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eli5

like 2

{ "a_id": [ "d0epja9", "d0fovik" ], "score": [ 166, 2 ], "text": [ "Judging whether a action in the past, and one that involved millions of people no less, is virtuous or not is probably not the best way to see it. Ideas of virtue change, people have various and variable motivations for their actions, and motivations often overlap and change as we look at actions from different perspectives. So, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 cannot really be seen as a \"selfless act of virtue,\" but to suggest that there were implicitly vicious \"ulterior motives\" isn't really accurate either.\n\nTo begin with, no, people in Britain did not suddenly decide that slavery was bad. Rather, there were always people who deeply opposed slavery, and virtually everyone agreed that it was a bad thing. Sure, there were people who said that it was great and beneficial for the slaves, but those voices were pretty small (we don't see the really heavy \"civilizing mission\" justifications for slavery and colonial exploitation until the 19th century--we're a little early for that here). Overall though, the real issue is that people saw slavery as a bad thing that just *was*, that it had been there for a long time, that it was inevitable, that it reflected the inherently corrupt nature of people not under proper moral guidance. In retrospect, racialized slavery in the Atlantic world was very obviously a murderous exploitation of human beings not merely for profit, but as part of a burgeoning capitalist system that relied on commodified land and labor, and that prioritized profit above human welfare. It was the result of changing institutions that enabled and encouraged widespread and systematic exploitation, so that there were real incentives to British merchants to engage in the slave trade and its ultimate foundation, the plantation sugar complex. Plus, many Britons could and did say that slavery was a terrible thing, but they also were under tremendous social and cultural pressure to situate themselves within a class-based society that made extensive use of the products of slavery--sugar. (See, for example, Sidney Mintz's classic history of sugar, with a particular emphasis on the 18th century, *Sweetness and Power*.) To many contemporaries, these broader forces driving slavery were difficult to discern; they instead saw it as the result of bad people doing bad thing, perhaps lacking proper moral guidance.\n\nThere are some useful parallels here with contemporary issues like climate change: we may worry about the fate of polar bears or the dangers of sea level rise, but many of us are practically compelled to burn fossil fuels and contribute to this problem every day. And, it's easy for us to blame oil companies or corrupt politicians and say that they're just bad people who won't \"do the right thing,\" but climate change is probably better seen as the long-term outgrowth of our transformations of the biosphere through human labor. It is so difficult for us to get a coherent response together precisely because it is so deeply embedded in our economy, culture, and politics. Jason Moore's *Capitalism in the Web of Life* is a brilliant look at this phenomenon as both an economic one and a cultural one over the past five centuries. \n\nBack to the slave trade: what changed was that people began to see the slave trade as something that they *could* and *should* change through collective political action. Christopher Leslie Brown's book *Moral Capital* argues that this shift came about as a result of the American War for Independence. For both Britons and their settler colonies, the ideas and traditions of English freedom, fought for and won in the seventeenth century, were central to their identity. These were people who spoke about and cared deeply for freedom, though it might not always be clear precisely what that meant: the right to own property, to engage in business, to write or speak freely, to be subject to laws that were responsible and fair, and so on. Certainly *not being a slave* was a major element in the definition of freedom, though one rarely articulated literally. We can see this deep valuation of freedom in the American and British discourse about the colonial crisis and resulting war. Americans charged King George with \"enslaving them,\" denying them their \"independence,\" their ability to determine their own fate by expressing themselves in political determination. One way to read something like the Declaration of Independence is to say that the Americans were accusing the English of *not being English enough*, of rejecting their own ancient traditions of English freedom. This stung Britons pretty deeply; they did, after all, believe in the value of parliamentary representation and it was pretty obvious that it was being denied to the American colonies. They responded by charging the Americans with being *actual* slave-holders, as many of them were. Slavery had been difficult in the Archipelago (Britain, Ireland, and nearby islands), if not technically illegal, since the Somerset case in 1772. That case said that enslaved Africans could not be sent back to the colonies against their will once they had come to Britain and at the very least it meant that the unrestricted chattel slavery practiced in the Americas could not be done in Britain. So, Britons could respond to American claims that George was enslaving them by calling light to their hypocrisy: how could Americans go on and on about how bad it was to be enslaved when they were literally enslaving thousands and thousands of Africans?\n\nFollowing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, there was a bit of soul-searching in Britain. The American colonies had been valuable possessions, sure, but they were also *Englishmen* who had rebelled. Setting aside economics, it was a profound blow that the great English-speaking realm spanning the Atlantic had been torn asunder. Britons, not surprisingly, responded with a sort of cultural retrenchment: they needed to figure out what it meant to be British, and one way was to reassert their commitment to freedom. And, how better to do that than to attack the opposite of freedom, slavery. Unfortunately, at that point, slavery itself was so widespread and so deeply entrenched that a direct attack on it was impossible. Slaves were property, after all, and outright abolition would (and eventually did) mean actually buying the freedom of many people. Simply emancipating all the slaves in the empire would mean either violating the property rights of slaveowners or an enormous outlay of funds. As such, in the late 18th century, it was a bit too far.\n\nThe slave *trade*, on the other hand, offered a real thing that could actually be stopped. It would require enforcement, but that could be done and would likely have beneficial effects in that the Royal Navy was interdicting French and Spanish shipping in the late 18th and early 19th century as a result of war, so stopping the slave trade would hurt Britain's enemies economically. Most important, though, is that attacking the slave trade gave Britons a chance to reassert their identity as free people and as people who sought the freedom of others. This spoke, Brown argues, directly to the crisis of British imperial identity after 1783, and arguably also to the claims of Revolutionary France as a true light of freedom. Beginning in the 1780s, and gaining strength through the 1790s and early 1800s, Britons carried out one of the earliest social movements in their campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. There were boycotts of slave-grown sugar, massive letter-writing campaigns, anti-slavery societies, and so on. And while the actual voting population of Britain was fairly small (say, 10%), they did exert enough political and cultural pressure that Parliament responded by banning the slave trade in 1807. The abolition of slavery itself had to wait for the rise of classical Liberalism, greater growth of the industrial North, and the expansion of the franchise in the Reform Bill of 1832; immediately following that, Parliament ~~abolished slavery in the British empire in 1833.~~ see /u/sowser's excellent corrections and elaborations below, they are important follow-ups to this answer.\n\nSo, as you can see, there are various and multi-layered motivations here. Britons certainly saw it as the right thing to do, so it was virtuous in that sense. But it also benefitted them because it gave them a way to assert their identity as free people, and that's a powerful thing. Does it count as an \"ulterior motive\"? I'd say not, because I suspect most Britons involved the abolition movement both before 1807 and after were genuine. But it's also important to recognize where our cultural ideas come from, and how they have political salience. \n\n", "In the book listed below, James Epstein argues that a famous and sensationalist trial in 1806 London of a the rogue colonial leader of Trinidad who tortures a free mulatto girl led to the abolishing of the slave trade (note: not slavery just slave trade) in 1807. \n\nThe trial was all over the papers and played to gothic themes that were popular at the times of a poor helpless girl kept in a dungeon and tortured. The trial brought a lot of attention to how the colonies were run and the brutalities that occured.\n\nThe trial was \n\nSource: The Scandal of Colonial Rule, James Epstein\n\nCan't recommend this book enough. It reads almost like a novel but with sources. It covers one of the most sensational trials of early 19th century England (where the trial took place) and played an important part in ending slavery in the British Empire. Here is a synopsis.\n\nIn 1806 General Thomas Picton, Britain's first governor of Trinidad, was brought to trial for the torture of a free mulatto named Louisa Calderon and for overseeing a regime of terror over the island's slave population. James Epstein offers a fascinating account of the unfolding of this colonial drama. He shows the ways in which the trial and its investigation brought empire 'home' and exposed the disjuncture between a national self-image of humane governance and the brutal realities of colonial rule. He uses the trial to open up a range of issues, including colonial violence and norms of justice, the status of the British subject, imperial careering, visions of development after slavery, slave conspiracy and the colonial archive. He reveals how Britain's imperial regime became more authoritarian, hierarchical and militarised but also how unease about abuses of power and of the rights of colonial subjects began to grow.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctk082u", "ctk2mj8" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "ELI5-style:\n\nTorque is the ability to pick up a 500-lb weight.\n\nHorsepower is the ability to pick up 5 100-lb weights in the same amount of time.\n\nWay over-simplified, but that's the idea. Race Cars tend to be high-horsepower, but not so much torque, because Speed Kills (the competition). On the other hand, on short tracks, high-torque engines can be a good thing, because they can accelerate the car, especially at low speeds and out of tight corners.", "HP = ( Torque x RPM ) 5252\n\nWhere Torque is measured in Lb-Ft.\n\nPower is what actually does *work*, and Torque is just one component of Power, the other being rate (RPM in this case).\n\nAn engine that makes 1000 lb-ft of torque at 1000 RPM = 190 HP at 1000 RPM.\n\nAn engine that makes 250 lb-ft of torque at 5000 RPM = 238 HP at 5000 RPM.\n\nAdding a 1:5 reduction gear to the second engine drops it's output speed from 5000 RPM to 1000 RPM and multiplies its torque by 5 to 1250 lb-ft.\n\nSo with proper gearing, the engine with more power can out-torque the less powerful but more torquey engine. The trade off is that you have to run the engine at a higher speed which increases wear and friction.\n\nIn your example, the 300 HP engine is capable of producing an output of 50% more torque than the 200 HP engine *with proper gearing*.\n\nNote that peak torque and peak power are achieved at different engine speeds." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d8uu0d9", "d8uu1iq", "d8uu6fa" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "those prices are so small that increasing them with small increments would be useless. I will explain with something from my country (Turkey). In here, the smallest capacity bottled water has being sold for 0.5 try for so long that even our republic would be younger from it. We have approximately 0.08 inflation and if they increase the price, it would be 0.54 try. I would rather have small amount of freakingly small exchanges (0.01 try, 0.10 try etc) than buy a bottle of water that is priced 0.54, but if it were a good 0.50, I would both end my thrist and have less coins in my pocket.\n\nI think that, they take note of that little increments, keep a balance between them and lowered costs due to technological improvements (producing plastic bottle -should be- cheaper than producing it in 1996) and when there is enough unbalance occur, they make a high price jump to the next round value such as selling a bottle of water for 0.75.", "If you see that the inflation is, say, 5%, that doesn't mean it's the same among all goods. Instead it's average: plastics cost went up by 1%, furs by 9%, we have 5% inflation. There are things whose costs affect most goods - like price of gas, and there also might be regulations on price of some special goods. But as you see inflation might not necessarily apply to costs of every category of goods.\n\nAlso the cost of materials can be just a fraction of the whole price, most being marketing, transportation and packaging, then inflation affects the price even less.", "Well first of all, inflation has been pretty slow in the US for the last decade, ~1-2% per year. So if you're only looking at a period of a few months, it's not likely you'll see a difference. Even in the space of a few years, you might not see an appreciable change.\n\nSome things stay the same price because, as inflation occurs, other improvements make the item cheaper, and the two cancel each other out. For example, if I built a new Little Debbie factory that was closer to your town and started pumping out candy bars, it would cost less to transport the bars to your store. Or maybe I buy a new machine that makes candy bars faster, so I can make more in the same amount of time. Or maybe the slowing demand for refined sugar results in an overall drop in the price of that ingredient, which offsets the higher cost of the others.\n\nOther times, companies get sneaky. They may put those candy bars in the same package, but they make the bars just a tiny bit smaller where you won't notice the difference. Maybe the lighters look the same, but they have a little less fuel in them, or they use a lower-quality plastic that makes them more likely to break. Perhaps they outsourced the manufacture of those tools to China where the labor is cheaper in order to make up the difference." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "egyrjii", "egyrk4s", "egysa78" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There is a 100% probability that you will in fact die to some cause that is in itself improbable when compared to all possible causes.", "Unlikely you'd even find projections of all the low probabilities. It would be more efficient, in any case, to aggregate the most common causes of death, and the difference would be the group you're looking for. ", "\"Chances of dying\" are really \"how often does someone die from this.\" I'm assuming that these numbers usually mean \"what percentage of cause-of-death, within a given time frame and for a set population, is this cause.\" In other words, if you look at 750 million people deaths, then one of them will be on a rollercoaster, 3 of them will be from a coconut, around 1,000 will be from lightning...\n\nEven if you add up the most common 500 weird deaths, you're still only gonna get to maybe 150,000 to 200,000 deaths out of your pool of 750,000,000, meaning that those 500 different weird deaths have a 1 in 4,000 chance of happening. Not very high, particularly when you consider that the pool includes so many different methods of exit." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cv8ovso", "cv8qsnl" ], "score": [ 17, 10 ], "text": [ "The speed of gravity -- say, as measured by the speed of gravitational waves -- is the same as the speed of light. The best paper on this is one by [Carlip](_URL_0_).", " > how the velocity of the event horizon is so fast nothing, not even light can escape. \n\nThis doesn't make any sense. The event horizon doesn't have \"a velocity\".\n\nThe fact that light can't escape has nothing to do with anything traveling faster / slower than something else, but rather because the curvature of space is such that NO PATH inside the event horizon points anywhere except the center.\n\nYou seem to think that if you were inside of the even horizon, you could point yourself in a direction OUT of the event horizon and simply travel fast enough to make it.... this is not the case. You could travel as fast as you want, even traveling faster than the speed of light, and it wouldn't make any difference, because there is literally no direction that points out, space is too curved back in on itself for that.*\n\nAs other poster mentioned, gravity doesn't \"travel\". **changes** in gravity travel at the speed of light, just like all massless particles. \n\n\\* *(note: I'm speaking of spatial velocity, as if you could go faster than light... in SR that would actually also mean traveling back in time.... we are ignoring that part for this simplification)*.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9909087" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8e0vhe" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "[\"Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: \"How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done.\" He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he \"would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss.\" \nWith Moody's encouragement, Lady Hope's story was printed in the Boston Watchman Examiner. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the Reformation Review and in the Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. \"I was present at his deathbed,\" she wrote in the Christian for February 23, 1922. \"Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever.\" (Ellipsis is in the book)\"](_URL_0_)\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hope.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgampm9", "cgankiy" ], "score": [ 3, 40 ], "text": [ "Cisgender is when the stuff down there matches what's going on in your head. Transgender is when the stuff down there is the opposite of what you think you should be. Intersex is when you're kinda neither", "Cisgender is what most people are. Their physical sex, and gender identity are mostly in sync, so they feel 'normal' with themselves for the most part.\n\nTransgender -as can be assumed by the prefix 'trans' being the opposite of the prefix 'cis', is the exact opposite. Their physical sex does not match how their gender identity, so they feel like they're in the wrong body. This is a depressing, often dysphoric situation for most transgender folks, and modern society's view on transgenderism as a mental illness comes with a lot of stigma. \n\nThen, there are things like genderfluidity, being genderqueer, and being agendered. Things things, as their names suggest; someone whose mental gender identity has a tendency to shift between one and the other; someone whose gender identity does not conform with either male or female, and don't really have a specific category; and someone who don't identify with any gender whatsoever.\n\nBeing intersex is a completely different issue to being transgender... sort of.\nA person is intersex when their visible, physical sex is not one of the two 'typical' sexes. This is the case in individuals born with atypical genitalia, hermaphroditic(both sexes) genital expression, or in some human chimeras (individuals who are the result of a merging of twin embryos very early on in development).\n\nAll of these things are separate from sexual orientation, and should not be treated as one and the same." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9f0x1s", "c9f21ok" ], "score": [ 2, 7 ], "text": [ "Oops! Forgot to add \"ELI5\" in the title, sorry :(", "They splice it into the reel. Basically that's how editing was done back then. \n\nYou would have someone look each frame. The editor would then cut the reel in between the frames where you want to add something, then stick the added footage into that reel and finally reattach the rest onto the end of the added frames. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dne6b2g" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not a death sentence, and often a coveted honour. Our notion of the lethality of these engagements is mostly derived from movies sensationalising what happens in pitched battle. I wrote about this in more detail [here](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48pumt/did_the_people_in_the_front_lines_of_ancient/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwbm0bz" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "All depends on who you are and what mode of philosophy you follow, really! But that would be a cruel answer, so let's go ahead and look into some of it. I've been reading quite a bit of Seneca lately, and he offers some wonderful opinions on the matter.\n\nSome quick background on Seneca before we start - if you want to get straight through to the actual \"thoughts on death thing,\" feel free to skip this paragraph! He was a Stoic philosopher who's moderately well known today (I've seen some cherry picked quotes of his on Facebook and such) due to his letters - many of which we still have today. In these letters to his friend (Lucilius), he grouches a lot, but has some really fantastic discussions that give a glimpse into daily life and thought in the Roman world. Seneca himself was pretty high on the Roman food chain - he was Nero's tutor, and helped govern the Empire while Nero was still young. Nero eventually killed him, though, so there's that. Anywho - on to Stoic philosophical thought about death.\n\nA couple of letters that essentially encapsulate this entire question are his 21st letter to Lucilius - on \"creating a lasting monument\" - and his 24th- on \"despising death.\" In the former letter, he writes about how people are so easily forgotten after their deaths. In the latter, he discusses not only the wider view of death, but also his own and why he thinks that the wider view of death is bullshit. [I'll start with letter 21,](_URL_0_) particularly this passage (Note - these translations are not quite beautiful, but they get the point across pretty nicely): \n\n > Allow me to mention the case of Epicurus. He was writing to Idomeneus and trying to recall him from a showy existence to sure and steadfast renown. Idomeneus was at that time a minister of state who exercised a rigorous authority and had important affairs in hand. \"If,\" said Epicurus, \"you are attracted by fame, my letters will make you more renowned than all the things which you cherish and which make you cherished.\" Did Epicurus speak falsely? Who would have known of Idomeneus, had not the philosopher thus engraved his name in those letters of his? All the grandees and satraps, even the king himself, who was petitioned for the title which Idomeneus sought, are sunk in deep oblivion. Cicero's letters keep the name of Atticus from perishing. It would have profited Atticus nothing to have an Agrippa for a son-in-law, a Tiberius for the husband of his grand-daughter, and a Drusus Caesar for a great-grandson; amid these mighty names his name would never be spoken, had not Cicero bound him to himself. The deep flood of time will roll over us; some few great men will raise their heads above it, and, though destined at the last to depart into the same realms of silence, will battle against oblivion and maintain their ground for long. \n\nAgain, while this one doesn't directly address death, I thought it fit in rather nicely with the wider idea of \"being remembered.\" Essentially, as he notes, there are many people who would be utterly forgotten by the sands of time if not for some few being saved by being included in letters. He uses the example of Atticus; another easy example is that of Lucilius himself, of whom we know only what Seneca wrote. In the letter, however, he notes one of the most truly notable things about death: Those things which each man leaves behind, and how men who are remembered are essentially immortal.\n\nAnywho, next letter, which addresses things a bit more directly! I can't quote this one, because it's just that long (it's slightly over the 10k character limit in itself, which is a pain in the rear - if you want me to quote it in a later comment, I'll be happy to), but I really encourage you to read the whole thing. It's incredibly beautiful and I won't be able to do it justice through my writing here, but hey, I'll give you a vague idea. [Letter 24, same disclaimer on the translation.](_URL_1_)\n\nThere are varying degrees on which a person may consider death, which hold true to the modern day as much as they did 2000 years ago. Then, as now, most people feared death - yet, in a truly Roman fashion, they looked up to those who embraced death, rather than allow themselves to be dishonoured. Embracing death isn't necessarily about a person being suicidal - it was about a man who had the option to live in disgrace, but rather chose the path of death. Seneca lived in the First Century CE - these letters were written during his retirement, between 62-65 CE. One of his favourite notes describing this is described in this passage from the aforementioned letter: \n\n > \"Oh,\" say you, \"those stories have been droned to death in all the schools; pretty soon, when you reach the topic 'On Despising Death,' you will be telling me about Cato.\" But why should I not tell you about Cato, how he read Plato's book on that last glorious night, with a sword laid at his pillow? He had provided these two requisites for his last moments, - the first, that he might have the will to die, and the second, that be might have the means. So he put his affairs in order, - as well as one could put in order that which was ruined and near its end, - and thought that he ought to see to it that no one should have the power to slay or the good fortune to save/c Cato. Drawing the sword, - which he had kept unstained from all bloodshed against the final day, he cried: \"Fortune, you have accomplished nothing by resisting all my endeavours. I have fought, till \nnow, for my country's freedom, and not for my own, I did not strive so doggedly to be free, but only to live among the free. Now, since the affairs of mankind are beyond hope, let Cato be withdrawn to safety.\" So saying, he inflicted a mortal wound upon his body. After the physicians had bound it up, Cato had less blood and less strength, but no less courage; angered now not only at Caesar but also at himself, he rallied his unarmed hands against his wound, and expelled, rather than dismissed, that noble soul which had been so defiant of all worldly power. \n\nYeah, he was plenty snarky :D That's the kind of thing that the Romans admired, though, when it came to despising death. Seneca straight out says that, although a man shouldn't fear death...\n\n > The grave and wise man should not beat a hasty retreat from life; he should make a becoming exit. And above all, he should avoid the weakness which has taken possession of so many, - the lust for death. For just as there is an unreflecting tendency of the mind towards other things, so, my dear Lucilius, there is an unreflecting tendency towards death; this often seizes upon the noblest and most spirited men, as well as upon the craven and the abject. The former despise life; the latter find it irksome. \n\nSelf explanatory :) Hope that answered your question! Feel free to read through the letters themselves - not only are they super quotable, but they're absolutely *fascinating* reads. Feel free to ask if you have any more!" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#‘XXI1", "http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#‘XXIV1" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca147vw", "ca183wq" ], "score": [ 13, 2 ], "text": [ "I seem to recall reading a recent article that suggests Dark Flow was just a mistake in the data. I will look for said article.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPoints out errors in article that postulated the concept of Dark Flow\n\nNatGeo has a reprinting of the article\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n\nThe answer the ELI5\n\nDark Flow is an idea that came about because of the apparently velocity (direction and magnitude) of a group of galaxies was \"flowing\" in. It looked like there was something beyond the light veil (not a real world, but descriptive enough, the distance where light wouldn't have had enough time to reach us) or possibly beyond the outside of our universe that was somehow affecting this matter gravitationally. If either version of gravitational attraction where true (different universe, or just a beyond the horizon/veil universe,) it would have lots of implications for our understanding of the cosmos. We really need to find a word to describe everything that ever was, or will be discovered. We tried with universe I guess. :P\n\nAs stated with above links, it appears to be just an error in data and an error in conclusions.", " > Is our universe being sucked out into another vacuum?\n\nNah, I think it's more like a lazy river. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/dark-flow-errors.html", "http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120120-dark-flow-universe-multiverse-supernovas-space-science/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1g8qvi" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "It's difficult to comment on the accuracy of a work that runs to 10,000+ pages. I've only read (part of) *The Age of Faith*. It's very out of date. He's not a specialist in what he's writing about. He really likes pithy lines of analysis that seem archaic to me even for someone writing in 1950. And it's about as Eurocentric as you would expect for a series entitled *The Story of Civilization* the final six books of which only mention the rest of the world in passing, if at all.\n\nHe's a great writer, but I wouldn't read it for \"accuracy\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f2k5ueo", "f2k7qrd" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The oath is more of a symbol than anything else. It is in no way a binding contract with whoever. In addition to any legitimate reason a doctor would not treat a patient, don't forget they are humans, and maybe not nice humans", "First, many doctors don't swear a Hippocratic Oath. Some schools require different oaths, which may be modified Hippocratic Oaths, the original Hippocratic Oath, the Oath of Maimonidies, the Declaration of Geneva, or some other professional oath or covenant. \n\nIn most of them, you'll find a line that says something like \"either help or do not harm the patient\". You'll also find lines like \"look after yourself, too\" and \"remember that there are other doctors who might be more experienced or specialized for a given case\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6by3iw", "c6c403u" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "This gets asked every so often, but the best short answer is that water is a good conductor, but not a great one. If water was a great conductor, we wouldn't need power lines. We could run the electricity through the water pipes. This means that the lightening that hits a lake doesn't spread out that far and aims for ground kind of quickly. ", "There has to be a high concentration of ions for a liquid to be a good conductor. Since the lake is a freshwater body, it's not a great conductor.\n\nSource : Chemistry 11" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d57b2ea" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The plate armour was combined with traditional (read: pre-Western contact) Japanese armour styles to better protect the wearer from musket balls and other various related firings. I talk about armour development in Japan [here](_URL_1_), with this relevant line:\n\n > Their armour was more to deal with arrows loosed from bows and spears, and later on against musket balls, [...] It's worth noting that, upon contact with the west and the advent and adoption of firearms, [Japanese] smiths developed armour to better stop musket balls. A good idea of how this was implemented is seen in nanban gusoku ^[[link](_URL_0_)], where you can see how a combination of the strong metal plate seen in Western armour is integrated with more traditional style armouring in the limb guards.\n\nSo yes, some did wear this plate armour - as to their effectiveness, it depends on what you're comparing it to. To prior-Western contact armours, or against what weaponry, for example." ] }

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[ [ "http://old.vcm.asemus.museum/uploads/images/VO_5258_11.JPG", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3asgc6/during_the_middle_ages_how_did_the_armor_of/csfqs0e?st=iqhbkv66&sh=591c47ae" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck0pbgy", "ck0pi8i" ], "score": [ 7, 5 ], "text": [ "Yep. It's may be difficult to realize, but radio waves have identical properties to visible light. This is because they are both forms of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves travel at the speed of light and do not deteriorate in space. In the same way that you can see the light from the sun 300,000,000 miles away, radio waves can travel that far too. Sending radio waves back in certain patterns allows us to discern massive amounts of information from the original message.", "Yes, via radio. Rosetta and other deep space probes talk to [NASA's Deep Space Network](_URL_0_). The antennas in the DSN are approximately 120 degrees apart on Earth so that at least one is in the right position of receiving a signal." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f7n6304" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "So what I think you're getting at is that it seems in the fragmented political and judicial landscape of post-Roman Europe, it would be very difficult to safely move revenues collected from one place to another.\n\nAnd you know what? You're absolutely right. It was incredibly difficult.\n\nThe Roman Empire, for all its provincial specificities, was a largely coherent economic area which would not be matched in Europe until the european integration process began in the wake of the Second World War. In the period in between these two very distant moments of unity, european political organizations were very fragmented. I'm going to first examine aristocratic landholding in Europe between more or less the sixth and tenth centuries (a world which I am more or less familiar with) and in a sort of addendum compare this to the very different kind world which the Roman Senatorial Class existed in (a world which I'm less familiar with). \n\nWhile modern scholarship rejects notions of Rome's catastrophic downfall and instead prefers to examine continuity in many institutions after the Empire's end (and many of my own answers on this sub insist on this) it is important to keep in mind that these continuities were not uniform. In different parts of the former Empire, the governing classes preserved different elements of Roman institutions as they adapted to the needs of their own part of the continent. So the story of the post-Roman transformation is, somewhat surprisingly, both a story of preservation and radical change. And one of the most radical of changes was the inability of landowners to diversify the lands they owned. \n\nFar-flung estate ownership declined rapidly as the Empire unraveled in the fifth and sixth centuries, with the last holdouts (predictably) among what was left of the old senatorial aristocracy in Central Italy, who might be expected to hold estates as far as Sicily in the first half of the sixth century. They too, however, would retrench into more regional holdings as war pitting the Eastern Empire against the Italian Kingdom ravaged the peninsula midway through the 500s. Setting aside the Eastern Empire (where political dynasties could be expected to own land in or near Constantinople in addition to their region of origin) far-flung absentee land ownership became entirely anomalous, only ever practiced exclusively by one or two of the most anomalously wealthy dynasties in a given kingdom. In Italy especially, but also in the urbanized portions of Gaul and Germania, the disappearance of a large governmental superstructure pushed political and social leadership towards local political organizations centered in cities, and as a consequence saw it both desirable and necessary to localize their landholdings. This was, in many respects, part of a broader transformation that would permeate to their very identity of what it meant to be aristocratic in Europe. Indeed, by the eight century it is impossible to trace the lineage of nearly all the most prominent political dynasties in Europe, and yet they can be found exerting their rights and privileges in urban councils much like their Roman forefathers did four centuries earlier. Land localization was as technique which allowed them to adapt to the new political landscape. \n\nLand was wealth and wealth was land, this much is true of any pre-industrial society. But Post-Roman Western Europe is interesting in that land also featured as a building block of state organization. For as much as we can lament the incorrect use of the word \"Feudalism,\" and as much as we dislike the idealized hierarchy of feudal ownership, it is undeniable that the Post-Roman period saw a shift away from the politics of taxation and towards the politics of land. Of course, this was never a total shift, nor was land ownership itself unknown or irrelevant in Ancient Rome: medieval monarchs could and did still raise taxes, just as Roman Aristocrats relied on their land to generate the income they spent in politics. But in the medieval period land ownership takes on a dimension of responsibility and privilege unknown in the Roman period, and this encouraged retrenchment and direct management of estates, discouraging absenteeism. This was only strengthened by administrative officials of the state, such as they could be said to exist, who could no longer rely on taxes as the Roman Proconsuls did in their Provinces; instead they would be asked to rely on whatever they could commandeer from local landowners as well as whatever lands was given directly to them, thus creating a space for the generation of local power bases that they could use to threaten the very political system that appointed them in the first place. If we know nothing of the medieval period, is is that it was very unstable. \n\nWhile I am a medievalist and as such will spend fewer words on the Roman Empire, a comparison might still be worthwhile. Indeed, it wouldn't be accurate to, as I perhaps have done with my choice of wording above, depict the Roman Empire as the complete opposite of whatever system existed in the period that followed its collapse. \n\nWhile the Roman period saw both many raw materials and finished goods transit from one end of the Mediterranean to another (mostly consisting of grain the government needed to feed its legions as well as the urban grain dole, with a much smaller but still non-negligible quantity of goods also moved around by individual merchants for sale in the marketplace) there were still factors that discouraged Roman Senators from purchasing estates just anywhere. In fact, the favored regions for senatorial investment were Southern Italy, Sicily, and the Province of Africa (referring to the region around Carthage, that is to say much of modern Tunisia). While there were certainly Roman aristocratic dynasties that also held estates in other parts of the Empire, it was Southern Italy, Sicily, and Africa that consistently housed the core of all the greatest dynasties' landowning portfolios. \n\nWe have little information on the specific mechanics by which wealthy Romans collected their agricultural wealth, there are some clear characteristics of the regions where they preferred to invest that we can examine: Southern Italy, Sicily, and Africa are all located on a straight geographic axis, making it easy to move people and resources between them; they were also heavily romanized, with well-established institutions upholding Roman laws (and Senatorial privileges); and of course it didn't hurt that they were very fertile regions. Thus the clan-like nature of the Roman senatorial dynasties meant that trusted family members could be counted on to oversee these estates without griping about being too far from the capital, so the *Pater Familias* could trust that wealth generated on these estates could safely stay on the estate itself. Locating estates in highly romanized regions also meant that wealth kept locally could be used to purchase many of the same material luxuries that would be available in Rome. Lastly, good political connections meant that the Senatorial class could easily enter contracts to deliver grain to the dole or to the legions, allowing them to collect payments while staying in the capital. The enormous consumption of goods and raw materials in Rome itself also meant that much of what was produced in a faraway estate could be converted into cash by transporting it to a Roman marketplace, and thus closely overseeing its liquidation. While no method was foolproof, and many goods could certainly be stolen or lost, extensive estate ownership was expressly thought out to compensate: revenues lost in some place would be compensated up by revenues generated somewhere else. \n\nMy main source for all that I have posted is Chris Wickham's \"Framing the Early Middle Ages,\" which is not only an immense work of comparative history on the four hundred years after the fall of the Western Empire in Europe, but also does a great job of examining the conditions preceding the Empire's transformation. Regarding estate holding in the Roman period, Wickham cites \"Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364-425\" by John Matthews, in addition to two works by French historians, one published in Italian by François Jacques titled \"L'ordine senatorio attraverso la crisi del III secolo,\" and another (in French) by Mireille Corbier on Proconsular Africa titled, \"Les familles clarissimes d'Afrique Proconsulaire.\" \n\nRegarding instead Late Roman and Early Medieval landholding, Wickham points to \"Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy, c. A.D. 400–700\" by S. J. B. Barnish, and \"The Later Roman Empire, 284-602\" by A. H. M. Jones. Another source cited of which I am partial to (and clearly biased towards) is the Italian Francesco Marazzi's \"Il conflitto fra Leone III Isaurico e il papato e il \"definitivo\" inizio del Medioevo a Roma.\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e60h841", "e60heix", "e60ickw", "e60ihy9", "e60o3gl" ], "score": [ 3, 4, 2, 2, 9 ], "text": [ "Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but under the new parliamentary rules simple criticisms of the Israeli state. For example \"Israel should open dialogue with the PLO as opposed to fighting with them\" is now considered as anti-semitism.\nSo I don't think there is any evidence of Corbyn being anti-semetic in the old fashioned way. Just his past criticisms of Israel are regarded as anti-semetic, now. ", "From tabloid headlines I've only seen \"Jewish x accuses corbyn of antisenitism\" or \"y member of the antisimetic Labour Party...\" so I would be very surprised if it wasn't just tabloids being tabloids. If they had quotes they would be there on the front page as well. ", "I believe some of it was because of the labour party didn't accept the examples used in the International holocaust remembrance alience's, definition of anti-semitism. Which because of its wide adoption by a number of different countries, UK councils, and the crown prosecution service, it is the go to definition of antisemitism. \n\nI think another cause for this, is their reluctance to investigate, or make any changes after complaints are made about individuals within their party. The latest being a number of formal complaints being made against Corbyn himself, I don't what the claims made are, but Labour do seem to be refusing to investigate their own leader. \n\nIf I remember correctly this all kicked off a few years ago, when the daily stormer (an alt right/ white supremacist/ neo nazi website, whatever you wanna call it) started writing articles about how Jeremy Corbyn was one of them.\n\n\nThis is all coming from memory, so sorry if any information is wrong. ", "His criticism of Israel and inappropriate friendliness to Hamas are not the reasons why I'd considered him anti-Semitic.\n\n\nThis, however, explains why his comments are anti-Semitic:\n\n > When he implies that, however long they have lived here, Jews are not fully British, he is using the language of classic pre-war European anti-Semitism. \n\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "A very good question! \n\nEvidence: \nThe overwhelming majority of the media focus here is on people *accusing* Labour of antisemitism. There is very little evidence of Labour peers making antisemitic statements. Most of the so-called evidence is from the media focusing on a few events and twisting the narrative to suit their agenda. Here are a few of them: \n\nKen Livingston got in trouble a few years ago for talking about Hitler working with Zionism to encourage Jews to leave pre-war Nazi Germany, which actually happened and is evidenced in the [Haavara Agreement](_URL_0_). Ken ended up being expelled from the party. \n\nJeremy did lay a wreath back in 2014 for the Palestinian victims of a Israli air strike in 1985. The memorial was very close to another memorial for some genuine Hamas terrorists who killed innocent Israeli civilians in 1972. The media conflated this as Corbyn laying the wreath for the terrorists, which isn't accurate. The BBC goes into some detail about this [here](_URL_1_). \n\nUnder the barrage of antisemitism accusations, Labour re-wrote its party rules on antisemitic speech. They used the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism as the basis. The IHRA does include some problematic definitions which confuses legitimate criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitism. Labour tried to re-word some of these definitions to allow legitimate criticism of the government. The media were very quick to hold this up as further evidence of antisemitism. \n\nIs this conservative tabloid manipulation tactics?\n\nYes. It absolutely is. \n\nIt seizes of the fact that Corbyn has been very critical of the government of Israel. Criticism of the actions of any government is essential for democracy, however Israel has the unique advantage of being able to deflect criticism with accusations of racism; a tactic it, and its supporters, use regularly. \n\nLabour has been very reluctant to make the correct argument here - that criticizing the government is not racism. They are probably fearful that the media would further twist that into more accusations of antisemitism. \n\nThe reason this is all happening at the moment is because of the current state of UK politics. The Conservative party is incredibly divided and weakened because of Brexit. Its been in a position where it could fall at any moment, triggering a general election. The Conservatives and their media supporters have been throwing the antisemitism issue at Labour to force Labour to focus on that, and not Brexit. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-uk-chief-rabbi-lord-sacks-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-dangerous-anti-semite/" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement", "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45196409" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9f1gl5", "c9f7dzm" ], "score": [ 16, 2 ], "text": [ " War reenactment (specifically American Civil War reenactment) began when veterans of the actual war wanted to remember their fallen comrades and teach what the war was all about. Since then, it has become a popular hobby among many different ages.\n\nThere are a few different types of reenactors. Some are more casual, spending little time/money on being realistic and authentic, and some dedicate themselves to the hobby, immersing themselves in the culture, eating the food of the time, dressing accordingly, etc.\n\nThere are also some different types of reenactments. Some are put on by reenactors for the sole purpose of teaching others about what the war was like. Some are scripted, with participants knowing where they will go, when they will die, etc. Sometimes, hardcore reenactors hold \"total immersion\" events, where the participants are expected to hold a high level of realism.\n\nThe outcome of the reenactment depends on what battle is being played out. It isn't like paintball or airsoft, where the opposing parties try to eliminate each other using teamwork and tactics. These reenactors simply try to live out what the battle was like.\n\nSometimes, certain reenactors are designated as famous historical figures (Gen. Robert E. Lee, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, etc.), and other times people will simply try to act out what it was like to be a soldier or civilian in these times. Hope this answered your questions.", "If you are interesting in re-enactors (again American Civil War), I would recommend Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. It's really enjoyable. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ev0turl", "ev0tycw", "ev14iag", "ev14kcv", "ev14vza", "ev1ab25", "ev2d97k", "ev2ded1", "ev2jkou" ], "score": [ 5481, 480, 56, 750, 18, 19, 3, 6, 8 ], "text": [ "[_URL_1_](_URL_3_)\n\n[_URL_4_](_URL_4_)\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_2_)\n\nAs part of the depressurisation cycle the ISS quest airlocks use pumps to pump air from the airlock back into the station. The pumps reduce air pressure inside the airlock to 5 psi (34 kPa), 1/3 of that in the station.\n\nThis reduced pressure is used to test the EVA suits for leaks. The remaining air is vented to space prior to opening the airlock.\n\nIdeally you'd want to pump all the air from the airlock into the station, however it is extraordinarily difficult to pump a vacuum to the point where it's just easier and cheaper to ship extra atmospheric gas up to the ISS than try to build, launch, operate and maintain a set of pumps capable of producing a near vacuum.\n\nEdit:\n\nMy description of the procedure isn't correct. See u/ninelives1 post below.", "Small correction for the other comments here. They are mostly correct, except you won’t have any kind of dramatic decompression for any leaks.\n\nSpace has 0 atmospheres of pressure. Sea level has 1 atmosphere of pressure. It’s not like Alien where you’ll get sucked through a tiny hole.\n\nIt will be a light breeze.", "The modern moon rover has an innovative system called a 'suit port', which greatly reduces air losses when transitioning in and out of the vehicle:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe astronaut slips into the suit from the inside of the rover via a door built into the backpack, then a pair of seals close: one attached to the suit and one hinged on the interior of the rover. This reduces the amount of contaminants that get in and the amount of air that gets out and eliminates the need for an airlock, which is quite bulky.", "Hey, so my (eventual) job is to actually assist in this process via ground commanding. I even had a sim where I had to do this just a couple weeks ago.\n\nThere are 2 segments to the airlock. The crew lock and the equipment lock. The equipment lock is a large drum shape and (nominally) is not depressurized. The crew lock is where the 2 EV (extravehicular) crew members go in their space suits for the depress. They close the IV hatch (between crew lock and equipment lock) and then the depress pump starts pumping air from the crew lock, back into the whole stack. This is easier for the pump at first, but it eventually slows down. At 5.0psi, the pump is stopped to do a leak check. Basically they see if there's a leak across the IV hatch which would be recognized by an increase in pressure in the crew lock. Once the leak check is passed, the depress pump resumes, but this time, a vent to space is initiated to assist the depress rate. You will start losing consumables at this point, but not all of it. At 2.0 psi, the depress pump is stopped entirely and the rest is vented out. At 0.5 psi, the EV hatch (to space) can be opened and the EVA can begin! \n\nSo tldr, we try to recover most of the atmosphere, but not all of it for practicality and time reasons.", "There was a fascinating piece in the [13 Minutes to the Moon Podcast](_URL_0_), that said that the astronauts on Apollo 11 hadn't equalised the pressure between the Lunar Landing Module and the Command Module then they decoupled, resulting in a 'champagne cork *pop*' sending them off faster than planned and ending in the LLM landing off course. I presume that left them with less air overall?", "Yes, normal air lock design wastes some air. Before opening the outer door, the lock would be pumped down to *near* vacuum, but not 100%, because that would be expensive and time-consuming, and not really required. This presumes that the air pumped out is returned to the supply system, and not merely vented to the outside.\n\nHowever, *any* opening in a vacuum vessel--such as an air lock--leaks just as a matter of course, just sitting there. Not enough to worry about if it's properly-designed, but not zero either. The ISS has many leaks, but they don't add up to enough to worry about. Even minuscule leaks would become a serious issue--possibly a show-stopper--on a manned interstellar voyage lasting hundreds or thousands of years.\n\nAnd this is also another reason why no people are going to be allowed to go to Mars for a long, long time. Humans cannot be allowed to contaminate Mars until the possibility of indigenous life has been **thoroughly** studied. Indeed, it is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.\n\nA human habitat just sitting on Mars will be a contamination machine, even with nobody going outside. If people DO go outside, the contamination will jump by many orders of magnitude. And there's not a goddam thing you can do about that. Sorry, Elon.", "The air locks on Shuttle dumped “air” overboard so yes you can use it too much. \nThe airlock was depressurized by astronauts in the air lock. This was a. Improvement over Apollo. \nISS is an improvement over Shuttle. The Quest airlock has Airsave compressors to try to save some air but you still vent a little bit.", "When astronauts are in the airlock for their spacewalk, they’re in their suits attached to the main air system. They pump the air back into the actual station to conserve oxygen before the doors open. If there was oxygen, they would be sucked out into the vacuum of space when the doors open. They have to purge the air from the airlock before they open the doors otherwise they’d risk damage to the suit/person/station", "Air locks have pumps so that they can be emptied or filled with air to match the pressure on the other side of the door to be opened: air losses would be close to zero with this system, assuming the pump is strong enough to get the air pressure to an almost vacumn." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/123834main\\_iss\\_eva\\_sys\\_checklist.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest\\_Joint\\_Airlock", "https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/123834main_iss_eva_sys_checklist.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_Joint_Airlock", "https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/structure/airlock.html" ], [], [ "https://youtu.be/nPSbOsOJ9Ro?t=1m10s" ], [], [ "https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "df31e0y", "df31g6m", "df34zzh" ], "score": [ 2, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Rewards accounts = customer loyalty, just kind frequent flyer miles. Zip and such are for big data. Walgreens benefits, but it's not like they're selling your number to some insurance salesman. ", "Yes and no. These programs are backed by statistical sales analysis that you can draw various conclusions from. \n\nLoyalty programs provide troves of data on consumer behavior while also incentivizing loyalty and creating another avenue for the organization to push their brand image. \n\nTypically, consumers in these programs can get better deals on products that sellers will often lose on. It is the add on items/repeat purchases that consistently add value. This creates the incentive for retailers to use that information for targeted marketing purposes.\n\nThe ethicality of the information collected is really subject on the industry imo. EX: I don't care if a grocery chain knows how many bananas I buy a year and sharing that info. I would be more sensitive about marketers knowing how often I pay for something ridiculous like tentacle porn. ", "Stores might bring in customers with the promise of never selling information. The problem is that those kind of agreements also include language that \"this policy may change at any time for any reason without notification\".\n\nThis means that they can have a large database of information on customer purchases that they can one day sell to advert companies or used as leverage in company acquisition meetings to get larger offers, simply by altering the language of the document you already \"agreed to\".\n\nYou don't really seem paranoid because it is an actual thing that is put into practice fairly regularly. Data is valuable, and privacy is undervalued." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cokdisc", "cokdiz4", "cokdllj", "cokeuqa", "cokeyg4", "cokl2jn" ], "score": [ 4, 22, 8, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Emoticons in moderation are usually fine on reddit. The problem with them is that they are strongly associated with immaturity; kids just tend to use them more than adults. That's just fine on most forums becuase the userbase tends to be of a similar demographic. The issue with reddit is that it has an incredibly diverse userbase, with users ranging in age from 10 to 100 (there literally have been AMAs of people over 100, though they were usually done with the help of the person's child or grandchild).", "Different places have different cultures.\n\nI'm guessing it's just the upvote system. Emoticons look childish, so they get upvoted less.", "To me, emoticons (particularly the stupid animated ones you see on car forums or game forums) are immature and distracting. Posting a comment that just has an emoticon with a pistol that shoots out a flag that says, \"pwned\" doesn't add anything to the discussion. We always tell our little children, \"Use your words!\" Well, the same idea applies in a forum with legitimate discussions, in my opinion.\n\nUse them if you'd like, but I'll downvote the comment unless there is something tangible and relevant in it.", "Some research suggested that people who use more emoji's have a more active sex life than people who don't. Not kidding. I'll find a source if you want but Bear with me, i'm on the phone. \n\n\nEdit: [source]( _URL_0_). Actually it's probably not very reliable. It's a survey of some dating site, not really science i guess. ", "I upvote when a comment clearly adds value to a thread. I think emoticons are too simplistic to convey anything significant to a discussion. No problem when they are used in a text,, but there are other ways to get your point across emotionally. They tend to be used as a shorthand and I appreciate someone who can use language to inform, critique or tickle my funny bone.", "While many people point to lack of maturity as a reason emoticons are looked down on, to me it's not about age but intelligence. \n\nI've never in my life seen something smart or worthwhile followed by a winky face. It's always been the most asinine, unnecessary, stupid shit imaginable. So now, even benign comments when paired with emoticons get associated with idiocy.\n\nRemember when Ed Hardy t-shirts got big, and people thought it was so douchey? There wasn't necessarily anything wrong with the shirt designs, but instead the people who tended to wear them. So even if I were not a douche (which, you know, is arguable but for this example let's pretend I'm not), and I walk down the street in an Ed Hardy t shirt, you might think I am a douche. And even if you aren't dumber than a tennis ball, if I see you using emoticons, I might think you are more than a tennis ball's worth of dumbness. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://time.com/3694763/match-com-dating-survey-emoji-sex/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czzs618" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "WRT Korea this idea of the \"hermit kingdom\" is because of a Eurocentric worldview.\n\nKorea into the 19th century had a flourishing relationship, both diplomatic and commercial, with both Beijing and Edo. After the Jurchens and the Chinese merged into a single actor in the mid-17th century as the former conquered the latter, these were the only two neighbors of Korea that actually mattered. China, Japan, and the Jurchens were also the only neighbors that had mattered much for Korea ever since around 1387. So \"the hermit kingdom\" wasn't an isolationist hermit kingdom at all, **it was a kingdom that followed established diplomatic and commercial protocols with established neighbors.**\n\nIt is true that early 15th century Korea was more \"international\" than early 19th century Korea in many aspects but not all. For example, early Choson Korea had some form of contact with Thailand and into the 15th century there was a small Muslim community that eventually assimilated into the wider Korean population. But Korea's ties with Thailand or even the Ryukyus were totally inconsequential. What really mattered was that an amicable relationship was met with their immediate neighbors.\n\nSo really \"the hermit kingdom\" just did what it had been doing for centuries - maintaining good relationships with important neighbors they already knew. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czthlf4", "cztoizx" ], "score": [ 39, 11 ], "text": [ "I've had a sniff around and there isn't very much information on this, for reasons I'll suggest at the end, but: \n\nThe Telegraph [reports the Royal Horticultural Society](_URL_0_) (I can't find the original source) saying that (I think) the allotments produced 1.3 million tonnes of food during the war, while stating that food imports in 1941 were 14.65 million tonnes, albeit that that was half of what we were importing in the 1930s. Even if we read that figure as being yearly (it isn't clear what the Telegraph actually meant to write), it's clear that the actual effect the Dig for Victory campaign was having on food shortages was small as it did very little to affect the UK's reliance on imports. \n\nAs you'll know, many foods (along with clothing, petrol and other things) were rationed in the UK from the start of the war until, in some cases, the mid-50s. As such, the government had a central control over products that were in shortage (meat, butter and so on). I think it's telling that there weren't any such controls on vegetables.\n\nBy 1942, the Ministry for Food was bolstered by large amounts of food being imported through Lend-Lease from the USA. The MoF also subsidised many foodstuffs mostly consumed by the poor (wheat, oats, bread, meat, potatoes and eggs) to the tune of £145m a year. Similarly, no government subsidy for vegetables. \n\nTo me this suggests that there wasn't a major shortage of vegetables at any point during the war, which may be due to the Dig for Victory campaigns. But I think it would be hard to tell, as by the very nature of the DfV campaign it was small-scale production at the local level with no-one tracking it. ", "You might be interested in a past post on the topic:\n\n* [_Did 'Dig For Victory' and allotment gardens and parks make a real contribution to the war effort in the UK? Did it turn out to have been necessary (could we have survived without having bothered)?_](_URL_0_) \n^(18 Jul 2015 | 62 comments) \n^(/u/kieslowskifan gives a detailed answer on the topic.) " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/9996180/How-Dig-for-Victory-campaign-helped-win-the-War.html" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dqkio/did_dig_for_victory_and_allotment_gardens_and/ct7wg4c" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crtz4w5", "crtz9c7", "cruaain" ], "score": [ 5, 18, 3 ], "text": [ "Great original question. I always thought they jump and let the breeze carry them to the best spot but I would love to hear the correct answer.", "Note, I don't know the exact species of spiders that do the following.\n\nSome spiders will literally jump and be carried by the wind to another tree. Some species will attach it to one tree, climb down the same tree, climb up another tree, and pull on its web to shorten it, then do it again until there are strands running between the trees. Some spiders will attach the web at the top of one tree, jump down, walk over to the other tree, attach to the bottom of the other tree, then climb up that same tree, and do it over again.", "While camping sometimes in the Serrias I have seen small spiders blown by the wind trailing web behind them. \n\nWas never sure if they fell or were gliding to another tree. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e57edsw", "e57gfom", "e57gy24", "e57j455", "e57l493", "e57naok", "e57t2wl" ], "score": [ 31, 23, 7, 52, 4, 13, 2 ], "text": [ "It's a form of self-help therapy, which basically is the act of thinking about how you're feeling, keeping yourself in the present, how you're sat, just accepting things as they are, with the end-goal of calming and relaxing you. There are literally books written on this subject so a quick summary here is going to miss the finer points, to say the least, but that's the basic idea. ", "To quote a brief but poetic description of mindfulness:\n\n > You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember *now.*", "My personal interpretation of mindfulness is to “be here now.” \n\nFor example, when you wash your hands your train of thought will be compelled to think about other things besides washing hands. Such as what you are having for dinner that night etc. \n\nBut instead, live in the moment, don’t worry about that awkward moment you had 2 days ago or worry about what’s for dinner. Live in the moment!\n\n\nSlow not fast. Here not there. These are the days that will never come again. Mediate don’t procrastinate. Pause your mind it’s time to slow down. \n\n", "It is a process that with training allows you to be present in the moment, aware of what you feel and think. ", "Let's say you are playing with a doll in the kindergarten and Billy comes up and steal your doll and destroy it. You will feel angry right? Maybe you will do or say something you will regret while you are angry? Mindfulness is when you are angry, but you understand that you are angry - and you take a moment to feel how angry you are. You realize it's just a feeling that will pass and you are able to go on your day without being angry anymore!", "Hello! Licensed mental health therapist here. A quick summary would be mindfulness is the act of observing the present moment, with all of your attention, non-judgmentally. What you do is: observe the moment, describe the moment, and participate in the moment. How you do it is: one thing at a time, non-judgmentally, and effectively. The benefits: increased awareness, improved interpersonal interactions, decreased judgments of self and others, and a reduction in symptoms of anxiety/depression.", "Imagine you are watching a group of friends playing a game. Maybe you’re someone who gets bored not being part of the action, and your mind wanders. Maybe you’re so excited watching them you feel their excitement, and you plan ahead as if you could help! Now imagine your sole job was to observe and pay attention to what is happening. You don’t need to tell them what to do, you don’t need to decide who wins or loses, or even root for one or the other. All those things are okay if they happen, but they’re not the point. Instead, you try your best to describe things and events as they happen, and move on to the next thing. The keys here are how you describe, and how you focus. Rather than getting stuck on being frustrated with why Billy keeps picking terrible hiding spots, you make note that he keeps going behind the tree and seems upset when found, and then move on to another part of the action. Now imagine that same view could be applied to yourself and what you do in any moment, except now you have access to thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations you couldn’t observe in someone else. As expected, your mind will likely wander, become bored, or something urgent might come up where you find it difficult to just observe (and not act). That’s okay—but you can always return to the observer role if you’d like." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cp5yrre" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Changing speed or direction in space requires thrust. Thrust requires fuel. Fuel is heavy. Since we use rockets to put things into space, they have to be as light as possible.\n\nNew Horizons is moving very, very fast and Pluto doesn't have all that much gravity, so the spacecraft would require a long rocket burn to slow down enough to enter orbit. It doesn't have a rocket engine, only some tiny maneuvering thrusters.\n\nOn the other hand, we could have chosen a course for the spacecraft which didn't give it so much speed and it would have been able to enter orbit around Pluto. But then it would have taken decades, maybe centuries, to *get* to Pluto." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dwjstqf" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "More can always be said about the topic, and linking old answers is not meant to discourage anyone from writing new replies. But while waiting for those to be written, the OP might be interested in reading [this thread](_URL_0_) with an interesting comment by u/wumao" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nwnp3/historians_could_you_explain_how_the_chinese/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca6sw38" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I am going to speak not for household domestics (dogs, cats) but for other non-domesticated captive animals. \n\nFor animals that require a lot of specialized care or ones that do not do well in captivity then their life span can actually decrease. More often then not, we are to blame because we simply cannot provide them their basic needs. This comes from not understanding what their basic needs are (like nutrition, shelter and habitat), or from substandard facilities or from forcing them to live either in isolation (when they are social) or socially (when they are solitary). \n\nIt really has only been recently that we have improved the quality of care and housing of captive animals. Even now there are few places we would consider excellent quality. Many places (and especially private ownership of exotic and large animals) tend to have such deplorable conditions that animals develop severe abnormal behaviours. Behaviours like self-injury (bitting, scratching itself...), or symptoms of depression and boredom (pacing, listlessness...), or extreme behaviours (a constant state of aggression, or constant apathy). These behaviours shorten the lifespan of the animal compared to its wild counterpart. We have a long way to go before captive animal conditions are up to the standards where all animals thrive. \n\nThat is not to say that all captive animals are suffering, many live long and stress-free lives. They have ample space without threat of predation. They are provided clean fresh water and quality balanced meals. They are given excellent preventative care, and any injury they sustain is cared for immediately. They are given a lot of enrichment so they do not become bored. But you asked about those cases where animals have a decreased lifespan, and in those cases somehow, somewhere we are not providing them what they need to thrive like their wild counterparts.\n\n**Examples**\n\n1. We are incapable of keeping [Indri](_URL_1_) in captivity because we have not been able to get them to breed successfully (let alone live). You can put them in a cage (you can put anything in a cage), but that does not mean it will thrive. \"Only one indri has lived over a year in captivity and none have bred successfully while captive.\" Indri are perfect examples of this. For this reason, it is very important that their native habitat (rainforests of Madagascar) is kept intact, because we cannot save them through captive breeding programs (like the Panda, or Gorilla). Most lemurs do very poorly in captivity and the only really successful lemur center is at Duke University.\n\n2. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) tend to do very poorly in captivity. They are often very stressed out and despite appearances in aquariums the behind the scenes health care is quite sad. They often need multiple rounds of anitibiotics etc just to keep them healthy. This is because cetaceans are marine mammals that require a lot of space and a lot of social partners. We tend to provide them neither in captivity. Moreover the way the communicate tends to get seriously messed up in artificial environments with glass and concrete. The pool cleaning motors, if house near the aquarium can generate so much noise as to drive cetaceans insane (we can't hear it because our hearing is not as good).\n\nFor example, the [Orca Whale](_URL_0_): \"In captivity, they often develop pathologies, such as the dorsal fin collapse seen in 60–90% of captive males. Captives have vastly reduced life expectancies, on average only living into their 20s. In the wild, females which survive infancy live 50 years on average, and up to 70–80 years in rare cases. Wild males who survive infancy live 30 years on average, and up to 50–60 years. Captivity usually bears little resemblance to wild habitat, and captive whales' social groups are foreign to those found in the wild. Critics claim captive life is stressful due to these factors and the requirement to perform circus tricks that are not part of wild killer whale behavior. Wild killer whales travel up to 160 kilometres (100 mi) each day, and critics say the animals are too big and intelligent to be suitable for captivity.\"" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Captivity", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indri" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cruyze4" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "The engineering is generally less at fault that the construction/implementation. A big problem for the Soviet Union was in the quality of materials they used. In particular during the pre-WWII period the absurdly high quotas and emphasis on Stakhanovites (essentially glorifying the most productive worker) led to a failure of quality control. A prominent example is the massive steel mill at Magnitigorsk (intended to surpass the American one in Gary, Indiana), which eventually met its quotas through phantom production and also through the creation of subpar steel which was generally unable to meet the requirements for construction of things like buildings, railroads, and weapons. Construction in the USSR remained shoddy throughout the Soviet period due to the emphasis on quantity over quality, and a fear of what failing to meet expectations would lead to. A great book that looks at many of these issues is [*Magnetic Mountain* by Stephen Kotkin](_URL_0_), it uses the steel mill at Magnitigorsk as a microcosm of Soviet society in a very compelling and interesting way." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books/about/Magnetic_Mountain.html?id=em3_-M7H0UgC&hl=en" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dg72pvp" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "because that's the way the general land based mammal's systems work. evolution means whatever mechanism survives gets passed on. not that you can't make a better system. the marine mammal's respiratory system doesn't mix the two. dolphins, whales, etc can't breathe thru their mouth. their blowhole is the only way of breathing\n\nthing is...the nose drainage is supposed to go to the esophagus so you don't flood the lung when you have extra nasal mucus activity, which is what pneumonia is. if the nose was only ever connected to the lung with no drainage, you'd have pneumonia all the time.....or you'd be sneezing to get all of that fluid out all the time. \n\nof course...the one way lung is a somewhat poor design. it could be much better to use two sphincter valves so you could have a flow thru lung. intake valve and exhaust valve would be wired so they open opposite of each other. exhaust valve ducts out to small of back. or maybe above stomach. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca7w8hn", "ca7xz8h" ], "score": [ 8, 3 ], "text": [ "It all starts with DNA in the nucleus. The cell makes a copy of a specific section of DNA that codes for the specific protein being made. The copy of the DNA is called RNA. The RNA gets modified into mRNA and leaves the nucleus and travels to a ribosome. The ribosome accepts the mRNA and, through a very complex process, reads the RNA and builds a protein according to the code on the RNA. As the protein is constructed it enters the endoplasmic reticulum where it is \"tagged\" to ensure it reaches its destination and sent out to do its job. \n\n", "So the information for making proteins is all kept in a long molecule called DNA. DNA is made up of a series of bases which are like letters (and often given the nickname A, T, G, or C), three of which make up a codon which is like a word. DNA's job is to be very stable and conserve this valuable information in the cell, so it stays in a part of the cell called the nucleus, which is a closed off bubble in the cell that houses the DNA. Proteins, however, are made by machinery outside the nucleus, so the cell uses RNA to bring the information from the nucleus to outside the nucleus (called cytoplasm). RNA is a less-stable molecule that is similar in make up to DNA, but not identical. It also has bases that act as letters (RNA has A, U, G, and C), which in groups of three are like words. The DNA gets transcribed into a type of RNA called messenger RNA (mRNA). This is like taking a document that is saved on a computer and printing it out. It goes from one form of information (virtual in this case being more secure and will last longer) to a different form of the information (like a paper copy which could get lost, torn, damaged, etc, but is easy to use and work with). This mRNA goes from DNA's house (nucleus) into the rest of the cell (cytoplasm) where there is cellular machinery to make proteins. This mRNA will be found by a ribosome, which is part of the machinery. The ribosome has two parts which both attach to the mRNA so that the ribosome can read the words of the mRNA. When the ribosome is reading a specific word, it finds another type of RNA in the cell, transfer RNA (tRNA), which the word indicates. In other words, the mRNA says something along the lines of \"Hey ribosome, I am looking for my buddy, tRNA XXX\" where the XXX is the letters of the tRNA that link up with the mRNA letters. Each of the tRNAs is attached to an amino acid. Amino acids are what proteins are made of in long strings. So the tRNA goes to meet up with the proper part of the mRNA and brings along a specific amino acid. The ribosome then takes the amino acids brought by the tRNAs and starts attaching them together. So the first word's amino acid would be attached to the second word's amino acid. This happens until all the words are read by the ribosome and the \"sentence\" that described the protein is completely read and the protein is completely made. There are some other things that happen after the initial translation of mRNA to protein by the ribosome where other proteins and parts of the cell get involved, but it gets even more away from a description I'd give to a five-year-old. I hope what I said was clear :)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2k7tix", "c2k86c4", "c2k872g", "c2k8ggx", "c2k8irw", "c2k8kat", "c2k8ymk", "c2k9u5p", "c2k7tix", "c2k86c4", "c2k872g", "c2k8ggx", "c2k8irw", "c2k8kat", "c2k8ymk", "c2k9u5p" ], "score": [ 5, 5, 3, 67, 2, 6, 16, 3, 5, 5, 3, 67, 2, 6, 16, 3 ], "text": [ "From yahoo answers (I know):\n\n > Global uranium resources (based on a report dated June 5th, 2006) are more than adequate to meet projected requirements for nuclear electricity generation, according to the latest edition of a United Nations-backed world reference guide.\n > \n > Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand, jointly prepared by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than $130 per kilo, at about 4.7 million tonnes.\n > \n > Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand, that is sufficient for 85 years, according to the study, also known as the ‘Red Book.’ Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2,500 years.\n > \n > But world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates, the study considers that more than 35 million tonnes are available for exploitation.\n > \n > The current uranium price (12/12/2008) is US$54 / lb (US$119 / kg) so this current figure is slightly down on the earlier article. However, there is adequate reserves of uranium in the world to keep the planet supplied with energy for hundreds of years.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI this should give you a rough idea where the US stands. But the US only generates 2.5% of the worlds uranium, however Canada produces close to 30%. \n\nAre you stipulating that the US must use it's own fissile material?", "I will address the waste question. I am not a nuclear engineer or physicist, or any type of expert in nuclear power in any way. What I am is someone that has been a huge proponent of nuclear power as the. By far cleanest and most environmentally friendly energy source and have done significant research on reactor types and waste removal.\n\nFirst the key to storing waste is to change over all reactors to the newer designs such as a Breeder reactor or Triso tractor, among some newer experimental designs. These produce significantly less waste with the waste from breeders being usable in other reactors and Triso reactors being able to reuse their own waste. I don't have the numbers in front of me but from what I remember is Triso reactors reduce fissile material by 90% leaving only 10% of original weight as waste, and some experimental reactors do even better. This would mean we could power the entire US, with a surplus to sell to Canada and Mexico, and be producing less waste than we currently do. \n\nSecond is where to put it. Well with the much lower volume of waste being produced opens up a number of options. One is the current plan of storing in Yucca mountain. Right now Yucca is a temporary solution at best due to the amount of waste, but becomes very practical and safe with newer reactor designs. Another option is disposing the waste in space. Obviously this has risks of potential explosions during launch, but containment vessels could minimize this, and it is a very environmentally sound solution although not politically viable. One more option, also not politically viable, is to dump it in the ocean. That sounds crazy right? Well it has been shown that salt water dissipates radiation very quickly, as demonstrated at Bikini Atoll where the traces of radiation in the water after nuclear tests were negligible after a few weeks. Dumping heavily shielded and pressure resistant containment vessels into one of the deep ocean trenches would have a negligible environmental impact with the smaller amount of radioactive material produced by the reactors and the fact the waste material has a much shorter half-life than current waste. Those are generally the 3 most discussed disposal and storage ideas kicked around in discussions of modern nuclear waste. \n\nThis plan of course would cost a metric butt load of government spending as private industry simply will not spend the up-front money to build these new reactors even with subsidies. The reactor designs are pretty expensive, and we would need a mix of different types of reactors using different types of fissile material. I don't forsee the US switching over to an all nuclear infrastructure despite the incredible advantages due to the cost and the anti-nuclear public sentiment fueled even more by the anti-intellectualism movement on both sides of the political extreme. But it is nice to dream.", "Thorium and Uranium breeder reactors could power the US for a very very long time. If you count Thorium/Uranium extraction from sea water the US could get power from these reactors at our current total rate of energy use for several thousand years at a minimum. The only way that you'd have any real supply problems would be if you completely denied the use of Thorium or Uranium breeder reactors, excluded advanced extraction methods and fuel extraction from spent fuel rods.", "I've said this before and I'll say it again - I think that the nature of nuclear waste is an asset for fission power. It is captured and stored on site. Imagine how little of a threat global warming would be if coal plants trapped 100% of their waste.\n\nThere only really two ways to get rid of waste. The first is to wait for it to decay. We would also like to keep it away from the general population in the meantime. The most talked about method is geologic sequestration, which is a fancy term for \"burying it.\" There are several repositories in Europe; the US designed and planned one for many years (Yucca Mountain), but it got killed in the Senate and eventually was scuttled. Some people also talk about dropping it in a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean, or shooting it into space, but these tend to also not be very realistic due to political concerns.\n\nThe second method, which I think is more promising, is to convert the waste into something more benign. The longest-lived components of waste are called \"actinides\" - it's all the stuff above uranium on the periodic table. These have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years, or more, and constitute a large part of the design criteria for repositories. But the great thing about actinides is that they can undergo fission themselves. It just takes a much more energetic neutron to do it than what is found in a normal reactor.\n\nThere are several designs for something called a \"burner reactor,\" which uses a fast neutron spectrum (neutrons with high energy) to fission the actinides directly. One example is the Subcritical Actinide Burner Reactor ([summary](_URL_0_), also lots of papers on it [here](_URL_1_)) which would actually take plutonium, americium, and other actinides from waste and uses it to generate energy. This technology isn't really feasible yet (considering it is driven by a *fusion* reactor comparable to ITER). But if it were built, it would only take a couple to burn all the actinides from the entire US fleet of nuclear plants.\n\nOther designs include types of critical fast burner reactors, accelerator-driven burner reactors, etc. And these of course come with the usual caveats about new nuclear designs (licensing issues, unbuilt, no support, unproven technology, etc etc).", "In terms of \"interesting semi-realted facts\":\n\nIf one wanted to power a country via nuclear power, one would very probably want to find a way to build an aneutronic Boron-Hydrogen fusion reactor.\n\n_URL_3_\n\nBoron has relatively low abundance, but it isn't rare. There would probably be enough Boron to power the whole planet for millenia. It might be possible to produce electricity directly, without going through a thermal step:\n\n_URL_2_\n\n > \"Aneutronic fusion reactions produce the overwhelming bulk of their energy in the form of charged particles instead of neutrons. This means that energy could be converted directly into electricity by various techniques. Many proposed direct conversion techniques are based on mature technology derived from other fields, such as microwave technology\"\n\nThere would be almost no problem with nuclear waste either.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > \"Fortunately, with careful design, it should be possible to reduce the occupational dose of both neutron and gamma radiation to operators to a negligible level. The primary components of the shielding would be water to moderate the fast neutrons, boron to absorb the moderated neutrons, and metal to absorb X-rays. The total thickness needed should be about a meter, most of that being water.\"\n\nPolywell might yet be able to achieve Boron-Hydrogen fusion.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nLatest report: \n > The 3Q FY11 report states: \"As of 2Q/2011, the WB-8 device has demonstrated excellent plasma confinement properties. EMC2 is conducting high power pulsed experiments on WB-8 to test the Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma energy and confinement..\" \n\nPS: Apparently the company investigating Polywell has recently hired a microwave specialist engineer.\n\nPPS: Current production of Boron is apparently about 21 million tonnes per year.", "See here: _URL_0_\n\nAlright, from the above wikipedia page, there exists about 3 million tonnes of uranium which can be easily mined present-day. Of those 3 million tonnes of uranium, 23000 tonnes are the fissionable U-235 isotope. \n\nPowerplants typically consume about 5% of the U-235 fed to them. A powerplant also typically has about 40% thermodynamic efficiency (I.e., 40% of the heat generated by fission is converted to electricity. (This is true of *all* powerplants, not just nuclear ones)). \n\nUSA's electricity consumption is ~ 4 trillion kWh/yr. \n\nSo, if we assume that all of the US's power comes from nuclear fuel, we can work backward using the numbers presented above to come up with a (VERY VERY) rough idea of how much uranium it would take to power the USA, and how that compares to the 23000 tonnes of uranium available in the world. \n\nTaking into account the wasted energy in the nuclear process, 2% of the energy of U-235 used in the process is converted to electricity, so\n\n 4 trillion kWh = 0.02 * m * c^2\n\nwhere we are solving for m and c is the speed of light. [Solved](_URL_1_), this tells us that we need 8 tons of uranium per year, so the world's supply would power the US for almost 3000 years. (This seems.. very wrong. I wonder if I've made a grievous error.)\n\nThe world has an electricity consumption of 17 trillion kwh/yr, so the world's uranium supplies would last for about 700 years powering the whole world. ", "I'll answer one question because I don't feel like writing a big long response:\n\nThe energy from fissioning one U235 nuclei is 200 MeV (this is NOT from E=mc^2). 1 kg of U235 would be around 4.25 moles. 4.25 moles is 2.55935×10^24 atoms. This turns out to 1kg U235= 8.201×10^13 joules= 22.78 gigawatt hours.\n\nOther isotopes are similar to this number.\n\nOf course you cant fission all the uranium 235 in a fuel pin. Reactors go from like 3-4% enriched and pull out at .5 or 1. Its all a trade secret at that level so I can't tell you how much actually energy you extract from a rod. It varies based on company and company policy.\n\nFission gives an INSANE amount of energy, more than anything per volume. Around 375 megawatts/m^3 in a reactor. This allows the fuel pins to get about 1000C in the center. Coal, gas, and everything out there don't come close. \n\nAlso from a response by aaomaley:\n > Well it has been shown that salt water dissipates radiation very quickly\n\nwhat the fuck am I reading .jpg\n\nEdit: Made a mistake The fuel pins get to around 1000C in the center. The Delta T is 700C, but the coolant is around 300C.\n", "one bit of information seem to be still missing - how other fuels do per kilogram\n\nFuel Type \tEnergy Density (kWh/kg) \t\n\nNuclear Fission (100% U-235) \t24,513,889 \t\n\nNatural Uranium (99.3% U-238, 0.7% U-235) in a fast breeder reactor 6,666,667 \t\nEnriched Uranium (3.5% U-235) in a light water reactor \t960,000 \t\n\nNatural Uranium (99.3% U-238, 0.7% U-235) in a light water reactor \t123,056 \n\nLPG propane \t13.8 \t\n\nLPG butane \t13.6 \t\n\nGasoline \t13.0 \t\n\nDiesel fuel/Residential heating oil \t12.7 \t\n\nBiodiesel oil \t11.7 \n\nAnthracite Coal \t9.0 \t\n\nWater at 100 m dam height \t0.0003 \t\n\n\nthis is just copy-pasta from [here](_URL_0_)\n\nSo what are we looking at is 9 kWh vs 960000 kWh from one kg of high quality coal vs 1 kg of reactor fuel.\nso this basically means that you have to burn over 100 TONS of coal to get same energy as you would get from 1 kg of nuclear fuel. Kinda crazy :) \n\nTo get some idea how much energy it actually is, 1 kg of coal can make heat and boil and completely evaporate 12.5 litres of 20°C water, while uranium can do the same to 1 333 642 litres of water.*\n\nThis is including the evaporation, which needs MUCH more energy compared to just heating (heating of one kg of water per one celsius needs 4180 J, while evaporation needs 2 257 00 J)\n\n*I didnt double check the calculations, feel free to find any mistakes.\n", "From yahoo answers (I know):\n\n > Global uranium resources (based on a report dated June 5th, 2006) are more than adequate to meet projected requirements for nuclear electricity generation, according to the latest edition of a United Nations-backed world reference guide.\n > \n > Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand, jointly prepared by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than $130 per kilo, at about 4.7 million tonnes.\n > \n > Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand, that is sufficient for 85 years, according to the study, also known as the ‘Red Book.’ Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2,500 years.\n > \n > But world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates, the study considers that more than 35 million tonnes are available for exploitation.\n > \n > The current uranium price (12/12/2008) is US$54 / lb (US$119 / kg) so this current figure is slightly down on the earlier article. However, there is adequate reserves of uranium in the world to keep the planet supplied with energy for hundreds of years.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI this should give you a rough idea where the US stands. But the US only generates 2.5% of the worlds uranium, however Canada produces close to 30%. \n\nAre you stipulating that the US must use it's own fissile material?", "I will address the waste question. I am not a nuclear engineer or physicist, or any type of expert in nuclear power in any way. What I am is someone that has been a huge proponent of nuclear power as the. By far cleanest and most environmentally friendly energy source and have done significant research on reactor types and waste removal.\n\nFirst the key to storing waste is to change over all reactors to the newer designs such as a Breeder reactor or Triso tractor, among some newer experimental designs. These produce significantly less waste with the waste from breeders being usable in other reactors and Triso reactors being able to reuse their own waste. I don't have the numbers in front of me but from what I remember is Triso reactors reduce fissile material by 90% leaving only 10% of original weight as waste, and some experimental reactors do even better. This would mean we could power the entire US, with a surplus to sell to Canada and Mexico, and be producing less waste than we currently do. \n\nSecond is where to put it. Well with the much lower volume of waste being produced opens up a number of options. One is the current plan of storing in Yucca mountain. Right now Yucca is a temporary solution at best due to the amount of waste, but becomes very practical and safe with newer reactor designs. Another option is disposing the waste in space. Obviously this has risks of potential explosions during launch, but containment vessels could minimize this, and it is a very environmentally sound solution although not politically viable. One more option, also not politically viable, is to dump it in the ocean. That sounds crazy right? Well it has been shown that salt water dissipates radiation very quickly, as demonstrated at Bikini Atoll where the traces of radiation in the water after nuclear tests were negligible after a few weeks. Dumping heavily shielded and pressure resistant containment vessels into one of the deep ocean trenches would have a negligible environmental impact with the smaller amount of radioactive material produced by the reactors and the fact the waste material has a much shorter half-life than current waste. Those are generally the 3 most discussed disposal and storage ideas kicked around in discussions of modern nuclear waste. \n\nThis plan of course would cost a metric butt load of government spending as private industry simply will not spend the up-front money to build these new reactors even with subsidies. The reactor designs are pretty expensive, and we would need a mix of different types of reactors using different types of fissile material. I don't forsee the US switching over to an all nuclear infrastructure despite the incredible advantages due to the cost and the anti-nuclear public sentiment fueled even more by the anti-intellectualism movement on both sides of the political extreme. But it is nice to dream.", "Thorium and Uranium breeder reactors could power the US for a very very long time. If you count Thorium/Uranium extraction from sea water the US could get power from these reactors at our current total rate of energy use for several thousand years at a minimum. The only way that you'd have any real supply problems would be if you completely denied the use of Thorium or Uranium breeder reactors, excluded advanced extraction methods and fuel extraction from spent fuel rods.", "I've said this before and I'll say it again - I think that the nature of nuclear waste is an asset for fission power. It is captured and stored on site. Imagine how little of a threat global warming would be if coal plants trapped 100% of their waste.\n\nThere only really two ways to get rid of waste. The first is to wait for it to decay. We would also like to keep it away from the general population in the meantime. The most talked about method is geologic sequestration, which is a fancy term for \"burying it.\" There are several repositories in Europe; the US designed and planned one for many years (Yucca Mountain), but it got killed in the Senate and eventually was scuttled. Some people also talk about dropping it in a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean, or shooting it into space, but these tend to also not be very realistic due to political concerns.\n\nThe second method, which I think is more promising, is to convert the waste into something more benign. The longest-lived components of waste are called \"actinides\" - it's all the stuff above uranium on the periodic table. These have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years, or more, and constitute a large part of the design criteria for repositories. But the great thing about actinides is that they can undergo fission themselves. It just takes a much more energetic neutron to do it than what is found in a normal reactor.\n\nThere are several designs for something called a \"burner reactor,\" which uses a fast neutron spectrum (neutrons with high energy) to fission the actinides directly. One example is the Subcritical Actinide Burner Reactor ([summary](_URL_0_), also lots of papers on it [here](_URL_1_)) which would actually take plutonium, americium, and other actinides from waste and uses it to generate energy. This technology isn't really feasible yet (considering it is driven by a *fusion* reactor comparable to ITER). But if it were built, it would only take a couple to burn all the actinides from the entire US fleet of nuclear plants.\n\nOther designs include types of critical fast burner reactors, accelerator-driven burner reactors, etc. And these of course come with the usual caveats about new nuclear designs (licensing issues, unbuilt, no support, unproven technology, etc etc).", "In terms of \"interesting semi-realted facts\":\n\nIf one wanted to power a country via nuclear power, one would very probably want to find a way to build an aneutronic Boron-Hydrogen fusion reactor.\n\n_URL_3_\n\nBoron has relatively low abundance, but it isn't rare. There would probably be enough Boron to power the whole planet for millenia. It might be possible to produce electricity directly, without going through a thermal step:\n\n_URL_2_\n\n > \"Aneutronic fusion reactions produce the overwhelming bulk of their energy in the form of charged particles instead of neutrons. This means that energy could be converted directly into electricity by various techniques. Many proposed direct conversion techniques are based on mature technology derived from other fields, such as microwave technology\"\n\nThere would be almost no problem with nuclear waste either.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > \"Fortunately, with careful design, it should be possible to reduce the occupational dose of both neutron and gamma radiation to operators to a negligible level. The primary components of the shielding would be water to moderate the fast neutrons, boron to absorb the moderated neutrons, and metal to absorb X-rays. The total thickness needed should be about a meter, most of that being water.\"\n\nPolywell might yet be able to achieve Boron-Hydrogen fusion.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nLatest report: \n > The 3Q FY11 report states: \"As of 2Q/2011, the WB-8 device has demonstrated excellent plasma confinement properties. EMC2 is conducting high power pulsed experiments on WB-8 to test the Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma energy and confinement..\" \n\nPS: Apparently the company investigating Polywell has recently hired a microwave specialist engineer.\n\nPPS: Current production of Boron is apparently about 21 million tonnes per year.", "See here: _URL_0_\n\nAlright, from the above wikipedia page, there exists about 3 million tonnes of uranium which can be easily mined present-day. Of those 3 million tonnes of uranium, 23000 tonnes are the fissionable U-235 isotope. \n\nPowerplants typically consume about 5% of the U-235 fed to them. A powerplant also typically has about 40% thermodynamic efficiency (I.e., 40% of the heat generated by fission is converted to electricity. (This is true of *all* powerplants, not just nuclear ones)). \n\nUSA's electricity consumption is ~ 4 trillion kWh/yr. \n\nSo, if we assume that all of the US's power comes from nuclear fuel, we can work backward using the numbers presented above to come up with a (VERY VERY) rough idea of how much uranium it would take to power the USA, and how that compares to the 23000 tonnes of uranium available in the world. \n\nTaking into account the wasted energy in the nuclear process, 2% of the energy of U-235 used in the process is converted to electricity, so\n\n 4 trillion kWh = 0.02 * m * c^2\n\nwhere we are solving for m and c is the speed of light. [Solved](_URL_1_), this tells us that we need 8 tons of uranium per year, so the world's supply would power the US for almost 3000 years. (This seems.. very wrong. I wonder if I've made a grievous error.)\n\nThe world has an electricity consumption of 17 trillion kwh/yr, so the world's uranium supplies would last for about 700 years powering the whole world. ", "I'll answer one question because I don't feel like writing a big long response:\n\nThe energy from fissioning one U235 nuclei is 200 MeV (this is NOT from E=mc^2). 1 kg of U235 would be around 4.25 moles. 4.25 moles is 2.55935×10^24 atoms. This turns out to 1kg U235= 8.201×10^13 joules= 22.78 gigawatt hours.\n\nOther isotopes are similar to this number.\n\nOf course you cant fission all the uranium 235 in a fuel pin. Reactors go from like 3-4% enriched and pull out at .5 or 1. Its all a trade secret at that level so I can't tell you how much actually energy you extract from a rod. It varies based on company and company policy.\n\nFission gives an INSANE amount of energy, more than anything per volume. Around 375 megawatts/m^3 in a reactor. This allows the fuel pins to get about 1000C in the center. Coal, gas, and everything out there don't come close. \n\nAlso from a response by aaomaley:\n > Well it has been shown that salt water dissipates radiation very quickly\n\nwhat the fuck am I reading .jpg\n\nEdit: Made a mistake The fuel pins get to around 1000C in the center. The Delta T is 700C, but the coolant is around 300C.\n", "one bit of information seem to be still missing - how other fuels do per kilogram\n\nFuel Type \tEnergy Density (kWh/kg) \t\n\nNuclear Fission (100% U-235) \t24,513,889 \t\n\nNatural Uranium (99.3% U-238, 0.7% U-235) in a fast breeder reactor 6,666,667 \t\nEnriched Uranium (3.5% U-235) in a light water reactor \t960,000 \t\n\nNatural Uranium (99.3% U-238, 0.7% U-235) in a light water reactor \t123,056 \n\nLPG propane \t13.8 \t\n\nLPG butane \t13.6 \t\n\nGasoline \t13.0 \t\n\nDiesel fuel/Residential heating oil \t12.7 \t\n\nBiodiesel oil \t11.7 \n\nAnthracite Coal \t9.0 \t\n\nWater at 100 m dam height \t0.0003 \t\n\n\nthis is just copy-pasta from [here](_URL_0_)\n\nSo what are we looking at is 9 kWh vs 960000 kWh from one kg of high quality coal vs 1 kg of reactor fuel.\nso this basically means that you have to burn over 100 TONS of coal to get same energy as you would get from 1 kg of nuclear fuel. Kinda crazy :) \n\nTo get some idea how much energy it actually is, 1 kg of coal can make heat and boil and completely evaporate 12.5 litres of 20°C water, while uranium can do the same to 1 333 642 litres of water.*\n\nThis is including the evaporation, which needs MUCH more energy compared to just heating (heating of one kg of water per one celsius needs 4180 J, while evaporation needs 2 257 00 J)\n\n*I didnt double check the calculations, feel free to find any mistakes.\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081223102631AAnS89a" ], [], [], [ "http://www.frc.gatech.edu/Transmutation-Reactors/FST-52-719-2007.pdf", "http://www.frc.gatech.edu/Transmutation-Reactors.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Residual_radiation_from_a_p.E2.80.9311B_reactor", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Direct_conversion_of_energy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium", "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%284000000000000+kwh%29+%2F+%28c^2%29+%2F+0.02" ], [], [ "http://nuclearfissionary.com/2010/06/09/energy-density-and-waste-comparison-of-energy-production/" ], [ "http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081223102631AAnS89a" ], [], [], [ "http://www.frc.gatech.edu/Transmutation-Reactors/FST-52-719-2007.pdf", "http://www.frc.gatech.edu/Transmutation-Reactors.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Residual_radiation_from_a_p.E2.80.9311B_reactor", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Direct_conversion_of_energy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium", "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%284000000000000+kwh%29+%2F+%28c^2%29+%2F+0.02" ], [], [ "http://nuclearfissionary.com/2010/06/09/energy-density-and-waste-comparison-of-energy-production/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d07t1wd" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Feeling wetness is a combination of the work of mechanoreceptors, cutaneous receptors, and thermoreceptors. Thermoreceptors feel temperature, cutaneous receptors feel texture, and mechanoreceptors feel pressure.\n\nAnything that feels cold and smooth may feel wet. You're more likely to feel wetness if the temperature is lower.\n\nHere's a [Science Daily article](_URL_0_) on the subject." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141001133416.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cv650nk", "cv6x7hb" ], "score": [ 17, 2 ], "text": [ " > What on earth do they mean by \"moral\" tests? Is this simply a criminal background check, or was it also used for subjective elimination of people the recruiter decided were undesirable?\n\nThat sounds vague enough to provide cover for disallowing anyone involved in adultery, homosexuality, gambling, drugs, even drinking, if the powers that be so desired. I hadn't really thought about it until you asked. \n\nGoing off of the above, \"conduct unbecoming an officer\" is a phrase commonly associated with courts-martial. How (if at all) were officers' codes of conduct more strict than those of enlisted men? ", "In the US, IIRC taking volunteers shut down in 1943. After that you had to be drafted (hey, I read it here on askhistorians).\n\nThis solved a lot of social and bureaucratic problems. Men couldn't be shirking. It also meant the SSS didn't have to check to see if someone was in vital warwork: they didn't get drafted. Y'know, aircraft designers, farmers, die cutters. They had a real problem with labour shortages on farms when the first waves signed up, and the remainder went away to the city for high-paying defense plant jobs.\n\nNo one was handing out white feathers. People would find out your situation if they didn't know you before judging.\n\nMoral tests were to find people who were moral reprobates like dipsomaniacs and thieves. Those were considered moral problems then. Of course, they were also checking if those claiming to be homosexual were or just trying to dodge.\n\nSources: \n\n*Don't You Know There's a War On?*\n\n*Let the Good Times Roll*\n\n*Virtue Under Fire*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca8mbdt", "ca8mupx", "ca8oh6w", "ca8pf36", "ca8pylz" ], "score": [ 12, 7, 2, 2, 11 ], "text": [ "They did it as safely as they could. The problem was, the Nazi war machine could exploit the road network to move mechanized units quickly. In order to succeed, they had to get a lot of troops on the beach quickly before the Nazis could call in major reinforcements (part of the plan was faking the Germans out by making it look like Patton was going to invade somewhere else entirely). Given enough time, Germany could have called up a big pile of tanks and artillery from just about anywhere nearby in Europe to Normandy to make an invasion at that point impossible. When the US began invading islands held by Japan, they could afford the luxury of standing off and initially bombarding the shore with battleships. The US had air and naval superiority at that point, and there weren't any Autobahns between the islands. A prolonged shore bombardment at Normandy would have given the Germans too much time to react.", "Really, the Allies had almost no choice but to do an amphibious landing(by the by it was 6 beaches, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah and Pointe du Hoc)...ever since the [evacuation of Dunkirlk](_URL_0_) and the cauplation of the French government, the allies on the Atlantic Ocean side had no foothold in the Contient. Not to mention Stalin wanting the Allies to open up another front to ease pressure off his front. \n\nNormandy was not as well defended as other places such as the Pas-de-Calais to begin with in addition to the Allied misinformation campaign. \n\nIn addition, the American 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne units gained their reputations during D-Day for their sabotage campaigns(such as capturing critical junction points and artillery)carried out the night before the landings(in addition to the Free French cutting up railroads and phone lines) and for protecting the flanks of the amphibiously landing infantry. \n\nWithout the beachheads, things like the [Red Ball Express](_URL_1_) and other logistical wonders woudl've been inpossible.\n\ntl:dr: Allied command needed to invade Europe, so they took as many precautions as possible beforehand and after the landing. \n\n\n", "In addition to the fine answers from the other folks, the original plans for the Normandy landing had the infantry being support by Sherman DD's (basically amphibious tanks), but the bad weather caused pretty much all of the Shermans to sink before making it to the shoreline. The shermans were supposed to provide cover and support fire against the hardened German defenses. ", "The simple gist is nowadays any military would use precision bombs and helicopters (and V-22's) to concentrate a force like the US Marines inland. \n\nHelicopters were brand new during WW2 and saw basically no military usage.\n\nThe alternative was airborne infantry in parachute drops and un-powered gliders. This was used a lot, but due to incredibly heavy anti-aircraft fire, a lot of the units dropped to internal north France over the previous night were very disorganized and or killed.\n\nStorming the beaches was the way. The Germans knew that so they had positions that survived massive shelling and essentially unguided or vaguely guided bombings.", "A long time ago, a mean old Nazi named Hitler came to power in the country of Germany. One day, Hitler told the German Army to run around and beat up all their neighbors. They beat up so many, that soon Hitler's army had beat up every neighbor except Britain. Britain, however, is on an island in the ocean. To get from Germany to Britain you have to go over a part of the ocean called the English Channel.\n\nAt first, Hitler tried sending airplanes with bombs over the Channel to beat up Britain, but Britain just spit fire at these airplanes, blowing them up and keeping Hitler's army from going over the Channel. \n\nEventually Hitler gave up sending planes, but since he had not totally beat up Britain, he was scared that Britain would come back for revenge. To keep this from happening, he built a big wall all around the shoreline, full of machine guns and huge cannons, so if Britain tried to get across the Channel they would get beat up.\n\nA few years after Hitler built this wall, Britain tried to break it at the small town of Dee-Epp. But the wall worked, and Britain got beat up a bit and had to go back to the island.\n\nWhen they got back to the island their friends the Americans had come to visit. They were mad at Hitler for being a meanie, and agreed to help Britain break the big wall. But Britain said the big wall couldn't be broken, so America got an idea to go around. \n\nThey chose the country of Italy, a place where the big wall wasn't built. Italy was friends with Hitler, and Hitler didn't want to build the wall around there because it would keep his friends out. When America and Britain tried to go through Italy, Hitler and Italy quickly built a bunch of smaller walls. They built so many smaller walls that each time America and Britain broke through one, there was another behind it. \n\nGoing through all the smaller walls made America and Britain very tired, so they gave up trying to go through all of them. Instead, Britain had an idea. If they could fool Hitler into thinking they were gonna attack the big wall at one area, Hitler would send his army there, just like he sent it to Italy when they tried to go around the big wall.\n\nAmerica was worried, though. Attacking the big wall was very dangerous. They would have to run across the beach to the wall, while being shot by cannons and machine guns! But, they already tried to go around, there was no other way. They had to break through the big wall.\n\nLucky for them, the big wall was so long that Hitler could not send his army to defend it all. America, Britain and now a few more friends (let's just call them the Allies now) agreed to try and break a part of the big wall called Normandy. To fool Hitler into sending his army in the wrong place, the Allies made a huge fake army out of blow-up dolls and put them just next to the Channel, near the town of Cal-ay, very close to the strongest part of the big wall. They made such good dolls that Hitler thought they were a real army, and put his army on the big wall there, leaving Normandy with only a few guards.\n\nEven without Hitler's army there, the big wall was still strong, so the Allies would send over lots of airplanes to bomb the big wall to blow a hole in it to get through. They also got a huge fleet of big battle boats with huge guns to help blow holes in the wall. \n\nWith so many airplanes and big battle boats, and fooling Hitler into sending his army to the wrong place, the Allies went over to the big wall and pounded it with everything they had. Lots of soldiers died, even with the airplanes and big battle boats, some of the guards still could shoot at the Allies, but they finally managed to break down the big wall. \n\nWith the wall down, the Allies came through in the thousands. Hitler's army came from Cal-ay too late to stop the soldiers from coming through the broken part of wall, and got beat up by all the angry Allies. \n\nWith his army beat up and lots of angry Allies coming for him, that mean old Hitler went crazy and hid in his underground house, and was never seen again." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ball_Express" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fcvywvc" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "There is quite a lot to unpack here in your question, but I am going to try to unpack it a bit and hopefully provide you an answer to satisfy your curiosity. \n\nFor starters, there really isn't a march of civilization in play, and I'm reading a bit of an underlying assumption that clanship is a more primative form of social organization that is naturally abandoned as a group \"progresses\". This was once commonly believed, but frankly, \"different\" does not mean \"less than\". \n\nClanship in Scotland got a bad rap particularly due to very long-standing bias against the “men of the mountains”—all the way back to the 14th century, so by the time the term *did* arrive, English speakers were already inclined to see clanship in a negative light. This was heightened as well by the retreat of Gaelic, which was once the language of the Scottish Kings, to an area functionally bounded by the Highland Fault. However, clanship fundamentally has the same basis as the sort of Feudalism practiced in the rest of Scotland, with powerful families granted land charters and power to enforce the law within their own demesnes. \n\nThe Scottish crown did not have the ability to enforce its power on the furthest reaches of its Kingdom, indeed owing in part to geography. While it was hardly impossible to cross the Highlands in the medieval period, it was not easy, either, and the Highlands and Islands were far more accessible by sea. In fact, there had once been a seafaring kingdom of the isles under the earldom of Orkney that did govern the area. By the late medieval period, the MacDonalds were on the ascendancy, themselves ultimately descended from a mix of the norse settlers under the earldom and the local Gaelic population.\n\nAlso the MacDonald lords already held considerable land in the Islands, under Aonghas Og, they received further substantial grants of land, including Mull and Tiree, territory held by an elder branch of the same family, the MacDougalls. (If you have seen *Outlaw King*, Aonghas Og is that red-haired guy that hangs around all movie without really being named) By the time of Iain (John), Aonghas Og’s son and heir, the MacDonalds held most of the land in the Highlands and Islands, from Mull to Skye, and stretching inland through Lochaber, Ardnamurchan, and part of Argyll. A substantial holding, and Iain began to call himself *Dominus Insularum*, the Lord of the Isles. In Gaelic, that was *Rì innse gall* or KING of the Islands, an interesting distinction. \n\nWe are into clans here without really acknowledging it, but a minor note of etymology. Clan is from the Gaelic word \"clann\" (surprisingly enough...), which means children. I promise none of this is a pointless side track and it will all come together in the end. Remember that land was held by charter from the King, and this chartered land could be further subdivided (wadsetted or feu lands) by the lord and even further divided by these landholders (in the Gaelic world, these were the fir-tacsa, or taskmen). Holding land in a feudal system is all about maintaining your power, and thus it is important to grant land to close family members and strong allies. So the fir-tacsa (singular: fear-tacsa) were typically cadet members of the lord’s family. In this sort of structure, Gaelic or not, allies also play a major role in maintaining power over land, and thus it is erroneous to believe clans are in fact large families with blood relations. They were formed by a mix of linear descent, marital alliances, and political alliances to mutual benefit. (Thus, for example, the MacMhurichs, the MacBeatha/Beatons and Rhymer families were part of Clan MacDonald.)\n\nNone of this explains why we speak of “clanship” rather than “feudalism” when speaking of the Highlands, but it is necessary to dig into the root of your question, namely what was different and *why it appeared to persist* for a long period after feudal structures collapsed elsewhere. \n\nAmong Gaelic-speaking lords (typically English uses the word chief here for the major land-holding nobility and chieftain for the lesser nobility that reported to a chief), the concept of *dùthchas*is at play. This gets variously translated as birthright, homeland, heritage, etc. We are not getting wildly afield here in terms of ideas, but essentially we are talking about the idea that the land belongs to the chiefly families by hereditary birthright, rather than essentially by feudal land grant from the king. You will still find references to, for instance, the homeland of the MacKays or Campbells. This idea existed, and to an extent persists, even though R.A. Dodgshon, for example, has conducted studies to show that landholdings in the highlands were much less stable over time than the *dùthchas* would imply. \n\nCoupled with the idea of *dùthchas* is the idea that the Chief is at the head of his clan the way a father is head of his family (in traditional lines of thinking). This is where the observation earlier of the meaning of clann comes in—it was seen as a fairly apt analogy. The Chief did provide for his clansmen (and women) through various chiefly functions. One of these was the feast held in honour of a grand occasion, and potentially lasting days. It served to showcase the Chief’s wealth and generosity, as well as munificence to his people. The Chiefs also managed their estates (those original land charter grants as well as any additional holdings they obtained by other means over time) in such a way as to balance requirements from each sublet farm so that rents—in theory—would not ruin any farmer. If you are interested in getting down to the real nuts and bolts of how this would look, check out *From Chiefs to Landlords* by R.A. Dodgshon, particularly Ch. 3.\n\nEdit: I apparently elided a sentence entirely near the beginning." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dlu1vzf" ], "score": [ 36 ], "text": [ "I'm slightly confused by the difference between your first and second question. I think you could make a very strong and very plausible argument that Islam would be an Abrahamic faith on the basis of its tenets regardless of the connection with Abrahams progeny, in the same way that I think you could argue that Mormonism is an \"Abrahamic faith\" even though Joseph Smith, as far as I'm aware, claims no connection to the house of Abraham.\n\nThat the Arabs, at least the Arabs of the Hejaz, were the descendants of Ishmael as far as I'm aware predates the advent of Islam. It's readily accepted as part of the genealogy of Muhammad's tribe Quraysh in the biography of the prophet. It's also mentioned in contemporary non-Islamic sources at the time of the conquests by non-Arabs.\n\nSo the Bishop Sebeos, writing in 660 about a period 30 years earlier writes of Jewish refugees from Edessa that:\n\n\"They set out into the desert and came to Arabia, among the children of Ishmael.\"\n\nAccording to Crone's *Hagarism* (from which I'm quoting) the idea of Arab Ishmaelites is far older than that, appearing 800 years before the Advent of Islam in the Hebrew *Book of Jubilees*:\n\n > A charter for an Arab religion ofAbraham (Jshmaelite and Keturid), including mono- theism, circumcision according to the covenant, and some ethico-legal prescrip- tions, appears in Jubilees\n\nBut here we're venturing very far afield of my area of study indeed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c29gz8u", "c29h1cc", "c29gz8u", "c29h1cc" ], "score": [ 3, 7, 3, 7 ], "text": [ "It's trying to do a lot of things very fast. To do these things it uses electricity. Billions of times a second there are slightly wasteful actions that release a little tiny bit of heat. That heat builds up, and makes your computer hot. ", "Computers are made up of lots of tiny little machines, and they all do different things, but almost all of them make heat by accident. Sometimes the heat comes from things that move inside your computer, like the hard drive where we keep things like pictures and movies and programs. Those hard drives spin really fast and generate some heat by friction, like when you rub your hands together really fast.\n\nMost of the heat, though, comes from the tiny little machines that do all the work, called \"microprocessors\" or \"integrated circuits\", but that just means that they do special work with electricity. These little machines have special switches on them, kind of like the switches in your house that turn the lights on and off, but they're very very tiny and look very different. These tiny little switches have a special language that they speak in that uses just the numbers 0 and 1 to tell them whether they should be on or off. Just like the switches in your house, if you turn them on electricity goes through them, and if you turn them off, electricity doesn't go through them.\n\nNow, the thing to remember is that when electricity is trying to squeeze through the switches, it gets slowed down a little bit; it bumps into the switches and stuff they're made out of and when it gets slowed down, it makes the switches get a little bit warmer. When the computer isn't working very hard, we don't have to use many of the switches, but when we make the computer work very hard, we use lots of the switches, and the electricity gets all bumpy and jiggly inside, and it gets hotter and hotter the harder we make it work.\n\nEach switch only makes a little bit of heat, but the other thing to remember is that there are LOTS of these little switches, hundreds and hundreds of them, so many you could never count them. And they are all over the inside of your computer on special boards, but there are a few places where we want to put extra switches to do special things, like make the pictures on the screen or be the main brain of the computer. When you put lots of those switches together to do the special things, you get LOTS of heat, because it all adds together. That's why there are fans inside your computer - the switches work lots better if we keep them cool, so we put fans on them to make them more comfortable.", "It's trying to do a lot of things very fast. To do these things it uses electricity. Billions of times a second there are slightly wasteful actions that release a little tiny bit of heat. That heat builds up, and makes your computer hot. ", "Computers are made up of lots of tiny little machines, and they all do different things, but almost all of them make heat by accident. Sometimes the heat comes from things that move inside your computer, like the hard drive where we keep things like pictures and movies and programs. Those hard drives spin really fast and generate some heat by friction, like when you rub your hands together really fast.\n\nMost of the heat, though, comes from the tiny little machines that do all the work, called \"microprocessors\" or \"integrated circuits\", but that just means that they do special work with electricity. These little machines have special switches on them, kind of like the switches in your house that turn the lights on and off, but they're very very tiny and look very different. These tiny little switches have a special language that they speak in that uses just the numbers 0 and 1 to tell them whether they should be on or off. Just like the switches in your house, if you turn them on electricity goes through them, and if you turn them off, electricity doesn't go through them.\n\nNow, the thing to remember is that when electricity is trying to squeeze through the switches, it gets slowed down a little bit; it bumps into the switches and stuff they're made out of and when it gets slowed down, it makes the switches get a little bit warmer. When the computer isn't working very hard, we don't have to use many of the switches, but when we make the computer work very hard, we use lots of the switches, and the electricity gets all bumpy and jiggly inside, and it gets hotter and hotter the harder we make it work.\n\nEach switch only makes a little bit of heat, but the other thing to remember is that there are LOTS of these little switches, hundreds and hundreds of them, so many you could never count them. And they are all over the inside of your computer on special boards, but there are a few places where we want to put extra switches to do special things, like make the pictures on the screen or be the main brain of the computer. When you put lots of those switches together to do the special things, you get LOTS of heat, because it all adds together. That's why there are fans inside your computer - the switches work lots better if we keep them cool, so we put fans on them to make them more comfortable." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccdwuut" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "The plants can't tell. The insects, however, can tell what the plants look like. So if a plant looks like a female bee, or whatever this is just a hypothetical example, then a male bee is more likely to try to mate with it and pick up pollen.\n\nBecause those tricky plants who look the most like the bee are more likely to have pollen taken/given from them, they are more likely to reproduce. In the next generation, then, there will be some plants who look more and some who look less appealing to the bee. The ones who are more appealing are obviously more likely to reproduce than the ones who look less appealing. Therefore plants that look more like the bee are selected for and, very gradually over many generations, the mimicry will get more and more accurate." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dneow01" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Break down: It's a scam!\n\nJust a Ponzi scheme like marketing strategy where people are compensated for recruiting others to market some bullshit product or idea. You get compensated for every sale someone you recruited makes, you also get compensated for the sales made by recruits your recruits recruited. In successful MLM schemes thousands of people get involved and those at the top of the hierarchy can receive significant commissions or even salery.\n\nMLM is not inherently a scam their are examples of legitimate MLM companies. For example my sister has a friend that sells for Mary Kay which is a MLM cosmetic company which has quality product and ethical Management. But don't be fooled by the example most MLM companies are not worth your time and will find ways to get money from you by charging membership or for mandatory lectures etc." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cr63jmr", "cr645j8", "cr64aiz", "cr64f6f", "cr64vvv" ], "score": [ 8, 71, 2, 22, 2 ], "text": [ "Please please answer this somebody. Especially if you can explain why it happens a lot on mobile websites.", "In JavaScript you can set the \"focus\" to be on any specific item on the page. It's likely that the focus is set to something at the top of the page. Javascript can be told to run after the page finishes loading, which is why it will wait until after images load. May be more noticeable on mobile since slower download speeds and smaller screen space. ", "Once the all assets on the page have been loaded (or timed out) the browser decides \"Well, time to redraw the entire thing now that I have all the pieces\". So the browser draws the page again from scratch, doing stuff like laying text out to fit images that weren't there before etc.\n\nIn doing so it doesn't keep track of where you were, and where you were might change, so it just resets you back to the top of the page.", "This is because before each image is loaded by your web browser the height of the image is unknown, and until then your browser will use a typically small height (like 10 pixels) as a place-holder value. If you are reading a web page with large images stacked on top of each other, as the images load the page will increase in height quite dramatically as the actual height of each one becomes known, which will cause your view to 'bounce' around. Before the images load, scrolling down 1000 pixels might reveal the footer of the page, but after the images load, 1000 pixels down could be an image. You haven't really bounced up the page, the page has just become longer.\n\nThere are ways to program in the height of each image (the proper way to do it in my opinion) so that the page doesn't need to guess and then wait for it, but sometimes this technique isn't used.\n\n**EDIT:** This won't make you bounce right to the *very* top of the page. There might be a different answer for that. This is still the main reason however for general jumping around while large images are loading on websites.", "It might be because initially the HTML of the page is loaded, and then the scripts are loaded which may or may not require the page to be rendered again, which might scroll you up. That's my guess though, I'm not sure if there is enough time for you to scroll down between those two events." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccjljnc", "ccjlnek" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Keep your mouth closed, Alaskan.", "Mine do the same thing! I would like an answer/explanation to this too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dknhvuk", "dknwxlo", "dknzfcq", "dko0rzu" ], "score": [ 3, 16, 7, 4 ], "text": [ "We used selective breeding to create a wider variety of superficial traits, but the animals are all still effectively the same: same number of legs, organs, etc. - they're still about as genetically similar as can be, and all the big things that affect taxonomy are still pretty much identical. \n\nExample: A dwarf is still a perfectly normal human being, but has vastly different physical traits from what you'd expect of a human.", "Dogs have likely only existed as a separate subspecies of Canis lupus for ~ 40,000 yrs at max, which is too short a time for speciation to occur from wolves, much less different breeds of dog, even with geographical or other isolation. Most dogs are not \"purebreds\", anyway, so there is little chance for genetic drift. \n\nAdditionally, most breeds the way we think of a dog breed are relatively recent (the last 50 to 200yrs). Breeds are 100% artificial categories, they are not subject to natural selection and the premises of natural selection do not apply. Dogs have the potential for huge amount of phenotypic variation and few selective pressures which accounts for the wide array of behavior and appearances. The end result is that genetically similar individuals could end up looking hugely different. ", "It doesn't take much genetic difference to lead to dramatically different appearances, traits, and behaviors. This is part of the power of the genetic makeup of modern animals, it's a kind of \"meta-trait\" of modern organisms. Animals that didn't have the arrangements of genes and physiology which allowed for rapid adaptability were seemingly at a competitive disadvantage in the wild. There are still some examples of such creatures but modern mammals seem to be more successful overall.\n\nDogs are far from the only example. Domesticated horses have increased in size dramatically over the first versions, over the course of only a few thousand years. Domesticated farm animals as well, from goats to sheep to pigs to chickens to cows, etc.\n\nTo switch kingdoms entirely, there is also a lot of variability within otherwise singular plant species. For example, the common winter squash cucurbita pepo is made up of different cultivars including acorn squash, crookneck squash, scallop squash, zucchini, and pumpkin. Similarly, cabbage, collard greens, kale, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, et al are all different cultivars of the same species: brassica oleracea.\n\nSelective breeding is absolutely a big part of it, that vastly accelerates the process of selection compared to simple environmental pressure. Especially since in the absence of humans maintaining separate breeds intentionally they would generally just all mix together into \"mutts\" and lose most of their distinctive traits (like extreme size and coat differences).", "Because the variation is overwhelmingly accounted for by changes in allele frequencies, not by novel mutations. While it's novel mutations, and more specifically incompatible mutations that cause species divergence.\n\nThis might be confusing because usual explanations of the way evolution works are more or less only applicable to viruses and simplest bacteria, and even then not always (horizontal transfer etc).\n\nWe've got sexual reproduction precisely because it allows for lots of orders of magnitude faster adaptation that could possibly be provided by mutations. If you have literally trillions of viral RNA copies reproducing in your body every minute, then yeah, random mutations are a force to be reckoned with.\n\nIf you have a couple of hundreds of foxes bred for friendliness and successfully get [friendly foxes](_URL_0_) after mere tens of generations, that can't possibly be caused by mutations, the necessary rate of mutation would've totally destroyed the rest of the genome.\n\nIt's caused by higher animals having evolved to be very good at evolving, with a bunch of levels there. Not just varying allele frequencies can meaningfully contribute to the \"friendliness\" trait in every generation, smoothly increasing it, but it's probably a specific mechanism regulating neoteny in a wide range that allows for that, due to canines' evolutionary history being full of times when there was enough food for the pack to grow to large numbers (and it was good to be able to not destroy themselves), and then other times where they had to make do with small packs.\n\nThe Central Dogma of molecular biology is sort of reversed when we are talking about evolution: first, better phenotypes are selected by virtue of having better alleles, then new alleles are created by crossing-over, then novel mutations help with producing the same phenotype more efficiently, all on increasing time scales." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3x1owq" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "There's nothing special about sodium-sulfur batteries except for their high operating temperature and the danger of elemental sodium. It works the same as any other battery - described [here](_URL_0_) and [here] (_URL_1_). They cannot store sunlight except in the sense that you could use a photovoltaic cell to charge them (which is true for any rechargeable battery). If you want to learn about methods to store solar energy for later use then [this article](_URL_2_) and [this article](_URL_3_) are good places to start." ] }

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[ "http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147787321/the-battery-that-keeps-going-and-going", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery" ]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_Cells", "http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa082003a.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dfj7au6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Anglo-Saxon dialects definitely existed, and were likely mutually intelligible. Historians can see variation from one text to another, something that has been used perhaps most extensively with Beowulf. Using the language of Beowulf, a compelling case has been made for a West Saxon origin, based on linguistic aspects of the poem, as well as some place-name evidence. Of course, Beowulf is interesting in and of itself, since the only extant manuscript of it, from the Cotton library, is a transcription from an earlier manuscript, and thus contains errors and changes from whatever archetype was used. Michael Lapidge has done a good job of surveying what we know about these changes in an article I'll cite below.\n\nIt's important to note first off, though, that the study Old English dialects is not a new field, and in fact dates to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Language is an important aspect of national identity, and these early scholars of Old English such as George Hickes created a chronology of \"pure\" Germanic Saxon steadily diverging and being corrupted over time by Briton, Danish, and (outside of our period here) Norman influences. The idea of linguistic complexity was rooted in ideas of classical Latin purity, that the more singular a language was, the better. Of course, historiography has progressed since Hickes, but it's important to recognise that to some degree looking at Old English dialects is still an act of historical construction. Based on things like manuscript glosses and Old English texts, we've constructed an idea of the diversity of language in Anglo-Saxon England, but this is the written word, and may not reflect a potentially greater diversity in spoken English of the time. Nonetheless, these pieces of textual evidence do allow the differentiation of regional dialects. There was clearly a West Saxon dialect, as mentioned with Beowulf, as well as a Mercian, Anglian, Kentish, and Northumbrian. Certainly there were grey areas between the heartlands of these dialects, something that is picked up in documents like Beowulf, which shows aspects of the first four, but most strongly West Saxon and Mercian, hinting at an origin in northern Wessex or southern Mercia. \n\nAs to whether they were mutually intelligible, it's not something that will ever be proven, but is almost certainly the case. Although there are enough differences in the written word to identify one dialect from another, and indeed aspects of several within one text, they are similar enough from one another that Anglo-Saxons could probably communicate with one another regardless of origin.\n\nIt's important to mention too that I'm try to speak roughly in reference to the date you gave: c.700 AD. There is a chronology to Old English dialects, as with any language, and they evolved over time, to say nothing of the impact of Scandinavian languages from the Viking Age onwards. \n\nSome sources/further reading:\n\nMichael Lapidge's 'The Archetype of Beowulf'\n\nGeorge Hickes and the \"Invention\" of the Old English dialects', C.M. Cain, *The Review of English Studies* 11/2010\n\n'Negative Contractions and Old English Dialects', L. van Bergen, *Neuphilologische Mitteilungen* 2008" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dcubegf", "dcubie0", "dcubkzz", "dcuc0wa" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You are partially correct, however another huge reason is cows were domesticated before the rest of the livestock, and since people didn't want to change their ways they didn't try to milk other animal. Hope this helps.", "Humans domesticated cows and have been selectively breeding them for milk production (among other things) for so many generations that they're in no way similar to their wild ancestors (who have been extinct for centuries by the way). So they basically kind of fell into that niche - it basically became *easy*. \n\nThat said, as you mention, goat milk/cheese are fairly popular, as is sheep milk cheese. Water buffalo is also fairly common (it's what mozzarella, for example, is supposed to be made from). Horse and camel milk are also common in certain areas of the world. ", "Heard in a medical lecture that rat is the mammal having milk most similar nutrients as humans. So why do we go for cows? Practicality. The cow sits there and is happy to be milked, and the quantity of milk per cow is advantageous compared to other mammals. ", "There are also sheep we use then for cheese too. \n\nPrimarily the issue is economics they don't produce enough that it's worth your time. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "do8xbz2", "do8xcg5", "do8yy9k" ], "score": [ 11, 2, 2 ], "text": [ " > Is it possible to be healthily overweight\n\nthis is a tough question because of how we usually decide whats \"overweight\". If you have a lot of muscle you will technically be overweight, but will still be \"healthy\". The simplest answer is that excess fat will put unneeded stress on someones bodies cutting life span shorter. Can you be happy and live to 80 while being overweight? sure. Would you feel better, and drastically reduce the risk for things like hard disease if you lost 40 lbs? absolutely. ", "It is absolutely possible, since \"overweight\" at least from a clinical perspective, is based solely on a persons BMI, which justaposes a persons weight against their height without any regard for actual fat or muscle content. \n\nFrom what you are describing, it seems that you are both over weight and at risk of developing poor health if you continue to eat the way you do. But you aren't in any real danger right now. Develop diabetes and then we have a problem Houston ", "Sure. Plenty of lean and muscle-bound people have BMIs over 25, the standard benchmark for overweightness. Fewer are obese, with a BMI over 30 (at 5'10'', that's over 208 pounds.) Overweightness and obesity are often pooled together, although being 10 pounds overweight and 100 pounds overweight aren't really in the same ballpark. BMI is also a bit of a crude measurement compared to things like body fat percentage or waist-hip ratio. In terms of things we care about like \"not dying,\" we might be better off sticking a tape measure on people, since belly fat is way worse than hip or butt fat.\n\nDiscussing whether a given weight can be healthy gets us into two sticky points. One, obesity is partly an indirect risk, one which tends to lead to riskier things like diabetes/high blood pressure, which tend to lead to the bad things we REALLY care about (heart attack, stroke, death.) Two, obesity increases risk on average. This is a difficult thing to come to terms with when it applies to individuals. Let's say I'm in a population with a 20% risk of a heart attack in the next decade, while you have a 30% chance. You're not going to get 10% more of a heart attack than I will--each of us will have 0% or 100% of a heart attack. It's totally possible that I'll get one and you won't, even if my odds are better. Either way, we won't know until it happens. All we can do is play the odds, and improve them where we can. \n\nOne group of authors highlighted the concept of \"metabolically healthy obesity.\" It basically comes down to \"fat but without a huge belly, plus normal blood pressure/cholesterol/blood sugar, no insulin resistance, and good physical fitness.\" If all those apply, you're not at a terrible place for now. (I would probably add \"no sleep apnea,\" since obesity drives that risk up and it can cause all sorts of problems we do care about.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cp69ain", "cp6aya6", "cp6ix2u", "cp6jlln", "cp6mbmo", "cp6osyd" ], "score": [ 47, 13, 3, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Because Iran wants the same capability that the U.S. and Israel have had for a long time. And we're telling them they can't. \n\n", "It's good for Iran in the sense that they will have some economic sanctions lifted off them. They haven't taken it because it would mean that they have to give up an real nuclear programs they currently have running, and they are enriching to weaponized levels. Giving up their nuclear program is equivalent to them surrendering to Israel. They believe Israel to be just as dangerous as Israel sees Iran, and Israel already has a bomb. \n \nTruth is, there are no good guys, and no way to win, this situation. Both countries have committed horrendous acts against each other, and both want the other wiped off the planet. Israel has only taken a softer tone in public since the US has pressured them after we handed them their holy land.", "An important reason why Iran haven't accepted a deal is because they probably don;t have much faith that Obama can deliver on his end of the bargain in terms of lifting sanctions. This fear is exacerbated by the presence of a Republican congress and a right wing Israeli government unwilling to support any negotiations (hence the conflict between Obama and Netanyahu). Furthermore, they probably want to continue negotiating in order to make sure that they can get as good a deal as possible in terms of energy production vie nuclear, and in terms of sanctions lifting. ", "Also back in the day we helped build a nuclear plant and promised to provide the fuel... The revolution happened and it's been sitting idle since.", "It's actually a kinda shitty deal for Iran. \n\nEffectively we're twisting their arm to get them to stop their nuclear program and the deal would just mean we twist it a little less hard. ", "From my basic understanding of the situation it is because the terms Obama is promising, he cannot guarantee they would be delivered. By the time Iran fulfills all of its obligations, Obama's term will be over and in the event of a Republican President, House & Senate there is no guarantee that the current sanctions would get overturned." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eufrat4", "eug843f", "eug8fxw", "eugqm7d", "euhhmsy" ], "score": [ 47, 29, 8, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The same \"zero\" calorie sweetener you taste in a diet soda would taste drastically different if raised to a baking temperature prior to being served. Here is a good article detailing the whats and whys of how substitutes work in food prep: _URL_0_", "Type 1 diabetic here- I've done a ton of reading, research, cooking and baking over 20 years and discovered there are a number of answers to that question, but the primary one is cost. Zero calorie sweeteners aren't nearly as versatile as sugar and tend to leave aftertastes or turn to carbon when baked, particularly when you're producing them commercially and don't have the luxury of time.\n\nThe two I've tried over the years that do fairly well at high temperatures are Erythritol and Stevia. The former is a sugar alcohol and I've discovered many of these, primarily Xylitol (Erythritol actually seems to be a happy exception) used to be included in the ingredients list and then marketed as low or zero calorie/carb by companies who knew it was an outright lie (Atkins, Quest Bar products et al) and that sugar alcohols tend to simply be digested later in the intestines and can take hours to release sugars. More importantly to the question, both are expensive and unfortunately the reality is that most people aren't willing to pay more when a cheaper alternative is available and is also what you're used to and grew up with.\n\nFearmongering is another bullet point as many sweeteners are campaigned against on blogs, selective studying, etc. Aspartame being a prime example of something everyone remembers being demonised in the media despite being one of the most researched and safe consumables on the planet.\n\nUltimately, a combination of practicality, price, consumer demands and more.", "One of the problems is e.g. hard candy uses sugar not just to be sweet, but also to have structure not existing in drinks. Once you find candy types without this problem, sweeteners appear to be quite common. \n\nStevia-sweetened chocolate and compound chocolate certainly exist. Stevia gummies have reduced sugar, using collagen for structure. Chewing gum is very easy to make sugarless and many are sweetened with xylitol, as their structure doesn't use sugar whatsoever. Note too much of these sweeteners act like laxatives, which is another problem (:", "Amorphous sugar forms the structure of most candy into which flavours and colours are added. So to replace sugar you need to find something that is sweet, but doesn't have another strong taste to interfere with your chosen flavours and has similar properties - such as being non-toxic, soluble, not being overly sticky or melting at inconvenient temperatures.\n\nA common choice is sorbitol, a sugar alcohol which melts at about 95C. It's not quite as sweet as sugar, but it has many of the same properties - although the flavour is slightly different - I think it is a bit like menthol with a slight cooling senasation; which is why it is commonly used for things like mints where the flavouring covers up the sorbitol taste. It's also something of a laxative, so you have to go easy on them! Another choice is another is called isomalt which is a sugar alcohol called mannitol attached to a glucose molecule. It is used to make hard candies and it doesn't have the slight weird taste of sorbitol. But again, it is a laxative.\n\nAs for baking, most sweeteners are many times sweeter than sugar which means you need less of them and this affects the consistency of the batter. You need to bulk up the recipe to take account of the smaller amount of sweetener. It is possible for powdered sucralose (sold under the brandname Splenda) if your recipe uses volume measurements as the formulation is meant to match sugar volume for volume.\n\nAnd I suspect a final reason is that sugar chemistry at temperature is a crucial part of the browning and flavouring of many foods. As sugar is converted to caramel by heat, it browns the food and changes the flavour. This wouldn't happen for most sweeteners - indeed many of them, such as aspartame, are not stable at high temperatures.\n\nI'm sure a food scientist or organic chemistry will be along shortly to add more information/tell me just how wrong I am.", "Sugar does more than just provide the sensation of sweetness. When added into edible snacks and foods, it provides texture and mouth feel, particularly in baked goods. While artificial and other non-nutritive sweeteners can generally provide an adequate replacement for the flavor of sugar, they do a poor job at replicating the texture and mouth feel." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/lifestyle/blog/6193/baking-with-sugar-substitutes-which-ones-are-good-for-baking" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "edv6aly" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Copying my same comment from your other thread:\n\nWe don't know exactly what paths the r-process takes, or where they end. We have indications that fission is a major limiting factor to how high in mass the r-process can reach, but we don't know the structure and susceptibility to fission of the superheavies near the island of stability. And even if the r-process reaches all the way up to them, it's unlikely that any of them will truly be *stable*, just *relatively* stable compared to other nuclides in the same mass range. So maybe they're produced, but they all decay away on timescales too short to be found in nature.\n\nSo to summarize, we don't know." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu8h1zx", "cu8hc2d", "cu8in13" ], "score": [ 6, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "You generally have to listen to music in the context of the time, i.e. see what else was going on in the charts / mainstream at the same time and therein most often lies the difference - > people bring something new/extraordinary for that time, which is later hard to grasp as being so because everyone started doing the same.", "Watch Purple Rain and/or listen to the Purple Rain album. Maybe also check out Sign O' The Times, which was the follow up to Purple Rain.\n\nIf you really dislike it, it's probably just a matter of taste. \n\nAs far as I can tell, most of the reason people love Prince is his infectious energy mixed with lyrical genius/depth. He also has both great poppy hooks *and* technical ability. It's the best of a lot of different worlds. So he might not be the best guitarist of all time, or write the best lyrics ever, or have the absolute catchiest pop tunes, or be the most fun performer to watch that has ever existed. But, he is AMAZING at all of those things, probably better than most of his peers. So if you want the full package, you have to admit Prince is bringing it. \n\nIt's also worth noting Prince's place in pop music of the 80s. He was a synthesis of a lot of ideas people were really excited about, like the influence of Black music in white-dominated pop culture, androgyny, and a cohesive aesthetic/personal brand. He was also perfect for a time when a lot of people were consuming their music in the form of videos, because he's both talented and photogenic, and because he has a degree of lyrical depth and a cohesive creative vision, his music lends itself to making amazing music videos. \n\nAlso, a lot of artists are bad people who would at the very least be annoying to hang out with. If you pick and choose what to enjoy based on how moral and sane and nice the person seems to be, you're going to end up with some shitty taste.\n\nEDIT: Hypothesis - Prince was the Taylor Swift of the 80s.", "[Here](_URL_0_) is what shows how good Prince is on guitar. He is on stage with legends and he shreds.\n\nBeyond that, you can't really compare an artist who came out 30 years ago with ones today, because of course he doesn't sound all that different. That's because they are copying him. Its the same with the Beatles, people often claim they don't see anything special about them, and fail to realize the reason they don't seem special is because people have been copying them for 50 years. " ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6l9cfl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The term you're looking for is the *thermic effect of feeding*. Its magnitude depends on the type of food. Out of the three macronutrients, protein has by far the highest metabolic cost.\n\n > This thermic effect seems to be influenced by the composition of food consumed. In general, the typical thermic effect of protein is 20%–35% of energy consumed and for carbohydrate, this number usually falls between 5% and 15%. The thermic effect of fat is a subject of debate. Some have found that fat has a lower thermic effect compared to carbohydrate, while others have found no difference between the two.\n\nSource: [The Effects of High Protein Diets on Thermogenesis, Satiety and Weight Loss](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.jacn.org/content/23/5/373.long" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3rcad2", "c3rekia", "c3rgur4" ], "score": [ 3, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "From everything I've heard about the subject of homeopathy, there are far, far, more studies that have resulted in showing the homeopathy has at best only a placebo effect.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThese guys and the Podcast *The Skeptics Guide to the Universe* discuss this sort of thing all the time.", " > British Homoeopathic journal\n\nI will also point out that the start point of this study is incredibly vague. They are treating 'influenza-like symptoms'. There is no standardisation of what the disease actually is - no serology or culture or PCR or quantification of the infective organism of any kind. ", "It is also worth noting that the Cochrane Review article in question has been withdrawn and is due to be re-written by a different team of authors and did not conclude that Oscillo was an effective treatment when it was initially published. " ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475491699902084", "http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/739836" ]

[ [ "http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d96vtu2" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "An open port on your computer means that something is responding to connections on that port. a program is listening on the port and does things with what you send to it.\n\nIt's not the port that is the actual problem. It's the program. The program (probably) has a very narrow set of intended uses, but what happens if you feed it with data that doesn't correspond to the protocol of the intended use?\n\nSome programs are so poorly written that you can feed almost anything to the computer through a badly written program and some are so poorly written that you can make the computer crash purely by connecting to the port of the program and feed it with an excessive amount of data for a short while.\n\nThis reasoning is kind of a bit messed up by computers in networking environments too, because - somewhat simplifying things here - the reason that you can see that there are other windows computers on your network is that they are talking to each other. all the time. over a specific set of ports. If you are able to sneak into that communication, you can sort of pretend that you are a part of the network despite not being there at all.\n\nYou are vulnerable to it if computers on the internet are able to find a way in and talk directly to your NAT:ed computers in your home. If you port forward you are vulnerable if there is a known (or non-published) exploit on the specific program that you forward the connection to." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9q6gpc" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It is a confusing topic, both were pretty much the same event in some respects. I would say the most significant difference was that the Italian Renaissance was more driven by the revival of the pagan aspects of Classical Antiquity. The driving force of this was the Academy of Florence, it's founding father Marsilo Ficino, and in particular its visiting professor (so to speak) George Gemistus Plethon. Plethon's ambition was a Pagan revival which would Christianity, and all other religions into it. Oddly enough one his chief supporters was the Papacy. Rome had the ambition to reabsorb the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire, and above all the Orthodox Church. Plethon, a Greek Nationalist and an opponent of the Orthodox Church was a natural ally. Northern Europe was not much interested in this project. The Nation State was emerging with its own nationalisms, and the new scholarship was drawn into the conflict between the Nation States and the Papacy, otherwise known as The Reformation. The consequence of these long forgotten struggles is that Botticelli earned a good living painting Roman gods and goddesses and Hans Holbein painted Kings. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4af8fs", "c4ag3hd", "c4ahp2e" ], "score": [ 2, 21, 3 ], "text": [ "Assuming the pattern *is* due to radiation and isn't just a photo artifact, it reminds me of some kind of interference pattern, but that doesn't really make sense since I don't think the iris of the camera is on the order of the wavelength of gamma radiation.\n\nThe pattern is also stronger at the bottom of the photo and decreases going upward, which suggests that if it is due to radiation, it's being caused by radiation from the ground that rapidly drops off in intensity as the angle of incidence increases. So, I'm going to say (again, if it is from the radiation and not just a regular defect like \"orbs\") that it could be due to beta or mayyybe alpha radiation.", "I used to do darkroom photography a lot, and to me that doesn't look like any sort of chemical burn or radiation. I've had photos turn out like it; it was due to the film being crinkled inside the camera or during development, which makes the areas of the film on the bottom of the photo develop unevenly around the sprockets.", "I don't believe this is an issue of the film being \"crinkled\". Assuming this is 120 film (edit-based on the grain I think it might be 135), which comes on a spool, it appears that when it was wound on the spool a corner was exposed to more radiation and thus exposed. When unwound, boom, you have a repeating pattern.\n\nThis could have happened before being loaded into the camera, before the shot was taken, after the shot was taken, or after it was unloaded from the camera." ] }

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[ "http://i.imgur.com/60fie.jpg" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dkp2nwc", "dkp2plx", "dkp2rpa", "dkp2s25", "dkp2yoz", "dkp306x", "dkp40um" ], "score": [ 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Perhaps but I doubt it. gravity is the warping of space in the presence of mass. So unless you made the decking out of some sort of material with the mass of a planet, (which would create a whole host of other problems, you would have to rely on acceleration or centrifugal force to create a similar effect. ", "The technology already exists to simulate gravity, such as by having a large rotating section, however it's not practical for our current work in space. You'd need a fairly large rotating structure (if it is small, the difference in gravity between your feet and your head would be disorienting, and it would have to spin faster to generate the necessary force) and so people get by in free fall without apparent gravity. \n\nIf you mean like flipping a switch and suddenly there is a gravitational field, there's no technology on the foreseeable horizon that can do that. ", "From what I've gathered, absolutely not. The closest is to simulate gravity by having a portion of the craft spin using centripetal force to pull people against the floor. ", "The technology exists, it's just big, expensive, and hard to build.\n\nAll you really need to do is have the living quarters spin fast enough that centripetal acceleration is the same as earth's gravitational pull, like when you spin a bucket of water over your head fast enough and it doesn't spill", "It's hard to say what will exist in the next 50 years, but it really depends on the situation. We can simulate gravity in space by spinning a space-ship such that the \"floor\" is towards the outside of the ship, using centrifugal force to simulate gravity (in case that term makes you go \"huh\", it's the force you feel when you go fast around a corner in a car that seems to pull you to the outside of the turn. And for the physicists out there, yes I know that this is technically centripetal force but this is ELI5).\n\nIf you mean like on the Enterprise, where they are just motionless in Space and still experiencing earthlike gravity, then that will be trickier, as we don't know a whole lot about gravity in terms of what actually causes it, other than \"lots of mass\" (though we *have* observed gravity waves in the last few years, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can reproduce them artificially);\n\nThere's also the problem that if you *do* make this tech, in theory it's going to make your space ship, for all intents and purposes, the same mass as Earth, which means that you probably shouldn't get into a close orbit with any planet you don't want to mess with the orbits of.", "A magic floor that pulls you down wouldn't exist.\n\nThere are a few other ways to simulate gravity in space, a rotating ring or cylinder turning at the right speed (so \"down\" is facing outwards into space and \"up\" is towards the middle of the ring) or a ship accelerating so the bottom is pushing up, (\"down\" is towards the engine, \"up\" is the front of the ship),that only works while the ship is moving and steadily accelerating/decelerating", "As far as depictions of it go, one of the closest ones to getting it right is The Expanse. There are two ways to simulate gravity in space: \n\n1) as already mentioned, spinning otherwise known as centripetal force. This would need to be a large circle otherwise your feet will be spinning much faster than your head and will really mess you up.\n\n2) constant acceleration. This one is hard to do with current technology because the amount of fuel required. The idea is that you would accelerate continually for half way towards your destination, then turn around and decelerate the second half of the trip. \n\nIn this case, it is important to envision it not like people standing on a star wars or star trek ship, but would be like a skyscraper were the force is simulated to be pulling down towards the base which is where the rocket engines would be." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1vxysr", "c1w0fwq" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Well, some deaf people who learn how to speak have a some residual hearing, which is part of how they learn to speak. In that case, yes, I'd expect them to have accents.\n\nOther deaf people learn to speak by watching tongue and mouth movements and feeling the passage of air through the throat and attempting to mimic that. I figure that their accents are a lot less obvious.", "Deaf person here.\n\nA bit of background of myself: I am profound deaf from age of one due to spinal meningitis. I went to public school (not a school for deaf) with Signing Exact English (SEE) interpreter being available and took speech classes three times a week until I finished high school since the beginning of school (preschool in my case). I went through four different speech therapists. All of them are Arkansas natives as that is where I grew up until I finished school. I am 31 years old now. I live in Texas in the Austin area but have visited many of the states on the east side of USA since I finished school.\n\nEvery time I encounter someone who is not of Arkansas area - they do always ask where I am from as they could hear in my speaking that I was not from that area where I currently am. Some have always identified me being from the Deep South. I was told by the deaf-impaired friends that they do get asked often where they are from when they visit other states so I considered that normal for me being asked.\n\nI do not know what specific words were those that I pronounced differently which helped those people know that I am not native in the area.\n\nHowever, when I am in the Arkansas area around strangers, I never get asked of my origin. Even I noticed that lip reading is much easier for me to do in Arkansas compared to the Northeastern side of USA.\n\nIn short words, yes, there are specific speech therapists that would train Deaf people, like me, to pronounce words precisely to what the therapist's choice of speaking accents. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "egt9xsa" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "That doesn't happen to me, you might need to talk to your service provider, or have your phone checked out. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8f2ecb", "c8f3k7b" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Not really, no. Is it close enough? Yes. Is it pretty much the only option in digital signal processing? Yes.\n\nWith anything discrete you will use summations instead of integrals and difference equations instead of differentials. What this means is instead of calculating the area under the curve, you are creating smaller and smaller sized squares (approaching infinite) to approximate the area. \n\nIn laymans terms (I assumed until this point the reader is working with fourier seties and understands the concept of a Z-transform):\n\nWhen computers handle data they can't truly comprehend the nature of continuous. A computer clock does not advance steadily, it jumps forward from one value to another at an extremely rapid pace. What this means is that in the real world I can analyse a radio signal and break it into smaller pieces and continue to get more data. When we use computers we need to sample the waveform. Imagine having a blindfold on and asking your friend every few seconds what position a wheel was at. If done fast enough you can extrapolate how fast that wheel is turning. What you CAN'T do is know for sure where it was during that extrapolation. This is the concept of discrete time.\n\n\nOn a side note to /u/man-vs-spider : if you are using matlab send me a PM and I can recycle some code to do a discrete fourier transform (fast-fourier transforms require the toolkit I believe)\n", "Yes, you can and should do this if your samples are uniformly spaced. Beware of aliasing. You can't get any coefficient you want.\n\nDFT is technically just trigonometric interpolation, i.e. fitting your data points with a suitably chosen sum of sines and cosines. If you want to calculate Fourier coefficients «brute force», i.e. with integrals, then you need to interpolate anyway because presumably you are only sitting on a finite amount of data. Of course, you might get different Fourier coefficients if you do (say) polynomial interpolation and then transform that function, but I've never heard of anyone doing this. There's also no guarantee that such an interpolant could be periodically continued in a smooth or even continuous manner.\n\nI guess I could offer some more explicit advice if I knew what you are trying to do." ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_Fourier_transform" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "deql0f4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Wtf? Do they have to restrain you and carry you in and out? I have blood taken all the goddamned time and it takes like 2 minutes and one philipino lady." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7a7soc" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Yes and no. Freckles will come and go depending on how much sun exposure your skin gets. My freckles definitely multiply and then lessen between summer and winter when I'm getting different amounts of sun. I went to college in Florida after having grown up in Virginia and my freckle count quadrupled and they stuck around since I was getting sun consistently. Somewhere I have a picture from a weekend in Miami, and it looks like I got shot in the face with a freckle-colored paintball gun. \n\nSource: See username." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f6cvost", "f6cw24u", "f6cygkm", "f6d07s0" ], "score": [ 8, 8, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "They are probably at low ground.\n\nSo it rains over an area, and all the rain that isn't going down a drain needs to go somewhere. It travels to lower ground, causing flooding. Like going downhill. It pools at the bottom, submerging buildings and cars and such.", "It's because water flows and pools. Have you ever seen rainwater just sit in one spot? Nope, it will flow downhill, collect in large pools, overwhelm a drainage system and cause isolated areas of flooding. If you have a dip in a road where the drainage is poor, the water will collect there and you'll end up with a much great depth than the 40mm that one area received.", "The measured rain is actually not the amount of water. It is the height to which water would stand if all the rainwater was allowed to stay at the place without flowing off or getting absorbed in the soil. Thus, a rain of 40 mm means that if the rainwater had been collected in a circular funnel with a diameter of 203mm (rain gauge) which is kept in an open area, it would have water to a depth of 40 mm.", "You need to think of the rain a different way. If your watershed is 50 km^2 , 50M m^2 , then 40mm of rain is 2M m^3 of water. Can you imagine a shape of pool with 2M m^3 of water that could submerge a car (perhaps 20 m^3 )? That's 100K cars worth of water." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "drejgoy" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There are small watermarks in each copy that uniquely identifies it. If a theater were discovered to have leaked their copy, the movie studio would stop doing business with them, which would almost certainly cause the theater to go out of business.\n\nSo theaters are *heavily* incentivized to be as protective as possible of the copies of movies that they have received." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eoi8d72" ], "score": [ 224 ], "text": [ "I answered a similar question some time ago [here](_URL_0_) but I’ll repeat it below." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7jeucb/who_got_what_weapons_in_ww2/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5qk3m8", "c5qk959", "c5qkog7", "c5qkomk", "c5ql0ek", "c5qmb4z", "c5qpoqz", "c5qq1zv", "c5qr6rl", "c5qrrix", "c5qsh6z", "c5qtoqw" ], "score": [ 11, 14, 5, 8, 10, 6, 2, 5, 4, 4, 17, 7 ], "text": [ "During the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), the mujahideen used to attach explosives to camels and then direct them towards Soviet targets. Whenever the camel was close to a desired target (be it a position or a base), they would proceed to use a remote detonator to explode the camel. There are no sources right now that can tell me how effective these attacks actually were, but apparently the US intelligence agencies took this threat so seriously that they gave out warnings to American forces in Afghanistan during the early months of the occupation. The BBC reported in December 12th, 2001 about an incident at Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan where US marines guarding the camp got themselves quite a camel scare when a \"*big old camel*\" ran into the compound and was fired upon by several startled marines.", "Elephants were the first tanks, but do you know what the first anti-tank missiles were?\n\n[Pigs.](_URL_0_)", "Anyone care to share about old/ancient zoos?", "I'm interested to know why the lion is prominent in British regalia considering we don't have anything more vicious than pissed-off kittens on our fair isles?", "Back when Portugal started sailing around Africa and into India, they brought back diaries with descriptions of the men, fauna and flora they've seen on those foreign countries.\n\n One of these was that of a rhino, which was described as a one-horned armored elephant-like animal. This has lad verious artists, including the German Albrecht Dürer, to depict the rhino as[ literally wearing plate mail armor.](_URL_0_)", "Anyone remember the story of [Wojtek?](_URL_0_) Wojtek was a bear who helped the Polish 22nd Transport Company in WW2", "Related questions: How big were wolves in Europe/Eurasia?\n\nWhat difficulties did large predators represent through various periods of post-Roman civilization and did they create a need for the domestication of hunting or guard dogs?", "Since no one has mentioned it yet, Traveler( Robert E. Lee's horse) is probably the most famous horse of all time(at least in American history). At Washington and Lee college the garage doors ( formerly the stable) of the president's house are always left open for Traveler to come home. Interestingly enough a few miles down the road Jackson's horse, little Sorrel, is stuffed and on display. ", "As for intruiging uses of animals over time I present \n\nProject Pigeon\n\n > The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course.\n_URL_1_\n\nAlso the bat bomb\n > Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican Free-tailed Bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then roost in eaves and attics. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.\n_URL_0_\n\n\nThere are numerous other wacky ways humans have decided to use animals as weapons these are but a few I can post more if anyones interested.", "I gotta ask:\n\nWhere does the mythology of dragons start and why? How did they come to be? What was the basis?", "Oh my god, the chance to share one of my favourite animal-related facts EVER. I'm not an expert in this area, but this fact has fascinated me ever since I found out about.\n\nSo when cotton first hit Europe from Central Asia in the late medieval period, they didn't know how to explain it. It's like wool, but what kind of sheep does it come from? They knew it was from a plant, but they couldn't imagine what kind. The earliest written record was in 1350, but they came up with this amazing thing:\n\nThe idea of the [Vegetable Lamb](_URL_1_) was born. The idea was that cotton came from a sheep that was grown from the ground, with a umbilical cord \"stem\" that supported it in the air. The sheep would graze when the wind blew it over enough to reach the grass, and when it ran out of grass, it died, and then people harvested its cotton \"wool\".\n\nSupposedly, Europe didn't find out the truth until roughly *1683*, when German scholar Engelbert Kaempfer decided enough was enough, time to find out the truth. \n\nI feel giddy inside every time I think about this. [My face, every time.](_URL_0_)", "My favorite is certainly [the Beast of the Gévaudan](_URL_1_). \n\nIn the 1760s, there were reports of a [strange beasts](_URL_0_) skulking around south-central France, killing over 100 people and attacking many more over the course of a few years. The beasts were described by eyewitnesses as [wolf-like in appearance](_URL_2_). King Louis XV sent a small army to hunt them down and many subjects, from royal hunters to peasants, volunteered to join. The story became a sensation in the pamphlet press and the popular imagination of French naturalists.\n\nTo this day, we're not quite sure what these beasts might have been. Explanations have ranged from extremely large wolves (though they were reported to hunt alone rather than in packs) to cryptozoologists positing werewolves. I've even heard one person speculate that they might have been hyenas imported from North Africa via Marseilles. " ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_Abbas", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xkn0h/thursday_focus_the_history_of_music/" ]

[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_pig" ], [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/D%C3%BCrer_rhino_full.png" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_\\(soldier_bear\\)" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon" ], [], [ "http://images.wikia.com/thearchivesofutopia/images/f/f8/Tangled_Pic_Rapunzel.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_Lamb_of_Tartary" ], [ "http://images.wikia.com/villains/images/e/e4/La_b%C3%AAte_du_G%C3%A9vaudan.png", "http://books.google.com/books?id=J3d_z2WFKFYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=monsters+of+the+gevaudan&source=bl&ots=uybAio4In4&sig=lWym3JUricDOcogl-7CpXs9I-J0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rWEkUJS8FaHtygHCxID4Cg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=monsters%20of%20the%20gevaudan&f=false", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Gevaudanwolf.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbgvyi4", "dbh2yam" ], "score": [ 10, 14 ], "text": [ "Older televisions had an electron \"gun\" (not a real gun, but we're going to call it that) that fired electrons at the front of the television tube. This gun would constantly scan across the screen, from top to bottom, left to right. When you turned the screen off, the flow of electrons stopped as the gun \"reset\" itself toward the middle of screen.", "Old televisions used what is called a cathode ray tube. At the back of the tube there is a device called an electron gun which fires a beam of electrons at the screen. The screen is broken up into tiny spots called called pixels, and each pixel contains patches of material that will glow red, green, or blue when hit by the electron beam. To form the illusion of a consistent picture, the beam sweeps across the screen 60 times a second, hitting whichever patch needs to be hit at each pixel.\n\nThe beam is guided by a powerful magnetic field produced by an array of coils at the back of the tube. When the power is cut off, the field is shut down, and the last of the charge in the electron gun fires towards the screen in an uncontrolled pattern. The natural behavior of a cathode ray is to move in a cone from the source of the beam, so the \"blip\" you're seeing is basically a spray of electrons hitting the screen as the electron gun expels the last of its charge." ] }

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[ "https://youtu.be/-MH6JZdGZcI" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "chyadmu" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Same way we survive inbetween meals. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "co7x4yx", "co7x6v6", "co7y68g", "co7zaz6" ], "score": [ 2, 6, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "They used key words that they knew would be present in certain messages, such as \"Wetter\" (weather) and \"Heil Hitler\". The machines (there was more than one) would stop when a combination gave out those words as an output, and then someone would read the message to make sure it made sense. If it did, they knew the code combination for that day.", "Flaw in the Enigma Code - Numberphile: _URL_0_\n\nThat video explains pretty well what was happening, the machine wasnt looking for words, rather looking for the combination of rotors that didnt produce a logical impossibility based on the fact that a letter would never convert to itself. Once the machine found a combination of rotors and plugs which didnt convert any letter to itself, it could deliver the correct rotor settings to someone who would then decrypt the code.", "The Turing machine has nothing to do with cryptanalysis- it's a conceptual tool that's used for studying problems in theoretical computer science, not a machine that was ever intended to be built.\n\nThe device that turing designed to break [Enigma](_URL_0_) was called the [bombe](_URL_1_). It relied on a flaw in Enigma, in that Enigma *never encrypts a letter to itself*. Given a piece of known plaintext (called a crib), the bombe could quickly rule out possible rotor positions based on this rule. \n\nThe cryptanalyis of the [Lorenz cipher](_URL_3_) was based on statistics- in German as in English, certain letters come up more frequently than others, but in encrypted text the letters should have no discernable pattern. Lorenz had a flaw that allowed codebreakers to change one rotor at a time, looking for the statistical signature that indicated it was in the right place. Then they could move on to the next one until the complete rotor settings were determined. This task was automated by one of the first [electronic computers](_URL_2_), though this was designed by Tommy Flowers, not Turing.", "In every language, some letters are more common that others. In English, E, T, and A are very common, and X, Q, and Z are rare.\n\nIt is a pretty easy matter to count how often each letters occur in a message, and come up with a score that indicates how likely it is to be a real language vs. gibberish. It only takes looking at the first 30 letters or so to see whether the combination you tried worked.\n\nAlso, Turing came up with ways to examine the encoded message, and eliminate a lot of the combinations he needed to try." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://youtu.be/V4V2bpZlqx8" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Lorenz_cipher" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "esg680a" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Imagine this: You have a mouthful of water, but your mouth is closed, and you go swimming in the pool. The water from the pool doesn't flow into your mouth, but if you squeeze your cheeks, the water comes out of your mouth. Your mouth is likened to the pores that sweat comes out of.\n\nFor a slightly more complex explanation: The water inside of your body is always at surrounding pressure, or higher pressure. This means that water from the outside never wants to flow in. However, when the water inside of you is at a higher pressure, it can flows out. As for why the pressure inside of you is always equal or higher to the pressure around you, it is because pressure is determined by how much force is squishing a fluid. Since the pressure around your body is squishing your body, the water in your body is under at least that much pressure. Your body can squeeze it to further raise the pressure, but your body cannot stretch it to lower the pressure." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fb9wapp", "fb9yb80" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Winter sun (at sea level) is much weaker than summer sun, just like the sun near sunset is weaker than at noon, because the sun isn't directly shining at you and has more atmosphere to go through.", " > Can someone please explain the science, data, and recommendations regarding the dangers of sun exposure?\n\nThe \"Sun Protection Factor\" tells you how much longer it will take to cause damage. So if you're in conditions where you'd normally burn in 15 minutes (pretty strong sun), SPF 30 means you'll burn in 15 * 30 = 450 minutes (or 7.5 hours). SPF 50 means you'll burn in 15 * 50 = 750 minutes (or 12.5 hours). No matter how waterproof that sunscreen claims to be, you're probably going to sweat it all off long before you're exposed to enough sunlight for SPF 30 vs SPF 50 to make a difference. But if the sun is particularly strong, you might be outside long enough to burn through SPF 15, so most recommendations say to use SPF 30 or better. \n\n > Is getting burned the problem, or just ANY sun exposure?\n\nJust about any sun exposure will result in UV rays hitting your skin. If enough UV rays hit just the right place on your skin, you get skin cancer. The longer you're in the sun, the more damage your skin takes and the more likely it is to turn into cancer. \n\n > Haven’t humans been exposed to the sun for millennia?\n\nSure, but back when we were wandering around the savanna all day, you'd likely starve to death at age 40, if you even made it past childhood so you wouldn't have had to worry about getting skin cancer at age 70. If you were in a place with intense sunlight, you would have also had dark skin that acts as a natural sunscreen, rather than light skin which is needed in the north to make vitamin D from what little sunlight is available (your body uses some UV light from the sun to synthesize vitamin D, so you do need at least some sunlight). \n\n > Also, can a person still get tan with high spf frequently applied? Would that be the way to go?\n\nTechnically, yes you could. Remember that UV is a type of light. It's essentially some extra colors below violet in the rainbow (hence the name \"ultraviolet\"). Tanning is caused by UVA - the color just below violet. SPF measures how much the sunscreen blocks UVB, which is yet another color down in the rainbow (this is the color that causes sunburns). So you could have a high SPF sunscreen that doesn't block the tanning rays at all. However, both colors of UV rays can cause skin cancer, so while this is helpful in the short term, you're better off getting the broad-spectrum sunscreen that blocks both colors in the long run." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2ovqp0", "c2ovqp0" ], "score": [ 6, 6 ], "text": [ "These lights have electronic eyeballs that read how much light there is in an area. If the amount of light changes too quickly, usually because somebody walks in front of it and blocks the eyeball, it tells the lights to come on.", "These lights have electronic eyeballs that read how much light there is in an area. If the amount of light changes too quickly, usually because somebody walks in front of it and blocks the eyeball, it tells the lights to come on." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d65h6us", "d65heqx", "d65hsxh", "d65pbs3" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 9, 9 ], "text": [ "In Europe they don't even check your ID or anything if you wanna deposit cash, just give it to the guy? ", "I could be wrong, but I think this only applies to cash. The last time I deposited a check inside the bank, they didn't ask for a slip, just my bank card and ID.\n\nBut then again, you can now deposit cash at an ATM as well without a slip, so yeah, it doesn't make any sense.\n\n(USA here)", "Banks have VERY old technology and processes. If you only saw behind the curtain, most banks operate (at least some of their systems), with technology from the 1980's. ", "Where it's used, it's accountability for the teller. Essentially you fill out the slip with $XXX dollars on it, then when they process the document the receipt is printed on the same sheet and should reflect the same amount. That way there is a cross-check and verification that both of you agree how much money was deposited and deters the teller from under-depositing cash and customers from claiming that they gave the teller more than was deposited." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmlu586" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "If you're OK with a dense read, John Iliffe's *Africans: The History of a Continent* (2d ed., 2009?) is an interesting overview that extends across the continent in space and time and introduces a lot of concepts that help to define the whole. He's big on thematic subjects, but he does cover a very long stretch of time, and most of the continent." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dirb9ks" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "It would have been very difficult for Northern civilians to get their hands on tobacco products during the war (in fact the Internal Revenue Act placed a tax on luxury items -- [tobacco](_URL_0_) was included in that). \n\nIf you were a soldier, however, it was pretty easy to procure tobacco. Since most of the war was fought in the South you could easily help yourself to free tobacco at whichever plantation caught your eye and, as Northern and Southern soldiers did feel a certain kinship, there were occasional lulls in the fighting where soldiers would call a short truce to bury their dead and meet up to trade -- these trades included [tobacco](_URL_1_). \n\nAnd finally, America is an expansive country and obviously, surveillance was not nearly at the level it is today, so some entrepreneurial people would smuggle tobacco into the north, as detailed [here](_URL_2_) (this requires a JSTOR subscription).\n\nSo yeah, it was tricky, even if you were a soldier, but people were still able to get tobacco, it just required a bit more ingenuity and money than it did before or after the war." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm%3Fid%3D251", "https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/breaks-in-the-action/?_r=0", "http://www.jstor.org.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/stable/1895751?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=tobacco&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Diid%253A10.2307%252Fi305543%26amp%3BQuery%3Dtobacco&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chgf80a", "chgnbx2", "clpz387" ], "score": [ 36, 11, 2 ], "text": [ "So Gary Allen has a really complete time line of the history of 911 in the USA. _URL_0_ here. I would recommend reading that. It's complete with correct resources and self sourced history. \n\nEdit: his article answers your questions as well! ", "Historians mark the beginning of the American EMS system with the publication of *Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society* (National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, 1966), generally referred to as \"The White Paper\". This paper concerned itself with \"preventable\" deaths, or deaths that had not to do with something like disease, but car accidents, work place accidents, essentially, deaths caused from human fault. The paper argued that many of these deaths were caused due to the time it took for patients to receive care (laying the foundation for pre-hospital care). \n\nThe idea of prehospital care and transport was not altogether new. In 1797, Dominique-Jean Larrey used a system of special carriages to transport soldiers away from battle fields. Bellevue Hospital, the first hospital in the United Sates, used horse drawn carriages as well as early as 1869. To give you an idea what these look like, [Here](_URL_0_) is a picture of the horse drawn carriages used by Grady Hospital in Atlanta in 1896. However, it is important to realize hospitals during this time were very different than the modern day hospital. Hospitals would consist of large wards, and was really considered a place where people (the poor in particular) went to die. Funeral Homes often were the means of transport to the hospital well into the 20th century. Patients would actually ride in the back of the hearse. \n\nAfter the release of the white paper, the National Highway Traffic Saftey Administrator (subset of the Department of Transportation) released its first curriculum for the training of Emergency Medical Technicians. When it became clear that space was needed to preform CPR, bandage wounds, carry patients on stretchers, the modern Ambulances soon followed. This took time to implement though, and use of funeral homes for transportation continued into the 70s in some places (particularly rural areas). \n\nThe second thing to realize is EMS has largely been influenced by US military interventions. The military originally showed the importance of pre hospital care for trauma, particularly in stabilizing patients prior to transport in a helicopter. The Vietnam war gave the data needed to prove this, and so great strides in treating trauma were made (in fact, recently, Iraq and Afganistan wars have dramatically changed trauma treatment as well, but that goes beyond the scope of this subreddit)\n\nDuring the 70s, the Emergency Medical Services Act of 1973 dramatically improved development of regional EMS services, and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (the national board which certifies people to this day) was formed in 1970 to standardize practices. Much of the funding was lost however, after Health Care became managed by Block Grants under Reagan, a system which did not favor EMS funding. The ideas and practices of what EMS needed to accomplish, and what qualified as proper care began to evolve in the 90s, and by that point EMS was an integrated member of the emergency response trifecta (Police, Fire, EMS). \n\nA highly recommend you peruse _URL_1_, which has lots of excellent information on the people behind getting EMS started in the united states. For more information on modern day EMS, please visit us in /r/EMS. \n\nSource: Advance EMT: A Clinical Reasoning Approach, Melissa Alexander and Richard Belle\n", "In 1968, a solution was agreed upon. AT & T chose to implement the concept, but with its unique emergency number, 9-1-1, which was brief, easy to remember, dialed easily, and worked well with the phone systems in place at the time. _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.911dispatch.com/911/history/" ], [ "http://em.pgpic.com/images/vm/Grady%20Hospital%20Horsedrawn1888.jpg", "emsmuseum.org" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4emuit" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "What matters is the change in magnetic flux. When you have a magnet going through a donut of copper coil, the flux doesn't change at all, and you won't get any voltage out of it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1m85m3", "c1m87t7", "c1m88nz", "c1m8asc", "c1m8puk", "c1maqfl" ], "score": [ 9, 22, 2, 6, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Yes, gravity follows what's called an \"inverse square law\", meaning that gravity gets exponentially weaker the farther you move from a mass. Astronauts typically experience about ~80% of earth's gravity in orbit on the ISS, though they seem weightless relative to their surroundings because the people themselves are orbiting at the same rate as the station that surrounds them.\n\nAt the center of the earth the *apparent* gravity exerted on you would seem to be zero, because the gravity caused by the mass all around would cancel out (if we ignore the fact that earth is not a perfectly distributed sphere). ", "As you move closer to the center of mass of an object, the apparent force of gravity feels higher. I've been wondering the same. Here is my reasoning, would somebody please correct me if it's wrong:\n\nAs you go closer to the center, there's less mass below you, so that decreases the force of gravity. However, you're also nearing the core, which is the densest part, and that's where most of the gravity comes from anyway. I think that the rate at which gravity increases as you go toward the core is higher than the rate at which it decreases from having less mass beneath you. However, once you reach the core, if it's a fairly uniform density, the rate of gravity decreasing should raise until you reach the true center, at which point you'd feel no gravity.\n", "Above the surface of the earth, the gravity force is\nG = m*M/r^2\nWhere m is your mass, M is earth's mass, r is the distance to earth's center. \nSo it is true that the higher the less gravity. \n\nHowever if you dig down from earth's surface, the M in the equation has to be changed to the mass of the part of earth that's lower than you (this was figured out by Newton first using a very smart geometry method). So it depends on earth's mass distribution over depth, but in general the gravity also decreases when you go lower, and you will be weightless at the center of earth. \n", "The attractive force of gravity acting on any two objects (e.g. you and the Earth) can be calculated using the equation \n\nF=(G x M x m)/r^2\n\nwhere \nG = the gravitational constant, 6.67 x 10^-11 \nM = the mass of the first object; Earth's mass is 6 x 10^24 kg \nm = the mass of the second object \nr = the distance between the two objects. On the Earth's surface the distance from the core is about 6371 km \n\nAs you fly higher up into space the distance r increases, and you can see from the equation that the force of gravity decreases exponentially.\n\nIf we take the Earth as a symmetrical ball we can simplify the equation by relocating all its mass into the center (this is why the distance r is taken from the center). As you dig deeper towards the planet's core, things get more complicated since the mass is now all around you. \n\nWhen you reach the center there is no gravity since the mass above you is pulling your body just as hard as the mass beneath you, left mass is pulling just as much as right mass, etc. (And no, you won't get ripped apart. Each atom in your body is being pulled in the same direction, ie nowhere, so fortunately you will stay intact.)", "The comments here are mostly correct. The higher up you go, the strength of gravity decreases as 1/r^2. The tricky part is when you start going down to the center of the earth. Intuition tells you that at the center of the earth you should feel no net gravity (because the earth is distributed symmetrically around you, therefore is pulling on you equally in all directions).\n\nThe proper relation can be derived, knowing about [Gauss' law for gravity](_URL_0_). Basically, the amount of gravity that you would feel only depends on the amount of mass \"below\" you. By \"below\" i mean if you are at a distance R from the center of the earth, then only the amount mass enclosed in a sphere of radius R effects you. Any mass \"above\" you has no net effect.\n\nNow for the fun part:\n\nAssuming uniform density (good approximation), the amount of mass contained in a sphere of radius R goes like R^3. We know that gravitation is a inverse square law.\n\nF= GmM/R^2 = Gm(4/3 * PI * R^3 )/R^2 = G m * 4/3 * PI * R\n\nThis means that the gravitational force you feel while inside the earth goes linearly with R. Once you are at the surface, the force drops off like 1/R^2. This is analogous to the electric field of a uniform spherical charge distribution.", "Since you got yor answer let me tell a nice story: if all Earth's mass was concentrated in a point in the center, then yes, gravity would increase exponentially as you went further down. That's how black holes were first described maybe a hundred years before relativity, or sort of. A scientist calculated using Newtonian mechanics that if a planet was dense enough then it's escape velocity would be bigger than the speed of light. At that moment almost nothing was known what light was and that it's speed was way more special than, say, the speed of sound or trains, but he postulated that, if light behaved as a particle subject to gravity then it wouldn't be able to escape the gravity of the planet/star and therefore it would seem completely dark. Therefore a sort of black hole could exist in a universe governed purely by classical mechanics. He didn't name it black hole either, but something akin to dark star. \n\nThe significance of this was completely lost thou, since such hyper dense material was deemed pure fiction a d this whole idea was nothing but a mathematical curiosity. Black hole as we know today would be independently discovered only after Einstein published his papers. \n\nI'm on a phone now but if you want I can get the dates and names correct. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27_law_for_gravity#Spherically_symmetric_mass_distribution" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4efbxr", "c4eg59b" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "When we talk about light, we usually think of the thing that comes from the sun and light bulbs and colors.\n\nWe can think of this light as a wave. Each color is a different wavelength of this wave. Blue is a certain wavelength. Green is a different one. With red being the largest (lowest energy) and violet being the smallest (highest energy). \n\nBut in actuality, things like radio, microwaves, x-rays, and wireless ALL use this same exact type of wave. Just at different frequencies. \n\nSo there are only a select range of these frequencies that we can use for electronics. Certain frequencies are too common, so there would be a lot of interference. Some frequencies are dangerous (x-ray and gamma), some frequencies would require too much power (example, a lightbulbs requires power).\n\nOf the spectrum that we can use for electronics, a certain wavelength has been dedicated to wireless technologies. The FCC decides this. We can't just \"make more of it\" because there are only a certain number of frequencies. Sure we can dedicate 2110Mhz to something and then 2110.1 to something else, and then 2110.01 to something else, etc to 2110.00000000001, but this would cause interference. This is why radio stations are only odd numbers (no even radio stations) because if we had both, there might be some overlap.", "\"Wireless spectrum\" refers to the parts of the [electromagnetic spectrum](_URL_1_) that can be used to transmit data wirelessly. The whole spectrum can't be used because some bands can't travel through obstacles (like visible), some bands will kill you (x xray, gamma). In fact there's only a few gaps which are suitable for wireless transmission at meaningful distances without requiring a lot of power. We can't make more of it because it already infinite and continuous. \n\nSo why are we fighting over it? How much data you can push through any digital transmission is limited by how wide a band of frequencies (bandwidth) you're using. The theoretical upper limit of this is called the [channel capacity](_URL_2_). This means that even though that's an infinite number of frequencies between 0 and 1 Hz, there is a finite and limited amount of data you can communicate with that bandwidth.\n\nEven though we can't make more spectrum, we can definitely improve how we use it with various [modulation](_URL_0_) techniques and [encodings](_URL_3_). \n\nTo give you two recent developments, a wifi modem was built that is capable of transmitting and receiving at the same time on the same frequency by placing antennas such that the transmitted signal destructively interferes where the receiver antenna is. This effectively doubles the channel capacity without increasing the spectrum used.\n\nThe other is the idea of modulating the signal [polarization](_URL_4_) to increase the data that can be sent in the same bandwidth by anywhere between 2 and 64x. I'm not going to cite sources for either of these because its been a while since I read them and I'm lazy." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxssb6l" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The tests definitely did kill animals who were inadvertently nearby, but I don't think we have good documentation on how many. There are anecdotal accounts of people coming across rabbits at the Trinity site and lots of work was done to study the effects of nuclear testing on the creatures and ecosystem at the Pacific Proving Grounds. The Bravo test alone [deposited enough radiation in the water to be measured in radioactive fish for hundreds of miles around the test site](_URL_1_). \n\nThe tests also deliberately killed many animals for the purposes of the testing — pigs, mice, etc. — to see the effects on creatures. Pigs, for example, have skin that is similar to human skin in many ways, and so were used for burn tests. [This chart](_URL_0_) I stumbled across recently gives you a sense of scale for these kinds of testing endeavors — they may have been using conventional high explosives or other means for doing this, though. But that particular chart used 614 \"large\" animals, including burros, dogs, and steer, and 1,483 \"small\" animals, to get the data." ] }

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[ [ "https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/658309338742829056", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo#/media/File:Castle_Bravo_fish_contamination_map.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbq9l1h", "dbqiron", "dbqixa5", "dbqrhfo" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "How ancient would you like the game to represent? Rome II: Total War has a fairly realistic look at logistics and armies of the time period, and an interesting look at some of the (very high level) politics. Shogun II: Total War as well for the samurai-era in Japan. \n\nHave you considered board games as a complement to the video games, or is it directly about video game concepts?", "I had a teacher in Middle School that actually did in-class simulations dealing with the ancient Near East and also Rome. His name was Brad Hulman, and I know his simulation was published. I'll try to find it.\n\nHere it is: \n_URL_1_\n\nAnd my favorite simulation:_URL_0_\n\nI'll never forget doing these in class. I used to spend my gym period every day strategizing and planning what to do next in the simulation. Empires was amazing.", "Ancient world history is super broad. If you mean Antiquity your best bet is the Rome: Total War games and perhaps EU:Rome. \n\nIf you mean up to early middle ages I can suggest games like Crusader Kings 2.\n\nI don't know much about anywhere other than the ancient Mediterranean world, but it is heavily under used field imo. Good luck with that", "In addition to the Total War series that others have mentioned, have you had a look at any of the old school city builders like [Caesar III](_URL_1_), [Zeus+Poseidon](_URL_2_), [Pharoah+Cleopatra](_URL_0_)?\n\nThere is a combat element to some of the missions but they're way more focused on trade and city development." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.interact-simulations.com/c/product.web?nocache@13+s@aSosq6kZqQf6k+record@TF34287+Title@EMPIRES+ISBN@9781573363754", "http://www.interact-simulations.com/c/product.web?nocache@1+s@aSosq6kZqQf6k+record@TF42261+Title@ANCIENT%20HISTORY%20ACTIVATORS+ISBN@9781560043706" ], [], [ "https://www.gog.com/game/pharaoh_cleopatra", "https://www.gog.com/game/caesar_3", "https://www.gog.com/game/zeus_poseidon" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg8c6qf", "cg8c76g", "cg8d72b", "cg8daz8", "cg8dmnn" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 4, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Having specific nutrients isn't tremendously important to your body. You can get unfortunate diseases from nutrient deficiency, but it takes a *long* time to become a problem; a little bit of scurvy won't kill you.\n\nThe most important thing to your body is getting enough *energy* from food. In the wild, high-energy foods are rare, so they accordingly taste very good.", "And as I’m getting older i start to like veggies more and more... Does anyone know why that is?", "From an evolutionary standpoint calorically dense foods were not very abundant when cavemen were out foraging for food, a bag of skittles and a can of coke probably has more sugar in it than what the first humans would eat all day.", "Meats and high-sugar / high-carbohydrate foods were fairly rare treats for the majority of our history.\n\nAlso palette - if you were raised primarily on vegetables and fruit they'd taste a lot better to you most likely. Go to China and try out there food and you'll realize just how much your taste is defined by what you were fed when you were young - most North Americans find real Chinese food (As opposed to what you get in most 'Chinese food' places outside China) terrible because it focuses different flavours so much. ", "I think veggies are delicious." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3k80gc", "c3k87xi", "c3k8p0x", "c3k8ro1", "c3k9pb1" ], "score": [ 3, 10, 23, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "The thing you have to remember is that the use of the word \"Knowledge\" as if it were some kind of overarching and unified category can very easily throw us for a loop when we try to explain something like this.\n\nThe brain is a conflagration of millions of separate systems and processes--connected and often sharing components, but still functionally separate--happening in parallel all at the same time. When we use the ordinary vernacular word \"knowledge\" we are in fact picking out a heterogeneous mishmash of all sorts of abstract reasoning systems, semantic associations, motor programs, \"emotional\" processes, reflexes, hormones, etc...\n\nNon-human animals share many if not most of these, either by ancestry or simply by virtue of sharing similar environments and so evolving similar features. And many feature other senses and systems we don't have. But the basic neural architecture, for all its variation, is fairly well conserved among animals and is fairly simple for all the complexity that can be made with it: The strengths of connections between one neuron and the next perform processing as well as store memory.\n\nWhen we remember this, it can make questions like the OP's a lot easier to begin to answer. Let's consider a classic example: the herring gull. The mother gull has a red dot on her beak and the young gulls are born \"knowing\" to peck on the dot for food.\n\nBut when we ask the question of what the chick is actually born \"knowing\" out of the egg we begin to see how \"innate knowledge\" works. The chicks just peck at red spots. They don't have some magical or mysterious \"mental picture\" of the mother gull in vivid detail or an internalized conception or idea carved into their brains about why they're doing it or that it will feed them. All of those are separate systems. Different parts. The machinery that mediates that experience is not the same as the machinery that makes them want to peck.\n\nNow of course we might imagine that all those other things we consider when we use the word \"knowledge\" will be associated from their experience very quickly, but all that's \"innate\" is something very simple at the levels of visual processing and motor coordination and motivational systems at play in a newborn bird.\n\nHopefully this makes it seem a lot easier to see how selection can act on something as fuzzy and abstract as \"knowledge.\"", "As some others have stated, this is a very philosophical question that tracks back to the question of \"what counts as innate knowledge?\"\n\nI think the \"sucking reflex\" as mentioned by jxj24 is **exactly** the type of innate knowledge the OP was thinking of when he asked the question. And yet, the stripes on a tiger (as mentioned by Bob3333, although I don't believe he was claiming them as knowledge) would be considered not-innate-knowledge by almost everyone.\n\nUnfortunately, the difference between then, which everyone sees, is not really there. A specific group of cells undergoes specific developmental processes which result in the sucking reflex in humans. A specific group of cells undergoes specific developmental processes in tigers which result in stripes. Both are evolutionarily adaptive.\n\nThus, I would say every single animal (and every single plant) has innate knowledge in the sense that it has pre-programmed developmental processes that cause it to be generally well adapted to its environment.\n\nAll this innate knowledge is in contrast to things like \"remembering peoples' birthdays\" and \"knowing to hunt for food in a certain part of the forest\", which I consider learned knowledge of a human and tiger, respectively.", "One way this could be answered, from a cell biology perspective, is that there is nothing on earth which is born *without* innate knowledge. A lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) knows immediately from the moment of division how to [recognize and attack certain organisms](_URL_0_), and this thing which looks very much like \"behavior\" is actually the result of chemical cause-and-effect, logic circuits made of matter.\n\nIt could be a problem of semantics: it is undeniably true that genes encode for behavior, even complex behaviors. No ant needs to be 'taught' how to speak Ant, and pheromones which look to us like countless chemical derivatives of eachother have specific reserved meanings. \n\n", "Sometimes very complex behavior can be the result of very simple \"rules\". For instance beaver dam building seems to be a response to piling sticks on the sound of running water. ", "Having reread the question I have this to add to the conversation.\n\nBack in grad schol, a friend of mine was working in a lab that investigated questions of innate behavior. The most interesting thing he showed me of this work was a study of song development in different species of finches. They were able to transplant a very specific, very small section of brain between two birds when they were immature, and when they then reached the age when they should start singing, they invariably did so using the song native to the bird whose brain tissue they had received." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_xh-bkiv_c" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dxp2j6z" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The mouth is a dark, damp, warm environment. Perfect place for bacteria to grow. Think about it- when you sleep, your mouth is often closed, sometimes for as long as 8 hours a day. And lets be honest, who brushes their tongue vigorously every night before they go to bed? All of those left over food particles and bacteria sits on the tongue for upwards of 7-8 hours and therefore sulphur producing bacteria will be produced on the surface of the tongue. \n\nIn order to make it less ass-y you could drink more water, because dehydration and dry mouth is also a culprit of bad breath. Or maybe you have Halitosis, which is an over abundance of that sulphur producing bacteria. Nasty stuff. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8jjqik", "c8jk9zw", "c8jkzfo" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 11 ], "text": [ "Byzantine art drew off of many classical elements (logically, for it was a former part of Rome itself) and featured all of the regular religious subject matter. It was mostly just building upon the pre-existing trends of Roman art you mention; it was definitely a pioneer of many things, but again, Roman art was its mother. \n\nIt was, in fact, considered unrealistic at a certain point, which led to its decline and the cusp of the Renaissance, so don't believe it was considered \"real\" by all.\nAnother thing to consider is that for the popular medium of mosaic, it was indeed made with realism in mind, and uses certain techniques to make it that way, but was perhaps less flexible than traditional canvas and paper (of which Byzantine art may look generally more \"real\" on). \nPerhaps, though, you assume too strongly that people took this art style as realistic, when indeed it was deliberately stylized in certain areas. People of the time period saw religion as a super natural experience, and wanted the art to reflect that, causing some deliberate incongruence of reality with godlike qualities. It brought new conventions that tied in with religious beliefs at the time; certain unrealistic or stylized parts of it were useful in communicating certain ideas to the viewer: for instance, more important figures would have feet that were larger and on top of less important figures in the composition. Fully golden backgrounds signified the celestial and royal. There's more examples I could use but I'd prefer to have brevity.\n \n\nYou mention Hellenistic art; Byzantine art need not worry about Hellenistic conventions, because the two periods were very, very far off from each other, by 1000+ years. I'm not sure if you meant to imply that Hellenistic period in particular or are being more broad, though.\n\nSource: took AP Art History last year; I'm rusty, so please take this answer with a grain of salt. I'm by no means an expert and for all I know i'm way off.\n", "Early christians wanted to avoid similarities with pagan representation and also had a worry of falling in into iconography, that the Bible condemned, but some saw importance in a educational function: art made easier to make people remember religious passages. \n\nPope Gregory I followed this opinion, but then the scene portrayed nedded to be the simplest possible and all unnecessary things were removed. Like in [this mosaic](_URL_0_) in Ravena, you can see they knew how to make draperies and human figures but made it deliberately simple.\n\nLater the Oriental Orthodox churches avoided the question of iconography by only allowing traditional styles. An \"[Icon](_URL_1_)\" couldn't be just any painting but follow strict models. You can notice they knew how to do drapperies and how use shadows in the face and hands so.\n\nSource: History of Art classes, Gombrich's *The Story of Art* - chapter 6", "I think that an important distinction to be made here is the difference between \"realistic\" and \"naturalistic\". While naturalistic art refers to works that convincingly portray things the way they appear in real life, realistic art portrays things the way they *are*, including symbolic and spiritual elements as well as visual similarities. In the case of the Byzantines, I think they would not necessarily consider their art naturalistic, because it does show stylization, but they would consider it realistic. Byzantine art tends to represent things accurately not based on the way they look, but also by showing their spiritual nature. Since most Byzantine art was religious in subject matter, it would not have been considered realistic if it showed religious figures as they would have appeared in real life. These religious works would only be considered realistic if they showed symbolic spiritual elements such as a gold background that represented a sort of heavenly setting or elongated weightless bodies that signified the holy nature of the individuals. \n\nAs for the change from the Hellenistic aesthetic to the Byzantine style, there were several hundred years separating these two styles with a natural progression in art that occurred between them. The late Roman style and early Christian style come between the Hellenistic period and the Byzantine period, which show a slow change in style, rather than an abrupt shift. Was there a particular work of Byzantine art that you had in mind?" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ajSs1Z4jq60/S62Tg8szwZI/AAAAAAAAANE/cJGq5hl1pPs/s1600/IMG_0438.JPG", "http://www.nga.gov/image/a0000a/a0000a06.jpg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c2ix3pl", "c2ix3pl" ], "score": [ 6, 6 ], "text": [ "I'm going to assume you are talking about food salts, as the word salt in a scientific sense refers to compounds resulting from acid-base reactions (someone correct me on this if I am wrong, it has been awhile since chemistry). The basic varieties are:\n\n* Table Salt -- This is the standard salt that comes out of salt shakers. It is basically pure Sodium Chloride with Iodine added. The Iodine is added because its something our bodies need and we don't get them easily from other places. There is nothing unhealthy about it unless you have sodium issues. In fact, because of the iodine it is arguably healthier.\n\n* Kosher salt: Pure NaCl, except in a shape suitable for pinching and dispersing. It's health benefits are the same minus the iodine.\n\n* Sea salts / Mineral Salts: Basically salts that also have other minerals in addition to NaCl. Their health benefits are debated due to the content of minerals, but most seem to agree that the minerals are not in great enough quantities to affect you.\n\n\nIn summary, salt is pretty much all the same with the exception of added iodine which can be good for you.\n", "I'm going to assume you are talking about food salts, as the word salt in a scientific sense refers to compounds resulting from acid-base reactions (someone correct me on this if I am wrong, it has been awhile since chemistry). The basic varieties are:\n\n* Table Salt -- This is the standard salt that comes out of salt shakers. It is basically pure Sodium Chloride with Iodine added. The Iodine is added because its something our bodies need and we don't get them easily from other places. There is nothing unhealthy about it unless you have sodium issues. In fact, because of the iodine it is arguably healthier.\n\n* Kosher salt: Pure NaCl, except in a shape suitable for pinching and dispersing. It's health benefits are the same minus the iodine.\n\n* Sea salts / Mineral Salts: Basically salts that also have other minerals in addition to NaCl. Their health benefits are debated due to the content of minerals, but most seem to agree that the minerals are not in great enough quantities to affect you.\n\n\nIn summary, salt is pretty much all the same with the exception of added iodine which can be good for you.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clp67ub", "clp6juh" ], "score": [ 4, 25 ], "text": [ "In chess you play the board more than you do your opponent. Every move and pattern that is displayed on the board reveals the thinking of your opponent.\n\nPoker is different, the most important information is hidden until the reveal at then end. Professional poker players play against the player and not the odds on the cards themselves. To my knowledge, there aren't any programs that have inputs for player behavior and any other tells that a player may have.\n\nNote : The above is only a hypothesis.", "Probably the main difference between checkers/chess and poker is that the players in poker do not have [complete information](_URL_6_). In chess you always know exactly what the state of the game is and where all the opponent's pieces are. In poker you do not know all the other players cards and you don't know their strategy.\n\nThere are actually poker playing programs that are quite good, and they are getting better. See _URL_3_ for some good discussion. They contend that computers are now better than humans in 2-player limit texas hold'em while humans remain better at no-limit games and games with more than 2 players.\n\nYou are also getting to the situation where human behavior is a big component in winning and humans act in very peculiar ways sometimes. It is a very big open problem in AI/economics/social science to come up with good models of human behavior. You can't even assume that humans are acting rationally and in their own best interest all the time. [Kahneman](_URL_0_) won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics for his work with [Tversky](_URL_2_) studying these types of things.\n\nConstrast this with games like checkers that can be programmed using some very well understood techniques in AI like [game trees](_URL_4_). In the simplest form you can think of this as listing out all the possible moves you can make and all the possible responses that your opponent could make and then always choosing a path in the tree that results in the outcome you want (winning usually).\n\nIf a game is simple enough, it can be [solved](_URL_5_) using these types of methods. In simple terms this means that we can compute a strategy that will guarantee a win (or maybe just a draw).\n\n[Chess is too complex to solve on the hardware that we have](_URL_1_), and may be too complex to ever solve. The reason is there are too many combinations of moves that both players can make to compute all the possibilities. This doesn't mean we can't make programs that are really good at chess (obviously we can because they exist). We can solve chess completely in the case that a low number of pieces is left because the complexity goes down quite a bit as you reduce the number of pieces." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky", "http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sandholm/solving%20games.aimag11.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_tree", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_information" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cq0v2eu", "cq11ry3" ], "score": [ 15, 6 ], "text": [ "MWI postulates the concept of the other universes as a means to explain \"apparent\" wave function collapse, or the concept in quantum mechanics that \"selects\" a single quantum state from a superposition of states. Let's exam what this means with a *tiny* bit of math. Let's say you have a quantum state that is the superposition of two other states,\n\n |Cat > = |Dead > + |Alive > \n\nOur cat is in a superposition of both dead-and-alive. According to *normal* Copenhagen quantum mechanics, when you open the box, the wavefunction |Cat > spontaneously collapses choosing |Dead > or choosing |Alive > , but never both at the same time. For a variety of fairly good reasons, this explanation isn't good enough for a lot of physicists. According to Many-Worlds, there are currently two overlapping universes that are exactly the same in every way until the box is opened. When the box is opened, *both* options are selected, but one for each universe. From now on the two are different universes whose ability to \"communicate\" via interference effects drops to zero fairly quickly becoming forever unconnected. A concept called decoherence is integral to this process.\n\nIn this way, the wavefunction never collapses, but is the realization of branching universes as possible outcome for every possible quantum event becomes realized. Couple important things to note,\n\n1. This is an interpretation of quantum mechanics mechanics. Its testable predictions are the same as every other interpretation's testable predictions--perhaps one day we'll be able to differentiate them, but it is not this day.\n\n2. This doesn't nessisarily imply an alternate universe [where our planet is still dominated by dinosaurs.](_URL_0_) If a potential universe doesn't have a line (or several) of quantum choices leading to it, it doesn't occur, or more accurately, it was never there to begin with.\n\n3. MWI has some fairly technical problems explaining what probabilities mean, as in if we're simply *going through the motions* and branching out universes like popcorn, what does it mean for an event to have a low probability? Are low probable universes equally represented as high probability ones? Here's [some more exposition on this problem.](_URL_1_)", "I just want to give a shorter and more direct response than the excellent one /u/AsAChemicalEngineer already gave:\n\nThe \"many worlds\" in the many worlds interpretation are not *added* to quantum mechanics. The point is just to take seriously the \"worlds\" that are already there in the mathematical description given by ordinary quantum mechanics. In even the most bare-bones mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, states can be in superposition, which is just another way of saying that two \"worlds\" simultaneously coexist. For this reason some try to frame other interpretations of quantum mechanics as \"disappearing worlds\" interpretations, since their proponents are essentially ducking their heads in the sand by trying to ignore the philosophical consequences of taking superposition at face value. " ] }

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[ [ "https://youtu.be/u0rNwo3c51M", "http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/107681" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0asfzi", "d0ashy7", "d0b2itp" ], "score": [ 8, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Mostly because it is REALLY hard to track down each individual downloader and many have done so little that the court case and process of tracking down the offender would be more trouble than it's worth. A larger entity that has committed more offenses can be found easier, can be sued for more, and taking them out could decrease piracy more than any smaller scale offender.", "There are just too many people, they can't sue them all. \nThe music industry tried suing only some of the people downloading. The result was a public relations disaster, dead people and 2 year old wound up getting sued. It made them look like bullies, going after weak individuals with their corporate might.\nSo they stopped doing it.", "There are two kinds of courts, Civil and Criminal. \n\nCivil charges are one person suing another, like the kind on Judge Judy. This is how people sharing music were chased down. The record companies found out who they were, and sued them. They were never arrested, and were never at risk of serving jail time.\n\nIt's also important to note that the act of downloading pirated content is only probably illegal, and hasn't really been tested in court. They mostly care about people uploading/sharing the content. This is what happens when you leave a torrent a running after it finished, and it's what will get your ISP to send you a nasty email or whatever they do. So many people do it that they quit suing individuals AFAIK.\n\nThe Pirate Bay founders were arrested, and faced both kinds of charges. In particular though, I assume you're talking about the criminal charges. They intentionally violated these laws, flagrantly and over a long period of time. It's the difference between burning a CD for your friend vs selling copies out of your trunk at a flea market.\n\nFinally, for really gross dark web stuff, where just possessing it alone is a crime, they absolutely do go after individual people downloading it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c628r95" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Keep in mind evolution doesn't 'do' things. It merely happens as a result of the environment a species lives in and the current physiological make of the species. \n\nAlso, cats and dogs do lose their teeth like humans do. The common link is they are all mammals that breast feed at birth. So the simple reason we don't keep growing new teeth is that we so far haven't had the selective pressure to do so. For example, elephants can grow several sets of molars because of the wear and tear caused by their diets. If they didn't they would die of starvation, therefore in their case there is selective pressure to do so. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cx2jro2" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "For one, red blood cells are extremely simple. They don't have a lot of flags on their surface that organ cells do. So they're less of a target for the immune system. While cells do, but it's okay if white cells die after a transfusion, you are only interested in the red cells (and the plasma).\n\nThe other reason, red cells get recycled regularly, so if all the red cells from your transfusion die over the next few days and weeks, you'll have made more by then. But organ tissue needs to last years." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e8h1cdf" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I'm not sure about the situation in Georgia, but my guess is that Georgia's absence could have something to do with the limbo Georgia was in during this period. The trustees of the colony had more or less given up and signed over control to the Crown in 1752, yet Georgia did not officially become a royal colony until 1755. \n\nThe original woodcut was created by Benjamin Franklin to garner support for the Albany Plan of Union in 1754. As Virginia began a conflict with the French over control of the Ohio Valley, the British wanted the American colonies to meet in order to discuss a plan for effectively countering French advancements in North America. This stems from the fact that the colonies were severely divided over land claims and as hostilities increased, few colonies were willing to come to the aid of Virginia.\n\nAt the Albany Congress, the representatives (representatives came from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania, although other colonies like Virginia were represented via proxy) settled on the Albany Plan of Union. Among other things, this plan called for a grand council, with 2-7 delegates from each colony, which would have legislative powers and control Indian affairs (a very important point, as Indian policy varied dramatically between the colonies). \n\nFranklin's woodcut was appealing to the colonial legislatures to approve the Albany Plan in order to defeat the French in the coming war and facilitate Indian alliances (especially the Covenant Chain with the Six Nations of the Iroquois). However, the plan was not approved in any of the colonies, and was rejected by British imperial officials. The plan, which is largely credited to Franklin, served as a rough basis for the formation of the Articles of Confederation government created during the American Revolution. \n\nSource: Timothy J. Shannon, *The Albany Congress of 1754: Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire* (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)." ] }

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[ "http://www.usflag.org/gadsden.html" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ccsyohz", "ccsyozq" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Looks man-made to me, but without a better picture I can't be sure.", "Manmade lake: [The Vinkeveense Plassen](_URL_0_)\n\nApparently the lake was created by peat extraction." ] }

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[ "https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=Amsterdam%2C+The+Netherlands&data=!1m4!1m3!1d21440!2d4.9358555!3d52.2300152!2m1!1e3!4m15!2m14!1m13!1s0x47c63fb5949a7755%3A0x6600fd4cb7c0af8d!3m8!1m3!1d291641!2d-101.8884435!3d33.5911434!3m2!1i1600!2i1053!4f13.1!4m2!3d52.3702157!4d4.8951679&fid=7" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.kanoroutes.nl/e-vinkeveen.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ff01sh8" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "The test involves looking at the cervix, which men don't have. So unless a man shows symptoms of three virus (warts) there's no other way to know. Blood tests don't show the virus." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "est5wqe" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Well, generally speaking one adult can consume one standard drink per hour. One standard drink is 1 beer, 1 glass of wine, or one shot of liquor. Now, that does not factor in the proof of the alcohol. Drinking a 180 proof shot is different than a 90 proof. Generally if you consume 1 drink per hour you will be fine. The liver can process lesser alcohol amounts quicker, but this is an easy to remember range." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3vofw0", "c3vp3v4", "c3vs06k" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It costs nothing to spam people, so they still make a profit even if only a handful of people fall for it.", "You made an assumption in the title question. That assumption happens to be wrong.", "No, Lot of people fall for it. I mean even the educated one, for e.g. \n\n1.I knew a girl who has studied commerce and looking for job in HR, she got a fake mail from spammer saying shes got a interview at some place, just you have to send a secutiry deposit for sending in flight tickets. \nShe absolutely fell for it & was about to do it when she called me and I told her to stop and its a scam.\n\n2. you know those mails where you win from COCA-COLA, AUSTRALIAN Lottery for no reason. Well My friend who is clever enough to be a manager in just 4 years, thought he DID actually win the Australian lottery ( he is in US) and I think he sent like $ 100 for \"RECEIVING the DETAILS of collecting the reward\" \n\nso you see people do get fooled and spammers get benefited. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cafrxdd", "cafsjhi", "caft5d5", "cafu9bk" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The answer is most likely no, it has little or nothing to do with our survival. That's one of the things that separates us from other animals, we have tastes. The reason why one would have a favorite song is basically for the same reason one would have a favorite colour or favorite flavor of ice cream. As a society, we have begun to enjoy and develop preferences for things that are specifically not relevant to survival, but rather to pleasure. We listen to music because it's something that our advanced human brains can perceive as information that is fun and stimulating. Music is really just an illusion. It's nothing more than organized frequencies and pulses; we just found a way to realize the patterns in them, which is why they're enjoyable. The brain is always trying to find meaning in things that could really be nothing. The same could be said for reading and writing, it's just markings on paper, but we have found a way to perceive them as information. ", "Music doesn't play on any survival instinct, instead it plays on the dopamine systems in one's brain, just like a good beer does. When you listen to music, your brain feels 'rewarded', but at the same time craves more of this reward, making you want to listen to more music. I don't think people exactly know why music makes us feel pleasured, but it is known that it triggers dopamine; your brain's 'happy' chemical.", "No-one actually knows. Maybe in tribal societies listening to music round a fire at night helped bonding thus made the tribe that bit stronger when working together (speculation).", "Humans are social animals, and music is a social experience. Not everything comes down to survival instincts. Humans are not automatons, we are innately social and we generally abide by an instinctual social structure that has been around since long before we figured out how to walk standing up. We have a vested interest in helping those who belong to our social group because our survival is dependent on the success of the group, or \"tribe.\" The tribe provides you with food, safety, and sex--in proportional amounts relative to the size of your tribe. \n\nYou are aware of who belongs to your tribe and who does not--this is the concept of social identity. Those who share your social identity are friends, those who don't share your identity are (at the very least) approached with caution. The ways that this social identity is expressed becomes the tribe's \"culture.\" For example, a tribe may adopt a shared visual presentation by marking themselves with or by wearing specific colors or patterns. A tribe's common manner of dress is a way to visually express their common social identity, but since everyone belonging to that identity is now distinguished by its visual expression, the expression itself becomes part of the tribe's social identity. The assumption is made that those who belong to the tribe are visually distinct, and those who are not distinct in the same way do not belong to the tribe. Not to suggest that this is a particularly wise or non-exploitable assumption, but it nonetheless remains an assumption that is made and exploited to this day--to illustrate: few would be skeptical of a person claiming to be a police officer if that person was also in a police uniform. \n\nMusic is also an expression of social identity, but rarely for the purposes of identification. Music is one of the few things that the entire tribe can do together; it's one of the only things that, in the early days, allowed group cohesion to maintain. Without a way to maintain cohesion, there would likely be a hard ceiling on how large a group could get before it started falling apart. Group cohesion is essential to the survival of the tribe and its members. But although music may have been arguably relevant to our survival, I doubt that it stems from any sort of survival instinct. We didn't make music because we had to, we did it because we wanted to socialize and have fun.\n\n > Why do we listen to music?\n\nI don't have a definitive answer for you, past here is speculation: we love patterns--in fact, we begin listening for speech patterns before we're even out of the womb. Given that we already have our ears to the wall, it seems unlikely that the giant fucking drum beating at 3/4 right above our heads would escape our notice. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxjrfcz", "cxjrkw9", "cxjs7n5", "cxjsi33", "cxjslqi" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Higher interest rates as compared to other loans. Plus the initial amount of money can be more than say, a car loan. ", "I assume you're in the US. \n\nIt's a huge debt very early in your life. A mortgage isn't going to happen till much later in your life and your standing in society determines how good or bad of a deal you get.\n\nYou may no longer be in your formative years but you are still growing as a person coupled with the stresses of collage and now this huge debt you've taken on. \n\nYou will be paying it back for many, many years and the more mistakes you make the more problems you create. You're at college busy trying to learn but also work to survive but you've also got this loan you're paying off which never pauses when something terrible hapodns and sometimes you just don't have the time to do everything. \n\nIt's not written off with bankruptcy. (for the most part) If you declare bankruptcy this is one debt that isn't written off so you are still required to pay it back. If you've declared bankruptcy you're not really in a position to be paying a huge loan back but you're forced to but because you're broke you're digging yourself an even deeper pit by not being able to pay it. ", "As others have pointed out its high interest and the amount can be much much higher than other loans you will typically have.\n\nThey also kick in once you graduate, and for many their first jobs out of school are not very high paying as they need to still build experience and thus the dept is very hard to grapple with. \n", "No where else can you take on so much debt with no collateral. You can take on $50,000 or $100,000 of debt for physically nothing. When you buy a house for $250,000 and you can't afford the house anymore, the bank takes the house. If you buy a car and can't pay it, it gets repossessed. If you accumulate $100,000 of credit card or store debt, you declare bankruptcy, sell everything you have, and if that is not enough the debt just goes away.\n\nStudent debt doesn't go away, even with bankruptcy. You can't return your diploma for a refund. It is there until it gets paid off, and there you are after school. Unemployed or working part time for minimum wage barely making enough to pay rent and have food to eat. There is nothing left over for things you want to do, let alone make a dent in that debt you have.", "A major issue with Student Loan Debt vs Credit card debt is student loan debt is not discharged in bankruptcy. Where as credit card debt is discharged. So even if you declare bankruptcy, and you will still owe your student loan debt after the bankruptcy case is over." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "di0buoz" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "Several factors that mostly have to do with the shape of your body:\n\n1) Length of your larynx (vocal cords). Men tend to have longer and more robust vocal cords due to testosterone. Just like strings on a piano, the longer the cords the lower the tone.\n\n2) Shape of your chest cavity. Your chest cavity gives a place for sound to resonate.\n\n3) Size and shape of your sinuses. Tone also resonates in your head.\n\n4) Strength of your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is the muscle that pushes air out to speak.\n\n5) Cultural and personal differences. You may not realize that you have a lot of subconscious control in your vocal tone. If you don't like the sound of your natural voice you can -with practice or coaching- change it permanently." ] }

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