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[ "All life on earth is negatively impacted by inbreeding, including insects. This includes organisms that reproduce sexually vs asexually. Consider that a single bacterial colony originating from a single bacteria is much more susceptible to we wiped out by disease or antibiotics then a bacterial colony originating from 10 different bacteria." ]

[ "One recent example of what happens is [here](_URL_0_) This community of Muslims in Great Britain promotes marriage between cousins, and the birth defect rate is dramatically higher than average. **Research for BBC2's Newsnight in November 2005 showed British Pakistanis accounted for 3.4 per cent of all births but have *30 per cent* of all British children with recessive disorders.**" ]

[ "Because you got complete bullshit in AskReddit, I'll answer: No, it did not exist, nor is it based on any real event. Nor was it meant to be a depiction of a real, historical society. Nobody took it seriously until the nineteenth century or so, when it captured the hearts of spiritualists and charlatans. Rather, it was an allegorical parable meant to illustrate philosophical principles, much like Thomas Moore's Utopia, Jonathan Swift's Lilliput, and James Hilton's Shangri-La." ]

[ "Hello everyone, Unfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compound the issue. In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_5_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_4_), or a [META thread](_URL_3_[META]). Thank you!" ]

[ "The person. There are countless number of people who are aware of countless number numbers of highly classified and secretive information. The Secretaries of Defense and State are likely to know almost as much information as the President, but they don't get lifetime protection." ]

[ "This is a hold-over from the physical book era. When physical books had to be printed, publishers had local partners in many different places in the world that did local marketing, printing, and distributing to local bookshops. So if you were in New York, you didn't have to talk to a book shop in Switzerland. There would be a designated local publisher that handled the Swiss market. This was also useful because each country has its own laws. As the main publisher, you didn't have to worry about Swiss law, your local partner handled that for you. Many of the publishers have long-term agreements with each other to handle rights for each other's stuff in certain locations. When the digital era arrived, we were stuck with the old business model. So to enforce these restrictions, the publishers use software encryption schemes called \"Digital; Rights Management\" to make sure that an e-book is purchased and delivered to accounts in certain locations where the rights are cleared." ]

[ "Because most people will see it as a lower value. Just like stuff are advertised for 19.99 and a lot of people will think of that as \"less than twenty.\" 3.699 gets rounded in people's heads as three-sixty, not three-seventy. In a couple of days you can train your self to see the real value, 19.99 actually means 20, if I can't spend 20 I can't spend 19." ]

[ "Penn & Teller: Bullshit! did a show on this, its very worth a watch, they break it down quite well and understandable. [Link to the full episode](_URL_0_) on youtube. Warning, NSFW language and boobies in like the first 2 seconds, because its Penn & Teller and thats what they do" ]

[ "My body did something weird just from reading the title" ]

[ "Where did you get the idea that eating cheese neutralizes cavity forming acids?" ]

[ "No, people did sometimes drink fruit juice, especially apple juice, even in the 18th and 19th century. Usually it tended to naturally ferment, so it was less sweet and slightly alcoholic, although most 18th century ciders were probably a little less alcoholic than modern commercial hard cider. It was seen as a way to use apples that didn't taste good or were too damaged to make good eating fruit. This is cribbed shamelessly from Michael Pollan's *The Botany of Desire*, and food history is waaay outside my wheelhouse." ]

[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almost the entirety of human existence. Thanks! Also, it may be worth cross-posting the question to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskSocialScience for their insights on this subject." ]

[ "New book coming out next month by Owsley and Jantz called *Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton*. For those who don't know, the ~9,500 year old remains of an adult male were discovered along the Columbia River in 1996. A firestorm of controversy erupted over the remains that involved local Native American nations, new NAGPRA legislation, debate on the peopling of the New World, and even neo-Druids. The osteological analysis in the book represents the most complete analysis of Paleoindian remains ever completed. [Smithsonian Magazine](_URL_0_) has a good write up about the topic if you are interested." ]

[ "BTW, for those that are downvoting this question, I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to explain the motivation. On reddit in general I could care less if something I write gets downvoted, but here in askHistorians it decreases the chances something I ask will get answered so if I am breaking some sort of taboo here or if something I have posted in the past has generated some hostility towards me I would appreciate the feedback. Thanks!" ]

[ "The current theory is the moon is being flexed by Jupiter's gravitational tides, and the ice crust that floats over a liquid sea continually heaves and buckles under that stress. Water then percolates up through the cracks and leaves streaks of material behind on the surface of the ice, within those cracks." ]

[ "It was completely driven by tabloid speculation. [Here's a bit of slightly intelligent speculation](_URL_2_), but it's still a bit outlandish. [Here are the actual two images taken by the rover: [Photo 1](_URL_0_), [Photo 2](_URL_1_). It's pretty much just an ordinary rock with a bit of lighter material catching the sun, so it doesn't really warrant further study." ]

[ "Yes, it would be possible. You cannot put it in direct contact with a container made of normal matter, but you can use electromagnetic forces to contain it. Here are some links with relevant info: [CERN - Storing antimatter](_URL_0_) [Anti-Hydrogen stored for the first time \\(2010\\)](_URL_1_)" ]

[ "The same reason you can walk through an airplane isle even though you are unable to move at hundreds of miles an hour (or fly). The same reason you are able to survive walking around outside even though the earth is spinning around at thousands of miles per hour. Ir more precisely, why you can swim in a pool even though that pool is spinning around the earth at thousands of miles an hour. The entire interior and the air of the car (or plane, or your place on earth) are all movin at the same speed. To the fly it makes no difference if the car is stopped or moving. It is sitting in a giant pool of air. All ot has to do is swim through that air." ]

[ "Big birds are, ironically, in more danger. The bigger the bird, the longer it takes them to get airborn, and the more likely they are to be on the menu. Small animals generally aren't worth the trouble to catch, especially because they're light and fast. The little birds aren't afraid of you because they know they're not worth your time to catch, and anyway you're too slow to catch them anyway. Larger birds know that they would make a decent meal and if you got close enough you might be fast enough to grab one." ]

[ "If you ask for 1 pen, it costs you two dollars. If you ask for 100 000 pens, they will only cost you one dollar each. I prefer selling you 100 000 pens at half price, than selling you 1 at full price and have 99 999 sitting around doing nothing. In a similar way, if you ask for a small amount of money, you pay a big interest, and if you ask for a big amount of money, you pay less interest. The bank actually wants you to ask them for a LOT of money, so they lower the price the bigger the loan is. Loans is where they get their profits from." ]

[ "There is actually a reason for this. Sleep is essentially just a reduced state of mental activity. When you start getting excited, emotional, sexually aroused, or anything else because of a dream your brain begins increasing its level of activity and you wake up. Simply because it is the best part is why you wake up." ]

[ "When we’re awake, particles, allergies or an illness can stimulate the nerve cells in the nose. The nerves then send signals to the brain in order to initiate a sneeze to get rid of whatever is irritating it. But during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, certain neurotransmitters shut down. This means that the motor neurons are not being stimulated, so they aren’t sending these signals to the brain. TLDR: Your brain shuts down information sharing from the nose so you won't wake yourself up. & #x200B; & #x200B;" ]

[ "\"Pleasant\" is too imprecise. 70F water is not going to scald a baby. Babies take warm baths from the day they pop out of the vajayjay. Some adults find higher temperature water pleasant, but other adults would find the same temperature water to be painfully hot. A baby's skin is more sensitive than an adults, so the threshold will be lower for higher temperature water before the baby feels pain. But \"pleasant\" seems unlikely." ]

[ "I read an article a somewhere that said it was do the the \"roughness\" or randomness of the noise. As the fingers nails catch and slip it produces random variances in the amplitude and frequency of the noise. Our brains find the signal unpredictable and that somehow causes it the view it as a danger. There are also some theories that it sounds like a scream and it's an evolutionary reaction to potential threats" ]

[ "There's actually animals for whom it's completely normal and healthy to be nearsighted. Example: mice. As you may know, they can climb and jump extremely well. But because their eyes are arranged towards the sides of their heads (typical for prey animals), their depth perception isn't great. So how do they judge whether they can jump to a particular point? They're nearsighted, and if they can still see the point clearly, they know they will be able to reach it. They won't normally jump from great heights because they can't see the floor, for instance." ]

[ "There isn't anything particularly special about 2012. But the Sun isn't a very good lens anyway - it's too small and too close, so you only notice lensing very close to its surface. There are three types of lensing we can see: 1) Microlensing. Two star systems line up, and the one in the background looks way brighter for a day or so. The pattern of how quickly it gets brighter can tell us about the star systems. 2) Strong lensing: A distant galaxy cluster warps and magnifies stuff behind it. We see weird arc-shaped galaxies. These things are so far away that they don't appear to be moving, so these shapes don't appear to change. 3) Weak lensing: Like strong lensing, but weaker :) The distant galaxies aren't strongly warped, but if you perform statistics on them you can see they *tend* to bend one way more than the other, and that can tell you about how much gravity is in the lens - they actually used this for the Bullet Cluster. Hope that helps!" ]

[ "You're actually controlling a variable resistor, a.k.a. a potentiometer -- which can control the amount current in a circuit. Lower current = weaker sound, higher current = louder sound. Basically, when you turn up the volume, you're allowing more electricity to flow through the circuit that leads to the amplifier." ]

[ "Sound waves are a lot like ocean waves. If you put something on the surface (say, a sailboat) and watch it over a few wave passes not much happens. The boat moves forward a little, then back a little. The water in each wave essentially moves in a circle, so the boat doesn't go anywhere. Sound is a little different because it relies on compression, but it essentially moves air molecules back and forth. This isn't very useful for dispersing things like clouds, because it doesn't really cause mixing or large-scale movement. The scale of energy involved in a storm is also very large, so the energy required to stop one is very large. Crowd control noise works because it only takes a very small amount of energy over a relatively small area to cause pain, discomfort, and distress." ]

[ "Flight 93 had wreckage spread all over a field in Pennsylvania. None of the experts have suggested that it MH370 vaporized like Flight 93 because all of the experts know that Flight 93 didn't vaporize." ]

[ "there are differences in the way that the rock Sheers. Megathrust vs Strike-Slip In a Megathrust Earthquake (the sort which cause tsunamis) the fault breaks vertically and the seafloor is lifted or dropped by several feet or meters around the fault. Moving the Sea floor up or down moves the entire column of water above it up or down, generating a Tsunami. In a Strike-slip Earthquake the sides of the fault slip past one another horizontally, not generally creating any sort of disturbance to the water column and subsequently no tsunami." ]

[ "Isolation and adaptation to new environments mainly. As humans spread throughout the world they encountered all sorts of ecosystems that varied in everything (i.e. food type and quantity, temperature, water availability, exposure, altitude, predators, etc). Therefore they developed all sorts of unique traits to face these challenges. Those early humans were very isolated from other human communities, so their adaptations remained locked into their geographical positions. Essentially just natural selection doing its usual thing." ]

[ "Straight hair that lies flat tends to hold in heat. That's an advantage in cold climates. Curly hair allows heat to escape while still providing protection from the sun to the skin underneath. That's an advantage in hot climates. Melanin in skin (the part that makes it dark) tends to block what's needed to make vitamin D while offering some protection from sunburn - this is why people who live closer to the polar regions have far lighter skin: less danger of sunburn, and since they get so much less sunlight, they need to produce vitamin D much easier. People who live closer to the equator get a lot more sunlight, so they have all the vitamin D from sunlight they need, but the protection from sunburn is far more important." ]

[ "When sexual content is introduced. Nudity is not pornography, and having or taking pictures of naked children, in and of itself, is not illegal. It only becomes pornography when the primary purpose is to illicit a sexual response." ]

[ "In my art history class (textbook: Jansen) we learned that it was a lack of understanding; people had little reason to think that people in the past dressed differently. No paintings survived from Roman or biblical times [EDIT per hoytwarner, below: at least, none that people would have been familiar with at the time], and the details of dress were not well preserved in the literature people would have been familiar with. It was only in the Renaissance, after interest in classical sculpture revived, that people started to think, hey, these statues are always dressed funny. Although my art history class is not the final word, it's telling that contemporary dress turns up not just in Biblical paintings but in historical ones (My favorite example of someone getting it totally wrong is Albrecht Altdorfer's [The Battle of Issus](_URL_0_), where Alexander and Darius battle it out with 15th-century knights.)" ]

[ "Just don't EVER allow anyone to step on your tail." ]

[ "Your eye sensors tire after a short while viewing a static image. In this example they're giving you a fixed point to focus on so that the image stays positioned in the same place on your retina. Notice how her lips are green in the negative. Staring at that wears our your green sensor there. Then, when you switch to look at white (which contains red, green and blue) your eye's red sensors work but the green, temporarily, do not. So you see red lips." ]

[ "From a pseudo historical standpoint Jewish and Christians wouldn't accept Islam because its claim to the Abrahamic lineage is based on Ishmael (eldest son, but born to a slave). Whereas Jewish and Christians trace themselves thru Isaac. Islam and Jewish/Christians disagree which son was almost sacrificed (others disagree if this is even a significant point)." ]

[ "This guy explains it very nicely: _URL_0_ Generally the idea of the hemi is good, but it is not very efficient when you design the layout of the valves and sparkplugs, and it is difficult to get a good compression in. Pent-roof is the way to go." ]

[ "The sebaceous glands are tiny skin glands that secrete sebum, a waxy or oily substance that lubricates the skin and hair. Sebaceous glands are found inside the pores of our skin, all over the body, except the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. There are more sebaceous glands on the face and scalp than elsewhere. As the glands produce sebum inside the pores, new skin cells are constantly growing, and the outer layers of skin are being shed. Sometimes, dead skin cells are not shed. They remain in the pores and get stuck together by the sticky sebum, causing a blockage in the pore. Pore blockage is more likely to occur during puberty, as the sebaceous glands produce more sebum at this time. Oils build up inside the pore as it slowly swells in size, and in the case of acne where bacteria feeds upon the oils within the pore, white blood cells also accumulate, causing an even more violent and accelerated development of sores under the skin." ]

[ "Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe it has to do with some instinctive grooming drive that we inherited from our ancestors. If you go to the zoo or watch a documentary, you can see that apes/etc. instinctively groom each other; so some people probably get a sense of pleasure from seeing such things because there's an instinctive drive (and psychological reward) to remove/pop/clean such things." ]

[ "Because fruit flavours is produced from the sum of hundreds of chemical compounds found in the fruit. Artifical flavours, on the other hand, can only contain the few major chemical compounds for reasons of cost. So they taste different. Banana is an interesting case, because banana flavouring is based on the taste of the Gros Michel banana (a softer and sweeter variety), which was rendered almost extinct by a Panama Disease pandemic in the 50s (hence the song \"We have no Bananas Today\"). Modern bananas are of the Cavendish cultivar, which tastes distinctly different." ]

[ "Keep in mind that musical instruments create a sound by vibrating; instruments with different shapes can have a variety of different [overtones](_URL_0_), and the degree to which these different vibrations damp (i.e. stop) is going to have an effect on the sound of a note. A sustained note can feature a variety of distortions over time, including phenomena like [tremolo](_URL_1_), which some singers will even do unconsciously. From a synth, details of the geometry and design of the speakers, in addition to the signal processing being done to create the tone, can cause slightly different sounds. The most extreme case of this that I can think of is found in amps, which have a variety of \"sounds\" depending on the manner in which the sound is amplified. Parts of the signal are lost or distorted relative to others. Still, I suspect (though don't have any data to prove) that you can get a variety of keyboards and synths to produce fairly similar sounding notes." ]

[ "Traits don't have to serve a purpose to survive. They just need to not inhibit sexual selection. Look at cancer. We still suffer from it but only tend to after we've likely been able to reproduce so it isn't selected out. I'm not saying that beards don't serve a purpose. They might. They just don't have to as long as they're not a detriment." ]

[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almost the entirety of human existence. Thanks! Also, it may be worth cross-posting the question to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskSocialScience for their insights on this subject." ]

[ "you open the freezer door, heat goes in melts the ice cream slightly, you close the door, the ice cream freezes but nothing is churning the ice cream so the freezing action forces the water out. rinse and repeat and you get large chunks of ice. ice cream also has lots of fat in it which tends to absorb any free floating smells inside your ice cream." ]

[ "First of all, there are limits to how much is given for free. Usually \"one per visit\", \"one per day\" or \"one per week\". That keeps the costs from getting too prohibitive. The winner could go into a McDonald's, get an ice cream, and had to come back later, and couldn't just sit in the lobby from open to close and demand a thousand ice cream cones. As for why companies do this, it's great advertising. Even if the person takes advantage a little, the actual cost per cone is pretty cheap, and it would take years for the cost of him eating thousands upon thousands of ice creams to equal a single commercial spot. So, for the cost of two commercials (the one advertising the contest, plus the cost of the ice creams), they get thousands or millions of active participants in a contest, including names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that they know, for sure, are interested in McDonald's." ]

[ "There are some countries that depend on oil being above a certain price so that they don't lose money. In order to stop some of these countries from doing bad things, the bigger countries are making more oil so that the bad countries will need to be nice so that they can sell oil again." ]

[ "The Theory of relativity. The same reason time seems to pass In a blink when you're enjoying a night with friends, yet seems to last an eternity during the last 10 minutes of work." ]

[ "Its the easiest way to get out of the kitchen for a 5 minute break." ]

[ "Nostalgia, too ~ a lot of older guys that now have lots of money are reliving their youth - they either had one when they were young & want another, or wanted one when they were young and can now afford to pay the big bucks to get one." ]

[ "While you're waiting for a reply, [this one](_URL_0_) by u/RainyResident is pretty thorough and details sort of what you're asking as well as the nature of Greek colonization, so you get some comparisons and contrasts." ]

[ "If your next door neighbor is trampling flowers in your backyard, and your much larger, much bigger neighbor from across the street decides to try and stop him, it's in your interest to just let him do that, whether with implicit or explicit approval. ... especially when you can't get to that corner of the backyard yourself, because you're still dealing with your stove being on fire and the vacuum going out of control." ]

[ "Some cranes actually raise themselves, see [this timelapse video](_URL_0_) for an example." ]

[ "Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): You can find the basic answer with a google / wiki search. Please start there and come back with a more specific question. If you disagree with this decision, please send a [message to the moderators.](_URL_3_)" ]

[ "the assets are deemed by the purchase to be worth billions. the assets being the users and the niche technology" ]

[ "There are a lot more steps involved than you see. From your perspective as a customer, you see the the money leave your account immediately when you make a purchase; but in reality there's a lot of processing that goes on and banks talking to each other and checking with each other before passing the money over. Just like how you don't get the money immediately when they do a refund, they don't get your money immediately when you make a purchase either." ]

[ "One way is to look at air bubbles found in glaciers. Scientists are able to estimate when the ice was formed and the air trapped inside is exactly what the air was like when that part of the glacier formed. So by examining the composition of that air, they can make a pretty good guess to what the temperature was." ]

[ "We don't, we go by the most logical and most common accounts. If there is a fight with 10 people, and 6 of them all say the same thing and the evidence backs it up, then the other 4 saying it was aliens was probably wrong." ]

[ "A lounge is typically a somewhat upscale establishment serving cocktails, with music to set ambiance but not for dancing. A Pub is a \"come as you are\" casual establishment serving mostly beer and maybe shots. A bistro is a casual restaurant serving homey/rustic fare on the lighter side, but more substantial food than a cafe." ]

[ "Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing." ]

[ "As the eye dries and goes cloudy after death it looks really creepy. Closing the eyes makes it look more like they're asleep, which is easier for many people to deal with." ]

[ "Joseph II likened himself as an enlightened monarch and often tried to enact Enlightenment principles in his decrees. One of these principles was to simplify burials and funerary practices. He wanted to change seemingly wasteful Austrian funeral culture of elaborate coffins and embalming. In doing so, not only would it lessen the fiscal burden of funerals, but also increase hygiene and alleviate shortages of timber. So he issued a decree in 1784 declaring, that save for high nobility, people would be buried in canvas sacks in unmarked mass graves outside of the city limits. There was an immediate pushback from the public about this decree and Joseph II rescinded it, but his decree that there could be no burials within walled cities or within churches stood." ]

[ "Seasonal precipitation cycles are common, and have a lot of different reasons that vary by region. Without knowing where you live it's impossible to give a specific answer. However, I'd like to correct a common misconception: snow is not frozen rain, [rain is melted snow](_URL_0_). Even in the summer, almost all rain starts as snowflakes high in the clouds, and only becomes rain if the temperature closer to the ground is warm enough." ]

[ "Our built up immunity can last a really long time... against viruses that don't change / evolve very much (like polio, chickenpox, etc.). But the cold and flu are constantly changing, they're like viruses on crack cocaine just constantly on the move and lookin' for that next high (in this case, the high would be infecting the host). edit: Sorry I forgot this was ELI5... I suppose it would be inappropriate to reference crackheads in an explanation to a 5 year old > _ >" ]

[ "If you would throw away the battery afterwards probably not, but Tesla plans on collecting and recycling them." ]

[ "Incidentally, this is the problem that _URL_0_ is trying to solve. Here is the map of the overall plan: _URL_1_ There is enough solar energy in the Sahara desert in 6 hours to power the entire world in 1 year. From the Sahara, they plan on connecting Europe with underwater high voltage direct current lines. The problem with HVDC is that there is a 3% loss per 1000km. Another solution is to use the energy to create liquid hydrogen which can be shipped by tankers throughout the world. The problem with the hydrogen store is that creating hydrogen from electricity requires water, a scarcity in the deserts. The plan would be to ship the electricity through HVDC to Europe and convert to hydrogen there." ]

[ "A well-functioning immune system often has undesirable by products when mounting an immune response. Additionally, the immune system is quite complex with numerous signaling pathways and different types of white blood cells responding. For example, the cascade of cytokines, which help propagate an immune response, also give you that \"I feel like shit\" feeling. Sometimes, the immune response is actually partially harmful. Many types of pneumonia, meningitis, or other widespread infections with big inflammatory responses show better outcomes when steroids are used. The idea, again, is that while the inflammatory response may be good at killing a pathogen, it may also be good at causing airway swelling along with it, for example. [Here is a study](_URL_0_) showing a list of different illnesses where steroids have been shown to help." ]

[ "It's like weeding a garden. If you don't get the roots out, the weeds come back. Kill all the weeds and you keep a healthy garden, leave the roots and they come back. But with anti-biotics it survival of the fittest, the most resistant survive the die off and re-populate with a more resistant strain." ]

[ "I think it would be good to specify what particular IRA you wish to know about. Are you talking about the Old IRA that Michael Collins fought with? Or the Provisional IRA?" ]

[ "Do you have a source on any of those figures? I have a difficult time imagining that record-keeping in Tibet during that timeframe was very much reliable from what little I know of Tibetan history." ]

[ "This is only true for male versus female life expectancy and nothing really to do with any particular person. As has been said, men are more likely to have risky jobs. They are also more likely to engage in risky behavior and less likely to take care of their health, such as by going to the doctor when they have symptoms of a serious illness." ]

[ "The starting player has what we call a *trivial advantage* (meaning, it is trivially clear that there is one), which is created by the rule that when a winning position (checkmate) is reached, play stops immediately. This has the result that every time a white player wins, he or she has been allowed to play one turn more than the other player. When a black player wins, however, he or she has never played more turns than the other player. The same applies to 5-in-a-row. If X begins and O follows up, then if on turn 10 both X and O are able to complete a five-in-a-row, meaning they have both played equally well and are otherwise in an equally good position to win, then X wins because he gets to go first and O doesn't get a turn once a victory occurs." ]

[ "Those are the tassels called Tzitzit which are on a religious prayer shawl called a Tallit. They are suppose to be worn during prayer times, on the Sabbath, and on the High Holy days though some orthodox Jews wear it daily. As with most religious garments there are lots of meanings attached to it, but in general it is viewed as both a sign of submissiveness to God, and a singling out that you are a Jew." ]

[ "Balisors are less common around airports (where air traffic is tightly controlled) than in the countryside where low-flying planes are likely (if not common) for crop-dusting, police, state natural resource departments. They can also be visible at night, read here: _URL_0_" ]

[ "No one really knows for sure. It’s assumed to be an inherent mental programming that has yet to be decoded. A good example: as humans we instinctively pull away from something that causes us pain. If you touch something hot or get cut, you jerk your hand away. But you were never taught that, it just happens. Sorry there isn’t a better response at this time." ]

[ "Yes, we can infer it from the genetic distances between species. What this means is that we pretty much count how many mutations are different between species, those that have fewer differences are more closely related and those that have more differences are more distantly related. When you compare a lot of species, you can get a bigger picture of their evolutionary relationships, represented by something called a phylogenetic tree (an evolutionarily tree). This gives us an idea of the relative ages of the species includes in the tree - those that branch of nearer the end of the tree are newer species. Using something called a molecular clock we can even get actual numbers, although it’s not an exact science. Using the the average mutation rate for that group and the number of mutations counted, we can figure out that the species diverged between x and y number of years ago." ]

[ "Your PC can run any program that's on it at any time. But your Android smartphone can only run programs downloaded from the app store unless you change an option deep in settings, and your iPhone can't run programs from unknown sources at all (unless you jailbreak it) And because viruses are computer programs that need to be ran to do anything, they have a much harder time getting on a smartphone. They have to exploit a security flaw somewhere in the system, which is a whole lot harder than just getting an ignorant PC user to just download and double-click an .exe file containing a virus." ]

[ "It's like you're driving a car down the highway and you need to replace the tires because they're old and worn out. You *could* engineer a really complicated system that would allow you to safely change the tires while you're still moving. Or, you could just stop the car, replace the tires, then get going again. For what it's worth, most OSes actually do the equivalent of replacing the tires on the moving car, most of the time. It's only for really major updates that they stop the car and pull over." ]

[ "Are you referring to characters going through their daily life and then by some strange turn of fate end up falling on top of a girl/copping a feel or getting a panty shot followed swiftly by said girl beating the shit out of him for his intended or accidental transgression? If so, slapstick humour is not a new invention nor even japanese by origin. It's quite prevalent in the west with loony tunes being a prime example. This type of humour requires little effort from the creator and is an easy way to throw in fanservice as well. A combination of these two factors is probably why it's so prevalent in shounen manga/anime which is primarily targeted at teenaged boys." ]

[ "Soda drinks were developed and popularized in the US. The US had Puritan traditions (see Kellogg corn flakes) that influenced diet. Because of these consumption of alcohol, beer, wine was seen as bad (see prohibition). The US didn't have a cafe culture. This left a void. Where could young people go to socialize? The soda fountain was a popular thing, a social phenomenon, and had a whole culture of young people around it in the mid 20th century. During the mid 20th century Europe had cafe culture, had a tradition of good beer and wine that had been produced for centuries, and didn't have Puritan traditions that looked down on moderate drinking. Even children used to have watered down wine or a low alcohol beer." ]

[ "It's used as a detector, in the form of Thallium(I) bromide in X-ray, Gamma-ray, and infrared cameras, and Thallium(I) iodide is used in mercury arc lights to adjust the color and also in radiation detectors. In general though, Thallium is really really toxic, so it's not popular and practically every application where a suitable replacement can be used it is, leaving just a handful a high end detectors still using it as just a coating (so a tiny, tiny amount is used in a device that's very expensive and few people buy). Due to its toxicity, I don't think it's really something that anyone is going to be mining much of soon, it has it's usage, but there is a big push to not put such a toxic thing in anything sold to consumers, the only place people would really be comfortable using it is closed industrial processes, but it doesn't seem like there are many that require it right now." ]

[ "I remember one story, but many details escape me. Some patients (schizophrenia, if I remember correctly) got better when moved to a new place, because that place had well water that was naturally high in lithium. When not drinking that water, their symptoms reverted. Sadly, the lithium infused water was only a temporary fix, as their bodies got resistant to the effects of the lithium, and they eventually reverted even when drinking that water." ]

[ "For the most part, Chinese singers stick to the tune of the song rather than the natural tones of the language. This is why virtually all Chinese music videos have subtitles. EDIT: I should probably add that getting the tune to match with the natural tones of the lyrics IS taken into account (See: [北京欢迎你](_URL_0_), the official propaganda-y song of Beijing for a good example), but there's really only so much you can do." ]

[ "Still decoding the song. You can verify this by looking at the spectrum analyzer while on mute." ]

[ "M is called the bilabial nasal, meaning that it is produced by letting air flow out of the nose. It is also a voiced consonant, meaning that the vocal cords vibrate during its production. P is the voiceless bilabial stop. Air does not flow out through the nose and the vocal cords do not vibrate during its production." ]

[ "Here is a great animation: _URL_0_ As you can see from the animation, the inner surface of the pen is grooved. The button has a \"holder\", which holds the pen shaft in place and slides back and forth on the grooves. The shaft has a complementary part that fits into the holder. The holder is designed such that the shaft's part always wants to be one section over (it's hard to explain, but if you take apart one of the clicky pens you must have, you can infer from there). The shape of the holder, however, is such that the shaft has to fit in one of the spots in the holder. The spring forces the shaft into these spots. Once you push the button, however, you lift the shaft out of the spot, allowing it to go one spot over. These spots are elevated differently so that the pen has two modes: out and in. The difference in elevation is also why you have to push the button further to open the pen than to close it. As for what it's called, I have no idea." ]

[ "It's actually not that 'little' of code, if you want to look at it that way. The human genome consists of over 3 billion base pairs - and while we can consider only about 15% of those base pairs to directly code for proteins, the other 85% are slowly being determined to control other things (like protein interactions, stress interactions, cancer etc.) Broadly speaking, the human genome isn't even as 'compressed' as some other species - bacteria often have multiple proteins that can be coded for by one gene. Also, remember that most proteins do multiple functions. That is, they may have a basic function, but it may be useful in many of the situations you mentioned above. There actually really isn't any compression for the human genome (as far as I know, please correct me if I'm wrong, somebody), because all base-pairs code 3:1 (in other words, 3 base pairs for every 1 amino acid in a protein chain), so there can be no compression." ]

[ "Put Simply - Because your brain isn't a computer The \"organic computer\" metaphor is really a bad metaphor for the human brain. Our memory isn't stored like a computers, so we can't do something like iterate every single word we know... but we can also hold a conversation which is something computer struggle to do well." ]

[ "You can spin your foot in different directions and change the angle of the plane the base of your foot makes while keeping structural integrity. Great for running on uneven surfaces and quickly changing directions." ]

[ "> ...why are all species so distinct? Many species aren't particularly distinct. Certain species of rabbit and certain species of cat, for example, are aesthetically similar. Various species of bird are similar to one another, as are various species of fish, plants, etc. > ...why do we have chimpanzees and people but no half-evolved chimp-people? Well, humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. That's *one* reason." ]

[ "Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist regime that governs the Gaza strip (one of the parts surrounding Israel which Arab Palestinians govern). A missile was fired which targeted Israeli civilians from within the Gaza strip. Hamas claims that rogue agents fired the missile in a unofficial capacity, however Israel has a long history of counterattacking tenfold to aggression. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it makes sense given that much of Israel's neighbors don't like them being there. Sort of a, \"Don't fuck with me or you'll be sorry\" attitude. The thing is, Israel's military is far, far stronger than any of the nations surrounding it, and its powerful bombs are killing civilians who have nothing to do with anti-Israel aggression. Overall, it's just more of the same. When will this conflict ever end?" ]

[ "[**Search before submitting**, especially when asking about current events. The search box is in the upper righthand corner of the page.](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "Usually it means the female lacked a father figure while growing up. either he wasn't around, was too controlling, didn't interact enough or positively in her life. This leads to her adults life and in a way, seeking out a male role model which is usually some creepy fat old guy with money and a boat." ]

[ "Nostalgia, too ~ a lot of older guys that now have lots of money are reliving their youth - they either had one when they were young & want another, or wanted one when they were young and can now afford to pay the big bucks to get one." ]

[ "A large reason is culture. Education is highly valued there, far more so than in most other countries. The high amount of money they spend on it helps but a lot of it comes from the fact that parents, teachers and the general community is engaged in and encourages education, instead of using it as a federally mandated day care as many parents in this country do. In short, Finland's education is amazing because everyone there wants it to be and culturally prizes and prioritizes it." ]

[ "This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) that are actively enforced by the moderators. We don't want to stifle discussion, but remember that: * Answers must be informed, detailed and backed up by historical sources. This applies to **all** top level comments (direct replies to the original post) as well as responses to follow-up questions. * All other comments must be on-topic and historical, i.e. the current olympics and political discussions about the pros and cons of socialism are both off-limits and will be deleted. Otherwise, feel free to add answers, expand on existing answers or ask follow-up questions, and we hope you'll stick around!" ]

[ "The biggest issue I see is that you now have two problems to deal with: the salt, and the microorganisms that are living in the water with the salt inside them." ]

[ "It does. The SODIS method is a way to use clear 2-liter bottles and sunlight to make water safe(r) to drink, very useful in third world countries." ]

[ "Do you mean using coins as adornment, as though they were beads? Such as this [Amerindian Dress](_URL_0_)?" ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "It's kind of tough to answer that because of our contemporary perspective. Regarding what your professor said, mystery cults and representation of the single divine force is probably a later Egyptian conception, with some Hellenic influence. The religious structure in Egypt changed dramatically over time, but the earlier kingdoms definitely saw multiple, distinct beings governed under the concept of Ma'at. My background in Egyptology is stronger than most but still pretty weak, but I would recommend \"Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt\" by Erik Hornung. It's sort of a one-stop shop for all your Ancient Egyptian Religious needs. It doesn't have ALL of the information readily available, but the info in the book along with the bibliography are all you need for a solid understanding of Ancient Egypt." ]

[ "Small models. If you go to Mount Rushmore or the Crazy Horse memorial they have the scale model on display that the artists used for planning purposes. These models are perfect replicas of what's going to get built, but at a small scale that you can actually walk around. By taking measurements off these models and multiplying the numbers you can get the exact placement of features on the rock that you're going to blast. If you place the model right, you can also use it as an exact visual indicator. By standing in the right spot you can look at the model in the exact spot of where it will sit on the mountain (kind of like putting your thumb in front of the moon)." ]

[ "HOAs are entirely voluntary. If you don't want to join one, you simply don't purchase property governed by an association. That'll be pretty hard to do if you want to live in a place with shared property (like a condo building), but it's quite easy if you want to live in a house. There are plenty of horror stories about HOAs on reddit, but the good that a lot of them do goes mostly unnoticed." ]

[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]

[ "To make a fission bomb, you need either U-235 or Pu-239. Both of these are really hard to get. Natural uranium is 99.2% U-238, which is not good for bombs, so it has to be enriched to at least 80% U-235. There are [various enrichment methods](_URL_1_), all very expensive, time consuming, and requiring large facilities. There are also various ways of making U-239, but they are also expensive and require technically complex facilities. That's where the political difficulties come into play, it's hard to hide the facilities for making U-235 or Pu-239. If you could get enough U-235, that would be the easiest bomb to make, because all you need to do is make a gun bomb like [Little Boy](_URL_0_). It's easier to get Pu-239, but then it's harder to make a bomb because you have to make a [really accurate spherical implosion bomb](_URL_2_)." ]

[ "When cells divide they make pretty much exact copies of themselves. Introduce radiation to the equation and the copying process goes screwy and the new cell is different. Rinse and repeat over and over and you end up with body cells which are completely different in shape size and function to what they were originally supposed to do. Simplified example: photocopy a document from an original and you get a good reproduction. Now photcopy the same document with the lid of the copier open and outside light getting in. The copy you get will not be as good. Then take this poor copy and copy it again with the lid open. Do this enough times and the resulting copy will be illegible and useless." ]

[ "When water turns from liquid to steam, it takes up about 1600× more volume. So when you inhale a lot of steam, you're only getting a drop or so of water in your lungs. _URL_0_" ]

[ "The same reason you can walk through an airplane isle even though you are unable to move at hundreds of miles an hour (or fly). The same reason you are able to survive walking around outside even though the earth is spinning around at thousands of miles per hour. Ir more precisely, why you can swim in a pool even though that pool is spinning around the earth at thousands of miles an hour. The entire interior and the air of the car (or plane, or your place on earth) are all movin at the same speed. To the fly it makes no difference if the car is stopped or moving. It is sitting in a giant pool of air. All ot has to do is swim through that air." ]

[ "Conservative strategist Frank Lutz pushed the idea of calling it climate change instead of global warming because climate change sounds less scary and can be conflated with historic changes. \"The climate is always changing, so what is happening now is fine\"- have you heard that \"\"\"logic\"\"\" before? It turns out that climate change is a helpful term for avoiding the equally logical \"it snowed today so the globe isn't warming\" argument." ]

[ "Relative humidity is relative to the carrying capacity of the air. Colder air cannot hold as much water vapor as warm air, which is how you get condensation on cold cups carried in warm humid weather - the air next to the cup cools and the water vapor in it precipitates out as liquid. So if relative humidity stays the same percentage, but the air gets significantly colder, there is less water vapor in any given segment of air." ]

[ "Basically, the base of the growth is situated at the part of the nail that is closest to your wrist (when your fingers are extended). Your skin folds over itself at the base, forming a sinus - a cavity in the external body in this case. All the walls of this sinus are external surfaces of your skin. In the base of this sinus, an area of skin express a large amount of keratin. Because of the shape of the sinus, growth of keratin-rich young cells pushes older cells out across your finger. This pushing compress the growing cells into a dense matrix of dead cells and keratin. So, your fingernails are just dense, flattened, protein-rich skin-cells. Because they were pressed together like that they form a strong matrix of multiple layers. If you're asking why only cells on that part of your body grow this way, I'm not prepared to answer that." ]

[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets difficult to discern a comma from a period, etc. Add to this, that our cells have a thing called telomeres, which cap off the ends of our DNA. Think of it like the period at the end of a sentence. Well each time you make a copy, that period gets a little smaller, and smaller, until its gone and then your DNA can't copy properly anymore, because it doesn't know where to end. So your cells get confused about the information on those strands of DNA, like trying to read a page of a book with no periods at all!" ]

[ "Generically speaking wind is the motion of air moving from high pressure zones to low pressure zones. It can be caused by any number of things but a major player is ocean currents that move warm water (and air) around the globe. Other events that can trigger wind include but are not limited to: Solar Radiation, Earthquakes, Volcanic Activity and Meteorites." ]

[ "yes--tied to changes in air pressure. [here's one version of the explanation](_URL_0_)." ]

[ "Energy is not an emergent property, even a single particle in free space has energy. Fundamentally, energy (or really the Hamiltonian) is the generator of translations through time. Whether you're doing quantum mechanics or classical mechanics, if you know the state of your system at one instant of time, the Hamiltonian is what ultimately determines what the state of your system will be in later instants of time. The Hamiltonian is often equivalent to the total energy in your system, but not always." ]

[ "The equation E = mc^(2) is true in any unit system. I could measure *E* in ergs and *m* in stones if I really wanted to. The equation would still be true. The formula is also not arbitrary at all. It's derivable from relativity." ]

[ "Many sponges are made from cellulose. Cellulose contains hydroxyl groups (OH) on the end that form hydrogen bonds to other hydroxyl groups on other cellulose molecules that stiffen the materiel. Water (H20) also forms hydrogen bonds. The water gets in the way and replaces some of the bonds the cellulose is forming with itself. This weakens the structure." ]

[ "A simple example to augment the sciencey explanation: Basic idea: *Materials have a point of no return* A simple sheet of printer paper can flop back and forth for eternity with little adverse effect. As soon as something puts a crease in that piece of paper, it is pretty much permanently changed. That crease will probably remain there in some form for the rest of its paper life. Essentially, the fold stretched the paper at that crease (like a spring!) beyond its point of no return and weakened it a little bit. The difference between the paper and the spring? It's significantly harder to stretch a spring than to crease a paper, especially if using the spring in a traditional sense (like an accordion!)." ]

[ "Churches actually filled a lot of these archival/museum type roles for many communities. The public might not have had complete access, but the church provided a lot of protection for religious and some secular artifacts, manuscripts, and artwork." ]

[ "You're going to need to narrow down your time frame here, keep in mind you're asking about a time frame of 1000 years over a very, very large area of land with vastly different cultures. You'll be more likely to receive an answer if you narrow the question down to a more specific time." ]

[ "The Morton Arboretum in IL uses a combo - beet juice and salt: \"When [beet juice is] mixed with rock salt, this natural ingredient clears the arboretum’s roads and trails faster than salt alone. And because there’s less salt in the product, it’s less harmful to the environment...\" Here's the source article that goes into more detail and explains the science of it in a pretty clear way: _URL_0_" ]

[ "Well, as its seeping out of the permafrost, were not quite aware of to which extent we have to do something about it. OFC, its a clear indicator that the weather is getting warmer (global warming), but it might go both ways when it comes to the aftermath" ]

[ "When your body is damaged, your body “panics” to seal up and protect the wound. It lays down a random mess of tissue (scar tissue) to simply cover up the wound and protect the body. Some times, the scar tissue is unable to re-learn how to be normal tissue again, and the scar is formed." ]

[ "Your understanding of how heat work in atomic level is correct. But when you have bunch of atoms together, you will get a slightly different thing that react to heat differently. Your skin is made up of many big molecules (molecules= many atoms bonded together into one thing), and they need to be in a very specific shape in order to function the way they are suppose to. Imagine your skin's molecule as a perfectly folded [paper crane](_URL_0_). When you heat up your skin too much, you are basically messing up your \"paper crane\", and when the paper crane is [messed up](_URL_1_), that's basically what your burnt skin is= messed up skin molecule. This is also basically how egg work. Before you fry an egg, it has protein (the big molecule) folded in a certain shape, but when you heat it up, the proteins denature (unfold or fold in a different way) and become white solid cooked egg." ]

[ "Such covers absolutely exist and work. They have not yet become common outside of practice (in my opinion) for purely visual reasons. And because fans and proponents of high contact sports like football already have an overly macho sensibility that doesn't allow them to accept changes that would significantly benefit player safety because it makes the sport \"weaker\" and instead think these kids (and yes, short of NFL they are kids) just need to \"toughen up\". Edit: When I say \"work\" I mean they do significantly reduce concussive force, not that they by any means eliminate it. Source: _URL_0_" ]

[ "1. Since when is the brainstem not protected? [Isn't it inside the base of the skull? ](_URL_0_) 2. As I understand it, ribs aren't purely for protection. They are also needed for lungs to properly inflate and deflate." ]

[ "Hormones are only suspected of causing early puberty by non-scientists. Growth hormones require receptors in order to be taken into cells, otherwise they are broken down by the digestive system like any other peptide. rBGH cows are treated with Bovine Growth Hormone not Human Growth Hormone. Humans lack receptors for it. Like Idzman218 said early puberty is directly linked to body fat percentage not hormones in food production. Although with everything in the body, not all systems and biochemical pathways are marked out so you never want to be absolute." ]

[ "Very fractionally younger, because you were moving at a very high speed relative to them. Astronauts on the ISS age slower by about 0.01 seconds per year." ]

[ "the only reason we have shame towards it is because we are told from an early age that this is shameful. That is all there is to it" ]

[ "Some tell by smell. Some tell by tiny differences in appearance. Some also tell by behaviors, like sound." ]

[ "To add to this, why was monogamy the norm in pre-Christian Greece and Rome? What were the cultural differences that made monogamy the norm among Roman emperors but not among Asian or Middle Eastern rulers?" ]

[ "In addition to [Pompeiian graffiti](_URL_1_) and other [epigraphy](_URL_3_), much of which was quite crude, we also have the books for a number of comedic plays by [Plautus](_URL_4_) and [Terence](_URL_0_) and satirical poems by [Horace](_URL_5_) and [Juvenal](_URL_2_). And what were they like? Much like humor in modern periods, you'll find different styles in different authors and at different times. Jokes scrawled on walls tended to be crude insults and/or puns. Plautus and Terence had a number of stock characters that they used to poke fun at social conventions in ways that are reminiscent of modern sketch comedy or slapstick. Horace and Juvenal is much more ironic or sarcastic in most of his satirical poems, pointing out the ridiculousness of politics and everyday life." ]

[ "Side-aches are caused by the up and down motion of running putting stress on your internal organs, most especially when you’re breathing out. When breathing out, there is an increase in the tension on the ligaments holding your organs in place, in particular the liver (which is a big and heavy organ), as the diaphragm comes upward. If you also happen to be hitting the ground with your foot at the same time, this banging can cause your side to ache." ]

[ "We aren't allowed to give medical advice. This is because none of us here can properly examine and diagnose you over the Internet. Go see a doctor." ]

[ "It depends on who you killed. If you killed a male citizen, you were in big trouble. If you killed the wife of a male citizen, you were in slightly less trouble, but it was still pretty bad. If you killed a slave, as long as it was yours, you weren't really in trouble; if you killed somebody else's slave you had to reimburse them for the loss of property. If you killed a prisoner of war, you were in no trouble. As for the actual punishments, I'm extremely curious. Roman experts? Chime in!" ]

[ "**If you're new to the thread, please don't post the Mythbusters episode again. Mythbusters is entertaining but it's not history (or more specifically, it's not historical proof of anything.)** The short answer is no, not that we know of. /u/davidaop, our pirate expert, and I have both answered [questions about this](_URL_0_) in the past. Unfortunately, because it's not a thing people did, there's not a canonical source saying that people didn't do it (if that makes sense); there's just an absence of evidence, into which void people throw half-baked conjecture. And Mythbusters." ]

[ "Chemo targets actively replicating cells in your body. That's why you lose your hair and have GI issues (those cells replicate a lot). The primary tumor is usually active, but some early disseminated cells might be hiding dormant at metastatic sites. They get passed over and only start proliferating many years later. We don't know what causes early dissemination, dormancy, or the reactivation of metastatic cancer cells." ]

[ "No computer which controls a power plant should ever be directly connected to the Internet. Stuxnet worked because of the incompetency of the operators. Nuclear accidents never happen as acts of god, they _always_ happen because people made layers upon layers of mistakes." ]

[ "The act of sitting is humanities most common form of not exercising. If you are sitting odds are you aren't exercising (even if you technically could be). The logic is that if you spend your time sitting you are not spending time exercising (commonly anyway) and thus eliminating/reducing sitting forces people to get some mediocre bit of exercise into their lives." ]

[ "the studies only show that people who drink diet soda can weigh more, they don't control for food intake. the issue is people act like it's ok to eat cake for dinner if they have a diet soda with it." ]

[ "It wouldn't burn in the sense of starting a fire. However, it could still heat up and boil or sublimate. You wouldn't even need a magnifying glass, just close enough to the sun to absorb that much energy." ]

[ "[The comments on this gif](_URL_0_) explain it, specifically [this one](_URL_0_csz5f42): > It's called retinoscopy. You shine a narrow beam through the pupil and focus it on the retina. Then you move the beam up and down. If the beam moves up or down on the retina too fast or too slow compared to your own movement then you know the lens/cornea is not focusing light directly on the retina and the baby is either myopic or hyperopic (nearsighted or farsighted). Then you simply do the same exercise but put different lenses in front of the baby's eye until you get the correct movement of the beam on the retina." ]

[ "Personal thoughts: * Primary reason that Sega hardware and some games where superior was Sega had excellent Arcade machines. When Arcades died off so did this advantage. * Hardware strategy all over the place and costly, Genesis had too many add ons that no one would develop for because not enough people had them * Saturn was a flop * even though the Dreamcast was a good system it was crushed by the Playstation 2 and Xbox * Unlike Nintendo who had several first party mega series to keep people purchasing even in slow times, Sega had... Sonic, and we all know that there haven't been very many good Sonic games." ]

[ "Demand. Well, lack of it. Compactflash is a much less popular format than SD cards, and thus the market is much less competitive. Competitive markets mean you can sell a lot of something for razor-thin profit margins, but if you sell less, you need to charge extra on each to profit." ]

[ "It varies from one dynasty to another, but early rulers of China had a tendency to name the dynasties they found after the places they hailed from, or are strongly associated with them. E.g., in the case of Han, as stated in its Wikipedia page:_URL_0_ , the first emperor Liu Ban was once appointed as the prince of Hanzhong, in fact he was usually known as 'Lord of Han' before he became the Emperor. Sui is much similar, which is just the ancient name of the fiefdom of Yang Jian, Sui's founding emperor. In the case of Yuan, it's a bit unique and quite famous, Kublai Khan, Yuan's first emperor, considered his dynasty to be unprecedented, so he took a quote, '大哉乾元', from I Ching, which means _URL_1_ 'Vast is the 'great and originating (power)' indicated by Qian(the first of the eight trigrams) !' The character 'Yuan(元）' literally means originating, first, premier,etc in Classical Chinese. I could give some sources, but I don't have anything in English, so...." ]

[ "Queen Elizabeth I was just, as you say, Queen Elizabeth. The new citations and additions of \"I\" were added after the ascension of Elizabeth II. As an example, if you look at the newer editions of Sir J. E. Neale's classic biography of Elizabeth I, you will see that from the first edition (published in 1934) he mentions that the title of the book changed after the new Elizabeth took the throne. The book title now reads *Queen Elizabeth I*, instead of just *Queen Elizabeth*. Books written in the nineteenth century about Elizabeth I or editions of the State Papers from her era are simply referred to as \"the reign of Queen Elizabeth\"." ]

[ "About the second question, in hindsight changing it to \"what legacies did this period of social democratic rule leave for modern sweden\" is more appropriate." ]

[ "What exactly do you mean by \"harness fire\"? Regarding the fire that didn't go out, I believe you are referring to the fire the Vestal Virgins were charged with keeping aflame. The Vestal Virgins were priestesses of the goddess of the hearth, and were chosen around 12 years old or younger and made 30 year vows of chastity. The fire they kept alive was considered sacred, and if it went out... serious punishment. Their chastity was also associated with the health of the Roman state. Here is some info about the goddess Vesta they served: _URL_1_ For a basic overview of Vestal Virgins and their duties, check out Wikipedia: _URL_0_ I hope this addresses the second part of your question." ]

[ "Certainly, when people cite the 3500 caloric deficit leading to a pound of adipose (fat) tissue lost, the majority of this weight is going to be lost through the end metabolites of cellular respiration, water and carbon dioxide (and in the case of proteins, ammonia). So depending on one's caloric deficit, a large portion of stored energy substrates can be utilized and converted to the excretable/expirable end products in substantial amounts" ]

[ "I'm sorry that I'm no expert, but I remember reading about this the last time a similar question was asked: _URL_0_ Basically, you percieve time faster after your run because of endorphines released during the work out, which means that the music seems slower. This is apparently also why a lot of rock musicians play faster live; they percieve time differently because of the rush they experience in front of a large audience. Hope someone can give a better answer." ]

[ "I will expand this comment later, when I have more time to write, but the short answer is that the Constitution left the number and size of federal courts in the hands of Congress. Congress determined the number of Justices on the Supreme Court, as well as the number and size of inferior courts in the landmark [Judiciary Act of 1789](_URL_1_). Anti-Federalists were very critical of the power of an unelected judiciary. To blunt these concerns, the drafters of the Constitution gave Congress wide discretion to determine the size of the federal judiciary, which would limit judicial power. In [Federalist Paper #82](_URL_0_), Hamilton notes that Congress is given power to determine the number of inferior courts, the size of inferior courts, etc. As he notes, the authority, scope, and limits of the federal judiciary are left to the \"discretion of the legislature.\"" ]

[ "East coast states were original chartered by various other entities. Western states wanted to join the union as fast as possible, usually. One of the bars to entry was population - you need _____ people to be a state (cutoff varies over time). If you have a bigger chunk of land, it will have more people, ergo quicker statehood." ]

[ "Calories are unit of measure for energy, not a physical object. You use up calories when you spend the energy to power your muscles and organs. The waste products from this process are exhaled in the form of CO2 and other gases and in the compounds filtered out by your kidneys and liver and expelled when you urinate." ]

[ "No where actually, all the data is still on your hard drive. Your computer has just marked that files spot as usable space, eventually it'll get overwritten. There are special programs that can fully erase a file by writing a bunch of zeroes over it." ]

[ "You might find these threads helpful: _URL_1_ _URL_0_" ]

[ "_URL_0_ \"The Milwaukee protocol (MP), a procedure reported to prevent death after the onset of rabies symptoms, has been performed over 26 times since its inception in 2004 but has only saved one life. Overwhelming failure has lead health officials to label the protocol, a red herring.\"" ]

[ "No, it's just a length constructed from physical constants. It is **not** the fundamental distance. The universe is not divided into a grid of planck length cubes." ]

[ "I initially was extremely sceptical, as the thread question is both wide-ranging and oddly specific. However, reading your explanatory post I got a much better idea of what it was you are looking for. You raise several valid points and I think the questions you are asking are interesting ones. But you mostly answered your own question here, I think, both in acknowledging that the question might be flawed but also by dealing with many of the potential responses to your question by yourself. Additionally, I might suggest that thread title was the wrong question to group all of these inquiries under- it gives the impression of being ultra specific, when upon reading your post I realised it actually wasn't. I am not qualified to answer these questions, and I fear none of us may be able to answer them in a way that does not resort to open speculation, but this is a really interesting topic." ]

[ "Continually: It keeps on happening. Continuously: It is happening all the time without stopping. Consistently: It happens the same way each time." ]

[ "A big one is, well, most of the bible. Was there a united monarchy? If so, what did it look like? Is there something behind the Exodus narrative, or is it a myth to give the Israelites a history separate from the other Canaanite groups?" ]

[ "Yes, they'd genetically be like siblings. And there wouldn't be any way for those couples to have biological children that wouldn't be genetically siblings. This is ignoring things like epigenetic effects, of course, but those don't show up on DNA tests anyway." ]

[ "[Here's a java demo of a double mass-spring system](_URL_3_). The motion of these types of systems can often be described as a sum of [normal modes](_URL_4_). In the geometry you described, a common normal mode is for the masses to sort of [pass the oscillation back and forth](_URL_0_). There are plenty of other sorts of [coupled oscillators](_URL_2_) such as [two pendulums connected by a spring](_URL_5_) (sorry about the obnoxious music, it's the only video I could find right now). Now things get really crazy when you have a [double pendulum](_URL_1_). The equations of motion are nonlinear, so there are no normal modes. The motion is chaotic." ]

[ "When you drink it, the water is at the near center of your body, in your backpack it's not. There i more support at the center of your body so it feels lighter. Carrying it on your back also requires a posture that is harder to maintain and thus requires more energy and may exhaust your muscles more." ]

[ "Supply and demand. People are willing to pay more for the portable .5L bottle when they are out and just want to grab something to drink. It's an \"impulse buy.\" But the 2L cokes are to be brought home and put in the refrigerator and drank over a period of time. So, it is less about the materials and more about the state of mind of the person buying it." ]

[ "How about how to fit a 2 km train on a circular 1 km track? It's impossible normally, but if the train is moving at 87% the speed of light it works fine. The game [Velocity Raptor](_URL_0_) involves several puzzles that require moving at relativistic speeds. For example, you unlock a door by making several blocks appear a certain color due to the doppler effect, and you have to pass a line of bullets that are closer together than your length." ]

[ "Think about things bouncing around. Imagine a box with a fan in it. Put 20 balls in ithe box. Now imagine a basket to one side just the right size for the balls. Turn on the fan. The balls jump around randomly. At some point a ball will fall into the basket. This will happen at a given rate which will depends on how many balls there are and how many baskets there are. This rate is known as k1. A ball in the basket won't stay there forever, either. It will rest a while, but eventually the fan will blow it out of the basket. This also happens at a given rate. This rate is known as k-1. Now imagine this basket is capable of converting the ball into a cube. It takes it a moment to do this. So the ball must sit in the basket for a given amount of time, which will be dictated by the ratio of k1 to k-1. Once it does get converted, it will get knocked out of the basket by the fan at a given rate. This rate is known as k2. I hope that helps a bit." ]

[ "I don't think an evolutionary model is at work here, because if you take a broad enough view there isn't really any strong tendency one way or the other. Different regions circle in and out of various different models of political organization, and it is very easy of assuming one of them is the \"natural\" version and the others are just outliers or products of unusual circumstances. And of course there are also cases that don't fit any real progression--Egypt and Britain, for example, were never really city states, Switzerland in many ways still is, and Myanmar/Burma has been cycling through different forms of organization for mellennia. That being said, strong city states tend to form in particular circumstances, often where they can capitalize on their comparatively greater organization than a territorial state--generally, with trade. However, when it comes down to it they are only very rarely able to compete against the sheer demographic pressures of a territorial state." ]

[ "Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question implies that you're asking about both *current* policy and historical reasons. If you want to pursue discussion on the former, do consider x-posting that question to another sub, e.g. /r/politics" ]

[ "Some animals *do* eat feces, but it can be for digestive purposes. Take rabbits or some rodents, they will eat their own feces in order to better digest it, as they do not have the physical anatomy to digest complex sugars like cellulose, and thus rely on microbial processes and multiple-digestions. They will eat their own feces in order to give it a \"second pass\" through their digestive systems. Then they *won't* eat the second defecation. Some animals use it as a way to conserve water, like the kangaroo rat, who will sometimes ingest feces which can supplement water in times when food is scarce (as they derive a good portion of their water from metabolism of carbohydrates). For dogs and cats, yes, it may be old behaviors similar to what you said, attempting to cover up their presence, but it can also be linked to missing nutrition from their diet, or even the need to further digest or absorb fats or animal protein from their diet." ]

[ "Dogs have keen enough smell that they can go beyond \"That's poo!\" to \"That's dog poo from a female\" or \"That's dog poo from a dog that eats lots of steak\". But to get the more detailed information, they need to be closer." ]

[ "I hate that this question is downvoted so much. C'mon people, why are we punishing people for asking questions? Whatever happened to \"there's no such thing as a dumb question?\" awersF, please keep asking questions about the world around you. Discoveries are made because people question their perceptions established by people who \"already know everything there is to know\". Don't be discouraged. Keep thinking. The answer to this question has already been stated (the air is stationary with respect to the train, so the fly can move around in the \"stationary\" air). Is that obvious to an everyday person? Maybe not. Anyway, /rant, but please keep asking questions." ]

[ "Odor is carried by molecules. When you smell lemon, for example, little molecules from the lemon are making their way through the air to your nose. Now think about what happens when you smell shit..." ]

[ "You mean they didn't eat any food? Yes, they would lose weight, but they would also be starving themselves and getting no nutrients whatsoever." ]

[ "If there is nothing plugged in, then no it will not use any electricity. For electricity to flow, there must be a complete circuit, and to complete the circuit you must plug something in. Some devices draw current even when they are off if they are plugged in, that may be what she is thinking of." ]

[ "Yes, the blanket or sheet analogy is just that, an analogy. The universe exists in 3 spatial dimensions, not 2. But that same bending and warping is still applicable, you just need to envision it in 3 dimensions instead of the 2. We just have no 3d analogies since we having nothing in our everyday lives to compare that to. Large masses warp the 3 dimensional \"fabric\" around it, causing other less-massive objects to appear attracted to them. In reality, those objects are following a straight line, but those straight lines in the fabric have been curved by the massive object." ]

[ "The full answer to your question depends on some pretty heavy math, which I'll be the first to admit I don't completely grasp, but in a nutshell it comes down to the idea that we can measure the large scale curvature of the universe using the data about the Cosmic Microwave Background recently provided by the [WMAP](_URL_0_). The data tells us that the universe is flat with a very high degree of accuracy (but not 100% so the question is still out there)." ]

[ "I could go into this answer, but honestly, it is such a broad and complex one. You are basically asking \"How did Rome conquer the Mediterranean\" and the answer to that is so much more complex than simply the army. If you're interested in the Army, I highly recommend Adrian Goldsworthy's *The Complete Roman Army* which will answer many of your questions." ]

[ "hi! not discouraging further discussion here, but fyi, this question has come up a few times, so check out previous responses here: * [What was so great about the Mona Lisa?](_URL_1_) * [Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?](_URL_0_) if you have followup questions on locked posts, ask them here & include the user's username so they'll be auto-notified" ]

[ "The command wire detection is probably similar to what is described in this [article](_URL_0_), it has a description of how you might detect different wire lengths in an IED. Basically you emit a radio signal and change the frequency looking for any type of resonance. Different wires (length/width) will have a different resonant frequency (there's more to it in the article). The command wire mentioned is a long thin wire that is hard to see and is used to set off the device, see [here](_URL_1_). So basically the system looks for long thin wires that would set off an IED. Once you find the wire, you should know where the IED is. The first article also describes other methods to find IEDs. Ground penetrating radars are indeed being used to find the command wire. GPRs can detect change in the relative permittivity of the materials in the ground. Anything that is buried and has a different relative permittivity than the soil should show up on the radar." ]

[ "Need more detail! Was the pilots voice being played *through* the speakers? If so, are your headphones wireless? Or did the headphones not cancel out the noise like you thought they should? Edit-- * If playing through the speakers, your headphones are wireless and the signal sounded fine: digital comm problem (implausible) * If playing through the speakers and the signal sounded poor: Accidental induction, demodulation (maybe, but unlikely if this has not happened many times before) * If not cancelling: Noise cancelling is extremely hard to do perfectly. Most likely explanation: the pilot was talking loudly and you heard it because you were in the front row. Otherwise, we have a mystery on our hands." ]

[ "I'd like to know how they came to conclusions like that during an autopsy. Clearly they can just open up the head and see there's brains in it and not water?" ]

[ "Federal records archivist here. We can't know the answer to that for sure, we aren't privy to details of Reagan's medical privacy. Most classified topics concern technical details of aircraft and weapon design, or other things that would hardly ever come up in conversation unless you were at work. It's unlikely that it was ever an issue, and if you've ever been around an Alzheimer's patient, you know they say a lot of things that aren't true and don't make much sense, sadly. If it did come up by some chance, the family would just sign a non-disclosure form, probably." ]

[ "Natalism has always been a central theme in modern French history, but there isn't a consensus on a single explanation for population decline in the 19th century that accounts for regional specificity, changes in government structure, shifting cultural mores, or economic and industrial growth. [Here](_URL_1_) I suggested an explanation applicable for southern France that pertains to the Napoleonic Code and peasant land holdings, but this isn't applicable for all areas. This, however, was never really a serious concern until 1871; France had historically had the largest population in Europe -even with a declining birth rate - until the unification of Germany. Post-Franco-Prussian War, procreation becomes highly politicized due to natalist concerns over another impending war with Germany." ]

[ "This post is confusing. The title is 'Pirenne Thesis' which is a reference to his thoery of transition from Roman to Frankish worlds up to 8^th CE (which is roughly summarized as 'Without Islam there is no Frankish empire; without Mohammed, no Charlemagne'). But your comment is about his theory of the 'resurgence' of medieval cities in 10^th to 12^th centuries CE. Which are you asking about?" ]

[ "you lose weight by burning calories, plain and simple. burn more calories than you consume. when you lose weight, you will lose both fat and muscle, it's unavoidable. to limit muscle loss, you can do weight training." ]

[ "The temperature sensors in your skin can only detect relative changes in temperature. Not absolute temperature. You can show this by doing a simple experiment with three cups of water. one cup of ice water, one cup of room temperature water, and one cup of hot water. Place a finger of your right hand in the ice water and a finger of your left hand in the hot water, wait for ~5 minutes (for the temperature sensors to acclimatise) then place both in the room temperature water. Your right finger should feel hot, your left finger should feel cold (but both are in the same water)." ]

[ "Although flying in a straight line may be a more energy efficient path, the erratic flight patterns mean that their movement is less predictable by predators such as birds. Overtime this evolutionary advantage has stuck." ]

[ "**Edit: STSCI people have [posted an explanation](_URL_4_).** There's also a [youtube video](_URL_3_) which explains it around 1:45. The long and short of it is that Hubble was tracking background stars throughout those images, and its orbit around the Earth meant that the comet had noticeable parallax which caused it to get smeared out into the V shape. ~~Was asked a few days ago, my best answer is that it appears to pointer arrows which were left in the .fits image for some unfathomable reason. No other images show the two bars pointing at the nucleus.~~ _URL_4_" ]

[ "The hydrogen atom has infinitely many bound energy levels, and you can have transitions between any two of them, as long as no conservation laws are violated." ]

[ "**Edit: STSCI people have [posted an explanation](_URL_4_).** There's also a [youtube video](_URL_3_) which explains it around 1:45. The long and short of it is that Hubble was tracking background stars throughout those images, and its orbit around the Earth meant that the comet had noticeable parallax which caused it to get smeared out into the V shape. ~~Was asked a few days ago, my best answer is that it appears to pointer arrows which were left in the .fits image for some unfathomable reason. No other images show the two bars pointing at the nucleus.~~ _URL_4_" ]

[ "Not exactly an attempt to invade Scandinavia but early Estonians (called Oeselians at the time) often raided Scandinavia during the Viking era and were described as Víkingr frá Esthland (Vikings from Estonia). _URL_0_" ]

[ "No. And to discuss why involves discussion of burden of proof. \"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.\" Sailing across either the Atlantic and Pacific, and making contact is a pretty extraordinary claim. Books such as \"Peru Before the Incas\", and \" The Last of the Incas\" have nothing to say about any contact between Inka and non-Americas groups. While the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the burden of proof falls on the group arguing for your claim and they so far have presented nothing of value." ]

[ "Fish have a unique chemistry. It has been determined that often their blood is similar to antifreeze. This makes them able to function at colder temperatures than a lake trout or some similar surface water species." ]

[ "The Gulf Stream primarily exists because of the action of winds blowing across the subtropical Atlantic. A good (but small) map of the surface currents is [here](_URL_0_). Unfortunately, many people are taught this [image](_URL_1_) of ocean circulation which both dramatically simplifies the Thermohaline Circulation and makes it appear that the Gulf Stream primarily exists as a limb of this circulation. The freshwater input from melting polar ice will certainly effect the global thermohaline circulation by decreasing the formation of deep waters at high latitude. But since most of the Gulf Stream transport (80-90%) is due to the wind and not thermohaline effects, The Gulf Stream itself will persist but perhaps with a slightly weaker transport." ]

[ "You are right in observing Venus does not have an intrinsic magnetic field. [However, solar winds interacting in Venus's upper atmosphere ionize particles](_URL_0_) (an ionosphere). This ionosphere induces an external magnetic field around Venus which acts similarly to planets with magnetic fields and excludes solar winds. [Zhang et al.](_URL_1_) also provide evidence that Venus's externally induced magnetic field reconnects, which was previously thought not to occur. Despite this, Venus still does experience some atmospheric loss due to solar wind pressures. Perhaps there is some geological process that replenishes Venus's atmosphere, but this is outside the scope of my study so I will refrain from speculating more on it." ]

[ "Ever watch water going down the bath tub drain? Even though the water was relatively motionless before you opened the drain, the low pressure area you introduced by opening the drain causes a rotating vortex to form in the water. Tornadoes work in much the same way. They're associated with low pressure areas, after all. The low pressure area is formed when winds moving in opposite directions produce a rotating motion on the mass of air between them, kind of like stirring water in a mixing bowl. Like the water in the mixing bowl, the atmosphere is actually *thinner* in the low-pressure area--that is, the column of air pressing down on that part of the Earth isn't as tall as normal. If you could see the low pressure area from space, it would literally look like a depressed spot. Occasionally, the area of rotating air contracts and speeds up (conservation of angular momentum) and forms a vortex: a tornado." ]

[ "I think that this is somewhat of an illusion. Generally the species that invests more in creating offspring is the choosey sex. In mammals this is almost always the females. While males may appear 'pretty' in some animals, it is almost always the females making the choice as to whom to have sex with. As for humans, women still tend to make the decisions as to whom they mate with. Men may not be the ideal of physical beauty but they do work awful hard to attract mates. The characters which women look for may not be bright feathers but instead, bold actions, clever speech or physical strength." ]

[ "Physically developing we are close to a bobcat or other animals in terms of lifespan. We have a much, much more complex world than any other animal does though. We have to eat that play-doh and stick that key in the electric socket to learn that we want to be a philosophy major or an architect. Bobcats can't build skyscrapers, baby." ]

[ "Reading is a form of comprehension and problem-solving. The relevant part of your brain (Parietal Lobe) would be working to comprehend the world around you and helping you make informed decisions by recognising patterns. A complex example of a pattern is language, spoken or written. I think, specifically the left hemisphere of the brain mainly deals with these kinds of things however, on this I am a little more unsure. Hope this helps! [Source](_URL_0_) Disclaimer: I am by no means a doctor/neurologist - if you are, please, chime in!" ]

[ "Yuo can raed taht way beauce we dno't acluatly raed ervey letter in a wrod, we raed the shpae of the wrod. It's sungrisiprly esay to raed tihs, but relaly anoyinng to write lkie tihs, so the rset I copeid form the intnernt. \"i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!\"" ]