed ( Norwegian lutefisk)\n\nHams and sides of bacon were generally salted, smoked, and hung in a dry larder. Sometimes they were also painted with a sugar solution as well. The salt content was high enough, however, that to be consumed they would typically be first soaked in water. To quote Lydia Maria Child's [The Frugal Housewife](_URL_0_):\n\n > The old-fashioned way for curing hams is to rub them with salt very thoroughly, and let them lay twenty-four hours. To each ham allow two ounces of salt-petre, one quart of common salt and one quart of molasses. First baste them with molasses; next rub in the salt-petre; and, last of all, the common salt. They must be carefully turned and rubbed every day for six weeks; then hang them in a chimney, or smoke-house, four weeks. \n > \n > They should be well covered up in paper bags, and put in a chest, or barrel, with layers of ashes, or charcoal, between. When you take out a ham to cut for use, be sure and put it away in a dark place, well covered up; especially in summer. \n > \n > Some very experienced epicures and cooks, think the old-fashioned way of preparing bacon is troublesome and useless. They say that legs of pork placed upright in pickle, for four or five weeks, are just as nice as those rubbed with so much care. The pickle for pork and hung beef, should be stronger than for legs of mutton. Eight pounds of salt, ten ounces of salt-petre and five pints of molasses is enough for one hundred weight of meat; water enough to cover the meat well—probably, four or five gallons. Any one can prepare bacon, or dried beef, very easily, in a common oven, according to the above directions.\n\nThe bacon you find in the grocery now is nowhere near as salty as this. If you encounter country ham ( especially in the southern US) you will get a better idea of what bacon would be. Bacon today also is typically sold sliced up. The bacon in the days of Child ( 1830's) would remain in a large hunk until pieces were sliced from it, and that hunk would be salted and glazed- and likely some more salt rubbed onto where a piece had been cut. Sometimes mold would form over the outside of dried meats- that would be scraped off.\n\nTL:DR your bacon is not their bacon.\n\n & #x200B;",
"Before refrigeration the average western diet consisted of 18-22 grams of salt per day because of salt's use as a preservative. In fact American prisoners in the war of 1812 complained bitterly that the 9 grams of salt per day that they were being rationed was meager. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13493/13493-h/13493-h.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
65soun
|
when we say a list of names, how come some sound better in a specific order?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65soun/eli5_when_we_say_a_list_of_names_how_come_some/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dgcwxmh"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Like 60% of the time, when someone asks why a certain phrase sounds better in a certain order, the answer is rhythm. Phrases with repetition seem to make people happy.\n\n\"Evan and Emily\" sounds good because it repeats the same pattern twice: a stressed syllable with an \"e\" sound follow by two unstressed syllables. Note that it has the exact same rhythm as \"Guinness is good for you,\" which obviously sounded so good that a giant corporation took it and made it their slogan.\n\n\"Emily and Evan\" sounds pretty good, because it almost sets up three pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables, but the \"ly\" in \"Emily\" is not stressed as strongly, so it's not as optimal."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
79hqa6
|
Does Quantum Field Theory imply that the idea of "Four Fundamental Forces" is an incorrect simplification?
|
My understanding of quantum field theory is that each "particle" in the standard model is actually an excitation of a field corresponding to that particle. Does that mean that there are actually 17 fundamental forces, rather than just 4?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/79hqa6/does_quantum_field_theory_imply_that_the_idea_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dp21n6t",
"dp2iyk4"
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text": [
"Each kind of particle is an excitation of its corresponding field, but each field does not correspond to a fundamental force. The Standard Model of particle physics has 12 \"force carrier\" particles, divided between three fundamental forces (one photon, three weak vector bosons, and eight gluons).",
"Only vector (and arguably tensor) fields are generally associated with forces. The vector fields in the standard model are the electroweak and strong fields, while gravity is best described by tensor fields.\n\nThe other fundamental fields in the standard model (the fermions and the Higgs) do not correspond to any fundamental forces, since they are not vector fields. The fermions correspond to matter particles, while the Higgs is in its own unique category and its main effect is to give mass to most of the other fundamental particles."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
5w9vkz
|
why does copper powder not give a high conductivity when in water?
|
Had a lab session the other day and we had to use a conductivity probe to measure the conductivity (μS/cm) of various substances in water.
I got 3870 μS/cm for Calcium Chloride, no surprise there since it's an Ionic bond. I got 5 μS/cm for Hexane, also no surprise since it's a Covalent bond. But when I put pure Copper powder into the water and probed it, I only got 12 μS/cm. Is this unusual? Isn't copper supposed to be highly conductive? If this is unusual, could this be caused by there being something in the powder?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w9vkz/eli5_why_does_copper_powder_not_give_a_high/
|
{
"a_id": [
"de8i09c"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The path of current does not go THRU it to convey current. The water by itself is the pathway for current. If the pure elemental copper was combined as a salt, it would then be conductive in the water and aid in passing the electrical current.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1mhjcc
|
is it actually bad for your brain to fall asleep to tv/music?
|
I fall asleep to netflix every night and literally cycle through all family guy/american dad/futurama episodes. Is this harming my sleep cycle and potentially anything else?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mhjcc/eli5is_it_actually_bad_for_your_brain_to_fall/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cc9cc9f",
"cc9eh9j",
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],
"score": [
3,
7,
2
],
"text": [
"My personal story about sleeping with the TV on. I used to fall asleep with PBS on (Public TV for you non-Yanks). I would then have some really bizarre dreams about the subject of whatever was being shown. A couple of the more odd dreams I had were one about math (the PBS channel in my city used to show telecourses from the local University) and one about Sesame Street.\n\nI had to stop leaving the TV on after about a month.",
"Music and tv is disruptive to sleep because your brain is still processing information, it doesn't just shut down when you fall asleep. You will have difficulty moving adequately through the stages of sleep because every change in tempo, sound level or light will cause an arousal or disturbance from the current sleep phase. Think of it like someone poking your arm every few minutes while your trying to sleep, its not very restful or refreshing. Lack of adequate sleep can lead to fatigue, memory problems and difficulty concentrating. Lack of sleep has also been linked to altering your body's insulin production and leading to onset diabetes type 2. \n\nSource: sleep tech and current RN student; watched a few patients through the years insist music didn't affect their sleep as I watched their brain waves on my monitor continually be disrupted by the music they were playing. ",
"My personal experience:\n\nI often fall asleep to tv. I do make sure to dim the screen's light, because light regulates sleep. Less light, better sleep.\n\nI enjoy the 'company' of the voices of tv & music. I think because, as a human, I am a social creature. Therefore, I'm biologically programmed to be around humans, and to be able to fall asleep around them. Even as they are still talking to one another. I'm talking thousands of years ago around a fire or something. At least this is my intuition. We are biologically and mentally very similar if not identical.\n\nThe best advice I could give is to just do what feels natural and good. Listen to your body. Maybe try soothing tv or music. I know that when I fall asleep to the Daily Show, I often get jerked out of sleep by the loud sound effects and audience's applause. Futurama usually gets me to sleep way more easily as I find it very mellow. I already know the plot to most episodes, so I don't mind not paying attention. It's sort of like friends nearby I suppose."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2djfif
|
why don't politicians ever take contributions then act counter to the contributors wishes?
|
Say Comcast and Time Warner give someone $50,000 in political contributions and that person soon becomes a Senator. Then the Senator decides to act counter to what the big cable companies want by pushing the FCC to prevent their merging and removing restrictions that were keeping start-up cable companies out of cities.
The Senator already has the money. Obviously the big cable companies wouldn't donate money to that person ever again, but wouldn't being a Senator for the people and getting donations from the smaller start-ups balance this?
I apologize if this question is naive and overly optimistic, but it seems that with lobbying making so many people angry that someone acting counter to corporate lobbyists would reap large rewards.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2djfif/eli5_why_dont_politicians_ever_take_contributions/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjq0ylx",
"cjq1edl"
],
"score": [
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Most likely because whoever gave the contribution will go to their rival and make sure that person does not get re-elected. You typically don't bite the hand that feeds you. ",
"There is also the fact that most people don't contribute to campaigns of people who don't align with their position. You contribute to people you expect to act in your interest, whether you're a company, or a person. Sure they could be completely lying about their stance about things in order to get contributions, but why lie and say you support A when you actually support B if B can give you a similar amount of money? Just say you support B, that way you can get in office and stay, instead of getting in office and pissing everyone off, A and B alike.\n\nSo instead of thinking of it as:\n\n* Company finds blank slate candidate with no opinions of their own and gives them money for their campaign.\n* candidate gets elected.\n* Candidate goes against company and supports organization. \n* Organization is unlikely to support them (they aren't trustworthy), and company is unlikely (they lied).\n* Candidate doesn't get relected.\n\nIt's probably more reasonable to think of it as:\n\n* Candidate supports policy which helps company.\n* Company gives money so that candidate can get into office, and enact stated policy.\n* Candidate gets elected, and acts as expected. \n* Company likes them, and gives again, organization doesn't, and doesn't give\n* Candidate gets re-elected.\n\nIn the second situation it wouldn't really make sense to abandon the company who supported you because of the policies you already expressed right? If you supported different policies it would have made way more sense in the short and long run to run on those (unless no one agrees with those policies)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
19wzx4
|
how do jpeg/jpg images get so pixelated and messed up?
|
What makes it different from other types like png.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19wzx4/eli5_how_do_jpegjpg_images_get_so_pixelated_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c8s1ypr",
"c8sdrhn"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"In an effort to reduce the size of the image, JPEGs will reduce the quality (kind of like how MP3s work). Sometimes it's noticeable, sometimes it's not, depending on the image and the level of compression.\n\nPNG files don't reduce the quality, but they are also larger than JPEGs.",
"JPG is old. The codec came out in 1992. You barely see cars on the road that old these days. That JPG corruption is the sacrifice the codec makes to achieve a file size, giving up parts of the image because they require more file size.\n\nPNG as mentioned is lossless, meaning there is no difference between the original image and the PNG unless you reduce the number of colors.\n\nOther formats, like JPEG 2000 (JP2) for instance, are a lot better for images than JPG is. They produce lower file sizes and better quality, as 8 years of R & D between JPG and JP2 should. But just like your old car the JPG codec's bought and paid for, insurance is a joke, and most importantly - it just works."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2pqt1b
|
Does the propagation of a gravity wave through a massive object encounter resistance from the mass of said object?
|
I'm wondering if gravity waves propagating through empty space and gravity waves propagating through something massive like a star carry on at the same speed.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2pqt1b/does_the_propagation_of_a_gravity_wave_through_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmzdja2",
"cmzhgj9"
],
"score": [
36,
5
],
"text": [
"We have never observed gravity to slow down or gravitational waves to scatter from matter interactions. Theory states that at least the former does not occur, but we haven't really had the facilities to perform the necessary experiments to verify this to any certainty. The fact that our galaxy is very dense in the center, so that light is occluded, yet the gravity of distant objects appears completely unimpeded, *suggests* that this may be right.",
"Yes. This is the GR way to view gravitational lensing of light, which travels in much the same way as gravitational waves. Observationally, we aren't anywhere near being able to detect it in gravitational waves, so we have to rely on theory.\n\nIt's a first order effect, so it's not exceptionally small, even though its proportional to the depth of the gravity field relative to a black hole event horizon, which is reasonably small for anything but a neutron star or a black hole.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1ojuqj
|
why is it that car insurance companies are telling me i am responsible for my children until they are 21, even though they are adults at 18?
|
so the insurance companies (geico, allstate, etc) are telling me that even after my children are out of the house and 18 years old (adults in every legal sense of the word) that i can still be sued if they get into a car accident, etc....have i completely lost my mind or is this a real thing? if this is true, can someone please explain to me how i could be held responsible for what my children do after they reach adulthood?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ojuqj/eli5_why_is_it_that_car_insurance_companies_are/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccsnosc",
"ccspei2"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Are they driving vehicles insured by you, or are you guarantor under the policy?",
"It's because of psychology and human development. This is under the topic of \"emerging adulthood\". Basically most 18‑20 year olds in the United States don't see themselves as adults and are still in the process of obtaining an education, are unmarried, and are childless. Generally emerging adulthood last until 25. Insurance companies know this and use it to keep kids under their parents responsibilites. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
70qojw
|
why does the cia sometimes refer to osama bin laden as "usama bin laden"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70qojw/eli5_why_does_the_cia_sometimes_refer_to_osama/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dn5729s",
"dn572x4",
"dn577wp",
"dn58gcz"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because his first name is spelled \"أسامة\", which doesn't have an exact representation in the Latin alphabet. Both \"Osama\" and \"Usama\" are correct. As are \"Oussama\" and \"Usamah\".",
"Transliterating Arabic words or names into English (converting the spelling from Arabic letters to English letters) is not perfect. The name we transliterate as \"Osama\" or \"Usama\" is \" أسامة \" in Arabic. The first sound in the name is one we don't really use in English and depending on the person speaking sounds like \"Oo\" or \"Uh\".",
"Osama bin Laden's name is Arabic; this language is not natively written with the Latin alphabet, but has its own writing system. Scholars have devised different systems for transliterating Arabic writing to the Latin alphabet, and there isn't a single one that's universally accepted. So it's normal to see Arabic words and names spelled in different ways.",
"There is no single standard for transliterating Arabic words into English. Depending on your pronunciation, both \"Osama\" and \"Usama\" can get you close to the native pronunciation of the name. Regardless of the spelling, they refer to the same person.\n\nFor what it's worth, I think the spelling \"Usama\" is closer to the correct Arabic pronunciation, but \"Osama\" is far and away the most common spelling in the West especially post-9/11."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2u0fgz
|
why a billion dollar gaming industry hasn't produced a "gaming" operating system?
|
How is there not yet a dynamic operating system for a PC that allows developers direct hooks or as low-level as possible to the hardware without all the other software "middle-persons" found in typical operating systems, to make games run?
edit- added "Dynamic" in front of operating system to curb the console fever crowd
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u0fgz/eli5_why_a_billion_dollar_gaming_industry_hasnt/
|
{
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"text": [
"Unless you count steam's os. Which shouldn't count because it can only run steam games (As far as I know).",
"So, what would happen if someone wanted to use PC hardware and write an optimized OS for it?\n\nWell, they'd want to standardize on some certain hardware. Because they don't want to be constantly writing for different video cards and sound and everything else.\n\nSo, know what you have then? A console.",
"They have...it is called the XBox and the Playstation.\n\nOne of the advantages of PC gaming is you can still use your box for other stuff, and that usually means Windows or Linux. Setting up a dual boot partition and rebooting whenever you want to play a game is not something most consumers want to deal with.\n\nAlso, DirectX works well enough, and graphics cards manufacturers tune directly to it. It is unlikely a fledgeling OS would get the same support, and for a long time, it might actually be slower.",
"that's what consoles do basically. they run operating systems optimized for the games they run, with lower specs and price tags for the actual machines.",
"If you take a PC and put a dedicated gaming OS on it it would become a console and would no longer be useful as a PC (unless you are going to dual boot but that's quite uncommon). PC's run games fine as it is, there's no need to put unnecessary limitations on them.",
"Because there's no point. Nobody wants a \"gaming OS\", nobody wants to support such a thing, nobody would gain anything real from using such a thing.\n\nWhy invest all that effort/money/time for negligible gains?",
"You ARE talking about console OSes. Throwing dynamic in front of it is meaningless because even console OSes are \"dynamic\". Just look at how much the 360 OS has changed over the years.\n\nTo understand the answer to your question, you need to understand why things like the OS and DirectX/OpenGL exist. You also need to understand why there are inherent drawbacks to vendor-specific technologies like Mantle and PhysX.\n\nAbstraction layers exist for a reason. The OS abstracts the hardware from the software. Direct3D and OpenGL abstract the gfx card from the software. These abstraction layers exist because software needs a standard way to interact with the hardware. Without it, your game is bound to specific hardware and will likely not work very well (if at all) on other hardware. Think about the case of Mantle. A game written to target Mantle will only ever run on gfx cards that support Mantle. Just like games that are written to target DirectX will only ever run hardware combinations that support DirectX. Same story with PhysX. If you have an NVidia card you get fancy physics simulations. If you're on AMD, tough luck, you get the bare minimum that can be simulated on your CPU.\n\nI'm guessing your question came about due to Mantle. Well, Mantle came about because AMD believes that DirectX added too much overhead by abstracting too much. Guess what? Microsoft agrees. That's why there are changes coming in DX12. And that's why there is much less attention being paid to Mantle now. Noone wants to expend the extra resources to write the game to work specifically on AMD cards because that cuts out the NVidia market. And if Microsoft is already addressing the problems in the technology that supports both, why waste the time?\n\nThis leads to the problem of more direct access to hardware. The closer you interact with hardware, the more you are bound to the specifics of how the hardware works. This is an inherent problem for PC platforms that consoles do not have to deal with. On a PC the gfx card and its specific behavior will change based on what gfx card you're using. Forget AMD or Nvidia here, each gfx card family will vary significantly from others from the same manufacturer. For consoles the gfx card they use is fixed and doesn't change. Any changes are almost non-existent even with hardware revisions, they spend a lot of development to ensure there is minimal change between hardware revisions. So once again, devs target the standard. On PC it's DirectX/OpenGL. On the consoles it's the officially published details of the target gfx card.\n\nWhat about the rest of the system, CPU, chipsets, memory, etc. It's the same problem. Consoles guarantee a specific CPU, chipset, and memory layout. It's a fixed rule that certain regions of memory are more quickly accessed by certain CPUs or the GPU. It's a fixed rule that data that goes from storage to the GPU needs to be moved onto specific memory chips. What your CPU supports is fixed. This guarantee does not exist in the PC world. The combinations of CPUs, CPU capabilities, chipset, amount/speed of RAM, gfx card interfaces, and so on are infinite. Once again developers target the standard. In the console world it's a combination of the OS and component layout. In the PC world it's the OS and the existence of various components. \n\nSo what would a PC \"gaming\" OS look like? Well, it would be Windows/DirectX. Or Linux/OpenGL. Why would the billion dollar gaming industry not produce their own OS? Because what's there does the job really well already and an OS is larger than a billion dollar industry. Seriously, an OS is a very complex beast and takes a lot of resources to make and maintain. Linux is free, but there's a reason there's industries larger than games built on just supporting it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1puxg7
|
how can judges dismiss evidence that isn't "submitted correctly" such as videos that incriminate the accused?
|
For example, a judge throws out a piece of evidence that shows the accused person in video because it wasn't submitted by a certain deadline. Isn't the video enough to prove someone guilty no matter how it was legally submitted to court?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1puxg7/eli5_how_can_judges_dismiss_evidence_that_isnt/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cd6bbg5",
"cd6bdcs"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"[Here](_URL_0_) is part of the Illustrated Guide to Law that explains this with comics.\n\nBasically, it's to protect citizens from police investigators overstepping their boundaries. The Constitution, which states the fundamental rights belonging to Americans, makes it clear that the government is to protect people from \"unreasonable searches and seizures\". In theory, this would mean stopping investigators from collecting evidence illegally. In practice, there are times when investigators (intentionally or unknowingly) go too far. Dismissing illegally collected evidence protects the accused from being negatively impacted by an illegal act by police and provides an incentive for them to make sure they perform searches properly. ",
"The rules are there to protect the *system*. No exceptions are made, even when it seems like an exception should be made because law is built upon precedents and citing previous cases. If one judge allowed evidence that shouldn't have been allowed, then either other cases should allow it, or the original judge's decision should be overturned. \n\nAlso, think about the case where someone *is* guilty, but we allow evidence no matter how it was obtained. It creates sketchy law, where police officers are allowed to skirt the law, ignore personal liberties, and usurp the need for search warrants because they *know* someone is guilty. It's there to protect you, me, the innocent, and even the guilty from illegal searches and seizures without a warrant. The ends do NOT justify the means - we can't just say that the evidence would convict if it means that unlawful means were taken to get it. \n\nIn the case of evidence, there are statutes to ensure that many crimes are done within a reasonable amount of time, within a time frame that the evidence is relevant, witnesses can still testify, and the parties involved are still there."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585"
],
[]
] |
|
47stpk
|
Why were Italian and Irish immigrants to America given such a hard time? Was this typical of every immigrant, and the Italians and Irish had just arrived in greater numbers? Or was there something unique about these immigrants that made them "lower-class"?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/47stpk/why_were_italian_and_irish_immigrants_to_america/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0fzdrt"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"I can think of four things that distinguished Italians and Irish from other immigrant groups (bearing in mind that Chinese and Jewish immigrants faced different, and in some ways more severe, forms of discrimination):\n\n1. They were predominantly Roman Catholic. The United States had long defined itself as a Protestant nation, and had inherited a tradition of anti-Catholicism that associated Catholics with despotism, ignorance and superstition. Until the mid-19th century, the overwhelming majority of immigrants to the United States were Protestant, but beginning with the Potato Famine Irish immigrants were increasingly Catholic - as were, of course, the Italians. Many of these Catholic immigrants wanted to educate their children separately from the public school system, which in the view of many - [including cartoonist Thomas Nast](_URL_3_) - threatened national unity and promoted a slavish adherence to the Pope.\n\n2. In the case of the Irish, the immigrants tended to flock to the Democratic Party and used their numbers to control the machinery of municipal government in cities like New York and Boston. This political control, in turn, translated into ability to funnel patronage toward members of their own ethnic group - it's not a coincidence that the stereotypical policeman at the beginning of the 20th century was Irish. Many native-born Americans, particularly those loyal the Republican Party and its free-labor ideology, [viewed this trend with alarm](_URL_0_).\n\n3. In the case of the Italians, a disproportionate number of them were low-skilled and had [little intention of staying in the United States](_URL_2_). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, highly-skilled Italian migrants tended to go to South America (especially Argentina), while lower-skilled migrants made their way to the United States (and perhaps as many as a half of them ultimately returned to Italy once they had made enough money). They were consequently stigmatized as a [pool of cheap labor](_URL_4_) that drove down wages, while not making any effort to integrate into their host society. \n\n4. The large waves of Irish and Italian immigrants came during the late 19th and 20th centuries, which was the peak period of immigration in American history. [The proportion of the population that was foreign-born was higher than it has ever been in the US.](_URL_1_) So many Americans, particularly old-stock Protestant Americans, were very concerned that the national character of the the country was under threat from immigrants who did not share the values of their native-born neighbors."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://ragingfluff.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/diasporational-part-thirteen-honest-dan-the-man-from-derry-who-took-on-tammany-hall/",
"http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/immigration-law-timeline/",
"http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/italian_immigration.cfm",
"http://thomasnastcartoons.com/irish-catholic-cartoons/the-american-river-ganges-1871/",
"https://jimsbikeblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/1888-cartoon-in-the-wasp-a-san-francisco-magazine-reflecting-anti-immigrant-sentiment1.gif"
]
] |
||
6uqegg
|
The Franks became Christian much earlier than many other Germanic groups. Why is this? When/where were the last Frankish pagans?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6uqegg/the_franks_became_christian_much_earlier_than/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dlv11qi"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"I'm going to do my best in answering this question as I feel it falls in my wheel house and I'm actually reading two books on the Gothic and Frankish peoples. \n\nStarting off with the first part of your question I just want to make a minor correction. \n\n > The Franks became Christian much earlier than many other Germanic groups. Why is this?\n\nThe Franks actually didn't become Christian earlier than many other germanic groups, for example Orosius of the 4th century writes.\n\n > The barbarians, detesting their swords, turned to their ploughs and now cherish the Romans as comrades and friends, so that now there may be found among them certain Romans who prefer poverty with freedom among the barbarians than paying tribute with anxiety among the Romans . . . throughout the East and the West the churches of Christ were replete with Huns, Suevi, Vandals, and Burgundians.\n\nThis is nearly 100 years before the conversion of the Franks, and there were already Vandal, Burgundian and Suebi Arians. So the Franks weren't the first to convert, but they were the first to convert to Orthodox Christianity, and the Frankish tales of Clovis' conversion are very romantic and remembered well. The story of Clovis and his hour of agonising prayer on the field of Tolbiac, and, perhaps most of all, the love and persistence of Clotilda, his wife, during their infants sickness is still taught in churches today. \n\nSo why did the Franks convert?\n\nThat's a harder question to answer. The preferred and best way of converting a population to Christianity during this time was to convert the local nobles and ruling lords, then the religion would shuffle down through the masses as laws and positions of power favoured those who followed the ruler's religion. So what the average person gained from converting was a lot more personal, things like having a greater connection with their community, a more secure afterlife, organized temples and churches that were all around Europe and obviously any personal or cultural influences that they might encounter in their daily lives. \n\nAs for the leaders it's a bit easier to see why they would convert, it allowed them a cultural tie with the Roman Empire that still stood in the East and the Papacy that remained in the West. Every local warlord wanted to be seen as the successor to Rome, and many had claimed that title during the Imperial Crisis of the 3rd century and the following centuries. Christianity granted Germanic kings who converted a powerful ally in the Church and legitimized their rule in the eyes of their non-pagan followers, but they also used it as a just cause to invade neighbouring pagans and heretics, such as when Clovis invaded Aquitaine under the pretense of liberating oppressed Catholics under Arian rule. \nOf course converting to Christianity would also help unify the realm and keep qualms from religious differences to a minimum, but it certainly helped the conquered Christian people feel reassured their lord wasn't a savage pagan. But of course a ruler like any other person would have personal reasons too, maybe one of their children died with pagan prayers but their next lived after being baptised, or maybe they married a Christian wife. \n\nI can't really speak to when the last hold out of Germanic paganism was or where it was in Francia so hopefully someone else can answer it, but if you have any followup questions I'll do my best to answer them. \n\n > Sources\n\n > The Franks by Lewis Sergeant\n\n > The Story of the Goths by Henry Bradley\n\n > Historiae Adversus Paganos by Paulus Orosius"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4ycmrk
|
why are some people well written but not well spoken? (myself included)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ycmrk/eli5why_are_some_people_well_written_but_not_well/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6mn2y1",
"d6mn3cj"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"To be well spoken you need to construct well phrased sentences in a fraction of the time you have when you are writing something. This requires a lot more practice as you can't do it if you have to use a lot of your brains capacity for it. ",
"Speaking is hard. You have to think of what to say, translate that into words that make sense and in the right order, then translate those into sounds and speak them correctly all while doing it fast enough and right on the first try so the other person doesn't think you're an awkward mess. \n\n\nWritting, you have all the time in the world to find the right words and put them in the right order and can even change your mind half way if you need to correct something. All before the other person can even see what thoughts you have to offer.\n\n\nSo all things being equal, you could have an amazing vocabulary, but if you're not quick witted or practiced, it's often hard to vocalize what you want to say on the spot. But given time to write it, you can make best use of your mental talents. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
328q8g
|
what is the medical condition s.t. depression?
|
My mom was told by her doctor after wearing a heart monitor that she has this condition. She asked him to elaborate and all he did was give her the technical medical terms that went over her head. She seems concerned and so am I!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/328q8g/eli5_what_is_the_medical_condition_st_depression/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cq8x8ls"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"There are about 11 different serious medical conditions that can cause a cardiac ST depression. \n\n***I highly suggest you or your mom call her cardiologist and tell them you don't understand his/her explanation and would like to meet to talk about it again. If they aren't willing to do that, then you need to find a new doctor. \n\nI can explain the basics of an ECG, if that will help? I cannot allude to what your mom has been diagnosed with, because I don't know the specifics of the situation. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
a8l2vw
|
In the US, did any of the founding fathers have thoughts about the Salem witch trials that happened within living memory?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a8l2vw/in_the_us_did_any_of_the_founding_fathers_have/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ecccpno",
"ecdwwxo"
],
"score": [
61,
21
],
"text": [
"Related question: when did the Salem witch trials become 'common knowledge' in America, for lack of a better term, and why the Salem witch trials as opposed to any other sort of tale of hysteria/superstition gone awry?",
"\"Living memory\" means a time which can still be recalled by people who are still alive.\n\nThe events of the American Revolution were a good 80 plus years after the Salem Witch Trials. There were people that old who participated in the Revolution - Captain Samuel Whittemore was born circa 1695, [bayoneted multiple times](_URL_0_) at the Battle of Concord, and survived another 18 years. Anyone who alive during the Salem Witch trials and Revolution would have been very young during the former and very old during the latter. The latest-lived participant in the Salem Trials that I can find is Elizabeth Parris, one of the accusers, who died in Concord at age 77 in 1760.\n\nAs far as the Founders go, they were born much later after the Salem Trials. Benjamin Franklin is generally considered one of the oldest Founders, and was born in 1706. Of course, growing up in Boston he *does* have a connection to a prominent observer of the Salem events, namely in his relationship with Reverend Cotton Mather. Franklin as a teenager wrote a number of anonymous essays [mocking](_URL_1_) Mather and the Puritan establishment that were published in Franklin's brother's paper *The Courant*, and during the 1721 smallpx epidemic they both had a very public debate over the benefits of vaccination (Mather was for, Franklin was against). However Franklin did meet with and respect Mather's moral teachings, and wrote about how his (Franklin's) whacking of his head on a beam in Mather's house after disregarding Mather's advice to stoop down was a lesson in humility.\n\nThere doesn't seem to be any record of them discussing the Salem Trials, however."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/07/02/he-joined-the-revolution-as-an-old-man-was-shot-in-the-face-and-lived-another-18-years",
"http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/benjamin-franklin-gets-teachable-moment-cotton-mather/"
]
] |
||
1ecc0p
|
Do animals experience menstrual cramps?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ecc0p/do_animals_experience_menstrual_cramps/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9yzdt0",
"c9yzyp0"
],
"score": [
230,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes. However, not many animals menstruate. Humans and old-world primates are about the only animals that undergo menses with the exception of bats. ",
"Are you specifically asking just about cramps or general menstruation?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1r7kc7
|
what would we experience on earth if another earth-like planet were to collide with us?
|
I watched Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" last night. It's not meant to be a scientifically accurate portrayal of the end of the world, and so it made me wonder what would actually happen in the circumstances depicted in the film.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r7kc7/eli5_what_would_we_experience_on_earth_if_another/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cdkdts5"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"We would all die in a matter of seconds. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
21i4g2
|
If there was no official "Emperor" position in the Roman Empire, or in its early days at least, what exactly did the new Emperor inherit from his predecessor? What official title or position did the new Emperor inherit that gave him absolute rule?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21i4g2/if_there_was_no_official_emperor_position_in_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cgddx48"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"The successor inherited nothing de jure. It was up to the Senate to grant him the same powers as his predecessor. What became common practice was that the current ruler would groom his successor, including him in the government and having him take bigger responsibilities. He would thus be granted offices by the Senate with the current ruler's recommendation. Eventually, upon the current ruler's death, the successor would have everything necessary to rule on his own. The best example of this practice in the early empire is the Augustus-Tiberius transition. The reason this transition was much more peaceful than the following was because of the efforts to ensure ability and familiarity with the new rulers. In fact, this specific practice is also one of the reasons why the Good Emperors suffered no overt problems while transitioning."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1hgude
|
Now that summer is upon us: Is there any real conclusive evidence about sunscreen being bad for us?
|
I've been googling around and I see lots of people giving "studies" from both sides of the fence. Mainly either saying the study from _URL_0_ is true or not true and whether ingredients like oxybenzone actually do damage you or not.
Is this anyones area of study? Can they give fairly conclusive evidence on what is right? Or at least let us know what is the best course of action to protect against the sun.
The reason I'm asking is because I work construction. So most of my body is covered except for my neck, nose and cheeks. I've been putting on SPF 60 that contains oxybenzone religiously, but am I really just harming myself in the long run? My father and grandfather both had skin cancer and it's not something I want to go through.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hgude/now_that_summer_is_upon_us_is_there_any_real/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cauh0ya"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"I am a bit uncomfortable with this question, as the last paragraph makes it clear you are asking for medical advice (which we are not allowed to give). Please see [this post](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"EWG.org"
] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s4chc/meta_medical_advice_on_askscience_the_guidelines/"
]
] |
|
6kt7nh
|
Poisoning wells is a common espionage activity in fiction based in medieval times. Was well poisoning actually something spies would do? What would the exact goals of a well-poisoning be?
|
There does not seem to be a lot of info on the subject easily accessible online and the only other similar question on the subreddit went unanswered.
Of the info I found online, it does look like well poisoning was common, but only as a defensive method, when retreating from an army, or as a scorched-earth policy.
I'd also like to point out that I am assuming that spies existed in medieval times and are similar to the idea of modern spies. I understand that this might be a large assumption.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kt7nh/poisoning_wells_is_a_common_espionage_activity_in/
|
{
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"djoupr6",
"djovv4b",
"djp2a5u",
"djpa5i5"
],
"score": [
150,
76,
1262,
35
],
"text": [
"To ad on to OPs question; what would an attacking army do to clear a Well? What were other sabatoge methods used by medieval spies? \n\nThis is an interesting post op",
"Hello everyone, \n\nThis thread is starting to become besieged by poor responses. Please remember [it can often take time for a good answer to be written](_URL_3_). The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with **in-depth and comprehensive responses**, and our [rules](_URL_0_) are intended to facilitate that purpose. *We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy*. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply compounds this issue. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the [rules](_URL_0_), as we don't want to have to warn you further.\n\nOf course, we know that it can be frustrating to come in here and see only *[removed]*, but we ask for your patience and understanding. Great content is produced on this subreddit every day though, and we hope that while you wait, you will check out places they are featured, including [Twitter](_URL_4_), the [Sunday Digest](_URL_6_), the [Monthly \"Best Of\"](_URL_1_) feature, and now, [Facebook](_URL_2_). It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a [Private Message](_URL_7_!) to the [Remind-Me bot](_URL_5_), and it will ensure you don't!\n\nFailure to abide by community rules will result in a one-way catapult trip over our city walls. \n\nThank you!",
"Words and water were both weaponized in medieval warfare, but it's questionable whether the same people would have been involved in both types of caper.\n\nFirst, when talking about spies and espionage in the Middle Ages, scholars have overwhelmingly stressed the importance of intelligence gathering--in wartime *and* in peacetime. Spycraft in the medieval Islamic world is legendary from its first century. The Umayyads instituted a postal delivery network pretty much so mail-carriers could snoop on the mail that people were sending and eavesdrop on their reactions after reading it; Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah turned his *mother* into an undercover secret agent, sending her to masquerade as the disgruntled mother of dead soldier complaining about that *horrid* vizier in order to find out who was truly loyal. I've written more about [medieval Muslim spies](http://www._URL_0_/2017/05/female-secret-agents-middle-ages/) for _URL_0_ a little while ago, if you're interested.\n\n[In western Europe, too,](_URL_2_) scholars talk primarily about spies as a willing or unwilling intelligence corps. For example, in 1364, the garrison commander of Sancerre, with war stirring up in the area, planted agents in local garrisons in hopes of getting the edge up on any attack that might be coming. As it happened, the commander's *brother* managed to overhear the precise target of the attack, which specific captains would be bringing their companies to the battle, and the strength of the incoming forces.\n\nPerhaps the best illustration of the medieval link between spycraft and intelligence comes with the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England. Chronicler Thomas Walsingham accuses people of spying for the mere fact of *conveying the news of the revolt* up to Scotland. What we might call journalism was instead judged espionage.\n\nDid spies ever move closer to subterfuge, disguises, gadgetry? In the Low Countries, it was fairly common for agents of towns at war to disguise themselves as merchants, pilgrims, or other \"nonsuspicious\" travelers. Unfortunately, the propensity for military commanders to impress *everyone* into spy service, even random fishermen, meant even disguises (or rather, the things people were disguised as) suspicious.\n\nFor a lot of the really good, fraught-with-danger-and-betrayal spy stories, we have to turn to Christian-Muslim warfare during the Crusades and then eastern European Christians facing off against Ottoman armies. This is where we get stories of the turncoat who either chose or was bribed to open one of Antioch's gates to the crusader army. And even better, of Christians and Muslims infiltrating each other's camps in disguise.\n\nOne of the more legendary accounts of this practice dates to the siege at Svetigrad (Albania) in 1448. The Albanian general-lord Skanderbeg was already a hero when our major account of events was written, so there is absolutely some embellishment. Nevertheless, we get an entertaining picture of the general's efforts at gathering intelligence.\n\nFirst, he was deeply paranoid about traitors in his own camp and in nearby Christian towns. A small group (him, two close associates, and no more than 30 others) disguised themselves as common foot soldiers and worked to ascertain whether the villagers were conveying information to the Ottomans. (To my great frustration, even the origin Latin of Marin Barleti's account provides no further details on this mission). We also have reports of plots on his life from former Muslim Ottomans who had thrown in their lot with the Christians, including begging to be baptized (a fairly common trope in Barleti's account is Muslims falling all over themselves to convert and join Skanderbeg's side). So you can point to that kind of would-be assassin as a non-intelligence form of spying.\n\nSecond, Skanderbeg gave the Ottomans reason to fear the same thing. He sent an associate who had past experience *as* an Ottoman into one camp, lightly armed--evidently as a distraction, because the Albanian forces made quick and bloody work of that particular company.\n\nNow, I've dragged myself through a case with basically zero English scholarship or translations of primary sources (unless you fancy a non-digitized 16th century text, apparently?) because there is one key rumor that Barleti repeats.\n\nHe sets the stage well: the perilous geographic placement of Svetigrad at the tip-top of a rocky hill, good for defense against a siege but very bad for access to plentiful water sources. Drawing out the themes of betrayal, Barleti condemns a local man for knowing exactly how to crush the citizens and soliders of the town psychologically as well as physically. This traitor, the story goes, cast the corpse of a dog into the local well. The town defenders had lost their source of water, and knew they had to give in.\n\nWhether it really took a local traitor to poison a well or whether the Ottoman army was actually just very strategic at cutting off the defenders' access to nearby water sources is an open question. Barleti definitely has motive to use the first version; the second is *probably* more plausible but makes the Ottomans look much more effective. \n\nFor understanding water and warfare in the Middle Ages, though, the most important thing isn't whether someone cast a dog corpse into a particular well. It's the *panic* that the action was said to cause--a problem above and beyond the physical effects of the action. Because while access to water was indeed weaponized in the Middle Ages, with French and English troops filling in wells behind them to try to ward off easy attacks during the Hundred Years War, you cannot, *cannot* talk about well poisoning in the Middle Ages without talking about the tragic, bloody cases where there was no poison at all--just paranoia.\n\nIn the late Middle Ages, accusations that a person or a group had poisoned local wells became a central manifestation of fear over uncontrollable events scapegoated out onto a particularly hated local group. In 1321, as the Great Famine ground down western Europeans into starvation and the burden of encroaching royal authority grew heavier, rumors sprang up in southwestern France. *Lepers were poisoning the wells.* They were determined to make *everyone* into lepers. And wait, was it foreigners or lepers? How about both? And surely it was lepers put up to the task by Jews. When the panic spread to Spain, the Spanish had a new fear--Jews paid by Muslims!\n\nNow, *obviously* southern France and the Crown of Aragon did not turn into lands of lepers. This poisoner-hunt was powered by panic. And yet it operated, torture session by torture session, execution by execution, through the legal systems of the principalities involved. This shows just how central to European culture the need to keep water pure and potable was.\n\nAnd of course, fears of well-poisoning would manifest equally tragically during the Black Death, as panicked city after panicked city accused its Jewish population of, you guessed it, seeking to murder Christians by putting items associated with pestilence into the water supply--wells and sometimes even rivers. An anonymous chronicler in Avignon informs us that the *rumors* involved wicked Christians (!) poisoning wells with powders. But he is skeptical that this is actually taking place. In fact, that tends to be the general assessment of reports of well-poisoning in this era. Rumors fly, Jews gets blamed, Jews get burned...but it probably never happened at all.\n\nSo you might say that in the context of tactical intelligence and water in the Middle Ages, we're dealing with the most dangerous and fickle weapon of all: *false* information.",
"Well poisoning is an ancient tactic. I mean, in Julius Africanus' 3rd century book of \"secret\" military tactics, he talks about poisoning supplies and water (as well as preparing yourself with antidotes to poison beforehand) as a completely common thing to do, and as a general battlefield tactic to be employed by the entire military unit if need be.\n\nFor example, he describes one elaborate ruse involving poisoning your own unit's food, feigning retreat, and then having the enemy eat that food. No spies are needed in such an activity."
]
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|
3va3es
|
why are bathroom hot air hand dryers better for the environment when they are using a non-renewable resource (fossil fuels) to save a renewable one (trees)?
|
Edit: Thanks, Reddit! Not sure why I didn't think about all the other stuff that needs to happen before and after the actual drying of hands.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3va3es/eli5why_are_bathroom_hot_air_hand_dryers_better/
|
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"To answer that question we need to know how much energy that particular dryer uses to dry your hands, what percentage of that energy is coming from burning fossil fuels, how much energy was used to produce the paper towel, and what resources were used to produce the paper towel. I have often pondered this as well, but I predict that the electric dryer ends up being much better after accounting for all the processes used to produce the paper.",
"The energy that goes into the production, transport, etc. of the towel is greater than that of the energy in the dryer and - over time - the dryer itself. \n",
"There's an energy accounting to be done, as others have pointed out, but there's also the impact of the waste of the paper towel. At minimum, the towel waste can be recycled, which would use fewer trees, but requires energy in the recycling process. Plus, recycling is notorious for using a lot of water. \n\nIf paper hand towels cannot be recycled, then the situation is even more grim - they have to be disposed of, either by composting, incineration or landfill. ",
"aside from saving trees from being used in manufacturing process, you're also keeping more trees up and keeping the air clean.\n\nTrees are like the bristles in your broom; by cutting down your bristles, you are effectively weakening the broom's ability to clean."
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oxbsk
|
Is it possible to put enough perfluocarbons into a lake or large body of water for people to be able to breathe underwater?
|
I got this idea after watching "The Abyss", but didn't realize until I looked into it that you can't simply "oxygenate water". I beleive liquid breathing involves breathing *only* perflurocarbons, but is it possible to have a high enough concentration of perflurocarbons in a body of water that would allow our lungs to absorb enough oxygen to breathe? Would this concentration be toxic for other water-breathing organisms?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/oxbsk/is_it_possible_to_put_enough_perfluocarbons_into/
|
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"Interesting question, i'd guess that it has to be a very high cocentration if even possible. Anyway, a nice article: _URL_0_\n\nPD: The Abyss is one of the most underrated sci fi out there.",
"Well the most widely used fluorocarbon for 'liquid breathing' is [perfluorodecalin](_URL_2_). There are videos on YouTube of [mice being submerged in it](_URL_1_), then freaking out when they realise they can still breathe. The solubility of O2 in perfluorodecalin is about 49% w/v, cf air which is approximately 21% v/v. This means that there is potentially twice as much oxygen in perfluorodecalin as there is in real air. Consequently, it could be diluted by half without significant ill effect. However, this back-of-the-envelope calculation is as far as my expertise on the matter goes.\n\nAs far as I'm aware, and this is mild conjecture, having water in your lungs is bad for you, and can cause [pulmonary edema](_URL_0_). The presence of 50% water would probably also hinder the absorption of O2 from the perfluorodecalin, so there are a variety of possible complications with this. Perfluorocarbons are generally considered to be biologically inert, so unless the fish or other water-breathing organisms are particularly sensitive to decreases in oxygen, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.",
"Perfluorocarbons are not appreciably soluble in water (their high affinity for oxygen is due in large part to the fact that they are non-polar), so you'd never be able to bump up their concentrations in a lake high enough to have any effect.\n",
"This is a very interesting concept. Something to consider is the feasibility of breathing a liquid. Your diaphragm is responsible for pumping air into the lungs, and the natural elastic recoil of your lungs is what pumps it out (accessory muscles can also assist in both of these processes). Due to the physiology of the system, your lungs operate in a very low pressure environment, ideally below 30mmHg at all times. \n\nWith that in mind, trying to breathe a liquid may be more difficult for the diaphragm and elastic recoil processes. Even with all of your accessory muscles at work, it still may not be feasible to repeatedly to inhale and exhale a fluid from your lungs. In addition, at any one time the average person has a few liters of air that is ALWAYS in their lungs, such that your lungs never collapse. The logic behind this is similar to blowing up a balloon. If you give a child an empty balloon and tell them to blow it up, they cant, but if you get it started, it is much easier. Your lungs work the same, and that is why they maintain some air in them at all times. If you were breathing entirely water, when you came back to the surface, you would have no way of exhaling the residual volume, so some fluid would be trapped in your lungs. I think this could present some problems, but then again people can drown and upon revival will eventually get all of the fluid out of their lungs, so it must be possible. "
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorodecalin"
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|
5lrjgz
|
Is there a reason all the planets orbit the sun in approximately the same plane and direction?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lrjgz/is_there_a_reason_all_the_planets_orbit_the_sun/
|
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"Yes. Conservation of angular momentum. Our solar system started out as a rotating gas cloud. Over time, this cloud collapsed and denser regions formed the sun and the planets. But due to conservation of angular momentum, the rotation had to remain, which means that the solar system as a whole rotates around the same axis that the original gas cloud did.",
"Like u/rannasha said but just to be more explanatory. \n The conservation of momentum keeps it that way, kept it so from the dish but... originally: \n -gravity pulled the gas together to form the sun. (No disc from that)\n -the *spin* forms the disc (much like spinning dow to make a pizza spreads) \n Objects orbiting on different axis are tell signs of:\n * passerby bodies caught later by the suns gravity, severe collisions having altered the orbit, or great distance where orbital speed has been too weak for centrifugal forces to play a major part to the form (Oort cloud for ex)*",
"I won't add anything else to the explanations of conservation of angular momentum but here is a bit of a neat high school demonstration of how a giant mass of moving stuff tends to all be moving the same direction. You can imagine that there are always some interesting exceptions due to interference more recently.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Yes. When you're making a pizza, you throw a ball of dough in the air and spin it. As it spins, it stretches out into a disk. Our solar system formed from a spinning, collapsing cloud, and it turned into a disk like dough does.",
"The current nebular theory of solar system formation explains this feature of our solar system as the result of formation from the collapse of a large cloud of gas and dust (nebula). As the nebula collapses under its own gravity, any tiny initial rotation in the cloud is amplified as it shrinks in size, just like a figure skater pulling in their arms to increase their rate of spin (conservation of angular momentum). The nebula forms a disk as it collapses, because of the combination of gravity and centrifugal force: gravity points *towards* the **center** of the cloud, and centrifugal force points *away* from the **axis of rotation** of the cloud. This means that on the \"equator\" of the cloud, these two forces point in opposite directions and partially cancel each other, but on the \"poles\" of the cloud, they are at right angles to each other, and there's nothing stopping gravity from flattening the cloud into a disk. The sun forms in the middle of this disk, and the planets form around it, in the rotating disk, and so they all end up going in the same direction and in (nearly) the same plane. \n\nI'm on mobile, but I can add some links later if any of that isn't clear. ",
"You can watch this for a demo:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nthe general ideal is that if objects are rotating in opposite directions and they collide then they both lose energy and \"fall\" inward. given enough collisions what remains will be orbiting roughly the same direction",
"Essentially, when a solar system or a galaxy is forming, the cloud of mass has a collective plane of rotation as a system, and that rotational momentum must be conserved. However, all the up and down motion of the particles in the Z axis eventually cancels each other out as particles collide and bound together from gravity. What ends up happening is the cloud loses all the motion in the Z axis and maintain the rotational momentum. \n\nMinutePhysics has a [great video](_URL_0_) on this. ",
"An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffused material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is typically a star. Gravity causes material in the disk to spiral inward towards the central body.",
"[Orbital resonance \\(planets tugging on each other to the point that their orbits become in sync with each other\\)](_URL_1_) also plays a role in keeping the planets in line.\n[\nThe Nice Model is a pretty fun theory regarding this.](_URL_0_)",
"On a related note: \n\nWe detect exoplanets by the dimming of their sun when they cross it.\n\nDoesn't that only work if the plane of the planet's orbit is in line with our view?\n\nCould we detect a planet whose orbit is perpendicular to our view of it?\n\nAnd how many of those are we missing?",
"You can see the conservation of angular momentum play out in your kitchen at home. Take a very large bucket or pot and fill it 3/4 full of water. Put some stuff in it, things that float, like pieces of paper or bark or wood, and then take a stick and scramble the water in random directions. It will not take long, you will see everything eventually spin in one direction. With the planets, the edge of the bucket is gravity.\n",
"There is a great episode of The Mechanical Universe (from Cal Tech in the '80s) that explains angular momentum and how this happens. The full episode can be viewed here:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn the video there is a (albeit dated) graphic at 22:30 that shows the galaxy collapsing from a gas cloud into a flat disk.\n",
"From the beginning, particles and chunks of matter orbited all kinds of ways around the sun. Eventually, due to collissions where some particles rotation changed or got cancelled, one of the direction which had the most mass \"won\". There is a great visualisation video [here](_URL_0_) explaining this with lycra and some marbles.",
"If they didn't, they'd occasionally hit each other. Hitting each other tends to average out the orbital plane of the remaining debris. When you look at \"Planets\", you are seeing the congealed clusters of debris from many, many collisions, averaged out until their remaining orbital elements are very, very similar.\n\nThe plane we ended up with by simple chance is the prevailing rotational element about the center of mass that was present in the previous ball of swirling gas that came before Sol. If that gas was arranged slightly differently, we'd have a different orbital plane.\n\nThe reason we have \"planets\" instead of \"Rings\" (other than the asteroid belt) is that the Solar Wind blew away much of the extra gas, and anything that's not arranged in a plane with some spacing between circular orbits, has occasional gravitational interactions that cause their orbit to be unstable and collide with something eventually.",
"This whole thread is avoiding the subject. Venus and Uranus rotate in the opposite direction than all the other planets and nobody is addressing this anomaly. _URL_0_ ",
"I'm sure you got beat to death with answers, but here's a cool visualization of the preservation of angular momentum:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHe has slightly ~~fewer~~ more marbles in his left hand, meaning there's more mass orbiting clockwise compared to counter-clockwise. We start out with a lot of mass orbiting in both directions. After all of the collisions, we're left with a little bit of mass orbiting in the clockwise direction. ",
"Ooh, I think I might actually know this one! If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me. \n\nSo the planets basically all came from a big disk of rock and dust that surrounded the sun billions of years ago. Some of the stuff in that disk actually helped the sun become the sun, but a lot of it just kept circling the sun. Over time, clumps of stuff gathered together to form the planets, but since it was all already moving so fast, it just kept going the way it was going. \n\nFun Fact: Venus actually spins the other way. The sun rises in the West and sets in the East. Not really relevant, but still cool. "
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||
1qsmvm
|
how do top chess players look so many moves ahead?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qsmvm/eli5_how_do_top_chess_players_look_so_many_moves/
|
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"When the top chess players began playing chess, they only looked 1 or 2 moves ahead. It was all they knew how to do, because they were new to the game.\nAfter beating some other players, having some close games, and becoming familiar with different combinations of moves, the top chess player was able to think 3, 4, 5 moves ahead. The player got better, and could read his or her opponent's next 4 moves, too.\nThe player progresses to thinking up four moves in response to each of the opponent's next four moves. Eventually, they're thinking 20 moves ahead for the end of the pawn skirmish and prioritizing 10 different execution styles in case the first 9 don't work out. It's about familiarity, focus, repetition, and a lot of time.",
"Most of them don't look at all possible combinations. They only look for moves that they think are likely for an opponent (in a given position, this may be only one good move to as many as twenty). Also, they are familiar with particular positions. They know which positions to try to get to and which positions to avoid at all costs. So they aren't actually looking at every single possible combination of moves for the next twenty moves."
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1511rd
|
what's the difference between "assault" and "battery"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1511rd/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_assault_and/
|
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"Assault is the threat of the violence, Battery is the actual violence.\n\nFrom Wikipedia:\n\nAssault and battery is the combination of two violent crimes: assault (the threat of violence) and battery (physical violence). This legal distinction exists only in jurisdictions that distinguish assault as threatened violence rather than actual violence.",
"Echoing what most of these posts say: assault is the threat, but battery is actual violence. \n\nBut keep in mind that these are specialized legal terms--\"assault\" in everyday use is more like the definitions of \"battery\" given here. An \"assault\" rifle is not named for its use in merely *threatening* violence."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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||
2i5snr
|
has the olympics always (since 1896) been a major expense and drain to the host city/country?
|
Oslo, Norway recently pulled its bid for the 2022 Olympics. In a reddit thread regarding that, most of the comments say how terribly expensive and burdensome the Olympics is on a city, and that it's no wonder Oslo would pull out.
Has it always been like this? Is the IOC actually more corrupt now than it used to be? Was it less expensive or more beneficial in the past for the host city? When and why did this change?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i5snr/eli5_has_the_olympics_always_since_1896_been_a/
|
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"The Olympic events themselves are, economically speaking, beneficial for a country. They attract a lot of visitors who will spend money at local establishments.\n\nThe burden comes from the infrastructure. Unless a city has hosted the Olympics before, they're very unlikely to have all of the facilities they needed for athletics, gymnastics, swimming, rowing, equestrian, shooting, and so on.\n\nEven once they build the facilities the city needs to have a plan for what to use the infrastructure for once the Olympics has passed. Every now and again photos show up on the front page of reddit showing that Olympic facilities in both Athens and Beijing are largely unused and run down; in comparison parts of Sydney's Olympic park are still in use for sports and general entertainment events.\n\nThe [1976 Olympics in Montreal](_URL_0_) is generally considered to be the first Olympics which resulted in an overall burden to the city (as opposed to a benefit). Due to the large costs of building new facilities outstripping the income generated by the games.\n\nThe issue is worse for the winter Olympics. It is vary unlikely that any city needs, or can even use, an Olympic bobsled course outside of the Olympics; but if they don't already have one then it must be built for the games, there is no alternative. Historically the winter games have also attracted less international attention and attract smaller crowds. So they make less money than the summer games while still being expensive to host."
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|
[] |
[] |
[
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Summer_Olympics#Legacy"
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|
3ezvrm
|
What were the main reasons the Russians lost WW1, and what were the consequences on their society and economic and military strength?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ezvrm/what_were_the_main_reasons_the_russians_lost_ww1/
|
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"text": [
"Well to start off' when the war broke out Russia was in no way prepared for a major conflict. They had been thrashed by the Japanese in 1904-1905 in the Russo-Japanese war, which left the economy in shambles, and Russia dangerously unstable. Even though Russia had the largest army in the world at the time, they lacked the industrial capacity to arm and equip their soldiers, with many common soldiers not even having rifles at the outbreak of the war, not to mention shortages of machine guns and artillery. The Russians allies attempted to alleviate these shortages through loans and arms shipments, but with the Dardanelles being blocked off by the Ottoman Empire and the German High Seas Fleet threatening the Baltic, these imports of materiel ceased. The loss of access to the Dardanelles was especially critical. Prior to the war 9/10 of Russia's exports went through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. In addition to the strains put on the Russian economy, catastrophic military defeats like the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes had seen losses of hundreds of thousands of men. Although manpower was basically the one resource the Russians had in droves, it made no difference because the Russian army lost massive amounts of equipment that simply could not be replaced. Despite the Russians enjoying considerable success against the Austrians, it could not last when Germany came to bail out their weaker ally. By the end of 1915, the Russians had been forced out of Austrian territory, and the Central powers had occupied all of Russian Poland, and what is today Lithuania and Latvia. What really brought the Russians crashing was revolution. In 1917, the Germans transported Vladimir Lenin from Switzerland through Germany and into Russia, with the understanding that he would incite revolution and topple the Tsarist Empire. And thats exactly what he did. The first revolution in February toppled the Tsar and installed a provisional Government headed by Georgy Lvov, who was himself replaced by Alexander Kerensky. However the Provisional government was still intent on fulfilling Russia's obligation to her allies. Eventually this led to the divide between the anti-war Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the pro-war Mensheviks led by Kerensky. It wasn't until October 1917 that the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government with the intent of making peace at any costs. \n\nAnd the costs were **staggering**. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918, losing all of Russian Poland, Finland, Courland, the Baltic States, what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia, Bessarabia, and the returning Kars, Ardahan, and Batum to the Ottomans. This amounted to the loss of nearly 1 million square miles of territory, 55 million of its population, the majority of Russia's Iron and coal reserves and most of its industrial base as well. Lenin bitterly called the settlement “that abyss of defeat, dismemberment, enslavement and humiliation.” To give some context as to how much land was lost [here!](_URL_0_) is a map showing the full territorial changes.\n\nThe consequences of this defeat saw Russia plunge into civil war until 1923, in addition to widespread famine, a shattered economy, and a country that was in ruins and would not stabilize until the mid to late 20s with the inception of Soviet Russia. \n\nIf you have more questions please ask.\n\n**EDIT**: Lenin was smuggled into Russia **after** the February Revolution. The Provisional Government had continued the war against the Central powers and the Germans hoped that Lenin would install a new government that would make peace.\nSources: *In Wars Dark Shadow* and *Passage Through Armageddon* by W. Bruce Lincoln."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://hsfsortie1918.webs.com/Pages/Pictures/1918%20Europe.jpg"
]
] |
||
8civgw
|
why does earth's armosphere glow blue in pictures taken from space?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8civgw/eli5_why_does_earths_armosphere_glow_blue_in/
|
{
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"text": [
"It is the same reson that the sky is blue from the ground. The atmosphere scatter the blue light more then the other colors so it looks blue. The amount of scattering depend on the wavelength of light. Blue scatter most and red on the others side of the spectrum scatter the least.\n\nIs is the same reason that a sun set looks looks red/orange. The light passes trough more atmosphere when it is low so more light is scattered. The result is that the light that reaches you is primary red/orange.."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2m4gxm
|
Can anyone help me interpret this political cartoon? All I know about it is that it is related to the Algerian War.
|
_URL_0_
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2m4gxm/can_anyone_help_me_interpret_this_political/
|
{
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"cm161om"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"My knowledge of the Algerian war is limited, but I can tell you that the image is a visual reference to [the three wise monkeys](_URL_0_), which in turn refer to the saying \"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.\" The cartoon is accusing someone of turning a blind eye to unethical behavior, though I don't know who the figures are."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://imgur.com/gallery/Pc9f9wL"
] |
[
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Hear_speak_see_no_evil_Toshogu.jpg"
]
] |
|
1x0v2j
|
why is red hair so much more rare than other hair colors?
|
My friend was telling me how something like 2% of the earth's population has red hair and that people with red hair are actually going "extinct". So why is red hair more uncommon than other hair colors?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x0v2j/why_is_red_hair_so_much_more_rare_than_other_hair/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because red hair is the most recessive of the hair colors. So if you look at a punnet square it'll be easy to see that unless both parents have red hair then there is only a 25% chance of the child having red hair at best and since there are multiple hair colors when red heads mate with non red heads it's easy to see how the recessive gene will slowly disappear "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
agkdyf
|
How were/are native peoples affected by the establishment of the US/Canada border?
|
I know some tribes like the Blackfoot/Siksika had territory that was sort of cut in half. How was this handled when national borders were drawn? What kind of pushback was there from the natives?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/agkdyf/how_wereare_native_peoples_affected_by_the/
|
{
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"There was no law or settlements in the Western Canadian prairies until the Northwest Mounted Police, newly established in 1873, arrived at Fort Whoop-up in 1874. Up until then there was no law nor any federal protection for the Indian tribes living in the Canadian side of the border and the US Cavalry was unwilling to become involved in disputes across the border.\n\nThe NWMP was formed 1873. Before that complaints of murder and mayhem going unpunished were reaching Ottawa so Colonel P. Ross Robertson was sent to Edmonton to investigate. He learned of 3 German families slaughtered by the Bloods, of a half-breed who brutally murdered his wife outside the gates of the fort and severed the sinews of an old Indian woman's arms who starved to death as she was unable to work. His report tells of a notorious Cree who was responsible for many murders and states that in 1871 some 88 Blackfeet were murdered as a result of drunken brawls. On top of this he says that the Indians code of honour includes murder and assassination which caused another untold number of deaths. \n\n This report, *\"A Report of a reconnaissance of the north-west provinces and Indian territories of the Dominion of Canada,\"* got the attention of the Canadian government. Once word of [The Cypress Hill Massacre](_URL_0_) reached Ottawa they acted and formed the Northwest Mounted Police. It's purpose was to protect the Indians, stop the liquor trade in the area and we're also ordered to bring justice to the West. They arrived in Fort Whoop-up in 1874 and quickly earned the respect and trust of the local Indians.\n\n\nI'm currently reading *The Range Men* by L.V. Kelly. It provides us with some of the history of the Indians, fur traders, ranchers and settlers that lived in what is now Southern Alberta. In his book Kelly tells us of Fort Stand-Off which got it's name from a group of whiskey traders who were running from the US Cavalry. When they crossed the border they stopped and turned around to taunt their persuers, who had to turn around and head home empty handed. Kelly goes on to tell us that while they respected the laws on the Canadian side of the border ,after the NWMP arrived, young warriors seeking fortune and adventure would cross the border in search of enemies to kill and horses to steal secure in the knowledge that they would be safe from prosecution once they returned to their side of the border. \n\nKelly goes on to say that the Blackfeet went to war with the Kootenay Indians in 1871. They were losing badly so set the prairies on fire in order to escape and force the Kootenais back to the mountains. This fire also chased the buffalo South across the border creating a shortage of food that winter. The buffalo were prevented from returning by the Sioux and were never to return to Canada. \n\nPeter Erasmus was an interpreter for Methodist missionaries in early Alberta in his youth then went to on to be a trader, miner and guide for such events as [The Palliative Expedition](_URL_2_). His memoirs are recorded in the book *Buffalo Days and Nights*. In this book he tells us that he was hired by the Cree to represent them as their interpreter because they did not trust the government to be truthful to them when they negotiated [Treaty 6](_URL_1_). He was present during the negotiations and while the chiefs were debating the terms of the treaty and whether or not to sign it. During the Chief's private debates Erasmus said that Big Child was the chief who swayed the others to sign the treaty. In his speech Big Child said that had seen how his people were treated South of the Medicine Line and that there they were vulnerable to the depredations caused by the white man and had no protections while the Canadians treated them as equals. With the mass herds of buffalo quickly disappearing he felt that his people would be better off accepting the government's terms and signing the treaty instead of rejecting it and becoming drawn into battle defending their lands against the onrush of settlers who would away from them anyways. \n\nIf this history interests you I would highly recommend that you read the books I mentioned and also get a copy of *Bear Child: The Life and times of Jerry Potts. * Potts was a scout and interpreter for the NWMP when they first arrived in the prairies. He led a very colorful life, being involved in battles against the Blackfoot Confederacy, hunting down and killing his mother's murderer and stealing horses from both sides of the border. He was known to be a crack shot with a pistol who one time got into a drunken argument with a friend whereupon they went into the street and proceeded to shoot the ends off of cigarettes hanging from each others mouths. He was also hired to be an interpreter during treaty negotiations but his lack of words were of little use. Once, after a Chief spoke a long flowery and elegant speech introducing his tribe Potts simplified it and told the negotiating committee \"He's damn glad you're here.\"\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Hills_Massacre",
"https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/treaty-6",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliser_expedition"
]
] |
|
16lp9f
|
What are some great examples of military deception throughout history?
|
I've heard of militaries using fake tanks and inflatable airplanes to fool their enemies. There is a post today in /r/todayilearned about the first jet pilot wearing a gorilla mask so that anyone who reported it wouldn't be believed.
What are the best examples of military deception in your area of expertise?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16lp9f/what_are_some_great_examples_of_military/
|
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"text": [
"There are others, like the [Dazzle Camouflage](_URL_1_), but for my money, the best ever were the [fake Sniper trees of World War 1](_URL_0_). ",
"During WW2 the Australian Prime Minister kept speaking of the Japanese pushing south and Australia being in danger of invasion as a way of deceiving the Japanese. The Allies had broken Japanese military codes and knew that the Japanese had no intention of invading Australia. However, before this was known the idea that Australia was in danger of being invaded had been openly discussed by the Australian government and so it was decided that if they suddenly stopped discussing it the Japanese might catch on that their codes had been broken and so the Australian government kept talking about it, and scaring the Australian people, so the secret that the codes had been broken wouldn't be revealed. \n\nNot as exciting as inflatable tanks and the like but still deception.",
"And of course you have probably one of the greatest examples during WW2 being the man that never was (Operation Mincemeat).\n\nA suicide victim was dressed up as an Allied officer and with \"Top Secret\" plans dumped off the coast of Spain. Also on his person was the little things, wallet, IDs, photos, etc that made him seem real. He even had a receipt for an engagement ring. To help sell the story that he'd fallen overboard, or whatever, with top secret documents, he was made out to be a bit absentminded. His military ID was made up as a replacement. \n\nHis fake Top Secret orders detailed an Allied invasion of Greece. In reality the Allies were invading Sicily.\n\nWhile Spain was a neutral country it was known, or rather hoped, that they would allow the Germans a peak at what this officer was carrying, which they did.\n\nThe Germans swallowed the bait.",
"Not a historian but the Lockheed plant being camouflaged during World War II \n\n_URL_1_\n\nand Britain's dummy airstrips\n\n_URL_0_\n\nimmediately came to mind",
"During the Siege of Tobruk during WW2 the Allies painted the desalination plants with oil to make them look from the air like they'd already being bombed. The Germans didn't bomb them. If they had the garrison would have found itself in dire straights. \n\nAlso at Tobruk fake AA guns were made up which were made to even look as if they were firing. They'd make a flash and kick up sand.\n\nFake jetties were set up and fake wrecks were set up around them.\n\nTargets that needed protecting, including the desalination plants, had drums of oily rags lit on fire at them to give them impression that they were on fire.",
"One of my favorites has always been the Quaker Gun. Basically soldiers would chop down a tree and paint it black so that it looked like a cannon. Always made me chuckle. \n\n_URL_0_",
"All this WW2 Deception is great, but anyone have information from prior centuries?",
"The Mongols were masters of battlefield deception. Often, they would have soldiers light extra fires to give the impression of a much bigger force. They were also known to tie branches and foiliage behind their horses, dragging them against the ground in order to kick up dust, also giving the impression of superior numbers. Imagine seeing a horde of Mongols riding a storm of dust, the sight and their reputation would be more than enough to instill a sense of terror in their enemies.\n\nAnother favorite tactic employed by the Mongols was the use of feigned retreat. To feign a retreat takes great discipline and battlefield coherance, as a fake retreat can very quickly turn into a real one if the soldiers are not properly drilled. Seeing their enemies seemingly running away, an army would often break ranks and chase the Mongols, wanting to secure their victory and cut down the routers. The Mongols would bide their time, lure the army deeper and farther, stretching their forces to a fragile state, then turn around and re-engage, now against an army with no formation or battle lines. Arrows rained down at the unorganized mass, and soon it became clear to the pursuing army that they were led into an ambush. As the enemy army begins to flee, Mongol heavy lancers would cut down the routers and decimate whatever paltry resistance was left. Tactics like these were effective because deception instills a sense of uncertainty which quickly leads to confusion then fear. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu tells us all war is deception, and the Mongols knew exactly what that meant."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://io9.com/5916534/during-world-war-i-fake-trees-for-snipers-would-pop-up-overnight",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2010/12/fighting-with-fakes.cfm",
"http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/camouflage.html"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_Gun"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
7nb2mh
|
what is mk ultra?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nb2mh/eli5_what_is_mk_ultra/
|
{
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"It was a CIA project that started in the 50s and lasted the the 70s. It's goal was to identify drugs and techniques used for interrogation and counter intelligence. It included a lot of messed up experiments like daily LSD dosage on unknowing patients. It was illegal and didn't yield any real results. It did however drive a ton of U.S citizens bat shit crazy. The uni bomber was one of the more famous test subjects. ",
"Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Project MKUltra ](_URL_3_) ^(_31 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What exactly was Project MKUltra, and was it deemed a success or failure? ](_URL_7_) ^(_13 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Project MKULTRA ](_URL_2_) ^(_6 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is this MK Ultra I keep hearing about? ](_URL_1_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: The conspiracy theory surrounding celebrities and MKUltra. ](_URL_4_) ^(_42 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is MK Ultra? ](_URL_5_) ^(_10 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: MK Ultra. ](_URL_0_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is MK Ultra? ](_URL_6_) ^(_._)\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q07eq/eli5_mk_ultra/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t1zgl/eli5_what_is_this_mk_ultra_i_keep_hearing_about/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jn3gv/eli5_project_mkultra/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1doa8r/eli5_project_mkultra/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xfaob/eli5_the_conspiracy_theory_surrounding/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3g1gre/eli5_what_is_mk_ultra/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiro/comments/3g1joe/eli5_what_is_mk_ultra/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lszwy/eli5_what_exactly_was_project_mkultra_and_was_it/"
]
] |
||
1im12k
|
Was there anything like the American "temperance movement" in Europe in the 19th or 20th century?
|
As much as I know about it, the movement seems like a particularly "American" phenomenon for a lot of reasons (Californian here). Sorry to lump all of Europe together, I'm sure explanations would vary wildly from the UK to Spain to Greece.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1im12k/was_there_anything_like_the_american_temperance/
|
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"There was a fairly strong temperance movement in Scandinavia. A number of both open and closed organisations were involved. An attempt was made in 1918 in Denmark to partially ban certain sorts of alcoholic drinks. A general drive to collect signatures for this managed 722,280 signatures (out of a pop. of 4 million). But the proposal failed in the parliament, and was not tried again.",
"There definitely was (and still is) in Sweden. It was strong enough to lead to a referendum in 1922 about banning alcohol, and the result was very close even though the suggested ban was struck down. There was a rationing system in place for a few decades, and the government still has a monopoly on selling alcohol.\nThere's also a Swedish branch of the international order of good templars, which was founded in the USA, that still exists.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
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|
8zbqkm
|
What’s the difference between sleep and just laying down/resting?
|
Why is sleep required for our bodies, and what does it do that simply laying down and resting doesn’t do?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8zbqkm/whats_the_difference_between_sleep_and_just/
|
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"Frankly, nobody knows for sure. It's one of the great unresolved questions in psychology and neurology. Hypotheses for the function of sleeping range from consolidating new memories to cleaning up metabolic waste products accrued in the brain. All we know that deprivation of sleep eventually incapacitates you no matter how much physical rest you get. Or, like some researcher once quipped, the only thing we know for sure is that we sleep because we get sleepy.",
"In the simplest of terms, resting/lying down is for the body; sleep is for the brain.\nBelow might not be very scientific in its language but is based on what I have read in scientific literature. Some it is still debated upon:\n\nSleep is actually something like the sleep mode of your laptop or desktop but a little bit more complex. Like a laptop's sleep mode, the part of the brain that controls movements and most of muscle activity are shut down. But that is pretty much where the analogy would end. Sleep and especially, deep sleep is a very special state of the brain in which the areas that control emotions, memory, (maybe) vision/audition go into a unique mode where thing are played out so as to consolidate the memories formed during the day. Further, the brain also runs simulations to improve emotional and rational decision making. It also been proposed that there are certain physiological processes that remove unused neurons and strengthen good neurons. \n\nSleeping therefore is way more complex than simply lying down or even just taking a 15 min nap.\n",
"Resting is sleep. It's just prolonged at times and if you get sufficient amounts your body would obviously feel better. But our bodies work well with periodical naps throughout the day rather than one elongated sleep session "
]
}
|
[] |
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[],
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|
3527m9
|
why do most americans seem to be suspicious of the federal government?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3527m9/eli5_why_do_most_americans_seem_to_be_suspicious/
|
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"Sadly, most Americans really aren't, and I wish that they were. It's not really suspicious, because that implies some level of mystery. I'm completely soured on them. They're power-hungry dicks who will use any and every tool at their disposal to control everyone's lives as much as they can. ",
"Because their interests arent the american people. Its keeping the machine going at all costs.. Oh yeah and their personal interests too",
"Because the federal government behaves in fashions that are clearly self-serving, rather than entirely 'for the people.' This is the nature of any power structure, to a greater or lesser degree. Absolute trust would cede absolute power and likely be disadvantageous to you, the individual. ",
"Because they are suspicious of us. They have been caught spying on basically everyone around the world, not just Americans, then they lied about it to protect themselves. And they sacrifice both freedom and liberty for the illusion of security.",
"I'm not going to speak to the paranoia that drives survivalists, gun nuts and xenophobes and antiglobalists, but what I personally am most suspicious of is the simple fact that the side effects of government policies always tend to be worse than the problems they are created to solve. Bureaucracies never wither or shrink, they always grow. When they are given the power to develop policies to implement their stated mission, it is as if we are getting legislation without representation.\n\nLaws passed with good intent end up being threats to free society and an affront to common sense. I don't really need to list areas in which federal \"solutions\" have had perverse side effects. The drug war, the sex offender registry, copyright law, and anti-hacking laws to name a few have all had numerous well-documented misapplications that defy common sense.\n\nSo yes, when someone proposes that the government is here to help us, be very afraid. It is true more often than not that the government that governs best is the one that governs least.",
"Everyone should always be suspicious of anyone who wants power enough to go through what you have to go through to get it, and doubly suspicious of anyone already in power and what they will do to keep it.",
"We have a long history in America of equating politicians with used car salesmen and snake oil peddlers. It fuels entire genres of humor and the people and pundits and talking heads employed by it aren't about to let it go. Add that to the number of times the government has either created a truly terrible unintended consequence or someone has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it's no wonder the nut job black helicopter types start to look like they may be onto something. ",
"Think about it like a school lunch at the cafeteria. Most students are fine to just eat the meal and go on with their day but there exists a small subset that, over time, feels they have been wronged in some way. \n\n* Timmy doesn't like cheese and, on Wednesday, the only lunch options are cheese pizza and grilled cheese.\n* Susy is lactose intolerant and the cafeteria often runs out of non-milk drink options\n* Jimmy only eats spaghetti and the cafeteria never serves spaghetti\n\nAfter multiple years of putting up with this, each of Timmy, Susy, and Jimmy begins to feel like the cafeteria is specifically targeting him/her when what might actually be happening is that the cafeteria has to serve 500 kids and it's nearly impossible to cater to every single preference or situation.\n\nOf course, maybe the cafeteria does actually have it out for Timmy or Susy or Jimmy! But it's probably just the misfortune of being caught up in a system that, out of necessity, prefers broad appeal over catering to specific individuals.\n\nAll this is to say that I suspect you are seeing a small but vocal minority of folks that are suspicious. My guess is that the average American lives his/her daily life and never once thinks about the government or, if the thought does pop up, it's completely benign. Among those that are suspicious, it likely stems from a perceived injustice of some sort. That injustice may be totally legit or it may be a complete fabrication but just the perception that an injustice occurred that is sufficient to set some folks on this course.\n\nTo further clarify, I'm not advocating her that the government is not worthy of suspicion. My personal take is that almost any pure authority figure deserves a healthy dose of skepticism. I'm only pointing out that a lot of suspicion that exists is likely the result of being a single party (or very small group) that exists within a huge system.",
"Why would any citizen NOT be suspicious of their government?",
"Watergate.\n\nAs an American, I remember learning in one of my high school history classes that trust in the federal government fell during the late 1970s, mainly due to Watergate. After the Watergate scandal, popularity polls decreased for a lot of high ranking elected officials, along with reduced voter turnout. Not only is Watergate still taught and remembered today (think of how many journalists use \"-gate\" to denote scandal), people who lived through have unknowingly passed this behavior to their children and it's become somewhat culturally ingrained.\n\nOn a side note it's not \"most\" Americans, but polls have showed USA has much less faith in their government that most other Western nations.\n\nEDIT: [Here's](_URL_0_) a good graph which shows Watergate's effect on trust in government.\n\nEDIT2: [Here](_URL_1_) is the results of a survey conducted by the Center for International Governance Innovation comparing U.S. to other countries.",
"It's part of our culture. Our nation was founded by people with a fear and resentment of governments and kings. We were once a brave and rebellious assortment of people.\n\nAlso our government always gives us good reason not to trust. Sneaky bunch of motherfuckers.",
"We have a President who believes he has the authority to assassinate American citizens without a trial or due process. When the government has that much power it is only natural for people to be suspicious.",
"Actually if you think about the founding principle in the Declaration of Independence \"\"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness\" it's that last one that the government has habitually tried to infringe upon, in many people's eyes. So, when people apply that to themselves individually, government -- usually the law authorities -- come after them pretty hard. It makes Americans .. suspicious.",
"I do not have a good explanation as to why.\n\nHowever, they should be. Now declassified documents indicate a long history of our own government doing horrible things. Like poisoning entire towns with radiation or chemicals, without the their knowledge, to see what the affects are. Also we have been tricked into every major war we have even gotten involved in. Sadly this is not the reason since, I believe, most Americans are ill informed regarding these incidents. \n\n\n",
"I don't think most Americans are, they are simply the ones making a noise. The reason (I think) is the importance of staying in power rather than making a change. \n\nFrom the politicians point of view it makes sense (and happens in every country, mind you); you have the best solutions, and the only way to make the country better is to make sure it is your policies winning. To do that you need to stay in power, and that will trump any other incentive. To make it worse, in the case of the US, the checks and balances system combined with a de facto two-party system makes for a very gridlocked political environment in which staying in power is alpha omega. Imagine two people fighting in water; 99% of your efforts are going to be just holding your breath and getting above the surface in order to do anything at all. Every little help that will get you an advantage will be crucial which is why campaigns are fuelled by billions of dollars. You are forced to take it in order to do anything, even if you will be handicapped by your promises to corporations. Better some than nothing. \n\nFrom the civilian's point of view, nothing gets done and the politicians are in the pockets of their donors; so much money is being spent and so little is being done. I would be tired and suspicious too, wishing that my vote would count for more than the power-stryggle between politicians. Even if I understand the reasons why, I would still find myself struggling to care.\n\nTL;DR: Most are not suspicious, but those who are blame the lack of action on corrupt politicians. ",
"Americans are afraid the government is trying to trick them (which it does sometimes) and/or take advantage of them. Politicians will go back on there promises or use misleading facts and that makes the American public feel cheated. If you have something that is not always trust worthy, you are going to start to be suspicious of them. I'm not saying there aren't good politicians that are trust worthy, but the bad examples leave a stain that makes people fear or not trust the people that run our states and country.\n\nTl;DR: The government's tract record is not close to perfect which makes some people scared and others not trusting of the government.",
"Because they give us reason to be very, very regularly. The NSA. Campaign financing. Lobbying. Gerrymandering. The list just goes on forever, basically. ",
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. - Eisenhower speech, 1961",
"I recently realized your question, which is really common in Europe, is highly unfair. It's not *wrong* as such, it's just unfair. I'm making a big assumption here, that you're European like me, so if you're not I apologize, but if you are, just think for a second: How many times have you read a headline along the lines of \"bureaucrats in Brussels screwing us over again\", or \"EU decides bananas cannot be bent more than XX degrees\" or \"EU means we'll be overrun by gypsies\"... Yeah, you get the point. Even pro-EU people in Europe are very firm on the whole sovereignty thing - as a Swede, I feel my country is mostly pro-EU, but there would be a fuckin' *revolution* if the EU outlawed our snus (they're trying to, we're resisting). \n\nSo here's the kicker: For a large part of the US, that's *exactly* how they feel about the federal government. Their union was based on states' sovereignty, and while some don't care, for others it is a *crime* when the federal government tries to decide things that they think should be up to states, *regardless* of whether it would be more *effective* to do it at a federal level.\n\nI feel I could make this argument more good if I wasn't so drunk, but the jist is there...\n\ntl;dr: Instead of \"I am Texan/whatever, distrust Washington\", read \"I am Dutch/German/Swedish/British/etc, distrust Brussels\" (then imagine it in 100 years, when EU federalism is a fait accompli). \n\nEDIT: Thank you for the gold, kind stranger!",
"First, I think I'd call it skepticism at its best, and suspicion at its worst. But this skepticism about federalism and the balance between states' rights and central government is something that has always been part of the fabric of American society. \n\nThis started with the founding of the country, when Americans kicked out the centralized government of England, which they believed was out of touch and taxing them unfairly while not providing services and representation in government. This feeling is carried on in many US states even today, but instead of being skeptical of the king of England, this skepticism is directed toward the President and Congress. \n\nAnother factor here is the vastness of the US. Someone in Hawaii, Montana, and Connecticut are going to have very different priorities. They might want a different direction for the federal government than one another. A cattle rancher in Wyoming and a graphic artist in New York city are living different lives. So the cattle rancher bristles when he has to swallow something that the graphic artist might enjoy, and vice versa. That makes it hard to reach consensus, so many Americans, perhaps rightly, see the federal government as a place of contention and not consensus, and don't believe the central government is capable of making a real positive impact on people's lives.",
"The true start was the twin scandals of Watergate and Vietnam. It was the first time Americans saw the extent to which their government lies to them. \n\nAnd if you want a more recent example, just turn on the news.",
"The larger, more populated, and more diverse a country is the harder it is for a single monolithic government entity to represent it. Some Americans like the federal government, some *depend on it* as a mommy figure, but a lot see it as a sort of foreign power. If you are community-oriented and self-sufficient, the federal government is seen as an external force imposing its will on you. I personally tend to have a lot more in common with people in my state, Washington, and similar states like Oregon than I do with people from say... Arkansas. There are statistical outliers of course, but when I've traveled to other parts of the country, although there are a lot of unifying traits that Americans have, there are also a lot of things that make us different. Marijuana legalization is one issue that serves as an example. My state legalized Marijuana and I almost never meet anyone here who disagrees with that measure, but I have family in other states and they think that my state, and myself, are crazy for allowing what they think is a harmful drug to be legal. Currently Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. That is one good example of the disconnect between different groups in the US, between states and and the federal government. How do you govern a country where there are such wide and varying opinions? The US is not a homogeneous in almost all areas and on almost all issues. \n\nThere is also the opinion that a lot of people have that the federal government mismanages everything it touches. There is a lot of waste and bureaucracy in basically every government program that exists. States often do things a lot better when left on their own (like marijuana legalization). \n\nAlso, the US government has just straight up done some sketchy shit. I don't think 9/11 was an inside job but I don't think that people in charge of the most powerful country in the world, trying to play the geopolitical long game to protect their interests, are above doing something like that. ",
"The real question is why are so many people uncritical of their government? You have to keep a close eye on your government, or else it will be doing bad things on your behalf (afterall they should be representing you).\n\nBut to answer your question: The US government has done some awful things in the past (MK Ultra for example), and there are other things the government does that looks extremely suspicious of what many conspiracy theorists say they are doing. The government just does a lot of things that appear sketchy and unethical when you view their actions with a critical eye.",
"People naturally fear things they don't fully understand. Secret societies, the worlds most powerful government ect. ",
"They listen to our phone calls, transcribing every word we say to keep forever. Then they lie to us about it.",
"There's been quite a lovely rise in things like \"civil forfeiture\" in the past couple decades. When the government gives itself the \"right\" to steal from you at will without recourse, they kinda aren't so much trustworthy anymore, ya know?",
"Honestly, it derives from Watergate, statistics show a much higher rate of trusting the federal government than afterwards. Our confidence in their ability to legislate and not act as tyrants has never recovered. ",
"Most Americans aren't suspicious of the federal government. Not in general, anyway.\n\nMost Americans *are* suspicious of *aspects* of the federal government, and okay with others, and few people in US politics speak with any nuance so it sounds like Everyone Hates The Fed.\n\nThe the FDA and the NSA, two different federal agencies. One evaluates nutrition labels and sets standards for drug testing. The other is a security agency.\n\nThere is a large number of people who mistrust the NSA because evidence has come out that they've been unconstitutionally/unethically spying on people they have no right or reason to spy on. But not everyone who believes this thinks that there shouldn't be an FDA or has any particularly big criticism of that bureau.\n\nMeanwhile, some people think the FDA has no business in regulating food and drugs and that state governments, or the market, should perform this function. But not everyone in that group disapproves of the NSA's spying operations, perhaps because they think that if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide.\n\nComparatively few people dislike the federal government *as a whole*, for any reason. This makes sense. It's a big organization made up of a lot of parts and it really doesn't have much of a uniting factor other than the kind of taxes that pay for it.\n\nSo your short answer is, \"Because American politics is oversimplified in media.\"",
"Because we always catch them doing stupid shit. Like overthrowing countries in South America, or listening in on all our phone calls, and working with corporations to screw the general population.\n\nI mean, we aren't \"suspicious\" without reason. The reasons are clear as day, they are literally the worst at hiding this shit. It's like coming home from work and your 4 year old has their hands behind their backs, a shit-eating-grin on their face, and everything is covered in blood. *WE DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID JUST YET BUT WE'RE LITERALLY ABOUT TO FIND OUT AND WE KNOW IT MUST BE FUCKING AWFUL.*"
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