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[ "Follow-up question, if allowed: how widespread was Nestorianism in Asia at its peak?" ]

[ "Could you perhaps present us with your original source so we can see what the author writes about it? I *think* I know the answer, but I would like to know what exactly the author wrote. Also, could you remove the bonus question? We do not allow discussions of events after 1993." ]

[ "Nobody knows but [this](_URL_0_) is an interesting theory. I figure the plane is either here (or somewhere else but similar story) or it's at the bottom of the ocean." ]

[ "[A similar question](_URL_0_) came up a few months ago, if you find the replies helpful. See the bit about Malays \"running amok.\"" ]

[ "If /u/Cenodoxus is right (and I'm willing to bet there are more people around who can read cuneiform than that!) you're in luck that Reddit is a den of geeks! As he points out, the script is cuneiform - specifically, it looks to be ~~Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian cuneiform (but more probably the former)~~ Old Babylonian (thanks, /u/Sandorra). The value of the individual characters, in order, is GIŠ - GÍN - MAŠ. You'd never pronounce it that way, though: this is how you write the name Gilgamesh! Usually, it would have the [DINGIR sign](_URL_4_) in front of it, so I'm curious where you found it. Source: Any sign list - I use Rykle Borger's (the basic one in *Babylonisch-Assyrische Lesestücke*, Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 2006 suffices for most basic texts)." ]

[ "In general, [Wikipedia has a good list of different countries' copyright term lengths](_URL_0_). The longest term is 99 years after the author's death, offered in the Ivory Coast. (Mexico offers 100 years after the author's death, but only for works published after 2003.) However, Great Britain has made several exceptions to its general copyright laws for specific works. The oldest two works currently under copyright are the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer; copyright in both of them will continue to be held by the Crown until 2039. (See Schedule 1 part 13(1) of the [Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988](_URL_1_).)" ]

[ "Hi, not discouraging other replies, but while you're waiting, you might want to check out a couple of earlier answers: * /u/bayoris walks us backwards through time in [How far back in time could you go, before modern English becomes unintelligible to inhabitants of the British Isles?](_URL_0_) * /u/cdesmoulins gives an overview & provides lots o' links to more in [Could a modern english speak with a person from the medieval in england?](_URL_1_)" ]

[ "I gona mention 2 potentially viable arguments but that are quite a few 1: It takes technology to make technology. Its like an exponential growth that has taken a long time to build up. A modern example would be for our modern computers to work we had to figure out analog transistors and before that we had have to understand and control electricity and before that we had to come up with processes for extracting, refining, and using materials with different electrical properties. 2. Over those thousands of years of human history we have \"forgotten\" more than we currently know. Think of all the examples in history like the Library of Alexandria or all of the knowledge of Ancient Greece. Either via war or cultural collapse, entire civilizations have been lost to time and there are likely some we arent even aware of. Personally, I believe if we had never \"lost\" any information and our species had written knowledge as far back as knowledge was attained, we be far more advanced than we currently are." ]

[ "A lot of it has to do with water tension. If you've ever filled a cup to the brim, you could see it takes only one small drop of water to have the top overflow down the sides. This is the same with the clouds and heavy downpours. Sometimes, a cloud just holds too much water, and one drop causes it all to fall" ]

[ "This doesn't change between babies and adults. It's actually the exact same. What changes is they way we take our drinks as we get older. As babies we are drinking from a nipple (either an actual nipple of a simulated one on baby bottles). A baby has to suck to get liquid out of it. If you tilt a baby bottle, very little will come out until the baby starts sucking on it. This allows the baby to control the amount of fluid going into their mouth. As adults we are drinking from cups or glasses. In this situation, the tilt on the cup/glass decides how much fluid is going into your mouth. If we lay down, it's very hard to control how much liquid is going into our mouth so we may choke. Of course, if you were to drink out of a baby bottle, you would have no problem lying on your back." ]

[ "They intake the food, and then blow outwards, spitting the water out of their mouth while keeping the food trapped inside (Humans can do this too. Put something in your mouth, for instance a small bit of carrot, then pour in some water. You can spit the water out through your teeth) The food is then swallowed whole. Excess salt left in the mouth and in the food naturally comes out mainly in their urine, which is about 8 times as salty as land mammal urine. Their blood is about the same in terms of salt content as land mammals." ]

[ "The same way that you and I do at home. Do not use too much toothpaste, and spit if you start to build up too much drool or foam." ]

[ "Let's say that you and the elevator are moving downward at a velocity of about 100 meters/second just before impact. You jump upwards at about 10 m/s. This means that your final velocity at impact is 90 m/s downwards. If that won't hurt you, and the falling pieces of the elevator coming down on your head at 100 m/s don't hurt you, then you're golden." ]

[ "You normally think of a house as just a place to live. You buy it if you want a place to live, and then you have a place to live. Woohoo. The thing is, housing prices were increasing, and everyone expected them to continue increasing. So a house was also a good *investment*. If you bought one, it would be worth more a few years later, and there are all sorts of ways to take advantage of that. Eventually, financial advisors started saying you should buy a house *even if you can't afford one*, because once the price rises you can take advantage of that to pay for the house. Well, eventually housing prices stopped rising, and all those people couldn't pay for their house. The banks who lent them money for the house thus saw that money they expected to be paid back disappear. People suddenly having a lot less money than they thought is a pretty bad thing, and it started the financial crisis." ]

[ "It is a safety measure. The narrow blade connects to the *hot* side, while the wider blade connects to the *neutral* side. The neutral wire in the outlet is very close to being the same voltage as ground, so if you accidentally touch the neutral wire, chances are nothing will happen. Inside the appliance, the neutral side is used for those pieces where there's a greater chance of accidentally touching them. For example, with a light socket, the socket itself should be connected to neutral while the contact all the way in the bottom of the socket should be connected to hot. Some devices don't have any significant difference between the two lines internally, so there's no value in polarized plugs." ]

[ "This doesn't change between babies and adults. It's actually the exact same. What changes is they way we take our drinks as we get older. As babies we are drinking from a nipple (either an actual nipple of a simulated one on baby bottles). A baby has to suck to get liquid out of it. If you tilt a baby bottle, very little will come out until the baby starts sucking on it. This allows the baby to control the amount of fluid going into their mouth. As adults we are drinking from cups or glasses. In this situation, the tilt on the cup/glass decides how much fluid is going into your mouth. If we lay down, it's very hard to control how much liquid is going into our mouth so we may choke. Of course, if you were to drink out of a baby bottle, you would have no problem lying on your back." ]

[ "That is a tough one. There is a lot of overlap between the different lodging classes. The most distinct is the Hostel, which is shared rooms, almost like a barracks. Then you have your B & B, which is like renting a bedroom in someone's home, but usually still a professional setting. Lodges are usually going to be small cabins for rent in wilderness areas. Inns are any sort of combination food and lodging. In Europe, it's actually usually a bar that rents rooms, also called a \"guest house\". In America, it tends to be a building with interior corridors that serves breakfast or has a small diner on site. Motels are usually exterior corridor buildings. The name derives from \"motor hotel\". And hotels are the larger buildings, interior corridor, with restaurants and additional amenities, like meeting spaces, gym, and room service." ]

[ "hi! there's always room for more contributions, but FYI there's a related section in the FAQ* - check it out for previous discussions [Weeks, weekdays, and weekends](_URL_0_) *see the link on the sidebar or the wiki tab" ]

[ "No. The atmosphere is slightly thinner at the poles, but the bigger factor is that launching near the equator gives the vehicle additional velocity. Launch vehicles turn east shortly after takeoff. At the equator, this would give roughly 1,040 mph (465 m/s), which is about 4% of escape velocity. Atmospheric drag accounts for a smaller fraction, so it's better to plow through slightly more air and take the extra speed from Earth's rotation." ]

[ "Get a protractor, tape or glue a straw to the straight edge, and tie a weighed down string to the middle. When you get on the plane, look down the straw at a star that you can easily pick out from the night sky (hope you're travelling at night!) and is viewable from both hemispheres, and mark where the string hangs. Once in Australia and landed, repeat and notice the difference in where the string hangs. I'm pretty sure this will work, have a fun trip :)" ]

[ "Yes, the lining bags are sorted out and either reused, discarded, or recycled separately -- all of which are a pain for the company that is actually trying to collect metal, glass, or heavier plastics." ]

[ "In the UK, TV broadcasting first started with the BBC, which is funded by a television licence. As such the BBC required no advertising to pay its way. Commercial broadcasting came along later, and with it came worries about the power and persuasive influence of TV advertising. Because of this laws, regulations and codes of conduct were drawn up to restrict what could be shown. One of the very first things to be banned was any form of political advertising. Instead TV channels are required to give space during elections for parties to air their own Party Political Broadcasts. It is this restriction that the Iceland advert has fallen foul of. Because the advert is not selling a service, but promoting a cause - it been judged to have contravened the above rules." ]

[ "Yes it is accurate to say there are different schools. In terms of the differences, it can be as small as different techniques for common actions to entirely different movement types and philosophies. Westerners like to think of kung fu as one type of martial art with multiple variations, but that isn't really accurate. Kung fu just means any skill achieved through hard work and discipline." ]

[ "Depends on the country. Some countries have laws in place that ensure equal service for all providers using the same network, i.e. the network owner aren't allowed to diminish the service in any way for providers who \"rent\" their network. As for your particular example, they're both owned by the same corporation, so I would presume that their subscription plans (and pricing models) are targeted at different markets." ]

[ "Ahoy, fellow redditor. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: How did the British empire get so big and powerful ? ](_URL_1_) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: The British Empire ](_URL_3_) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What allowed the British Empire to become what it became? ](_URL_2_) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How did the British Empire expand so fast and so far? ](_URL_0_) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5:Why is Britain such a renowned and (once) powerful nation considering it's so small? ](_URL_4_) ^(_33 comments_)" ]

[ "Congrats! You've asked what may be the single most-asked question on /r/AskHistorians. That's good news, because it means we have [a big FAQ file devoted to your question](_URL_1_). Check it out, and I hope it helps! *Edit: And [here](_URL_0_) is a great answer from /u/talondearg, who answers it quite a bit.*" ]

[ "Suppose you are sharing a room with your brother. The left side is yours, the right side is his. You draw a line on the floor to mark them, but you think it should be moved more to the right and so you start quarreling. You do not have a measuring tape (and besides, since the room is not a rectangle it's hard to measure), and you want to know if the division of the room is fair. What do you do? Well, some clever people came up with a way to see if the line is in the middle, and all you need is a bouncy ball. What you do is, you throw the bouncy ball against a wall (really hard, so that it bounces against the floor and walls multiple times) and see where it ends up. You do this a lot of times and each times you note whether the ball ends up on your side or his side. If you keep doing this, and the room is divided fairly, the balls should land in each side of the room about the same time." ]

[ "Downforce settings, camber settings, fuel levels, etc. The cars are supposed to be carbon copies of each-other prior to the engineers \"tweaking\" several settings, giving the driver a different feel on the track." ]

[ "Good question. What proportion of the feces is living bacteria? The 60% figure given here suggests free feces is the way these bacteria 'seed' the environment? Like any ecosystem, there is a death/birth cycle and feeding/absorption dynamic? Thanks." ]

[ "Oddly enough this is something a professor at my university is actually working on. He is trying to develop bacteria which consume explosive compounds and has funding from the department of defense. The idea is completely sound and possible. However when he described his research to me, it was more to destroy explosive residue in the soil and other areas that can become contaminated, such as blasting ranges. It would be rather difficult for bacterial to actually chew through a brick of explosives unless it was shredded and put in a sort of bio-reactor. This hypothetical bio-reactor however wouldn't be feasible with some explosive or safe, however it could work for others." ]

[ "[Feynman Discussing Mirrors](_URL_0_) Not exactly about your questions, but along the same lines, and still quite interesting. His other videos from the same interview are also very entertaining." ]

[ "They don't. They have really really good camera's that can take a picture from really far away." ]

[ "Different regions used different voltages. They created their own infrastructure when electricity began to spread, there was no specific way of doing things as it was a new thing. Different plugs go into different voltages because it would be damaging or even dangerous if not. Why don't we all just use the same voltage you ask? Well, why don't we all speak the same language? It's far more work and far less profitable to overhaul entire electrical infrastructures than it is to keep it the same and sell converters." ]

[ "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." ]

[ "In order to get people there, a few things need to happen. We must either A- Be able to freeze and melt people for long journeys or B- Be abe to get there really really fast. (The Alcubierre Drive mentioned by Teotwawki69 for example) In either case we must find a relatively light way to shield from cosmic radiation, currently the best way is to stick something dense between the spaceman and space. This is very very heavy, and would be exorbitantly expensive and cumbersome, especially when combined with the amount of fuel and supplies necessary for interstellar travel. People are currently looking into using electromagnetic fields for protection but nothing viable on the horizon. So we need basically everything to be lightweight, fast(or frozen), and reliable. As far as getting back again, that'll be farther into the future. Vsace did a great [video](_URL_0_) on interstellar travel, you might want to check it out." ]

[ "Thrusters don't work by thrusting \"against\" anything. They work based on the conservation of momentum. When you throw something in one direction, what remains has to move in the opposite direction for the momentum of the entire system to remain the same. Imagine standing on a skating rink wearing ice skates and holding a bowling ball. Now throw the ball forward. That will cause you to slide backwards. That's not caused by the bowling ball pushing against anything; it's cause by the fact that, when you push against the bowling ball, you're pushing yourself backward just as much as you're pushing the bowling ball forward (Newton's 3nd law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). Rockets do the same thing, expect instead of one massive bowling ball being pushed slowly, it's trillions of low-mass molecules of burned fuel being pushed quickly." ]

[ "Firstly: does this actually happen? I don't think it does in my subjective experience. If it does happen to many, I would *speculate* that it's related to the complexity that is human consciousness. We have 'awake' and 'asleep' but within and between those there can be many differences in what the brain is doing and your level of alertness." ]

[ "Sounds a bit like an [Amygdala Hijack](_URL_0_). In the case of an Amygdala Hijack, what happens is that the brain sends sensory input to both the Amygdala and the Neocortex. The Neocortex is the thinking part of our brain, and the Amygdala handles a bunch of emotional things. Now the Amygdala will check if it's in a Fight or Flight scenario, and when it finds a match it will hijack the Neocortex, overriding anything it comes up with, and go off on an adventure itself. The brain essentially goes into red alert panic mode, shuts down all non essential thinking processes, and focuses completely on survival alone. I'm not sure if this is the same thing as the snap you're talking about, but it sounds familiar." ]

[ "> But, why doesn't Mercury just crash into the sun and why doesn't Pluto just \"escape\" the Solar systems with it being so far away? Because the planets are all moving sideways, which causes them to fall toward the sun, but always miss. That's really all an orbit is. It's actually quite difficult to get an object to collide with a star. You have to get rid of pretty much all of it's momentum that isn't directly toward the star." ]

[ "Satellites are on a set orbit. The scientists put the satellite into that orbit to begin with, so they know when and where in space the satellite is going to be. When they launch a new satellite, they just calculate the appropriate trajectory and launch time to get the new satellite into space without hitting the other ones." ]

[ "Because the government is entitled to put reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on speech. The function of courts is highly regulated, with certain people able to speak at certain times, and often only to certain issues or facts, to ensure that the rules are followed. Failure to follow the judge's instructions on these issues is contempt of court." ]

[ "Usually when we type, we are using our working memory to hold the info we want to type. Our working memory only has so much space in it that if something new pops up it pushes back the old info and takes front seat; attention also affects this. Think of it like a bus. What you're trying to type is in the drivers seat (since you're focusing on it) and other things like, where the keyboard is or mouse is is stored in the passenger seat since you aren't focusing on it as much. When someone says something, you begin to focus on that rather than typing and type what they say. What the person said pretty much takes the drivers seat. This is also why you forget what your were going to say when having a conversation. Ever think of a good joke or comment in the middle of someone talking but then forget it when they're done? It's pretty much the same thing." ]

[ "If you have a big DC source supplying the power that can supply enough power then your AC motor will suffer a \"thermal event\" Without the changing of the AC signal then the motor won't spin, if the motor isn't spinning then it doesn't push back on the current by creating \"Back EMF\", and without it spinning the motor just looks like a long wire, aka a short which will lead to the motor acting like a toaster not a motor." ]

[ "This is why the running a microwave empty is dangerous. That energy has to go somewhere, and it ends up in the magnetron and can damage it." ]

[ "Asked recently on /r/askscience here: [How many people would you need to self-sufficiently populate a planet without inbreeding being a problem?](_URL_0_) Pitciarn islands makes a nice case study in humans. Pitcairn Islands were [settled by 6 men and 11 women](_URL_2_); and the majority of inhabitants are their descendants. _URL_1_ > Genetics on Pitcairn ... \"Inbreeding in this instance ... although extremely close, has not led to degeneracy as it is usually supposed to do. Inbreeding in a stock which has latent defects will naturally intensify those traits. I can't say that race mixture in this case has been harmful. . . . The people are superior physically and are also a hardworking, intelligent lot. In psychology and behavior they are predominantly British.\"" ]

[ "Everything /u/snarkinturtle said is correct, but it doesn't directly answer your question. > A systematic comparison to other population groups shows that in relation to the population size and in relation to the general bioscientific reference to this group, Jews are over-represented in human genetic literature, particularly in mutation-related contexts. This pattern is interpreted as representing geneticists' interest in Jewish communities, which are comparatively **endogamous** yet sizeable. [source](_URL_1_) The key word there is endogamous. \"Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific ethnic group, class, or social group, rejecting others on such basis as being unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships.\" [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) In other words, Ashkenazi Jews have a strong tendency to marry other Ashkenazi Jews, causing a decrease in genetic variance." ]

[ "The moon is actually getting farther from the Earth, due to tidal friction." ]

[ "It depends on altitude, space weather, and on board power requirements. This explains it better than I could: _URL_1_" ]

[ "You have a lemonade stand. You sell it for 50 cents a cup. One day you find out it's going to be very hot outside and people are going to want more lemonade. You figure you can get away with selling it for a little more since the demand is there. So you start charging 80 cents. You notice that the number of people paying for lemonade hasn't gone down. So because people are comfortable with the new price you decide you won't bring prices down even when it's not that hot anymore. Now replace lemonade stand with gasoline stations." ]

[ "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." ]

[ "Your mass is a given quantity regardless of where you are. Its how much \"stuff\" you are made of. Weight is how gravity acts on your mass so you weigh less on the moon because there is less gravity but your mass is the same anywhere you go in the universe." ]

[ "I'm going to assume that you really meant to type CO, carbon monoxide, which is lighter than air." ]

[ "The idea is to suck out the blood and cause it to coagulate around the wound, reducing the chances of infection. Traditionally this was done directly with the mouth, but nowadays it is mostly done using a sterile tube. As far as I know, most mohels (\"mohel\" is the proper name for the person who performs the circumcision, not rabbi) do not engage in the practice of oral suction and it considered highly controversial." ]

[ "Are they [leaf cutter ants?](_URL_0_) then they are collecting it to harvest fungus which grows on the little leafs." ]

[ "time perception. At five years old, 1 year is a huge chunk of time (1/5th).Compared to life at 40 one year is 1/40th. A 5th of your life to date is now 8years. As you age, time seems to move faster because you have a larger pool of time to compare it to...." ]

[ "I think we develop a \"been there, done that\" mentality in ways. I can not watch cartoons now. No matter what the topic. The irony is I just can't pay attention to cartoons." ]

[ "Because film making is a business. Who is more successful: someone making $40,000 today or someone making $30,000 in 1920? Clearly, the guy in the 20s was far wealthier. Studios measure the success of a film by how much money it makes for them. Just like any other business." ]

[ "I'm not a camera pro, but basically: A smartphone camera lense or even a Go pro doest have 1/10th of a cinema camera quality. There is much more than resolution and megapixels when it comes to cameras. Why does some 8mp phone camera does a better job than some 13mp ones? Same stuff. Lense, picture processing, etc..." ]

[ "That vertical distance (let's call it around 15 feet) is reasonable to jump down from if you absorb the force in your legs (like you see the guy in the clip doing). The other thing to remember is that some of the downward force there is going to be transferred forward because he's hitting at an angle and the wheels can roll freely. That being said, any impact which deforms an object will absorb some of the energy of the impact." ]

[ "Another component worth mentioning is that YouTube clips can 'intelligently buffer', while GIFs lack this functionality. Imagine your friend likes pistachios, but hates opening them. You, in your infinite kindness, start to crack open the shells and placing the open pistachios next to him/her. If your friend were a GIF, he/she would eat the pistachios as quickly as they arrived, so sometimes there would be a few seconds delay between when the last pistachio was consumed and the next one was available. If your friend were a streaming video, he/she would figure out how long it would take you to open all the pistachios, figure out how long it would take to eat them, and then wait until enough had been opened before eating them. Your friend would consume the pistachios at an even pace, then, and you would continue opening them as he/she ate. In this way, there's no staggering or stuttering in the flow of delicious pistachio goodness." ]

[ "I also have this and it's not related to an infection or STD. If OP is like me he pees normally most of the time but if you go for a pee within about 5 minutes of ejaculating it stings a bit. I thought that it might be because the uretra is still sensitive from sex." ]

[ "I've had similar sensations in the past. A Doctor friend explained it to me as your brain just sort of cross-firing the pain response. From the standpoint of evolution, it could your body's way of saying, \"Hey, Klutz, you're hurting yourself, how about we just slow things down a bit?\" It's nothing and should pass. If, on the other hand, it isn't nothing and doesn't pass, enjoy the short time you have left, or, your super powers. Whichever comes first." ]

[ "No new salt is being created. Growing a crystal is a process known as [deposition](_URL_0_). Basically it occurs when something that is dissolved in a solution comes out of solution. Having a pre-existing salt crystal promotes this because it provides a [nucleation site](_URL_2_) for the dissolved salt to deposit. So this means that the total amount of salt - solid crystals and whatever's dissolved in the water - never changes. However, your crystal can most definitely have more volume and mass simply because there is more salt in the crystalline state. You can read more about [crystallization on Wikipedia](_URL_1_). It is a common chemistry lab technique." ]

[ "Short story. Air. The air is never 100% clean. Try freezing ice in a tray, then pulling it out too early. Bubbles are visible at the bottom right? That's because air and impurities will always fill in traditional ice makers. As for commercial ice, it's clear because the ice is frozen from the inside. A cold mold or block is set up to freeze water around. As it freezes, the impurities and air slowly rise. In your ice maker, because you can crack it early, that means the ice is freezing from the outside first- forcing any gas to become stuck. The way you can make ice clear is you pour ice in layer by layer. As each one freezes, you can add another layer. Though extremely time consuming, it does work." ]

[ "People obsess over Hitler because he has ceased to be a historical figure, he's a symbol of evil. He was also driving force behind the single most massive war in human history. Said war was the first major war that occured in a society that resembles as our own." ]

[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_1_). You can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ]

[ "It's the same reason some white people do. It's a regional dialect. When you hear people who speak that way they are usually from the south, or have ancestry to the south. As an interesting side note, it's also not incorrect English. Chaucer used ax in the Canterbury Tales, and according to John Rickford it was commonly used until the last couple hundred years." ]

[ "> Middle English orthography was unstable, but when the sound /k/ appeared at the end of a syllable, two spellings tended to be used: > 1. If /k/ was preceded by a long vowel, it was spelled \"k\" (today's \"like\" used to be spelled \"lik\"). Adding \"ke\" at the end (like) is alater development. > 2. If /k/ was preceded by a short vowel, it was spelled \"ck\" (today's \"lick\" was spelled \"lick\") [source](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "It would be extremely difficult. Styles vary so much that virtually any style may be found in a different location at a different time. For example the large finely flaked bifaces of the Solutrean period (20-15 kya) in what is now western Europe could very easily be lost among Cascade Period (6-9 kya) bifaces in the Plateau Culture area of North America. They might also be confused with ethnohistoric period ceremonial blades in northwest California. The only exception that I can think of are the fluted points of the Clovis and slightly later periods in North America. These, to my knowledge, do not appear elsewhere. Now that's my perspective as a student of North American prehistory. The Old World guys might have another view." ]

[ "New answers are always welcome here, but while waiting for them, you may be interested in reading these old threads: * [How did European late medieval/early renaissance pike squares compare to classical phalanxes? Going head to head, would a phalanx of Athenian hoplites stand a chance against a square of Swiss pikemen?](_URL_0_) with an answer bu /u/iphikrates * [How did late medieval/early renaissance pike formations differ in tactics from ancient Macedonian phalanxes?](_URL_1_) with answers by /u/itsalrightwithme and u/XenophonTheAthenian" ]

[ "Woohoo! One I know and actually something I've asked somebody during a job interview. They weren't always the yellow colour(known as optic yellow) they were more commonly white but in the 70's some research was carried out around how to make sure the balls could be seen on colour tv. This lead to the development of the modern colour. As for why baseballs remain that set colour I would hazard a guess as it's more iconic for a baseball to be white with red stitching ." ]

[ "It's actually in your document. > The next year, Loewy/Snaith suggested painting collection boxes one color instead of three, recommending a sky-blue color. Sky-blue paint was tested on a few trucks, but the color failed to impress postal officials. In 1968, the Department began testing dark blue collection boxes in four cities. To make them easier to find at night, the boxes had reflective decals featuring the words \"U.S. MAIL\" and the Department's post rider seal. By April 1969, Department officials settled on the dark blue color." ]

[ "What we see as \"being sick\" is often the body's way of getting rid of diseases. This is part of our innate immune system, but it doesn't always work so well. Once your body makes antibodies, that's part of the adaptive immune system. The antibodies \"tag\" the virus so that killer T-cells can get rid of them. So instead of trying to flush it out (runny nose etc.) or make it uncomfortably hot (fever), the adaptive immune system grabs and destroys the virus. You could see it as the difference between having an alarm system and having someone on hand to arrest the thief. Both will stop your stuff getting stolen, but the alarm system won't stop your window being broken." ]

[ "I think we develop a \"been there, done that\" mentality in ways. I can not watch cartoons now. No matter what the topic. The irony is I just can't pay attention to cartoons." ]

[ "You may want to take this answer with a pinch of salt because I'm not 100% sure, But I would imagine the reason why is because certain colours can physiologically change your view on things. The colour blue is known to give a more calming, trust worthy view. I recommend reading up on [this](_URL_0_) it goes deeper into the effects of colours on our brains. its a very i interesting read!" ]

[ "Red meats have a much higher concentration of myoglobin, a protein that makes red meats look \"redder.\" Myoglobin is similar to hemoglobin, the protein that makes your blood red and both proteins also contain iron. Myoglobin and hemoglobin are used to store oxygen, one of the vital compounds needed for our body to produce energy. The issue with cancer is that myoglobin is broken down during digestion but not fully absorbed. Much of the iron and other broken protein parts will end up going through your large intestines (colon). These products stimulate the cells in your colon to grow which can lead to cancerous growths." ]

[ "You can easily add extra fields to your theory that just don’t interact with anything, and/or have enormous masses, so you’d never be able to produce that kind of particle. But by definition these things would be unobservable (at least currently), so you can’t experimentally falsify that they exist." ]

[ "Some things whose explanations most likely outside the scope of QM, GR or the Standard Model: 1. Dark matter 2. Dark energy 3. Neutrino Flavour Mixing 4. Charge-Parity violations by the strong force. One thing we don't yet understand, but will most likely be explained by QM, GR or the Standard Model (it's been talked about a lot so I figured I'd mention it). 1. High temperature superconductivity. In addition we don't currently understand the effects of gravity on QM systems, hence the search for a theory of Quantum Gravity. A good list of open problems in physics can be found here: _URL_0_ Edit: Fixed a spelling mistake." ]

[ "Sneezes use the diaphram... and yes you can produce this own power consciously. To answer the question of why, it's because it helps force out whatever's caught in your nose." ]

[ "Ok, just reading this post made me clear my throat. I'm genuinely curious and hope a psychologist or scientist will answer this :)" ]

[ "I was going to answer this with a description of Newton's laws of motion, but instead perhaps an analogy would be helpful. Imagine throwing a baseball, you know the baseball would accelerate down to earth on a trajectory of about 9.8 meters per second. The ball falls and comes to rest on the ground. Now imagine that you could throw a baseball so fast and so perfectly straight that it was falling at exactly the same rate the earth was curving away from it. Even though it was falling at 9.8 m/s, it was always the same height off the ground! The baseball would be in orbit. It was falling toward the earth, but also moving forward. The effect of gravity was exerting a force of acceleration upon the baseball, but its forward velocity would prevent it from falling directly into the earth. If you threw the ball too fast it would fly away from the earth, too slow and it hits the ground. This description ignores wind resistance which would also act upon the baseball, but maybe you get the idea." ]

[ "Very careful simulation based on testing data. Engineers have experimentally gathered data about all the different materials used to make the telescope. This data includes failure points given applied loads, vibrational frequencies, etc. They can use this along with a computational model of the sattelite to predict how it responds to the forces of launch. They design can use the results of these models to improve/change the sattelite design so that it can withstand the forces of launch. That said, It probably takes some clever engineering on the part of the mirror to make sure that forces are applied evenly to it during launch." ]

[ "Well, understand it's not *cash*. That would be crazy. It's invested, and making money. This would be fine for you and me, but isn't good for a company. They need to be investing in themselves, building out facilities, putting money into R & D, acquiring new properties...Unfortunately, they have so *much* money, that they're hitting a point where they can't productively spend any more on those things. It's not a bad place to be, but it's not *efficient*." ]

[ "I suspect it's down to size. Adding clips and removable backs. Adding battery contacts etc are much harder than just a small snap on connection that never moves. It probably helps sell more phones as when your batteries dead your probably going to buy a new phone rather than try and get into an iPhone." ]

[ "Yes, you would use [Newton's law of cooling](_URL_0_), set it equal to the temperature you want, then solve for the value of t. The constant *k* is something you would either need to look up, or solve for yourself by taking two temperature readings at two different times." ]

[ "Could this question be answered by spraying Never Wet on the surface if a cup? If so, I will go perform this experiment in my garage with a plastic cup, coated with the Never Wet product, and fill it with ice water, placing that cup next to an untreated cup with the same amount of ice and water and see which cups ice melts fastest. Edit: aug 19 - just got thermometers. Had to buy new jars, too, because I'm a fool and sprayed never wet on both of my jars. Will spray again when I get home, this time only one jar." ]

[ "Firearms and cars. I was raised around both. I was always either helping my mom with her cars or she was taking me out and shooting targets with her old .22 rifle. It was just plain old fun. I enjoyed learning how an engine worked, I enjoyed learning how different types of guns worked/shot. Once I got older and started to have my own money and could buy my own things and I started enjoying them more. It was no longer about learning how they worked it became about making them my own. Making them unique. That's the passion now. To me they are my symphony, my art. Really it started as a time passing hobby and it grew into something much bigger. I don't think you can force yourself to be passionate about anything you just have to find something you enjoy and run with it." ]

[ "Practice. They spent lots and lots of hours practicing throwing darts. It took them just as long to figure out how to get a dart shot as it did for you to figure out how to get a baseball throw. You just don't think about it, because you probably remember very little of how godawful you were at throwing baseballs before you were 12. Take those seven years of practice, and apply them to darts instead, and you'll be just as good as the pros." ]

[ "So far, capacity has kept increasing rapidly. You used to buy the biggest drive you could afford, knowing that it was going to be filled up all too soon anyway, but that you'd be able to get a bigger one in a few years. These days, the capacity of a hard drive tends to be much larger than anyone needs, especially with the offloading of capacity to the Internet. You can get your movies and songs online, so they're not eating your disk space. Files are more typically compressed to reduce bandwidth, now, so they don't eat too much of your data line, although it's also still handy to reduce storage space. There's always this trade-off with compression, is the problem. It takes time to compress and decompress data. I'd bet on drives getting larger and cheaper for the next decade or so. Barring a massive improvement in computer speed (unlikely) or cool new developments in compression algorithms (also unlikely), \"more space\" is still relatively easy at the moment." ]

[ "Computerphile explain it quite well - _URL_0_ Think of it like removing parts of a sentence but allowing it to still make sense. eg. 'The weather today will be sunny' compresses to 'weather today sunny' - it still somewhat makes sense, but there's less information. Hope this helps." ]

[ "I think the best description of alcohol's effect is lowering inhibitions. That makes it so that any strong emotion that happens to bubble up, be it happiness or sadness or rage, gets expressed without holding back. Essentially, it makes you emotional and gives those emotions exaggerated expression." ]

[ "Lots of chemical science and a base batch of fermented liquid to flavor. There isn't a lot of nuance in mass marketed booze, and practically every part of a flavor can be measured and replicated. The varietals are all put together the same way with tried and tested yeasts for exact Temps and times. They've removed a lot of the human variables." ]

[ "Pensions do not rely on new workers. Pensions are a specific savings account made in a worker's name that is put into various investments to grow the money. It then has a set payout rate at retirement." ]

[ "Playboy is a household name. 0G Juggs isn't. One looks good on any modeling resume (not to mention the contacts), the other is kinda limited." ]

[ "Empathy! In humans earlier stages it was important for us to care of our tribe and to care for each other. Thus creating a system for young and old to survive." ]

[ "The human body produces heat, at a rate of somewhere around 100 W averaged over a day, and it needs to get rid of it. If the temperature of our environment is too close to our body temperature, the efficiency with which we can shed our heat is greatly reduced. When the environment is as hot or hotter than our body, we can't lose heat through normal conduction anymore (there are other mechanisms, such as sweating that still work) and we experience such temperatures as feeling rather hot. In general, our sensation of temperature is not so much based on the actual temperature of the environment / the thing we're touching, but more on the rate of heat flow between our body and the environment. A cold piece of metal feels much colder than a piece of wood with the same temperature, because metal conducts heat much better and when we touch both, heat flows out of our body into the metal much faster than into the wood." ]

[ "It isn't necessarily a huge scam. It does, however, cost a fair bit of money, and it has limited use. If you are able to actually utilize it the way it is advertised, they tend to be pretty awesome. Most people aren't, though, and this is why it is often considered a scam. My girlfriend's parents have a timeshare, and it saves them about $750 a year. They also spend like a month each year on vacation somewhere. Most people don't fall into this category." ]

[ "They don't. They just care about your money. Come Easter they will remind you that the best way to commemorate the sacrifice of the lord and saviour Jesus Christ is to lease a 2016 Ford Escalade < /sarcasm >" ]

[ "The eye focuses on light, and thus when you close your eyes the muscle involved, the cillary muscle, relaxes." ]

[ "Imagine a spinning wheel getting faster and faster. At some point, it looks like it's suddenly reversed direction, spinning backwards, right? And then as it keeps on accelerating, it looks like the wheel is stopped. (Of course, the wheel is blurry, since it's going fast -- your brain interprets this as a spinning wheel.) This also works for fan blades, propellers, etcetc. You get the point. This is a similar idea to how a camera can match the shutter speed of a helicopter blade, making it seem like the helicopter is rising into the air without even spinning its rotors. Eyes don't have something like a shutter speed (hypothetically you could blink... a LOT....). The reason for this behavior is still unknown, but one theory is that we see the world as a bunch of discrete images put together (this is similar to a shutter speed, potentially), and another is something known as the \"Temporal Aliasing Theory\" (now, an ELI5 for this would be pretty interesting too)." ]

[ "I was curious about this as well, so I did some google-fu and found some results. This is all secondhand so take it with a grain of salt. It seems that the stations contract survey companies to get a rough estimate based on a sample population in the area. Arbitron is one of those companies. How do they do it? They ask people to maintain a diary. Seriously. \"Selecting a random sample of a population in roughly 100 metros throughout the United States four times a year. An additional 200 markets are surveyed in the Spring and Fall. People in the sample are asked to maintain a written diary describing each radio program listened to. Each selected household agreeing to participate is provided a diary for each member aged 12 and older… A new random sample is selected weekly…\" There's also something called a Portable People Meter, which is a microphone placed by a radio that can detect what the person is listening to through hidden audio tones in the broadcast. This is a little cooler. _URL_0_ Source: _URL_1_" ]

[ "Google Android has a feature that sends location data to the google servers, even if you have GPS turned off. If you use a Google Android phone, you can actually view your own data if login to Google and goto this site: _URL_0_ What Google is doing is fetching all this data that is sent from all the Google Android users, and based on that data they can make a guess on traffic conditions." ]

[ "Because that's the top speed you can safely do, assuming ideal conditions (at least that's the premise). When it's raining, snowing, cold or dark, this changes it from being ideal conditions. It's not safe to drive at that speed any more. Worse it is, the slower you need to go, especially if your visibility is impaired. Too much variation in the weather to set a \"minimum speed\". Not sure about you are, but here there is a 5% tolerance on our 100kph speed limit - 105 before they'll ping you. (which quite funnily is, in mph, equating to 63mph in a 60)" ]

[ "Sheriffs are elected law enforcement officers (LEOs), often under the jurisdiction of the courts. Police are LEOs under the jurisdiction of the local executives -- county board, governors, etc. Their jurisdiction is a function of where they're located and who they answer to. Highway patrol LEOs are usually state police, with jurisdiction through an entire state. Every type of LEO has a different boss and a different goal. They work together, but their objective and reason for being is different." ]

[ "Because of compatibility I would say. When we switched to DVD from vcr there was no backwards compatibility due to completely different form factors. Since dvd and bluray use the same form factor a bluray player can also play a DVD. So dvds didn't become immediately obsolete like vcr. Also, I don't believe the quality/convenience of a bluray over a DVD is nearly as pronounced as DVD vs vcr." ]

[ "Think of a rare baseball card. If there's only 10 of them in existence, then everyone would want them and they would be willing to trade hundreds of chocolate bars for it. Now think if they printed 990 more of that rare baseball card. Now everyone has one, and no one is willing to trade a chocolate bar for it." ]

[ "Did we know Earth's atmosphere didn't go on indefinitely before we launched our first probes into space?" ]

[ "Many people posting here haven't actually taken a nerf gun apart and looked at it and are speculating that spring loaded guns could shoot fine in a vaccum. Well, here's a picture of a [maverick](_URL_4_) being taken apart for modding. You can see the spring is pushing on a piston-cylinder assembly. The nozzle on the right of the cylinder expels air at the dart and propels it forward. So the spring propels the dart by pushing air--and absolutely will not work in a vaccum. The only nerf gun type I've seen which would fire in a vaccum use the same mechanism as [the barricade](_URL_3_). It works by using battery-powered spinning cylinders (white in that picture) to grasp and push the dart forward." ]

[ "A computer can track the movements of objects in the frame and add color to them, particularly when overseen by a human operator." ]

[ "we used television cameras with vidicon tubes. These let it turn the optical data into electronic pictures, and let us turn those pictures into a digital bitstream, which was sent to earth. edit: fixed typos" ]

[ "Several things. 1 - Money. Harvard has an endowment of over $30,000,000,000. That means that they have the nicest of everything and if they want you... you get a full ride. 2 - Prestige. Harvard is a known university. Anywhere in the world a degree from Harvard is going to say \"I'm well educated and talented\". 3 - People. Your professors will be among the best in your fields. Your classmates will be the cream of the crop on both the intellectual, social, political and economic spheres. Remember, it is often not \"what\" you know... it is \"who\" you know." ]

[ "Well, there's a difference between state and federal law in the US. If you break a state law and get sentenced to jail time - > state prison If you break a federal law and get sentenced to jail time - > federal prison" ]

[ "This might be of interest to you: _URL_0_" ]

[ "* What specifically differentiates genomic data vs typical data? More specifically, is genomic data not ergodic? * What similarities does reference based compression share with Slepian-Wolf (or Wyner-Ziv) coding? * Since there has been a large push towards machine learning, could you elaborate on the role you foresee information theory playing in the future machine learning?" ]

[ "In regards to the \"hippie look\", /u/thepibbs wrote in response to ['When did artists first start portraying Jesus with shoulder-length hair and a beard?'](_URL_2_) & #x200B; /u/sunagainstgold has written about [the role of iconography in Jesus' being seen as white.](_URL_1_) & #x200B; EDIT: You mentioned the 'universal Buddha look': /u/artfulorpheus previously explained ['Why is buddha fat?'](_URL_0_), which turns out to be a trick question." ]

[ "Post-Roman England? Anglo-Saxon England? Viking England? Norman England? England of the Magna Carta? Late Medieval Elizabethan England? The middle ages stretched almost a thousand years with a lot of different societal, cultural and religious differences in that time. Regardless, we have no evidence that ethnicity separated from religion mattered; for most of this period being Christian mattered, being Jew or Moor/Moslem mattered. Someone would wonder if you were a free man or not, and depending on the community and time period, they would even wonder how orthodox your Christian beliefs were. There are almost no medieval records where see an assumption of religion based on skin colour. We *might* see some race definitions in the very late medieval/beginnings of the early modern period." ]

[ "The convention continues, at least among the Marines I've known, but I am Army myself. \"Yes sir\" is used when answering a direct question. \"Aye/aye aye\" is used to acknowledge you have heard a command. For example: Lieutenant Butter Bar: Private, did you submit your leave form? Private Snuffy: Yes, sir. Vs. Lieutenant Butter Bar: Private, go to the motor pool and check the trucks. Private Snuffy: Aye, sir. \"Yes sir\" can also be used to acknowledge you've heard orders just like aye, but aye doesn't fit in the reverse. Also, once marine recruits are out of boot camp, they cease calling non-commissioned officers \"sir\", and instead refer to them by their full rank, ie \"Aye, Staff Sergeant\" as in the military only officers and warrant officers are called sir. Marine recruits call their NCO instructors \"sir\" because they are not yet considered Marines and have not yet earned the right to refer to Marine NCOs as such. Once they finish boot camp, they are recognized as Marines." ]

[ "Etymology online says knock it off is a request given to an auctioneer to end bidding (by knocking his gavel). While the entry puts the first usage as 1880, the same entry cites a US Senate record of 1834. _URL_0_" ]

[ "I can't remember 100%, but in uni I remembering learning about how genetics is a huge factor, but of course environment plays a role too. So neurons in general have to reach a certain threshold to \"synapse,\" and in the case of pain/sensory neurons, the synapse=pain felt. If you have a higher threshold to reach in order to have a synapse, then you'll be less likely to feel pain for certain triggers, whereas someone with a lower threshold will have neurons that are \"triggered\" more often. Different people are born with different thresholds, but like a lot of people are saying in the comments, environmental factors can modify it! So in theory, you can become more tolerant to pain." ]

[ "Just depends on how your brain precieves (sorry for spelling) the responses from nerve endings. I personally hate being tickled and do not like the feeling." ]

[ "Are you referring simply to the history of sex and sexuality, or are you interested in broader concepts like Gender or perhaps the LGBTQ community? Regardless, I'd suggest *Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement* by Elena Mancini. Hirschfield was a German sexologist who was one of the first advocates for Transgender and LGBT rights. ^^I ^^have ^^the ^^PDF ^^if ^^you ^^want ^^it" ]

[ "_URL_0_ The Geography of Time by Robert Levine. Blew my mind the first time I read it." ]

[ "Spectra. Each element emits photons at very specific wavelengths when its electrons dop from excited to ground state. When we observe light from a celestial body we can break that light down into its separate component wavelengths and determine which elements are present in what relative concentrations." ]

[ "We don't and that is why the search for different forms of life persists. If very well could have happened more than once. But you should note that all DNA based life shares the common trait of having right-handed dual-helix DNA. Since DNA could have taken multiple configurations it suggests that all of it shares a common origin. But that still doesn't say that there is only one origin" ]

[ "The idea is that professional sports complexes will energize the local economy by regularly attracting thousands of people to attend events who will then frequent local restaurants, hotels, shops, etc. This will stimulate job growth and tax revenue. Do the investments work out? I don't know. Perhaps in some instances." ]

[ "We put bases in other countries with the full agreement of the host country (with the possible exception of Cuba). They generally feel they gain from having our presence there. We, on the other hand, don't generally feel that having a foreign military presence on US soil would benefit us much. Who are they going to protect us from....Canada?" ]

[ "Entropy is a law of thermodynamics, not biology. It really doesn't have a 'biological context.' Although life could be said as a (relatively complex) entropy machine. We may create (temporarily) more complex objects (both biological and non-biological objects), but in the long run we use a lot of energy to create and maintain them, and some of that is lost in the process." ]

[ "Use everyday objects they can relate to along with analogies. I read this really good one a while ago explaining the prevalence of birth defects in siblings mating: pretend you and your sister's DNA are pants with holes on the left knee and right pocket. If you put them over each other there will still be holes. But if another person has a pair of pants with only one hole on the right knee area, when you put your pair of pants over that person's pair of pants, the holes will be covered." ]

[ "A compression release engine brake, frequently called a Jake brake or Jacobs brake, is an engine braking mechanism installed on some diesel engines. When activated, it opens exhaust valves in the cylinders after the compression cycle, releasing the compressed air trapped in the cylinders, and slowing the vehicle. Engine braking is prohibited in some areas because of the loud noise it creates. Typically, when an interstate travels near a residential area is when you will see the signs prohibiting the action. Typically, research shows the decibel level to be the same as that of a large lawnmower, but in early morning or late at night, the sound a jake brake causes when engaged can be very disruptive to local communities." ]

[ "There are marks along the highway at measured intervals. A plane flies overhead, timing cars as they pass these marks. They radio to the cruiser on the ground a description of the car, who then stops them and writes the ticket." ]

[ "They use this - _URL_1_ It records all of the major news channels and indexes the closed captioning data so that it's searchable. _URL_0_" ]

[ "Google doesn't search the internet when you run a google search, they search their highly optimized indexes from their own database. The database is formed by google \"spiders\" that crawl \"the web\". If you wanted, you could build a highly optimize database of your hard drive's contents that you could run searches against. But that would take up a lot of your computer's storage space, processor time, and isn't the best use of those resources." ]

[ "To add to the already excellent answers, I'd just like to put in one more point - Hitler was terrified of losing big ships. Hitler was an army man, first and foremost. He didn't really understand naval warfare, but he understood the prestige of big battleships well enough, and he was loath to lose any of them. The loss of the *Graf Spee* early in the war had been bad enough without adding real battleships to the casualty list. The end result was that the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet was used incredibly cautiously throughout the war. The prime example is the *Tirpitz*, who fired her guns in anger all of *once* - to bombard shore facilities." ]

[ "I read a great book for my Ancient History major work on the Roman Military which helped me extensively as it includes detailed figures of military formations and the strategy behind the generals thoughts and step by step drawings of the different stages of major battles. I highly recommend this book as most of my study came from this source. The book is called 'Roman Warfare' by Adrian Goldsworthy and he has many more books about Roman warfare and their armies (Both Empire and Republic)" ]

[ "A safety measure. The chance is low but its still the responsibility of the vet to make you aware and informed of it. Be happy you have a vet who is covering all the bases." ]

[ "One way is to word everything as a question. So if your headline reads \"Is Kim Kardashian a Hobbit?\" then nobody can sue you because, hey, you're just asking questions. Another strategy is to use so-called weasel words. Instead of saying \"Kim Kardashian is a Hobbit\", you say \"Some people have claimed Kim was a Hobbit\". See? It's not you, the tabloid, saying that she's a hobbit, its' \"some people\" saying that, and you're just reporting what \"some people\" are saying." ]

[ "Pretty much the same, one of the most interesting things modern genetics has shown is that populations have been more or less genetically continuous since the Neolithic, most population movements in recorded history have been small groups of men, who have had fairly little genetic impact on populations (if this were an episode of Crash Course History, the music would play and then the little screen would show up saying unless you're the Mongols)." ]

[ "Follow-up/related: Do we have any idea how prevalent the Classically stereotypical physical traits for each group (e.g. big strapping blond-haired Dorians) actually were in those populations?" ]

[ "Microbreweries used to be classified as a brewery producing less than 15,000 barrels of beer annually but over time the term has been associated more loosely." ]

[ "On normal cameras? No. The film or sensors in standard film or digital cameras simply records what light is on them. The recording medium needs to be at precisely the correct distance from the focal point of the camera lens, or else the picture will be out of focus. To focus the picture, we move the lenses towards and away from the recording medium. If the film or sensor isn't lined up with the focal point correctly, they will record what we see as a blurry picture. Taking a picture of the blurry picture won't fix the blurriness, it'll just make it more blurry." ]

[ "Suicide is legal in almost all western countries. However, law enforcement is generally compelled to prevent a suicidal person from killing themselves by any means necessary." ]

[ "The law against defacing coins forbids doing so in order to commit fraud. [18 USC § 331](_URL_0_). This law dates back to when coins were made of gold and silver and and, by shaving a bit off of a coin, one could cheat others out of the full value of a coin while holding back some of the value for oneself. That is the law isn't protecting the coins, but rather protecting those who accept government currency from being defrauded. The penny smashers don't amount to fraud. No one will think that penny is worth a nickle now. So the law doesn't cover them." ]

[ "> Why are many things in the US \"general\"? Things like the general store, General Motors, General Mills, etc. *Generally* speaking this was intended to convey the idea that the products they produced were standardized. Back when those names originated it was common for products to be made in smaller shops for local distribution, meaning any particular item may vary widely from what you would get elsewhere. Think about buying something from the local bakery vs buying from Apple; the bakeries vary while Apple has the same stuff across the world. \"General\" in this case could be considered similar to \"Universal\" in meaning. An exception to this would be a \"general store\" which was more a term for a kind of shop rather than a specific company name. In that case it was just a shop that sold generally everything and didn't specialize in a narrower market like a grocery store or auto store." ]

[ "I'm given to understand that it was to differentiate between hanging by the neck *until dead* and being hung, drawn and quartered (where the hanging was only temporary, and death was caused by the drawing and quartering). Either that or as a way to more easily distinguish hanging as a punishment from hanging for other purposes (possibly even displaying of the body itself, rather than just fancy watercolours). Either way, it's an old linguistic quirk that we still keep to today." ]

[ "Yes. Cellular damage occurs at different levels of your skin, muscle and blood vessels. However, what causes pain and discomfort is due to nerve endings and pain receptors in the same location. Something interesting I read a while back is that pain is thought to be a product of cellular damage around nerve endings, that is, cells die and release chemicals that irritate never endings and hence this is perceived as painful." ]

[ "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!" ]

[ "u/cleopatra_philopater wrote a number of particularly excellent posts on this difficult subject. [This one](_URL_0_) is specifically focussed on Roman Egypt, and also discussed the Greek period preceding this, but should give you a lot of food for thought." ]

[ "More questions about *The Golden Ass*. 1. What's the deal with the Cupid and Psyche story? What's the sub-text there? 2. In one of the later books, Lucius--as an ass--has to have sex with human women, including one who has been found guilty of adultery or worse (I don't recall exactly). He shies away from sex with such a \"wretched creature,\" fearing that he would be polluted. Was this kind of moral-physical pollution a big deal? And is the idea that this scene is funny because here's an ASS who is refusing the have sex with a WOMAN, because HE's afraid of it? 3. It seems pretty much throughout that women are troublemakers: they don't know their place, they get up to no good, they're difficult to control sexually. Is this typical for Classical ideas of sexuality? 4. Are Lucius's salvation and conversion at the end typical for \"mystery religions\" at the time?" ]

[ "While we wait for an actual expert to arrive, the name for what you're talking about is [Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness](_URL_0_). Sometimes, just knowing what name something goes by is enough to open the Google Floodgates and get you more information about the topic. I hope this helps a bit, and is not grounds for merciless downvoting." ]

[ "Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is most optimal in a medium arousal state where you are not too comfortable or too stressed. Extrapolating from these two my guess would be that learning at night in a tired state of mind is optimal for a middle arousal and probably optimal for most recall. Especially if you are tired all of the time like myself lol." ]

[ "Because the electrostatic force between the particle and the car is larger than the force pulling the particles off. The force which tries to remove the particles is dependent on the cross sectional area of the particle, where the air is pushing against. As dust are very small particles, the force applied by the air moving around the car is not enough to counteract the electrostatic force." ]

[ "Your eyes are constantly making adjustments for your movement, and your brain corrects for motion blur. A camera has to take a snapshot during a moment in time. If you move the camera during that moment, then the image is blurred. However, if your camera has a very fast shutter speed then the image will not be blurred (because the moment is so fast that not much movement happens in that instant). Extremely high-speed cameras can take pictures of hummingbird wings, even though hummingbird wings will always look like a blur to the naked eye." ]

[ "There are at least two kinds of accents. The first is simply a way of speaking which propagates in a certain geographical region... this is the case in the US of people who speak with a southern accent, for example. Another form of accent occurs when a person speaks a foreign language. After the time of puberty, more or less, (can't remember the exact age range) it's impossible to learn to speak the sounds of a foreign language perfectly. Thus you *emulate* the sounds of a foreign language, with the sounds available to your own language." ]

[ "This sounds like an extreme example of \"Tip of my Tongue\". _URL_0_ I can't really give an overly scientific answer as to what causes it (some interesting articles on that page, though), but I'd imagine that it's just a \"brain fart\", kinda like deja vu. It's a problem with long-term semantic memory recall. (Semantic memory are facts such as state capitals, or your kids names)." ]

[ "In regards to Slovakia, I know of one recent book that specifically covers the history if the country: *A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival * by Stanislav J. Kirschbaum. It is more a political history, but does go back centuries and is specifically about Slovakia." ]

[ "Check out Yuri Slezkine,[ *Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North*](_URL_0_)" ]

[ "The cemetery I run just bought 40 acres about 20 years ago. We have another 35 that was the original cemetery. We have about 600 plots left to buy in the old part. We do about 64 burials a year (ive been keeping track since 2011). We have double stacked bodies, meaning we dig one hole roughly 8' deep. Set two vaults in the hole. We have put cremains on top of vaults. We can bury 4 cremains on one plot. I won't be alive long enough to see the new part fill up. If an organization is smart they will plan ahead and buy more land so they dont fill up. If they are small and they do fill up then chances are they werent making money to begin with. My cemetery generates about $16000 a year. Thats not enough to pay anyone to take care of it. Its a city owned cemetery." ]

[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to *anyone* who mailed back the special offer." ]

[ "It's a radome to cover the AN/APS-15 search radar, first fitted to an experimental model designated XPBM-3E then rolled out to production models starting with the PBM-3C (from Squadron/Signal's *PBM Mariner in Action*). The most common installation of APS-15, also known as H2X (and \"Mickey\" due to some early installations resembling Mickey Mouse), was on B-17s, B-24s and B-29s as ground mapping radar for blind bombing; on naval patrol aircraft like the PBM it was used for general search operations, capable of detecting a 5000 ton ship at a range of around 40 miles. See [Radar Bulletin No. 2A: The Tactical Use of Radar in Aircraft] (_URL_0_) for further details, including some example images from the APS-15 scope." ]

[ "**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 point of a water softener is to remove calcium and magnesium which form positively charged ions when dissolved in water.The tank is filled with negatively charged beads and so when the hard water enters the tank the positively charged calcium and magnesium stick to the beads. The water that comes out of the tank it will be free of the ions. The big tank of salt is the brine tank. This tank fills with water and forms a very salty solution called brine. The brine is pumped into the empty tank and the high concentration of sodium drives the calcium and magnesium off of the beads and it is replaced with sodium. The brine is drained and with it goes the Ca and Mg. When more hard water is added the cycle repeats and the Ca and Mg replace the sodium. I don't know how the cycles work so that soft water is always available. My guess is there is a holding tank of some sort, or soft water is not available for a short period of time while the tank resets." ]

[ "Imagine you’re a wrinkled shirt. Masseuse straightens you out so you’re nice and unwrinkled. But some people are so use to be wrinkled, they don’t know how it feels to be unwrinkled. That’s my best ELI5. I tried." ]

[ "For the same reason we say \"in a car\" but \"on a train\"... Or \"in a chair\" but \"on a couch\"... Preposition use is English is exceedingly arbitrary." ]

[ "Are you from the US? Most of the world has shifted over to using 24 hour time (though analog clocks still have the 12 hour display). The most basic explanation is that it's too hard to glance at an analog clock and determine the hour if the circle is divided into 24ths. Dividing it in two was a good compromise: it's normally easy to tell which of the two possible hours it is (2am vs 2pm) and easy to estimate time with a quick glance (1/3 of the way through the top right quadrant = 1:00)." ]

[ "If they can live in Earth's ecosystem, then we have a whole planet sitting here ready to move in. (Even if they easily *can* build space habitats or terraform hostile planets or whatever, why not take this one?) Some people have postulated that biological materials (plants and animals) may be very valuable on their own. The extraterrestials have plenty of silicon and aluminum and iron wherever they go, but they don't have flamingos or llamas or beets. (They may have things that *look* like flamingos, llamas, or beets, but those things will be biochemically different.)" ]

[ "Clean water where you want it is a limited resource. It takes pipes to get the water to you, it takes treatment facilities to ensure it is safe, it takes land management and sometimes large, elaborate water transport projects to get treatable water to the treatment facilities. All of these facilities cost more the more water people use. In many places, surface water is insufficient to meet local water needs, so they pump water out of the ground, usually faster than it is being replenished, meaning it is a diminishing resource. As water gets used, it collects pollutants which are increasingly difficult to remove to make it clean. If it gets to the ocean or some other bodies of water, it becomes salty and its usefulness is low without a relatively large amount of energy. Pouring water into the ocean doesn't increase the rate that it evaporates nearly enough to notice it within our lifetimes." ]

[ "You go through a neutral 3rd country. For Europe popular choices were Switzerland (usually involving the International Red Cross for sending mail to POWs and civilian internees) and Portugal (for everything else). The British Mail service, in order to avoid appearing to colaborate with the enemy, enlisted the help of Thomas Cook & Son. You would send your letter to a Thomas Cook & Son office in Amsterdam (or later when Amsterdam was occupied Lisbon, Portugal). They would then forward your letter into occupied territories. Strict limits were placed on what could be discussed in the letters (for example, if your mail was going through Lisbon no location other than Lisbon could be mentioned) the length of the letters (two pages), and the way the letters were written (\"clearly written\", no erasing, only topics of \"personal interest\", etc.)." ]

[ "You may be interested in this similar earlier thread. _URL_0_ See responses by Blanglegorph, jonewer and myself. The short answer is that any positions of relative advance (e.g. Rocketry) tended to be out of desperation, whilst Allied advances (e.g. Computers) tended to be more a case of doing things they could afford to do and which were a more efficient use of resources." ]

[ "The process of filmmaking is nothing like the finished , edited work. Scenes are shot out of order, you probably just had lunch with the monster who’s going to kill you in the next scene, and nothing kills the mood like seeing the bored PAs standing around craft services. Most sets will also take special care to make filming as enjoyable of a process for child actors as possible, by making sure that everything is thoroughly explained and they aren’t forced to do anything they aren’t comfortable with. Edit: the films I’ve worked on have had child actors, and it’s really hard to phase them." ]

[ "I'm a journalist. I can tell you straight up : it's for audience. These videos create shock, which is the best hook television news has over the viewer. The whole ethics speech they'll give you about people having the right to see it is BS. Television is a business, news or not, sadly. This is even more true in the US, but in France, we recently had an example with the Charlie attacks. Everyone rushed on the video which shows the police officer getting executed on the ground. Cause it was shocking. This kind of things is a sure home run for ratings." ]

[ "It increases your blood pressure and sensors in your lungs blood vessels dampen your central nervous system (which takes messages from your body to the brain) and so reduces pain sensitivity." ]

[ "The rate at which a human brain processes information is not constant. It changes based on a number of factors. When you feel a sudden threat, your body releases hormones that trigger a change in the rate at which your brain can process information. If your brain is processing information more quickly, your perception will be that everything is slowing down. This is your body trying to give you an edge to get out of whatever threatening situation you are in. There are several things that you can do to artificially trigger this kind of response without actually being threatened. For some people, running is one of those things, especially if you push your limits when running. TLDR: Your body wants to save you from whatever you are running from. It makes your brain better for a short time." ]

[ "No explosions, but apparently there have been a number of natural nuclear reactors on earth over the millenia, where self-sustaining fission reactions occurred over an extended period of time. _URL_0_" ]

[ "As an initial matter, I believe statistically July is actually the warmest month in the northern hemisphere. What I'm gleaning from your question is \"why isn't it hottest when the sun is at it's highest northern position on the globe at the Tropic of Cancer on June 21st?\" (I.E., that's when the days are longest, why isn't it hottest?) The answer lies in the absorption of solar radiation by the earth (land, water, biomass, skyscrapers, etc.). The earth absorbs solar radiation and the effect is cumulative, and the Earth's heat capacity is more determinative of the outside air temperature than the length of day is. The process of radiating off heat in the form of electromagnetic radiation takes time, about 4-6 weeks. Similarly, it takes time for the earth to cool off, which is why February is generally colder than December 21." ]

[ "Batteries create electrical charge off of a chemical reaction occurring within the case. However as the reactants are not gaseous, it is very hard (teetering on impossible) to react all of the stuff together on the first go. Meaning, if you mix two liquid reactants together by pouring one into another, it is impossible to tell when the reaction is fully finished and there could be \"holdouts\" or clumps of reactants that have yet to come into contact with anything to react with. Batteries \"regain\" charge because there is still some holdout reactants within the case." ]

[ "When you shoot an arrow from a bow, the energy of the bow is transferred to the arrow. It gradually (doesn't seem like it, I know) pushes the arrow downrange, from a full stop at full draw, to full speed when the arrow leaves it. All that pent up energy of the bow at full draw is efficiently transferred to the arrow, and when the arrow hits the target, it has plenty of energy to kill; in fact, it can go completely through a deer. The limbs of the bow come to a stop after sending the arrow downrange. Now, think of pulling that bow back with no arrow. ALL that energy pent up in the bow at full draw has nowhere to go. The limbs jerk the string to a straight line, transferring all that pent up energy... right back into the bow itself. Just like a gun with the barrel stopped up, all that energy is transferred into destroying the bow, and trust me, it will destroy it. You do NOT want to be holding a bow that has been dry fired!" ]

[ "As the other user posted. Lather is just a gimmick. Studies have been done with market groups to determine how individuals FEEL about lather and what is the right amount. Chemists are constantly manipulating contents of conditioners, soaps and shampoos depending on their target market's feelings about the physical nature of products." ]

[ "Nothing, boiling is not a chemical reaction. All you do is heat up the H2O and change the state of aggregation of a small portion of it from liquid to gaseous (resulting in bubbles and steam). Unless you trap the steam somehow a little bit of H2O is going away, but apart from that it remains exactly the same, chemically speaking." ]

[ "Think of it as the vice president on a battleship. The vice-president is technically of a higher rank than the general/captain, but the VP will listen to the general when he tells him the military situation. Tarkin doesn't outrank Vader, and won't directly order him around, but Vader knows enough to let him run the show on the Death Star." ]

[ "Charlie Rose/60 minutes just aired an interview with Putin this week where they discussed this subject. Putin feels that Assad (Syrias President) is the best and only way to reclaim syria from isis. The US is backing non isis rebel groups in Syria to try and take down assad. They have opposing ideas how to deal with ISIS" ]

[ "Writing a bill can be done by anyone with the interest in doing it. Many bills are written by companies or organizations, they just find one state senator to sponsor it. Voting on a bill hardly takes any time at all. What takes a long time is finding compromise. With the really difficult and important issues, nobody can agree on the solution, so state legislatures spend most of their time arguing about how to compromise." ]

[ "They write half as many checks a year, pay the person that does payroll for half the hours. Depending on the size of the company that could be a few hours a week saved." ]

[ "Many times they have adaptations, like [very acidic stomachs](_URL_1_) that help kill bacteria in the food. They can also have other weird adaptations--scientists are trying to figure out how vultures can manage to eat literal rotting meat without getting sick, and it looks like they might actually have [commensal botulism bacteria](_URL_0_) in their stomach that somehow protect them from other foodborne illnesses, along with incredibly acidic stomachs and some other adaptations. Of course, animals do get all kinds of nasty stuff from eating food. A lot of parasites have evolved specifically to be eaten by various wild animals as part of their life cycle, like [toxoplasmosis](_URL_2_)." ]

[ "It's just in their DNA. Even now, science can't fully explain the phenomena we call \"instincts\", even though we can see them in action, and have them ourselves." ]

[ "MHC stands for major histocompatibility complex, which you already know... when antigens are taken into a cell, the antigen is degraded into a specific peptide and then is loaded onto an MHC class I or II protein and the peptide:MHC complex is presented at the cell surface where it might bind to an antigen specific CD4 (helper) or CD8 (cytotoxic) T cell on its receptor. [Glycocalyx](_URL_0_) is a general term for the gelatinous layer on top of epithelial/endothelial cells and bacteria cells (bacteria do not express MHC in nature) containing proteins, polysacchs, and glycoproteins.. the glycocalyx environment might contain mhc" ]

[ "GMT is affected by daylight savings time. UTC isn't. When you are on DST time, you are technically an hour ahead of the UTC time on your timezone." ]

[ "Yes, they was legal for army officers. In some cases even mandatory - if officer rejected duel, he was obliged to resign from army or well be fired after two weeks. In 1894-1910 there was 322 duels in Russian army, 315 with firearm, 30 people were killed." ]

[ "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!" ]

[ "There is an affiliated group of Banksy called \"Pest Control\" that authenticates Banksy's work. Small work and medium size work can be authenticated though them. Murals and street art pieces/setups are more difficult but those are usually for showcasing and not selling, thus do not need authenticating. Can refer to the official Banksy site and IG will also showcase locations of this type of work done. EDIT: a word" ]

[ "There are a few ways. Today we can do it by measuring distant stars parallax that changes slightly as we make a circle around the sun. We can look at other plants since we know their orbits and speeds. Finally, we can do what ancient people did, look at a pattern the sun makes in the sky. Each week exactly at the same time it's in a slightly different place in the sky. If you take a photo each week and combine them, you will get an 8 figure pattern. The sun returns to a starting position after a year. A picture: _URL_0_" ]

[ "> Aren't all parachutes designed the same? No, there are many designs. > Is there no procedure in place to ensure every chute is safe to use? There is. The process is performed by humans who can make mistakes, and equipment can still fail regardless. > What are the factors in play that could change the way a chute opens? Bunches. Incorrect folding, damaged or worn cables, position of the diver when opening, the list goes on. > I'm just surprised to see people at such a high caliber of expertise still have these problems. No experts are so good that they are flawless, and no process so good that nothing can ever go wrong." ]

[ "why would you eat your mentor? but the reaction will cause you to vomit uncontrollably sort of like putting baking soda in vinegar." ]

[ "Ever notice how on one side of a \"two-way\" mirror it's very brightly lit, but on the other side it's totally dark? That's not an accident. \"Two way\" mirrors are actually semi-transparent, with a highly reflective glass. The glare created by the bright lights on one side means that they can't look past their reflection into the dark room." ]

[ "Non smart person here. My guess is it has something to do with light bouncing off particles in the air. Which is the reason why less light reaches the target. Because. of the dust and dander and other air born things absorb some and reflect the rest in different directions and those are the light rays we see." ]

[ "Title is incorrect - Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water. This is why when you add salt, the water no longer freezes until temperatures drop significantly further." ]

[ "It increses the osmolarity of your blood: _URL_0_" ]

[ "It's basically the same reason why the original thirteen colonies in America wanted to breakaway from the British Empire. The British Raj was widely despised in India for various reasons but mostly because they didn't respect local customs and taxed the population without giving them a say (no representation). The first large-scale rebellions occurred in the mid 19th century but were easily squashed by British forces. As time went on, Indians became more and more organized, even forming their own Congress. Gandhi came in around 1915 to start seeding the non-violent civil disobedient method which spread rapidly through the lower classes (thus bringing in millions more into the struggle). Skipping a lot, it all culminated in 1947 with the independence of India and Pakistan." ]

[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_1_). You can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp." ]

[ "there is no difference between mental and chemical. there is no difference between physical illness and mental illness, they all take place in this physical world made of chemicals. & #x200B; as to how it works: we don't exactly know. we don't understand the brain enough to explain most mental illnesses or their medications. we just know that some things help and some things don't. why? we have theories, but they are all big question-marks that can be completely outdated next year. we estimate that about 1/3 of it is genetical 'weakness' that gets activated by something you experience. what that something is depends wildly per person." ]

[ "Lots. If you spend a lot of time in a building made of concrete, you're getting gammas from the small amount of potassium-40 in natural potassium. If you have an americium-241 smoke detector, you'll get gammas from that. ^(241)Am alpha-decays into ^(237)Np, but it doesn't always go directly to the ground state. Sometimes the alpha decays populate excited states in ^(237)Np, which will subsequently decay by gamma emission. This is all part of your normal background dose that you receive on a daily basis; nothing to worry about." ]