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{ "a_id": [ "c9x5jq4" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Warm air moves to an area where there is already cold air.\n\nAs the warm air moves into the new area, it gets pushed up on top of the cold air.\n\nUnlike cold fronts, the weather at warm fronts tends to be stable. In other words, as the warm air rises and cools, it becomes dense enough that it's not going to continue rising and rising.\n\nBecause of this, warm fronts tend to have lots of \"stratus\" types of cloud, that means layers of cloud (rather than big, bumpy clouds), and a warm front would normally be associated with persistent drizzle and rain (whereas cold fronts create lumpy \"cumulous\" clouds, and are associated with heavy rain showers)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2wg0xo", "c2wg0xo" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It was pretty well established by then that light acts like a wave. Now any other wave that we know about needs a medium to propagate through: ocean waves need water, sound waves need air. It was natural to assume that light needed a medium too, which they called the 'ether', but every experimental attempt to prove its existence failed miserably. The consequence of it having no medium means that there is no preferred frame for light, which given this and Maxwell's equations, means that the speed of light is constant for any observer. (As opposed to, say, me throwing a ball on a train: if I'm on the train I see it moving slowly, if you're off the train, you see it moving at the speed of the train plus the speed of the ball. If it was a photon, we'd BOTH see it moving at 3x10^8 m/s... weird but true). Time dilation and length contraction both come out of the math when you start formalizing these postulates, as in the Lorentz Transformations. Hope that helps - feel free to ask for clarification, and I'll do my best =]", "It was pretty well established by then that light acts like a wave. Now any other wave that we know about needs a medium to propagate through: ocean waves need water, sound waves need air. It was natural to assume that light needed a medium too, which they called the 'ether', but every experimental attempt to prove its existence failed miserably. The consequence of it having no medium means that there is no preferred frame for light, which given this and Maxwell's equations, means that the speed of light is constant for any observer. (As opposed to, say, me throwing a ball on a train: if I'm on the train I see it moving slowly, if you're off the train, you see it moving at the speed of the train plus the speed of the ball. If it was a photon, we'd BOTH see it moving at 3x10^8 m/s... weird but true). Time dilation and length contraction both come out of the math when you start formalizing these postulates, as in the Lorentz Transformations. Hope that helps - feel free to ask for clarification, and I'll do my best =]" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dc5gzw6", "dc5h3ev", "dc5hfma" ], "score": [ 21, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "The simple answer is that AM/FM is an analog signal, which you can \"kind of\" pick up. Think of analog as a scale of 100-0 with the quality increasing or decreasing as you move from the transmitter.\n\nSatellite radio is a digital signal. Think 1 or 0. It's either there, or it's not. The same holds true for satellite TV, where in a severe storm your picture will be perfect right up until it cuts out into nothingness.", "This is one of the major advantages of digital broadcasts over analogue. \n\nWhen your analogue AM/FM radio signal is weak you start to hear background noise and interference because it becomes difficult for your receiver to distinguish between signal and noise. Even on modern analogue devices, the internal filtering can't tell if the crackling static is part of the real signal or not when it's weak.\n\nDigital is either received or it isn't. If the digital signal is weak then the receiver just doesn't give you noise since it has nothing to decode. Whereas analogue actually transmits something directly related to the audio you hear, digital is just 1s and 0s. Noise and interference just make it hard to tell what's being received - they don't change 1s to 0s or 0s to 1s. Noise on analogue still turns into noise which you can hear. ", "Broadcast radio is (mostly) analog. That means if you get a partial signal, you can get a partial.\n\nSatellite radio is digital, which means all or nothing.\n\nIt is kind of like talking in a noisy room. \n\nIf we are just having a conversation and you miss a word or two, you can probably guess from the context what I am saying. \n\nBit if I am trying to give you a phone number, and you miss a few numbers, they numbers you do hear aren't going to do you much good." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccds6ck", "ccdsrw5" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "If you look at it economically, anarchism has strong ties to socialist/communist theory. Anarchists are pretty misunderstood, it's not all about no rules and complete chaos. Early anarchists believed that you should grow food, and whatever extra you had you should give to your neighbours for free, and vice versa. This idea is basically the opposite of capitalism, where you pretty much want to make as much money as you can off of your extra food. That is just one example of policy why it is on the left, rather than the right. ", "There are different forms of anarchy, but one of the earliest is radical collectivism. The collective still has management but is has no leader (what anarchy literally means).\n\nAs you can imagine collectivism has a lot in common with communism." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eb33i6u" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This varies greatly from plant to plant, and it will vary based on the conditions. You also need to define 'grow' because cells can expand or divide to grow. \n\nPlants that perform C4 photosynthesis (like grasses) tend to expand and divide rapidly under the right conditions, while plants that perform CAM photosynthesis (like cacti) will grow slower in an attempt to conserve water. There are [genes](_URL_0_) in some cultivars of rice that helps it keep itself above water when the paddy floods by rapidly growing to stay above water.\n\nMany plants will halt growth if the conditions aren't right, and try to ride out the problem. Some plants will rapidly grow if they arn't getting enough sunlight in a sort of last-ditch effort not to die.\n\nThere really isn't a simple answer to your question, sorry.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.nature.com/news/2009/090820/full/news.2009.841.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6z76ip", "c6zad8f", "c6zbk25" ], "score": [ 383, 13, 10 ], "text": [ "Short Answer: Somewhere around 50-500 nano meters, depending on where you measure the bubble's thickness.\n\nLong Answer: This can be measured using a very clever natural phenomenon, [thin-flim interference](_URL_0_).\n\nSo a bubble has two sides, the outside and the inside. Light coming from the sun hits the outside layer of the bubble, because light travels different speeds in a medium some of the light is reflected off of the outer layer of the bubble while most goes through it. This is a property of the index of refraction of a material, a small portion of light incident on a material with a different index of refraction that the lights original medium will reflect back. \n\nThe portion that goes through the outer layer then contacts the inner layer, again a change in the index of refraction causes some light to reflect back. So now we have two different rays of light that are exactly twice the thickness of a bubble out of phase from each other. \n\nNow depending on the particular thickness of the bubble at that certain point the observer will likely see some color appear. This color occurs from what is called constructive and destructive interference. Destructive interference is when two waves that are 180 degrees out of phase come in contact with each other, this destroys the wave and no light is seen. Constructive interference is when two waves of the either 0 or 360 degrees out of phase come in contact with each other, this creates brighter light.\n\nWhat we are seeing as color in the bubble is exactly a measurement of the thickness of that bubble. Say the color is purple and has a wavelength of 400nm. This means that the thickness of the bubble must be around 200nm, because the second beam of reflected light will constructively interfere if it travels and extra 400nm (in and back out) and destructively interfere if it travels any other distance.\n\nSome discrepancies in the accuracy of the measurement occur when you include the light traveling at an angle into the bubble, but you get the idea.\n\nThis is also why thin layers of oil on water make rainbow colors. There are lots of uses of the phenomenon, such as infrared protective layering on the front of expensive camera lenses...", "What does the surface of a bubble look like at the microscopic level?", "Can you freeze a bubble without popping it?" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca90qj2", "ca9237h" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "The \"feathered thing\" is called a crest and its usage depends on the time period:\n\nIn the days of the early republic, it was not common.\n\nDuring the late republic (post 3rd century B.C.) it was very common among legionaries.\n\nAfter the reforms by Augustus, only centurions were wearing crests.\n\nIn the later empire, they seem to be abandoned altogether.\n", "Crests were used by both Greek Hoplites and Roman legions to denote rank. The color/orientation of the crest would indicate exactly what rank you were depending on the culture." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dl2h2yk", "dl2hf4l", "dl2hurx", "dl2k17b", "dl2kvle" ], "score": [ 30, 6, 8, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "Scientists don't tend to use the word \"fact\" for any generalized statement.\n\nI dropped a ball from the top of a 100-meter building and I measured that it took 4.9 seconds to reach the ground. That's a *fact*. It's evidence consistent with the theory objects on Earth fall with an acceleration of approximately 9.8 meters per second squared.\n\nThe theory of gravity is our complete understanding of gravity based on all of the evidence we've collected. It takes into account things like wind resistance, so a feather falls more slowly than a brick. It takes into account the masses of the various objects involved, and it also takes into account Einstein's theory of relativity, which changes what happens pretty dramatically when the velocities involved are large.\n\nThe most important thing about a scientific theory, to me, is that it makes useful predictions. It says that given a certain situation, here's how to apply the theory to predict the outcome.\n\nIf it's right, it's a useful theory.\n\nYou can disbelieve the theory of gravity all you want, but that doesn't make it any less useful. If you can find a counterexample - some evidence that it's wrong under a certain set of circumstances, then the theory *must* change to incorporate that new evidence, if it can be reliably reproduced and the current theory is inconsistent with it.\n\nIn the case of 1+1=2, that's one of those things where as long as we all agree on the definitions of numbers and addition and equals, it's definitely true, but there are other scenarios where it's not true (like one cloud plus another cloud equals one larger cloud).\n\nWe don't talk about 1+1=2 just as an exercise, we talk about it because it's useful. We have problems to solve and math helps us get at the answer. If the answer we get is wrong then it's not very useful and then there'd be no point!\n", "Math is a bit different - its truth is largely self-demonstrating. As for science, we never claim to know anything with certainty the way mathematicians do. But when we think something is true, we look for every alternative explanation we can, and we try to prove ourselves wrong. And since every new thing we learn depends on other things we think we know, our ideas get tested over and over again. The same is true of a lot of modern technology. If we were wrong about the principles on which that technology is based, it couldn't work.", "In science a fact is an observation. Basically it's something that anyone can see for themselves, at least if they have the right equipment. The sun is in the sky right now. This is a fact, anyone can look up and verify it for themselves. If I take one object, and put one other object next to it, I now have two objects. This is a fact, anyone can verify this observation. \n\nThen there's theory and there's law. Despite a common misconception, these two terms are equal to each other in terms of factual support. A law is an observation that can be applied anywhere in the universe for the same conditions. Two objects will have a force of gravitational attraction to each other determined by their mass and the distance they have from each other. Given enough time and data, you can independently verify this observation for any two objects in the universe, thus it is a law. A theory is an *explanation* of observations. So the law of gravity tells us what gravity is, a force of attraction between two objects, while the theory of gravity creates a working framework to explain why gravity occurs (because large objects distort space, and the distortions are more pronounced the larger the object). Both the theory and the law are based on the same facts, but they have different purposes.\n\nAs a personal observation, your coworker sounds like he's being contrarian for the sake of contrarianism, or he thinks he's a lot smarter than he actually is.", "You asked specifically about 1 + 1 = 2.\n\nHere's one way to look at it. It's just a way to write down the following observation about the universe:\n\nI have this apple ( ).\n\nThere's another apple over there ( ).\n\nIf I go get that other apple, then now I have these apples: ( ) ( ).\n\n( ) + ( ) = ( ) ( )\n\n1 + 1 = 2\n\nThat's not really a great way to be rigorous about math, though, so here we go. I'll try hard to keep it ELI5.\n\nThere isn't anything universal or fundamental or magical about a given mathematical system.\n\nWe just write down some rules that we ASSUME are true. There isn't anything special about them. We just say \"here are the rules I am going to assume are true.\" These are called axioms.\n\nEverything else about the mathematical system is a direct result of the axioms.\n\nSo, let's see what we can do about 1 + 1 = 2. Those are all natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, ...).\n\nThe usual set of axioms for the natural numbers is called Peano's Axioms. _URL_0_\n\nThere are 8 axioms, but they can be divided into 3 parts.\n\nPart 1: Axiom 1 says that 0 is a natural number.\n\nPart 2: Axioms 2 through 5 describe how \"=\" works.\n\nPart 3: Axioms 6, 7, and 8 describe how S(n), the successor function works. Basically, for some natural number n, S(n) gives you some new natural number m, and you can only get m from S(n), not S(any other number besides n).\n\nThat's enough to give us all the natural numbers. \n\n0 is a natural number. \n\nS(0) is a new natural number. You can only get it from S(0), not S(any other number). Since it's the first natural number we get after 0, let's also give the number S(0) the convenient shorthand label of \"1\".\n\nS( S(0) ) is another new natural number. You can only get it from S( S(0) ), not S(any other number). Since it's the natural number you get after S(0), which we have labeled \"1\" for convenience, let's give the number S(S(0)) the convenient shorthand label of \"2\".\n\nThese are just labels. 1 is just shorthand for S(0), and 2 is just shorthand for S(S(0)).\n\nNow, let's figure out +.\n\n \"+\" is just another function. We define it as follows.\n\n(1) a + 0 = a\n\n(2) a + S(b) = S(a + b)\n\nSo, about 1 + 1 = 2.\n\nWell, 1 is really S(0), so we want to know what S(0) + S(0) is. \n\nFrom (2):\n\nS(0) + S(0) = S( S(0) + 0)\n\nFrom (1), S(0) + 0 = S(0), so:\n\nS(0) + S(0) = S( S(0) )\n\nGiven the rules we started with, that we simply assumed are true as the basis for our system (Peano's axioms), and how we defined \"+\", it MUST be the case that S(0) + S(0) = S( S(0) ). It is impossible to get any other result. \n\nNow, we replace S(0) with its handy shorthand \"1\":\n\n1 + 1 = S(S(0))\n\nNow, we replace S(S(0)) with its handy shorthand \"2\":\n\n1 + 1 = 2. \n\nSo, in the system where we assume Peano's axioms are true, and in which we labeled the number S(0) with \"1\" and the number S(S(0)) with \"2\", it must be the case that 1 + 1 = 2. It is impossible to get any other result.\n\nIf you start from different axioms, or you apply the labels \"1\" or \"2\" to other numbers, then it may or may not be true that 1 + 1 = 2.\n\nYou can even pick a set of axioms so that 1 + 1 = 2 is true if you get there one way and false if you get there a different way. That set of axioms would be called \"inconsistent.\" A \"consistent\" set of axioms is one where if you can prove a statement is true, you can't also prove that it is false, and if a statement is false, you can't also prove that it is true.\n\nGenerally, only sets of axioms that are consistent are useful.\n\nPeano's axioms are consistent.\n\nAs a side note, I agree with the other posters that your coworker is a pedantic ass. While there's a way in which what he says is technically true (\"What if I say that \"1\" is actually the label for the number S(S(S(0))), that you normally call \"3\"?\"), it isn't really meaningful or relevant or important or worth wasting time thinking about.", "These people are getting way too into this. In the most basic way possible, a \"scientific\" fact is anything that can be tested, preferably under the same conditions, and will give the same results time after time. I use scientific in quotations because there are some things that are accepted as fact without needing to be tested, such as 1+1=2. Just remember when in doubt: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "djs6jrw", "djsbxjh" ], "score": [ 8, 11 ], "text": [ "This has to do with the fact that our intestines are made up of microscopic nutrients collectors (imagine a fluffy rug and roll it) [i don't know how it's called in english.] So tiny that bacteria can't fit through them but the nutrients however can. \n\nBacteria decompose food in our intestines which then get absorbed into the bloodstream via the hair-like collectors. But bacteria never get into direct contact with the blood and so it never infects our bodies. (But if for example a perforation occurs in the intestines, there's a big risk of infection cause it disrupts this barrier.) \n\nOn the other hand if you come into contact with feces \"outside\" the bacteria can get into your body much easier through little wounds and mouth (if you don't wash your hands properly.) ", "The vast majority of the bacteria in your colon are (mostly) harmless organisms that have evolved to live with us. The high populations of these bacteria tend to suppress the growth of other, harmful bacteria. Think of an apartment building with 100 units. 98 of them are already occupied by quiet residents. Even if the other 2 units are occupied by hooligans, they can't cause a lot of trouble and that trouble can't spread.\n\nNow these bacteria aren't completely harmless. The very common E. coli bacteria causes infections ranging from mild (simple urinary tract infections) to life threatening (sepsis of the blood) if it gets somewhere it isn't supposed to be.\n\nWhen we kill off the friendly bacteria, sometimes less savory ones take their place. A bowel infection known as C. difficile colitis is typically caused when antibiotics kill off the benign bacteria, leaving it behind. And some bacteria are just bad actors (like Salmonella or Shigella) and can cause infections even in healthy colons.\n\nThe colon itself as another poster noted is resistant to invasion from most gut microbes." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddy9beq" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The sources are particularly lousy for this: the wretched Appian on the one hand, and on the other Plutarch, more interested in the morbid details of his wasting disease than any politics. Scullard and Keaveney both argued that Sulla simply got tired and decided that he'd done enough to ensure a return to Republican form. Sulla retired to Cumae, into a Campania that he had essentially remade from the ground up in the aftermath of the ravages of the Social War. It was a pleasant place, to be sure, and I don't think there's anything wrong with believing that Sulla went there purely because he wanted to relax and indulge in the proclivities which he seemed to cultivate.\n\nBut I don't think that's right. I don't think Sulla was \"done,\" and in fact the actions of Sulla in some ways provided a rough draft for how the *principes* would elevate themselves above the machinery of the Republic later, starting with his protege Pompey. Striking coins with his image while he still lived (a no-no in the *mos maiorum*), not to mention the giant equestrian statue of himself in the forum, both suggest Sulla had grand designs. He left off the dictatorship in 81 and held the consulship in 80, probably thinking he was secure enough in his position to do away with the more odious form of authority. His old rival Marius had held consecutive consulships in the past, and Sulla might have had something like that in mind in lieu of the dictatorship. If so, it never came to pass. I think the old madman was probably gently ushered out by the younger Sullani, Pompey in particular, and convinced to let others have a turn. He could have fought on, and there were plenty of Sullan veterans in Italia that he could have stirred up, but he seems to have just simply got too tired. I don't like modern claims that he was \"forced out\" or the like. Nobody ever forced Cornelius Sulla to do anything. It was most likely a combination of satisfaction with his life's work, fatigue and sickness, and the gentle, careful, but insistent advice of his young proteges. \n\nCheck out Jenkins' little article, \"Sulla's Retirement,\" 1994. See also, for a modern and interesting look at Sulla, Santangelo's *Sulla, the Elites, and the Empire* Brill 2007." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cje5tpd" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Yes, Roman armies faced armies primarily composed of horse archers more than once. The fellow under me has referenced Attila the Hun. The Romans did technically defeat him at Chalons, but I'll admit to a small working knowledge of the late Roman army, so I'll focus on the earlier armies of the Republic and the Principate, and how they fared against horse archers.\n\nIn this time period, the two best examples I can come up with are both involving the Parthians. Crassus was famously defeated by the Parthians at Carrhae, and Antony led a failed invasion into Parthia while a triumvir. \n\nThe Parthian army was based on a feudal model, controlled by the king but in reality a large formation of many different strong noble families. Most of the army was composed of cavalry, mainly horse archers along with a smaller force of heavily-armed cataphracts. For example, the force of Parthian commander Surena that fought Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC was made up of 10,000 horse-archers and 1,000 cataphracts. Parthian armies also included infantry made up from the poor, but these were never influential in any way at all and so have little tactical relevance. According to Lucian the basic unit of the Parthian army was a *dragon* of 1,000 horse-archers. The decimal model is quite prevalent in horse-archer armies, but we have no other evidence for this claim, and Lucian was no historian.\n\nThis cavalry force obviously operated in a very different way from Rome's infantry based army. We get a glimpse of Parthian tactics at Carrhae. In this battle, both sides expected an easy victory. The Romans had crushed every other eastern army they had faced with ease recently, and the Parthians were equally scornful of the Romans. Surena expected the Romans to be scared at the sight of his cataphracts, but was disappointed by the disciplined Roman infantry, who showed no signs of fear.\n\nIt seems that usually the Parthians simply expected the sight of their cataphracts to scare the enemy, and apparently they wore cloaks over their armour that they would discard right before battle, either as protection from the sun or to shock the enemy with a startling reveal of their glimmering scale armour. \n\nTherefore, at Carrhae Surena had his horse archers bombard the Roman troops all day. Despite thousands of arrows, the Roman troops suffered relatively few casualties, mostly wounds, due to their armour and shields. Their morale stayed intact as well. \n\nThe Romans held up very well in spite of the horse-archer bombardment, and the troops were comparatively safe as long as they maintained discipline. However, Crassus made an ill-fated attempt to drive away the horse-archers, led by his son, who was cut off and killed. Dispirited, Crassus ordered a retreat, which soon degenerated into a routing mob as the horse archers surrounded the Romans, who began to panic. Carrhae was a decisive Roman defeat, and it made the Parthians very confident in themselves and scornful of the Romans. However, the Parthian army is often over-estimated in our sources, and they weren't truly as powerful as they would have liked to think.\n\nCrassus's problem was that his army was unbalanced. Later Roman encounters with the horse-archers remedied this. For example, Antony brought many light missile troops with his Parthian expedition. A foot-archer will always out-range a horse-archer, and Antony's troops suffered little from horse archers. When the Romans were well prepared, usually the Parthians had to content themselves with shadowing the Roman marches, and depend on attacking their extended supply train. When Roman troops had enough supporting missile fire, they were very safe from horse archers, who became more of an irritant than a real threat.\n\nRome did sometimes have horse-archers in her armies, but it was never a major part of them in this period. I know that later Roman armies included more horse archers, but like I said I don't really know enough to be any authority on that. However in our period Rome tended to bring auxiliary troops into her army based on the native's methods of fighting, so many Roman armies in the east had horse-archer auxiliaries. \nFor example, Arrian's army that fought the Alans, a steppe people, had horse archers in it. However they were only really a supporting wing and the Romans never adopted this tactic beyond in a minor supporting role.\n\nI hope that this makes sense, I can elaborate more if need be. I'm not very good at organizing my answers on this subreddit yet, haha.\n\nSources: Plutarch's *Life of Crassus* & *Antony*, Adrian Goldworthy's *The Roman Army at War 100 BC - AD 200*\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctvd4t9" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Hz is a measure of frequency- the number of times something happens per second. If something has a frequency of 3GHz, it means that it happens three billion times per second. \n\nIn the case of computers, that's the speed of its internal clock. A single operation in a computer can take multiple steps, and the clock speed tells you how long it gives each step to complete. A simple operation, like addition, might only take 1 clock tick to complete, while a more complex operation like trig functions, can take over 100.\n\nClock speed by itself doesn't mean much. You can use it to directly compare processors of the same series (so you can compare a 4th gen Core i5 with another 4th gen Core i5 processor), but different series of processors take different amounts of time to complete each operation, and a 3GHz processor that can finish a task in 100 clock cycles is faster than a 4GHz processor that takes 200 cycles to do the same work. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cptuc07", "cptucrq", "cptufeh", "cptv17a", "cptzgnl" ], "score": [ 16, 6, 3, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "We are in no danger of running out of liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen, as they can be extracted from water. You can make a workable rocket with just those fuels, although a big fat first stage full of low density hydrogen has penalties. \n\nRealistically, if absolute supply of kerosene or methane is an issue, we'll be too far gone to have the technical infrastructure to support spaceflights. \n\nHelium is the real supply danger. It's irreplaceable as a pressurant and coolant and it is a nonrenewable resource. It's plentiful in space, but in limited supply on earth.", "Some particular stages of particular rockets use fossil fuels, such as the kerosene in the Saturn V rockets. There are other fuels that can be used, such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen combinations. So in answer to your question, if fossil fuels run out, there are still fuel variants that can get rockets into space.", "It depends on what propellant you use.\n\nSpaceX's Falcon and the Russian Soyuz use a mixture of liquid oxygen (which you can produce from water) and parrafins (which are a petroleum product). The Space Shuttle, however, used oxygen and hydrogen, both of which can be generated by electrolysis from water without any fossil fuels.\n\nIn reality, though, there is very little danger of running out of petroleum products for rocket fuel. Current reserves of oil are not running out any time in the next 200 years at the earliest, and if we have any low-volume need for specific hydrocarbons, we can certainly synthecize them from biological precursors.", "As others have already mentioned, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen can still takes us to space. They are harder to use since they are cryogenic, i.e. they have to be kept at an insanely low temperature, but they are widely used because of their mass efficiency.\n\nThere are kerosene rockets too, mostly used in lower stages. In your scenario those would be excluded.\n\nWhat I'd like to mention is that the way we obtain liquid hydrogen is from water electrolysis. This requires energy, and for that we're currently using fossil fuels. In theory it can be done using solar power, but our current development is not enough to do this at a large scale.\n\nCooling down hydrogen and oxygen to the temperatures at which they stay liquid also requires energy to power our machines. Also in this case we might be able to rely on solar or other sources, but at our current stage of development we're heavily dependent on fossil fuels.\n", "Yes, rockets use fossil fuels, there are two main kinds, hydrogen and \nRP-1. RP-1 is highly refined kerosene, which is one of the products made by refining crude oil. Hydrogen is made by reforming natural gas, which is manly methane (CH4), the Hydrogen atoms are stripped off, and the carbon is released into the atmosphere. It is possible to produce hydrogen by electrolyzing water, but it is far more expensive, so most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.\n\nThe result of all this is that we aren't going to be unable to make rocket fuel, but it may become a lot more expensive in the future." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e0t05xc" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Logically, the filesystem is told to reserve the physical space for the new file.\n\nPhysically, the space of a hard drive that are reserved still contain whatever data was last in that space." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ds49s5s" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Subjective is a judgement or experience. Objective is a reliably reproducible measurement. Both can be scientific. A good example is flavor versus chemistry.\n\nA cherry is tangy, sweet. That's a subjective statement because everyone experiences flavor in a different way, but it's still important to science to characterize the properties of a cherry.\n\nA cherry contains an average of 0.4 grams of fructose. That's an objective statement because we've distilled some measurement from an analysis.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce6bjmi" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "_URL_0_\n\n > We now know (as of 2013) that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error. This suggests that the Universe is infinite in extent; [...] All we can truly conclude is that the Universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > The size of the Universe is unknown; it may be infinite.\n\nBut\n\n > how can it truly be without an end?\n\nTo imagine *that* it might be so is easy: Just look at e.g. Natural Numbers ([0,] 1, 2, 3, ...) - they go on without end, so why shouldn't something physical (like the size of space) be infinite (= go on forever)?\n\nTo imagine this infinity itself is probably forever impossible, but whenever I try to create a mental image of \"Goes on forever. No, no just until that point - even further. And further.\", I seem to find a new, more \"correct\" image of infinite space. Maybe I am re-using previous such mental images in the new one, like subroutines in a computer program. This can maybe never lead to an actual imagination of an infinite spatial stretch, but it feels like something new and awesome whenever I find a bigger mental image of this.\n\nThe actual question might be: Why should we be able to create mental images for everything that exists in reality? Maybe it just has to be accepted that reality is beyond our ability to mentally describe it (except by symbols and concepts). But don't let that discourage you from trying.\n\n > When it comes to time, I know that we estimate the universe to be about 13.7 billion years old. I know we don't have a understanding of what was before that,\n\nWell, that's an interesting problem, and I must admit that my musings in this regard might be unfit for /r/AskScience, but I dare write them anyway:\n\nWe (Mankind.) have found principles that reality follows, e.g. Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity etc. - and before we had found those, we had simpler, less accurate concepts of the principles that reality follows, and we had *more* of those because we didn't know yet what their underlying principle was. I'm saying that we had found a lot of small boxes, but nowadays we have a few larger boxes that each holds a lot of those earlier boxes. We keep searching for TheOneBoxToRuleThemAll™, the principle that all of reality follows.\n\nBut in the same way, when we look back further in time, we see a conceptually simpler and simpler universe. Our search for \"the all-concept\" and our search for what was at the beginning of the universe is a very similar one, it's ultimately looking for the same answer: What is reality ultimately really?\n\nMy take regarding the beginning of time is that the closer we'd get with our understanding to that point, the more we'd look at the all-unification of all things, the all-principle, and this would - my opinion - ultimately describe even what time is. Even what logic / cause & effect is. If that were so, then the beginning of time would be a singularity not just of space/matter/energy but also of all meanings. The question \"what was before\" would in this way not even have a meaning.\n\nJust think of it this way: At some point in our mental journey to get closer to the root of the universe, we might find the explanation of what time is and how it works. And then? Well, and then there logically is no \"before\" any more." ] }

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[ [ "http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Size.2C_age.2C_contents.2C_structure.2C_and_laws" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "emx9c6l" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Think of countries as regular companies for this case. \n\nCountries don't really buy things - it's state companies that are run (more or less) like private companies, think of train networks requiring trains, power grids require generators, water networks needing pumps, etc. - when they buy something - and it doesn't matter if its domestic or foreign - they'll agree on a price (and a currency - especially in countries with weak local currencies, a strong foreign currency is actually agreed upon even on domestic deals) with the seller. \n\nOn longer running deals, most companies (state or private owned doesn't matter) then pay some insurance to have their exchange rate fixed (especially if the exchange rate between the local and foreign currency is more volatile) so they'll pay the same amount in their local currency for the foreign product over a longer amount of time." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "flfritc", "fle7xrm", "fle9mgh" ], "score": [ 2, 5, 27 ], "text": [ "Counterfeit and forgery generally mean the same thing, although you might use forgery to refer to something more specific.\n\nSo like \"counterfeit money\" is a banal mass-produced object, that happens to be fake. But a \"forgery\" would be like a painting that someone claimed was painted by Picasso, but actually wasn't. Or a signature on a document, made by someone who was lying about their identity, would be a \"forged signature.\"\n\nGenerally with mass produced things like money, pharmaceuticals, or branded clothing, we say they're counterfeit. And with signatures or art/written work attributed to certain people, we say they're forgeries.\n\nAn important nuance is that \"forgery\" implies dishonesty. If someone *honestly* misidentifies something, that thing is not a forgery. If we found an old painting in a basement somewhere, and we're not sure who painted it, and someone truly believed it was a Picasso painting, but we later found out it wasn't, we would not say that was a forgery. It's only if I painted it, and *I*, the painter, claimed this was a Picasso painting, that we would claim it to be a forgery.\n\nBut counterfeit is always counterfeit, no matter what. Even if I sincerely believed my counterfeit money was real money, it's still counterfeit money. That doesn't mean I'm in trouble, if I was truly duped. But the money will always be counterfeit.\n\nAnd \"fake\" is a non-specific term. Anything that is not the real thing it appears to be can be called fake. Counterfeits, forgeries, and many other things, can all be called fake.", "From a legal standpoint it's actually fairly nitpicky.\n\nA counterfeit is an item made to resemble or be identical to an original item of higher value or notariety then attempted to be passed off and/or sold as the original item. Handbags, cell phones, money, etc. Items that all have value as an item.\n\nForgery is similar to counterfeit of legally binding documents and signature. Contracts, licenses, etc. These documents don't have a value as an item rather as the authority and license they attempt to manufacture.\n\nAnd fake really doesn't have a legal definition.\n\nOutside of the legal realm they may be used fairly interchangeably.", "A forgery usually refers to a *specific* item, like a signature or an original painting. If you were two see two identical copies of the same original painting, you could conclude that forgery has occurred merely from the fact that there are two of them. You still might need an expert to tell which one is the forgery, though.\n\nCounterfeit is for *categories* of goods, and usually means that the thing being faked is the *origin*, not the good itself. Counterfeit is often, but not always, related to IP infringement.\n\nIf you make a purse, that's fine. If you make a purse and call it a Louis Vuitton, then it's a counterfeit because Louis Vuitton didn't make it (regardless if it's good quality or otherwise identical!). If Louis Vuitton licenses you to make LV-brand apparel, then that same purse is now not counterfeit anymore. In contrast to forgery, there's nothing inherently suspicious about seeing a dozen identical Louis Vuitton purses. \n\nBank notes are also counterfeit, because the thing being faked is who made them. The country issuing them is what gives them the legal weight to be considered money. So what you're faking is the issuing authority, and the good itself only incidentally.\n\nCounterfeiting banknotes may also require forgery because there's signatures and art. Also, *financial instruments* can be forged: things like checks and deposit slips and authorizations. \n\n\"Fake\" is a pretty loose term. I'm not sure it's well-defined." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccke0fo", "ccked12", "cckfd5p" ], "score": [ 6, 15, 2 ], "text": [ "... because times change. It's useful to study how people thought and lived and why things happened the way they did in eras very different from our own, so we gain insight into what might happen in future circumstances very different from our own.\n\nE.g., American History is only a few hundred years old, and until recently has been in a state of near constant expansion and growth in power. What happens when that is no longer true? There aren't that many former large empires to look at for comparison. If you want a large sample size with a wide variety of conditions and responses, that pretty much requires looking beyond recent local history.\n\nNot to mention to gain understanding in how we got to where we are now. How can we understand American History, with so much of our government and culture based on the Enlightenment, if we don't understand the Enlightenment and how it came to be? How can we understand the Enlightenment if we don't understand European history, the Renaissance and its origins, or the Greek and Roman history they idolized and tried to model themselves after?\n\n\"American history\" didn't start as a tabula rasa with the first European settlements. How can we understand the colonization of the Americas without examining at the social and political conditions of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries? How can we understand at those conditions without looking at the Protestant Reformation, and the centuries of Catholic/Protestant war? How can we understand that without understanding the role of Roman Catholicism in the development of European cultural identity and government in the post-Roman period? And how can we understand that without understanding the development of Catholic Church, and by extension the development of Christianity, and even further the development of the Abrahamic traditions as a whole? And how can we understand that without considering everything from the rise of the Roman Empire to Zoroaster?\n\nAnd of course, there's more to the world than America. How can we understand the politics and motivations and cultures and interests of countries more than 237 years old, if we disregard national histories that start before the 15th century?", "I don't actually feel as if I need to defend medieval history for its social relevance - the fact that I enjoy studying it is really enough for me. It should be obvious that medieval history presents special problems of understanding, in particular in relation to the number of sources, and I have always liked grappling with these.\n\nI also don't buy the distinction you seem to be making between history which \"has direct implications... and directly affects what occurs today\" and that which doesn't. This is partly because I believe that the medieval period genuinely does affect today - you could think about the roots of the British constitution and legal system in terms of Magna Carta (1215); or the development of the English language via Middle English including the cultural legacy of the medieval period via Chaucer; or the way in which we link modern events to [those from medieval society](_URL_0_); or the ways that [modern culture](_URL_1_) draws on medieval tropes. Drawing this sort of distinction reduces history to a monocausal discipline which just considers immediate context, and I don't think that actually captures the past very well. \n\nI'm also not sure how compelling a justification the one you use is. For one thing, I really don't think that people reading history necessarily apply the lessons of the past to the present - this is a bit crudely determinist for me.\n\nA good introduction to the value of medieval history is Marcus Bull's *Thinking Medieval*.", "Medieval history is world history - sounds like a non-answer, but in reality, there is a lot to be said for the study of Medieval history.\n\nTake for example the Magna Carta which was forced upon King John in 1215. It was a refutation of divine right and established, amongst other things, the right to trial with a jury of peers and certain property rights, as well as the famous *habeas corpus* wherein charges must be leveled against the offender or he must be set free. Sure, the Magna Carta only really applied to the elite, but wait! There's more:\n\nThe Black Death which ripped through Europe created, amongst other things, a drastic change in society, especially for peasants. Lords and their retainers, monks, priests, nuns, and all the trappings of hierarchical rule died just as easily as peasants *but* there were more peasants and an increasing demand for labor. Some peasants left serfdom or their municipalities and started new lives. Those left behind were invested with more freedom and power, even becoming \"lay\" lawyers in their own right. Re-enter the Magna Carta...slowly, over time, the peasantry and their local village courts in England began to try cases that were too small for the lords to take notice of. They used similar procedures (including juries) that lords expected under the Magna Carta. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the practices of lords and peasants were becoming parallels of each other and eventually melded into English \"common law\" (not a written set of laws, but merely common practices which are so entrenched, they are respected as if they were written laws).\n\nThe schism between Catholics and Protestants in the late Medieval/Renaissance period, while demographically destructive, laid the groundwork for Enlightenment thinkers' attitudes towards religious tolerance as well as peoples' relationships with their governments, especially the idea of the sovereignty of people and the ownership of property.\n\nThomas Jefferson's declaration was based upon John Locke, John Locke's ideas were based upon (among other things) the *Magna Carta* and therefore it could be argued that without Medieval History, you can't understand why people in the Enlightenment, Revolutionary War,and even today do what they do.\n\nIn essence, I would argue that while we look forward, we must also look further and further back in time lest we lose our way; we may think ourselves geniuses and giants compared to those in the Medieval (or Classic, or Ancient, or pre-historic) periods, but their genius is the foundation of our happiness and without them, we would not live in the world we do today (or hope to tomorrow)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cs5t76x", "cs5tzk0", "cs5u35l" ], "score": [ 30, 9, 2 ], "text": [ " > Why haven't we as humans adapted to the heat of the sun after all this time?\n\nIt's not the heat that's the problem. It's ultraviolet light, which damages cells and can lead to skin cancer. And we *have* adapted. Tanning is our body's response to excess sunlight, and it helps reduce (but does *not* eliminate) sun-related damage.\n\nBut skin cancer from sun exposure generally happens late enough in life that it has no impact on someone's ability to reproduce, and if it doesn't affect our ability to reproduce, then there is no evolutionary pressure to change it (i.e. pretty much no one who is more prone to UV-influenced cancer is dying before they can have children).", "The problem is, we have moved away from the places to which our skin *is* adapted. The world's whitest people, the Irish and Norwegians, adapted in places with very little sunlight, where in order to make enough Vitamin D, people who had the palest skin survived best and had the most babies. \n\nPeople in the sunniest areas tended to survive best with the darkest skin, with the most melanin. They could disable the negative effects of solar radiation and also get enough vitamin D because there was so much sun.\n\nThis would be fine if the pale skin people didn't keep moving to areas with much much more sunlight. Australia, for example, has a large number of pale skinned people in a very sun-intensive location, hence they have one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world.\n\nIn the Techno age of the late 20th-21st centuries, we apply sunscreen as a \"fake melanin\". It protects the skin from damage due to solar radiation.\n\nInterestingly enough, in the quest to reduce fatalities from skin cancer, physicians advise heavy sunscreen all the time. This has led to many people having Vitamin D deficiency. We don't know all the consequences of Vitamin D deficiency, but there are some who think it includes asthma, cancer, and dementia. \n\nThere has got to be a happy medium, but I'm guessing exactly how much is optimal for sun exposure varies from person to person. My doctor's solution is stay out of the sun, and take vitamin D supplements. I maintain that there have got to be other deficiencies when you get NO sun; we've done research on Vitamin D so we know about that one, but we should probably get some sun just in case. I'm not a doctor, she's probably correct.\n", "We adapted by being in the sun all day and building up a resistance.\n\nAnd then some of us started to use shades or more cloudy regions with less intense sunshine so our bodies dialed back the production of natural sunscreen." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyk7mjm", "cyk86o4", "cykapd9", "cyke73d" ], "score": [ 4, 60, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Which Latin America? We all have different histories you know. ", "I don't know that I can answer the question as written for \"most of Latin America, from what appears to be independence to the present day\", but I think I can point to some important differences that might help you think about the question you're asking. For the sake of brevity I'll stick to Spanish America, because Brazil is a whole different thing, and I'll just refer to \"America\" in your question as the US. \n\n- The independence of the United States was a purposeful, top-down effort led by a motivated elite; it was deeply rooted in international instability, but not, I would argue, primarily caused by it. The independence of Spanish America was, in large part, a product of a power vacuum created by Napoleon's sudden conquest of Spain. In the important power centers of Spanish America, this meant that various groups surged uncertainly into authority over the 15-20 years of Napoleonic instability, including an explosive, highly intolerant attempt to re-assert authority by the recently restored Ferdinand VII with the support of other counter-revolutionary European regimes. So while in the British colonies you had a relatively brief period of war with a decisive end, and a (weak, but functional in important ways) independence government with reasonable legitimacy waiting to step in, in Spanish America the best case scenario was to be far enough away from a power/economic center that you were mostly left alone for the decades of warfare and disorder. Which creates a neat catch-22 since those remote locations like Costa Rica were not going to become the sort of regional powers people have in mind when they ask this question. Because we lack (afaik) comprehensive evidence for how generalized support for US independence was, it's tough to really track that ebb and flow, but as you'll see in the next points, at least it wasn't like the upper classes were hopelessly alienated from the middle and lower classes in terms of their goals, which were basically \"change as little as possible and don't give an inch to the poor or underprivileged\" more than broad ideas of independence. Why was this?\n\n- The power vacuum situation in South America meant that, for all practical purposes, South America's major countries were simultaneously embroiled in the equivalent of the US Revolution and Civil War, at the same time, for a period of at least two decades on-and-off. That means issues of race, caste, class were being negotiated (Bolivar's rebranded independence movement after Haiti, Mexico's Hidalgo vs Iturbide branching paths, Peru's post Tupac Amaru II mentality was firmly in place, etc) simultaneously with basic questions of chain of command, forms of government, economic structure. This meant that people who Had Stuff in Spanish Latin America felt they were in a very scary place compared to US elites, and you can easily see why competing thrusts at low-consensus republics that shut out these new ideas or military dictatorships coming in and out of power would lead to difficult precedents, and far from \"taking care\" of major questions of governance like the eventual US Civil War, really only set in place the potential for cyclical discord, often tied to individuals rather than institutions, in many countries (see: *caudillismo*). \n\n- Timing. Ideologically, the Euro-American world was a very different place in the early 19th century versus late 18th, due in no small part to the US revolution but also to the French Revolution and, importantly, the semi-successful revolt of enslaved persons in Haiti. Combined with the uncertainty and the outbursts of change in social order in various independence movements (again, Hidalgo and the undercurrents that would lead to Bolivar v2), and you have that situation I described in the first point. Which is that the leadership that would take power from Ferdinand VII's (unwilling) hands was, in most ways, profoundly conservative and reactionary in motivations that simply weren't present for US leaders/elites in their ascension to power. \n\nI could go on, but that gives you three big things I think are important in considering the process of independence in the two regions. Why things evolved differently from there would really benefit from a country by country breakdown, as (for instance) Mexico's evolution into its 19th century and 20th century forms is much more deeply enmeshed with American intervention than, say, Argentina, to cite just one important factor in its \"instability\" over time. Apologies for the big generalizations above, but I hope they get the job done. \n\nFurther reading:\nRodríguez, Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge University Press, 1998.\nHalperin-Donghi, Tulio. The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America. Harper Torchbooks, 1973.\nBulmer-Thomas, Victor. The Economic History of Latin America since Independence. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003.\n\nSome more specific works that do well addressing this question in their areas\nWoodward, Ralph Lee. Central America: A Nation Divided. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, USA, 1999.\nWalker, Charles F. Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840. Duke University Press Books, 1999.\nYoung, Eric Van. The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821. 1st ed. Stanford University Press, 2002.\nJiménez, Iván Molina, and Steven Paul Palmer. El paso del cometa: estado, política social y culturas populares en Costa Rica (1800-1950). Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1994.\n\n\n\n\n", "While I know Niall Ferguson is not the most unbiased person out there, I would at least bring out a point he makes about northern american British colonies compared to Latin american colonies. He argues that in British colonies, more people owned land, property rights were better enforced and there existed a more representative method of government for the landowners. New colonists could also settle new lands and become new landowners, which was much less the case in Latin America, where huge swaths of land were owned by nobles/landowners. This meant that it was possible for people to rise from being a poor immigrant to a landowning and vote-casting member of the society. He then argues that this democratic government with the rule of law led to economic prosperity and greater stability.\n\nAnother point i was taught in geography lessons back in high-school was that while the Latin-American colonies were mostly extraction-type colonies (a relatively small european population with a lot of native and African slaves extracting either metals, wood or crops from the land to be sent to the centres of their respective empires, North-American colonies had more European populations, that tried and wanted to distance themselves from their homelands (often fleeing persecution and poverty) which led to more self-sufficient economies. This later led to rising industry and a diversified economy. After independence the latin american nations largely retained their etraction-based economy that has a lower potential added value than a diversified and industrious society that the north-American economy evolved into. This diversified economy allowed more people to enrich themselves (not only had you to own lots of land and slaves to become succesful), but there existed other ways to create wealth (working as a payed worker in industry, agriculture, construction). ", "So I come at this from a background in political science and law. I would point out that America wasn't exactly stable or dominant until after the World Wars. The pre war history seems full of violence, insurrection, riots, economic depression, political suppression, and all the other hallmarks of a generally rough place. Land mass, resources, recent and massive industrialization, and the fact that Europe was in shambles after the wars allowed America to assume the role of a global superpower. But it wasn't always coming up roses. By contrast, I remember studying how the post-revolutionary regimes in Latin America generally took an authoritarian form, where industry and decentralized power structures combined with small land area to produce an environment where supression was used as a tool for development, by a coalition of military leaders and technocratic elites. The idea of decentralization seems to trace all the way back to Spanish colonization, where again population control and rule-by-elites was paramount for maintaining a steady flow of raw material exports. I have always personally considered the later-arising \"bureaucratic authoritarianism,\" as it is commonly described, to be a product of anti-idealist regimes that want to play \"catch up\" with more developed powers, with a pragmatic approach that views civil liberties as secondary to economic growth. \n\nOf course, through a modern lens, we can't discount the negative effect, intentional or not, of having the United States looming over the back yard. Many regime changes that have occured in the region were sponsored by the American government, but always as a tool for promoting solely American interests - not the creation of stable governing structures. \n\nJust some thoughts! It is a very complicated question." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddu5qbi" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "It's a physical reaction, not chemical, the electricity is causing it not an interaction of chemicals. Ions (atoms missing bits) come off the anode (positive side). If you leave wires connected to a battery in water for long enough you'll see one of them will eventually disintegrate. That's why you see metal for out doors that is anodized or galvanized . They put a metal coating that will degrade by giving up ions preventing the underlying metal from degradation. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "colyh06", "colyh5m", "colylr8", "colyp32", "colz18u", "colzjnu" ], "score": [ 46, 3, 5, 4, 2, 7 ], "text": [ "If you eat fewer calories than you use, you lose weight.\n\nIf all those calories come from soda, chocolate, and chips, you lose other things. Like muscle mass, hair, and vital signs.", "You will lose weight based on calories, but getting appropriate nutrition on such a diet would be a challenge.", "If you eat fewer calories than you burn in your day to day life you will lose weight. It does not matter what form those calories come in in so far as your weight is concerned. \n\nWhat will be affected in other aspects of your health. A diet of mountain dew, cookies, and chips will not give you anything close to the amount of vitamins, protein, fats, or minerals that you need. You will likely have problems with your skin, muscle mass, hair, kidneys, liver, heart lungs, teeth, etc. ", "Someone went on a Twinkie diet and lost a bunch of weight. Sorry I didn't link it. I'm just being lazy because I'm alone on V-day eating Twinkies.", "I recently did some self research on this. I'm not in the medical field at all so i don't have all the technical terms but basically your body doesn't care what you eat. What ever you eat gets broken down into components that are absorbed or left to waste. The waste leaves your body via your ass and the parts that are absorbed go into your blood stream. (Your body may miss some of the nutrients you eat deepening on the person and the fat content of the food) The common, but not technical, names for these nutrients are sugar, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals. Of those only sugars and fats are stored, everything else will end up passing though if not used. Weather it is used and produces waste or if it is passing through it will come out of your body via your urine or lungs. Specifically when sugar or fat is broken down it produces water and CO2, everything else passes through as-is. Keep in mind that in order to have a healthy body you need the right amount of all those components. On that type of diet you will likely be lacking in protein, vitamins and minerals. \n\nA side note to what i was actually researching, when someone goes from 300 lbs to 150 lbs none of the weight lose is in their shit, all 150 lbs of weight loss leaves the body via lungs and urine by the break down of sugars and fats into water and CO2.\n\ntl;dr - yes you will lose weight b/c your body breaks everything down into its basic components but you still need all the components.", "Hey there! I'm a biomedical scientist who studies microbes, but part of that includes nutrition.\n\nFirst, let's take a look at what it means to lose and gain weight in a conventional sense.\n\nThe \"weight\" you are referring to is likely fat (although you can certainly [lose muscle mass from malnutrition](_URL_0_) as well, unless you're a POW in a third world country, that's probably not what you meant). So how is weight stored in your body?\n\nIt's stored in the form of fat! But what is fat? It's a type of molecule, also called a lipid. When people gain weight though, these lipids are not evenly distributed around their body in a liquid layer! Otherwise we would see it pooling in the legs of obese people due to gravity. Not only that, but losing weight would be as simple as puncturing the skin and allowing it to drain.\n\nFats are instead stored in a specialized tissue known as adipose, which is made up of cells called [lipocytes.](_URL_3_) Inside each one of these lipocytes is a \"bubble\" that stores fat, called a vacuole.\n\nSo think of your old man's beer gut as a 30 pack of cans, each separate from one another, rather than the keg he claims it is. Except instead of 30, there's tens of billions of them, and they're real tiny and filled with something closer in nature to butter than it is to beer (sorry, Pops).\n\nSo now we've answered the *how.* Let's talk about *why.* \n\nThere are many things that adipose tissue is good for. Thermal insulation, protection for your organs... But it's got one major role that is more important than the rest.\n\nThe chemical nature of a lipid makes it very very good at storing energy in its molecular bonds- energy that other cells in your body can use to get their jobs done (ever wonder why fat sits directly on top of muscle tissue? Muscles use a lot of energy so they need quick access to fat!)\n\nThe reason eating fatty foods is considered \"bad\" for you by some people is because of fat's high energy content (there are some other reasons, but that's the main one). The excessive calories are often more than you need, and the calorie-heavy food crowds out other, less-nutrient rich foods from your diet.\n\nNutrients! [Another buzzword!](_URL_1_) What are nutrients, exactly? They're the various things found in the food you eat that your body needs to continue to function normally!\n\nThere are two main classes of nutrients:\n\nMacronutrients (macro meaning large), the nutrients your body needs you to consume in large amounts to maintain its normal processes,\n\nand micronutrients (micro meaning \"small\" of course!), the nutrients you need to consume in small quantities.\n\nThere are three types of macronutrient: Lipids (yes, you need to eat fats to be healthy!), proteins, and carbohydrates. [In a different thread](_URL_2_) I went into a great amount of detail about the importance of some other macronutrients, if you're curious.\n\nMicronutrients include vitamins and minerals.\n\nWithout these nutrients in your body, you can't get certain things done. For example, if you don't get the lipids you need, your hair will become brittle. Your skin will get very dry, and your joints will really start to hurt!\n\n\nSome of the scariest symptoms, in my opinion, come from vitamin deficiencies. Without the right vitamins in your diet, you can get pale or yellow skin, weakness in your muscles, fatigue (tiredness), shortness of breath, tingling and numbness in your hands and feet... The list goes on.\n\nIf you ate only the foods you listed, and consumed few enough calories that you were at a caloric deficiency, you would indeed lose weight. The general rule still holds that you gain weight when you consume more calories than you burn, and you lose weight when you burn more calories than you consume.\n\nHowever, without the proper nutrients in your body, you would quickly become malnourished and would certainly die eventually.\n\n\nDoes that help? :o)" ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://i.imgur.com/qRD1uQF.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/zIOgA3q.jpg", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vs65b/eli5_what_do_protein_supplement_powders_actually/cokkgg6", "http://i.imgur.com/mtvnv5z.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c21tuy3", "c21twgi", "c21txnu", "c21u6ua", "c21x479", "c21ynu4" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "You are pretty much correct in your analysis.\n\nLong-term generation ships using nuclear pulse propulsion (or similar) could perhaps reach another star, but that technology is too far away to even say how far away it is.", "**Possible**, yes. Just slow. \n\n_URL_0_ is a good guide to some possibilities.\n\n", "You more or less got it. Possible, but not practical.", "Perhaps in the future we could send an artificial womb aboard a spacecraft. At arrival a machine will assemble DNA and sex cells from raw organic material and grow a number of humans inside artificial wombs. At first the babies will be cared for by robots and later they will be educated and work together with their computer \"parent\" to make the best of their new surroundings. ", "That is a bit like predicting that we will never land on the moon, because the atmosphere so high up is too thin to carry even the lightest balloons.", "Interstellar travel is *entirely* science fiction – manned missions even more so. We have no indication that it could be possible to circumvent the laws of physics and are thus bound by the cosmic speed limit c (the speed of light in vacuum). However, it’s unlikely we will ever attain even a fraction of that speed. That would mean a journey of thousands of years. Something we are unable to plan and prepare for – indeed we might not even be able to develop technologies that could last that long.\n\nThere are of cause very fanciful ideas about interstellar journeys, but they all depend of some form of *magic* (an unexplained future technological breakthrough that would enable us to do something currently impossible). However, the fact that you can visualize a future in your imagination is not evidence that it is likely or even possible.\n\nBar new physics interstellar journeys are fundamentally outside our reach.\n" ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_medicine", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sombrero_Galaxy#Dust_ring", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeoroid" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/slowerlight.php" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c38hb20", "c38hb20" ], "score": [ 8, 8 ], "text": [ "It's a somewhat tricky question, actually.\n\nFrom the point of view of the infalling particle, time doesn't slow down at all as it approaches the horizon; in fact, it doesn't feel anything special at the horizon at all, and it continues to fall in as normal.\n\nTo the outside, however, it's true that infalling matter appears to accrue on the surface of the black hole, and this is fine: the exterior gravitational field of a black hole of mass M is the same as that of a black hole with mass m1 surrounded by a shell of mass M-m1 on the horizon. As far as we're concerned, it doesn't matter if the matter falls in through the horizon or asymptotically reaches it because you'll get the same gravitational field either way.", "It's a somewhat tricky question, actually.\n\nFrom the point of view of the infalling particle, time doesn't slow down at all as it approaches the horizon; in fact, it doesn't feel anything special at the horizon at all, and it continues to fall in as normal.\n\nTo the outside, however, it's true that infalling matter appears to accrue on the surface of the black hole, and this is fine: the exterior gravitational field of a black hole of mass M is the same as that of a black hole with mass m1 surrounded by a shell of mass M-m1 on the horizon. As far as we're concerned, it doesn't matter if the matter falls in through the horizon or asymptotically reaches it because you'll get the same gravitational field either way." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnwv6w2" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "1. Humans have an instinctive desire to explore. Following our instincts feels good.\n2. It distracts us from our usual daily concerns, which aren't visible there.\n3. We don't have so many chores or work to do when on vacation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "exkoi3e", "exkrakp" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It works kind of like the stock market. Look up forex trading for details.\n\nBut basically a bunch of people make and take offers to trade one currency for another, and the rates those people are willing to trade at determine the exchange rate.", "\"Conversion rate\" is just another word of \"price of a currency\", and that is, like most prices, ruled by supply and demand.\n\nDemand for a currency comes mostly from the trade balance. Think about a company that produces in Europe, but sells its products in the USA. The workers want to be paid in euros, but the customers pay in dollars. That means that the company needs to buy euros with those dollars, or they will run out of euros to pay their workers.\n\nMeaning, if a country exports a lot, that increases demand for that countries' currency, and therefore this currency will rise. (Which in turn makes those exports less profitable, but thats another story).\n\nOf course, there are also other things that influence the conversion rates, like speculants. And obviously, if a country decides to print lots of its own money, that increases the supply, reducing its value.\n\nSo, no person or institution decides these rates, they are just the outcome of banks and corporations trying to buy and sell currencies." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce7fb6w", "ce7fmbx" ], "score": [ 3, 4 ], "text": [ "It doesn't counteract the acid a whole lot, and you wouldn't take it if you felt fine anyway. If you eat a lot of acidic food or drinks, then the balance gets thrown off, and its too acidic. Then you would want take an alka seltzer to basify it just a little, to get the acid levels to where they should be.", "Stomach acid isn't there to break down your food, its primary role is to destroy bacteria in anything you just ate. The enzymes in your small intestine are responsible for most of the digestion.\n\nHeartburn is caused by stomach acid finding its way up, and out of your stomach where it attacks the lining of your esophagus. Alka seltzer relieves heartburn by neutralizing that acid." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e2mojmo" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Liquids don't compress. Holding the bottle upside down and striking the heel sends shockwaves through the bottle, which terminate in the spongey cork, causing it to move. Since it can't move into the liquids, it moves out of the neck." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7sakut" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "A couple points:\n\n1) yes, the tree of life contains a wide spectrum of immune systems. The innate immune system (macrophages, granulocytes e.g. neutrophils, complement proteins, etc) varies across the animal clade. The adaptive immune system (T and B lymphocytes and the lymphoid organs) also become increasingly complex as you move from primitive to complex animals as well. Check out [this review](_URL_1_) ([pdf](_URL_5_)). Simple things like physical barriers also play a role. Our skin is tough plating of keratinized cells, exposed to the air and thus is quite dry. We are much less susceptible to fungal infections as a result (unless the skin is always kept moist, e.g. like in a shoe, allowing athlete's foot to take root). Amphibians, which are usually thin-skinned and wet, making some [fungal infections lethal to them](_URL_0_).\n\n2) viruses, which rely on host cells to replicate and survive, are always specific for a surface receptor of some kind to invade a cell. If this receptor is absent, the virus cannot invade from outside. Viruses that can cross from one animal to another (influenza, which can infect all sorts of mammals and birds) can do so because the receptors it requires evolved back before our last common ancestor. Think about that for a second: if the flu can infect a bird and a human, it must be able to infect any other animal (that hasn't since lost these receptors) that also came from that last common ancestor. Snakes arose from that ancestor, too, so snakes should be able to get the flu, right? [Yep. They can.](_URL_2_)\n\n3) bacteria aren't usually dependent on host cells so much as they need the right environment. Some hosts simply cannot provide the right environment for bacteria to live. Ectothermic animals like small reptiles don't keep their body temps where some bacteria grow best, but we do. Other bacteria don't grow well at high heat, so we're safer from them. In fact, this is why we have fevers when we get sick. \n\n4) advanced parasites require very specific aspects of host biology to reproduce. [Malaria](_URL_3_) is a great example: it is adapted to live in the GI tract, then the salivary glands, of a biting mosquito. After injection into a host's blood stream, it requires erythrocytes to reproduce. Without complex interactions between the parasite and its host (which induce [complex changes in parasite biology](_URL_4_)), the parasite can't reproduce. The malaria parasite simply cannot interact with non-host physiology in a way that lets it reproduce. This is just one example of parasite/host specificity- the world of parasites is filled with far more complex examples.\n\n\nHope that answers your question!" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis", "http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v11/n1/full/nrg2703.html", "http://www.formatex.org/microbio/pdf/pages868-874.pdf", "http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/images/ParasiteImages/M-R/Malaria/Malaria_LifeCycle.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Pftranscriptome.jpg", "http://ge.tt/3zxsfqU/v/0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "euavilh" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "There's a lot more methods to detect exoplanets. I'll summarize them : \n\n1. Transit Photometry as you said. This detects only a tiny fraction of the exoplanets since you need aligned systems there could be tens of thousands of planets not seen because of misalignment. However this is the most successful technique right now with over 3000 detection (next best being radial velocity at around 750 detections). \n2. Radial Velocity : The radial velocity method, also known as Doppler spectroscopy, is the most effective method for locating extrasolar planets with existing technology. The radial velocity method relies on the fact that a star does not remain completely stationary when it is orbited by a planet. It moves, ever so slightly, in a small circle or ellipse, responding to the gravitational tug of its smaller companion. When viewed from a distance, these slight movements affect the star's normal light spectrum. If the star is moving towards the observer, then its spectrum would appear slightly shifted towards the blue; if it is moving away, it will be shifted towards the red. Using highly sensitive spectrographs, we can track a star's spectrum, searching for periodic shifts towards the red, blue, and back again. The spectrum appears first slightly blue-shifted, and then slightly red-shifted. If the shifts are regular, repeating themselves at fixed intervals of days, months, or even years, it means that the star is moving ever so slightly back and forth - towards the Earth and then away from it in a regular cycle. This, in turn, is almost certainly caused by a body orbiting the star, and if it is of a low enough mass its a planet. \n3. Microlensing : Microlensing is the only known method capable of discovering planets at truly great distances from the Earth. Whereas radial velocity searches look for planets in our immediate galactic neighborhood, up to 100 light years from Earth, and transit photometry can potentially detect planets at a distance of hundreds of light-years, microlensing can find planets orbiting stars near the center of the galaxy, thousands of light-years away. when the light emanating from a star passes very close to another star on its way to an observer on Earth, the gravity of the intermediary star will slightly bend the light rays from the source star, causing the two stars to appear farther apart than they normally would. If the source star is positioned not just close to the intermediary star when seen from Earth, but precisely behind it, this effect is multiplied. Light rays from the source star pass on all sides of the intermediary, or \"lensing\" star, creating what is known as an \"Einstein ring\". Even the most powerful Earth-bound telescope cannot resolve the separate images of the source star and the lensing star between them, seeing instead a single giant disk of light, where a star had previously been. The resulting effect is a sudden dramatic increase in the brightness of the lensing star. If a planet is positioned close enough to the lensing star so that it crosses one of the two light streams emanating from the source star, the planet's own gravity bends the light stream and temporarily produces a third image of the source star. When measured from Earth, this effect appears as a temporary spike of brightness, lasting several hours to several days, superimposed upon the regular pattern of the microlensing event. Such spikes are the telltale signs of the presence of a planet. \n4. Astrometry : *Astrometry* is the method that detects the motion of a star by making precise measurements of its position on the sky. This technique can also be used to identify planets around a star by measuring tiny changes in the star's position as it wobbles around the center of mass of the planetary system. However, the precision required to detect a planet orbiting a star using this technique is extremely difficult to achieve and for this reason only one planet has been discovered by this method, although astrometry has been used to make follow-up observations for planets detected via other methods. \n5. Direct Imaging : Direct imaging of exoplanets is extremely difficult, and in most cases impossible. Being small and dim planets are easily lost in the brilliant glare of the giant stars they orbit. Nevertheless, even with existing telescope technology there are special circumstances in which a planet can be directly observed. \n\nFor further reading see : [_URL_1_](_URL_1_) (you can see exact detection statistics here) and [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.mpia.de/homes/ppvi/chapter/fischer.pdf", "https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/ways-to-find-a-planet/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "coimtgo", "coiorob", "coiptqj", "coj4y7i" ], "score": [ 88, 5, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "Bear with me on this:\n\nWhen our ancestors moved down from the trees and started to live in social groups out in the open this put selective pressure towards developing altruistic behavior. Some evolutionary biologists such as Robert Trivers argue that in humans this altruistic system is regulated by emotional dispositions. Altruism as a strategy makes sense for human-human interactions, whether we're talking symmetry-based altruism, attitudinal altruism or any other reciprocity mechanism. In this case let's focus on symmetry-based altruism with no cost to the giver, for example sharing the leftovers of a kill after you and your family are full instead of letting the remainder of it rot. There is no cost to you in sharing but you might get something in return later if you're nice and give the leftovers away to someone else. Fine and dandy. But how would this make sense for human-animal interactions? First consider that in the case above there is no cost to this behavior. Secondly we must assume that the emotional dispositions triggering the behavior isn't reserved for human-human interactions but in fact also apply in human-animal interactions. Seeing as there are no cost to sharing your spoils with animals there is also no selective pressure against this behavior. Now you may object to the assumption above stating that the emotional dispositions triggering the behavior isn't reserved for human-human interactions, but consider this: We find baby animals cute because there have been and is strong selective pressure towards bonding with our infant offspring. Recognizing infantile features in our children triggers this bonding, but a \"side effect\" of this mechanism is that infantile traits in animals also triggers a part of this system. We can assume the same has happened with our empathy, it was developed because of human-human social dynamics so we feel empathy for each other, but a \"side effect\" is that we also feel empathy for animals.\n\nSo then it follows that we feed animals because we feel compassionate towards them, and we feel compassionate towards them because there is selective pressure towards maintaining compassion and empathy in human-human interactions and no selective pressure against it from feeding animals with our surplus. It is likely that Ogg wouldn't feed the animals if he him self or his family were hungry, and so the extent of our compassion towards animals follows the same pattern as for human-human interactions, which is strongly regulated.\n\nTLDR: Simpler explanation: we feel sorry for the hungry animals so we feed them or we feel good when we help them so we feed them. We feel this way for animals because we feel this way for each other. Biological Market Theory offer an explanation for why we feel this way and how these strategies developed over time as a result of natural selection.", "Because they're \"wild\", and therefore exotic/interesting/otherwise stimulating to our sense of curiosity. \n\nWhen we feed them they come closer to us and hold still longer than they usually would, allowing us time to observe and comprehend them better than we would be able to otherwise.", "The majority of feeding of wild animals is just instrumental in getting them to spend time in a location where we can see them and expect them. For example, bird feeders in backyards or feeding birds in the park greatly increases how much bird watching you can do from your location.\n\nWhy we enjoy watching wild animals is a different question. Watching animals has a more obvious adaptive purpose, keeping us aware of animals that might be dangerous or delicious. Watching animals seems to be enjoyable even when it's useless, much like we enjoy knowing about fictional characters' lives and eating calorie - free food.", "I suggest an evolutionary explanation. In evolution there's sexual selection going on, i.e. you have to prove to potential mates that your genes are worth propagating. Costly signalling is a good way to show off how good your genes are. By handing out food to animals without getting anything in return you can prove that you genes are so good that you can afford to waste resources, e.g. food.\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5v59qk", "c5v5j36", "c5v69mp" ], "score": [ 20, 23, 11 ], "text": [ "It's a numbers game. Let's say you have 1000 pet owners in a town. Every day, 10 random pets are going to behave oddly for some reason - not important which. The owners most likely will shrug or maybe tell their friends about it over dinner. \n\nNow let's say we have an earthquake. Of those 10 pet owners maybe 2 will understand statistics and 3 won't care, but it's a fair bet you'll have 5 people telling everybody who'll listen that \"The morning before the earthquake my cat just couldn't sit still! I have no idea what got into her, she must have sensed the earthquake coming.\"", "The seizure sniffing dogs are a legit thing. They're a form of service animal that are *very* highly trained. I saw one assisting his \"owner\" (for lack of a better word in this context). About a minute before the guy started to seize, the dog did something (I didn't notice the signal, but apparently the guy did) to indicate that the seizure was about to start, the guy let me know what was about to happen and took a moment to roll his wheelchair over to an area with low foot traffic. The dog then kept guard on him for about a minute and a half while the seizure was happening, picked up the guy's dropped water bottle and put it back in his lap and gently nuzzled his hand once the seizure was ending. So, yeah, anecdotal, but totally legit.\n\nAs for animals detecting earthquakes, there was a really interesting segment on River Monsters where a Japanese scientist was studying the Nomazu catfish for signs of responses preceding earthquakes. Apparently, they will swim away from the bottom of the lake preceding an earthquake. I'm not sure how scientifically accurate the study was, as the fish were in tanks, but the implication and (presented) evidence seemed pretty strong to me.", "This paper studied a case where a number of toads left their breeding pond for higher ground a day before an earthquake. \n\nIt suggest that they were able to sense the release of certain ions from the rock below and move away from the pond before the water became potentially toxic due to a change in PH as a result of the earthquake. \n\nGranted they based this study off one abnormal mass movement of toads and that is simply not enough to definitely prove anything, their explanation and resulting research into the subject provides some interesting methods by which animals could sense an impending earthquake. \n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/can-animals-foresee-natural-disasters.html", "http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_oddities/2011/03/can-animals-sense-earthquakes-and-tsunamis.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_response_dog" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138006/pdf/ijerph-08-01936.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8a0yor" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I believe your confusion comes from thinking of decibels as being units used to measure sound waves. They aren't. The units typically used to measure sound waves are either micropascals RMS (for amplitude/pressure) or watts/meter^2 (for intensity). Decibels are, in general, just a convenient way to represent *ratios* that can vary over many [orders of magnitude](_URL_0_). In the specific case of sound pressure levels in air the decibels represent the ratio of the RMS pressure of the sound wave in question to the \"reference level\" which is by convention 20 uPa RMS.\n\nSo for example when someone says a sound is 60 dB they typically mean 60 dB re 20 uPa RMS which means that the pressure is 1,000 times greater than the reference level, or 20 millipascals RMS. That means that if you had a tiny and very sensitive pressure gauge and you watched the variation in pressure as the sound wave passed the reading on the pressure gauge would average out to 20 millipascals RMS." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dg98wlt" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It's air pressure. When the stove is completely open, air pressure is roughly equalized so oxygen being burned is immediately replenished. When the door is only slightly open, the fire is using up the oxygen in the oven causing an area of low pressure, so the atmosphere outside of the oven \"rushes in\" to attempt to equalize. So the fire is getting more oxygen dumped onto it, feeding it more oxygen to burn. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9osgvj" ], "score": [ 91 ], "text": [ "Hi, you may be interested in a couple of posts from [the FAQ](_URL_2_):\n\n* [Were the tombs of South American civilizations the booby-trapped nightmare we see in entertainment?](_URL_1_) - South & amp; Central America, Egypt\n\n* [Many fantasy/historical computer games and RPGs feature \"dungeons\", ie a large labyrinthian set of tunnels, rooms, traps etc. Is there any historical basis for dungeons?](_URL_0_) - various labyrinths & amp; catacombs\n\nIf you have follow-up questions, since these posts are archived, just ask here & tag the user's username to notify them" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13r37l/many_fantasyhistorical_computer_games_and_rpgs/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23jd10/were_the_tombs_of_south_american_civilizations/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/monuments#wiki_were.2Fare_there_actually_tombs_filled_with_deathtraps.3F" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4797km" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Pretty much none. Neon is a noble gas which won't form compounds with much and definitely not with all of these at any reasonable energy. You might be able to squeeze everything but Ne onto some long molecule all as substituted atoms, but even that would be a stretch. The only compound that sticks out containing two of these is potassium iodide though I'm sure cerium/scandium iodide are kicking around and maybe a few arsenic compounds as well." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c83e6gq", "c83fjgj", "c83frc3", "c83fuzp", "c83gbq7", "c83iaqu" ], "score": [ 166, 3, 11, 56, 85, 5 ], "text": [ "A polite reminder. This is AskScience. No layman speculation, no guessing, no anecdotes, no jokes. Please check the sidebar if you're unsure whether your answer should be here or not.", "How is it any different than the myriad of animals we've been able to domesticate with humans? They've identified another animal that does not seem to threaten them or their food supply, and come to treat them like another 'cat/dog/etc'", "Nature recently did an [episode](_URL_0_) on this subject.", "With some googling I've come up with some very vague answers. \nHopefully this satisfies your curiosity, or at the very least points you in the right direction. \n( Now bare with me, I'm mobile so no fancy pants formatting. )\n\n\"\"The particular phenomenon I want to focus on is cross-species friendships. There are broadly speaking two sorts of cross-species friendship. One is a friendship between an animal and a human – most obviously, the pet-owner relationship. This typically involves some degree of parent-child dynamic: the human keeps the pet in a sort of extended childhood, relating to its owner as a permanent parent. The other is friendships between two non-human animals of different species: a cat and a dog, a tiger and a dog, a cat and a crow, an elephant and a dog, a gorilla and a cat, even a hamster and a snake. All of the preceding can be seen on youtube, and I imagine pretty much any combination is possible. Here there’s likely to be a mixture of parent-child relationships, with a (usually female) animal raising an infant of another species, and peer relationships, analogous to those that would obtain between two animals of the same age.\n\n\nWhat does this tell us about the animals in question? Broadly speaking, it tells us that they have the psychological ‘equipment’ to form certain sorts of relationships, but that the objects of those relationships are not specified. At the same time, the fact that such things happen quite rarely, and that in the wild, the great majority of animals form relationships with their own species, tells us that this equipment is primed to look for certain characteristics. A wolf, for example, will be most prone to relate to the scent and appearance of other wolves, but will potentially be able to respond in the same way to a different creature. Presumably the most important feature involved is movement – the main thing that all animals have in common is a shared ability to move in a certain way, with apparent purpose. Bilateral symmetry may well also be an important cue.\n\nNow what jumps out at me is how similar this is to humans. Humans, like animals, are primed to respond to certain features that are distinctive of humans – the best way to see what those features are is probably to look at cartoons and dolls, where the key features are retained and the irrelevant ones not. And those features certainly make it easier for us to empathise with a being. Yet at the same time, the relationship schema itself is ‘open-ended’: it can be applied to any number of objects – the most important thing generally being that they can move in a purposive way.\"\"\n\nSource1: _URL_1_\n\nAccording to Dr. Marc Bekoff Ph.D., emotions like joy, love, empathy, compassion, kindness, and grief can readily be shared by improbable friends including predators and prey such as a cat and a bird, a snake and a hamster, and a lioness and a baby oryx.\n\nThe popular PBS series, Nature, featured Bekoff in a documentary called \"Animal Odd Couples\", which aired last week.\n\nThe Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder presents solid science to help explain the cross-species relationships, including the biological similarities between all mammals, including humans. They all share the same structures and neurochemicals in the body's limbic system, for instance.\n\nSource2:_URL_0_\n\n", "There's not really a field of animal psychology (even though some will claim to be animal psychologists) since we cannot ask animals what they are thinking. We do behavior studies on them, and from those studies we make conclusions about the reasons for their behavior. So I'll try to tackle this from an animal behavior point of view. Please keep in mind that animal behavior is a constantly evolving field. \n\nSo there are three main types of \"odd friendships\" that occur between to animals of different species: prey-prey (e.g. a squirrel and a rabbit), predator-prey (cat-squirrel), and predator-predator (e.g. zoos often pair dogs with cheetahs on purpose since it makes the cheetahs easier to work with). There are lots of examples of each kind. Predator-prey relationships are perhaps the most interesting, so I will try to explain that one first.\n\nRelationships that develop when the animals are young (still developing) can be easily explained due to imprinting in the prey species and socialization periods in the predator species. Keep in mind that only precocial species (species where the young are born fairly independent - able to walk within hours of birth, have all their senses - e.g. cattle, horses) imprint. Keep in mind that precocial typically means \"prey.\" The reason they are born so independent is because they need to be able to run away from predators within hours of birth. Predatory species on the other hand (like dogs) are born very very dependent on their mother (puppies don't open their eyes for days after birth). \n\nOk, back to Imprinting! Imprinting is an important time (and it is a defined time, the exact time varies between species, but it's typically very very young) where the animal essentially learns what is its own species. There are many cases of aberrant imprinting - where an animal is separated from its species during imprinting and it is exposed to another species. If the animal imprints on that other species, it will direct its social and (later) sexual behavior toward that other species. It will typically even be fearful of its own species. Remember, this occurs only in precocial (\"prey\") species.\n\nSo aberrant imprinting can explain the young prey animal's attachment to an animal of another species. What about the predator animal? Well, altricial (opposite of precocial) species DO have critical periods where they need to be socialized to their own species, it's just not as strong as anything in precocial species. Example, puppies need to be socialized to humans otherwise as an adult dog they can be aggressive toward people (example: feral dogs). However, if they are exposed to new species during this time, they don't form an irreversible attachment. Their sexual and social behavior will still be normal toward their own species. \n\nSo those two combined things: imprinting in the precocial species and socialization period in the altricial species can explain how two young animals, separated from their respective species, could form a bond. This also explains the other types of bonds between two prey species and two predator species. However, there are many examples of adult animals becoming \"friends\" ([here's one)](_URL_0_) From what I know, I have no science-supported data that can explain that. \n\nI used my animal behavior notes from last semester (I am a first year veterinary student) to write this response. There are many nuances that I didn't get to touch on. But I hope this answers some of your question. If more sources are needed, please let me know. ", "This was posted on reddit a while back. While I doubt it applies to all of these situations, it seems likely that signaling \"play\" behavior could be a major part of some of these interactions. I highly recommend the relevant TED talk.\n\n* Relevant page of National Institute for Play website: _URL_0_\n* TED Talk: _URL_1_" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/178l3i/my_university_has_a_cute_couple_a_cat_and_a_duck/" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://video.pbs.org/video/2300668052/" ], [ "http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/most-popular/pbs-features-cross-species-compassion.html", "http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/cross-species-relationships-and-the-minds-of-animals/" ], [ "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/bella-the-dog-dies-tarra-the-elephant-mourns_n_1074531.html" ], [ "http://nifplay.org/polar-husky.html", "http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4kaye0", "c4kb2oo", "c4kbxiy" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Apparently it was a triple helix with three sugar-phosphate backbones in the middle with the Nitrogen bases sticking out.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThat is my google fu however not my expertise. I would not be a good person to describe what that would actually look like.", "Interestingly enough, there is some [debate](_URL_0_) on whether or not Watson and Crick actually came up with the double helix model.", "Actually, Watson and Crick never proposed a three-stranded model. Linus Pauling speculated that idea. Watson and Crick built upon the knowledge of several scientists before them to arrive at the double helix model. After Hershey and Chase proved DNA was the genetic material (as opposed to RNA or protein), Chargaff furthered the research. It was known that DNA was made of a nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar, and a phosphate group; equalling a nucleotide. Chargaff made two important observations: (1) N-base composition varies between species and (2) the number of T bases is equal to the number of A bases and C to G. Watson and Crick used x-ray crystallography to image pure DNA. The \"images\" confirmed the duo's suspicion that DNA was helix-shaped. They also noted there was a certain spacing between nitrogenous bases. This suggested the double-helix that is now universally accepted. By combining Chargaff's rules with the knowledge that n bases are hydrophobic, the double-helix was born.\nBecause the n bases are hydrophobic, the are on the inside. That places the deoxyribose backbone on the outside., running in antiparallel fashion. I do not know anything about Pauling's model beyond the fact it was three stranded. Hope this helps." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.storybehindthescience.org/pdf/dna.pdf" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin#Contribution_to_the_model_of_DNA" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f9fazvs" ], "score": [ 25 ], "text": [ "Memory isn't as perfect as we'd like to think it is to begin with. Then, on top of that, the altered state of consciousness the brain is in during sleep can (essentially) shut down parts of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex. Since memory requires many neurons firing in concert, having fewer neurons functional while sleeping likely causes the memory not to be encoded. Further, dreams are influenced by experiences so there's probably blurring between reality and dreams when it comes to forming memories.\n\n & #x200B;\n\ntl;dr: Same mechanism, but fewer active neurons to encode memory." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4bhn2g", "c4bjgau" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Devices like this exist and are being marketed to police departments around the world as a means for terminating dangerous car chases. I believe there is some safety cost/benefit calculation at work. The burning out of all electronics will effectively destroy/total the car. The driver may in fact lose control of the vehicle, but this is considered preferable to the alternative of allowing him to continue and put other people's lives at risk. There is also considerable shielding required for the police car to prevent the pulse from also destroying the police vehicle electronics. There is the possibility of other nearby vehicles in the path of the pulse also being damaged (although the range of the pulse is only 20-30 feet so it is not a major consideration). If you built one on your own, you might be able to get away with it, however, you might also end up disabling your own vehicle in the process and get identified as the culprit\n", "The \"Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack\" did some testing of the effects from EMP-like conditions on cars, amongst other things. The results can be found on [page 115 of their report](_URL_0_). They tested a sample of 37 cars.\n\nI'm not sure if this is a large enough sample to give any definitive answer, and I am also a bit hesitant about their testing methods, but this was the best source I could find. How testing was done: \n\n > \"The testing was conducted by exposing running and nonrunning automobiles to sequentially increasing EMP field intensities. If anomalous response (either temporary or permanent) was observed, the testing of that particular automobile was stopped. If no anomalous response was observed, the testing was continued up to the field intensity limits of the simulation capability (approximately 50 kV/m).\"\n\n**Short summary seems to be:**\n\nMost cars will not even stall. In a test, where cars were subjected to EMP conditions, they tested both with cars turned ON, and cars turned OFF. \n > \"No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles that were not turned on during EMP exposure.\"\n\nEMP effects on cars that are running:\n > \"The most serious effect observed on running automobiles was that the motors in three cars stopped at field strengths of approximately 30 kV/m or above. In an actual EMP exposure, these vehicles would glide to a stop and require the driver to restart them.\"\n\n90% of the cars would not even stall if they were running when an EMP happened. There were some further effects, blinking dashboard lights on some cars, etc. Over 20% of cars experienced NO effects while running." ] }

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[ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT5EJYY_6HQ" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dutjxca" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained that this is *tinnitus:*\n\n1. [ELI5: what is the ringing noise we hear when there's silence? ](_URL_3_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do my ears ring in a quiet room? ](_URL_2_) ^(_12 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is the beeping sound I hear sometimes when it's completely silent? ](_URL_1_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is happening when you randomly hear a weird ringing in one or both of your ears? ](_URL_0_) ^(_69 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do I sometimes suddenly hear a ringing in one of my ears? ](_URL_4_) ^(_86 comments_)\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nodef/eli5_what_is_happening_when_you_randomly_hear_a/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37zr0m/eli5_what_is_the_beeping_sound_i_hear_sometimes/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2idbau/eli5_why_do_my_ears_ring_in_a_quiet_room/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ixn1n/eli5_what_is_the_ringing_noise_we_hear_when/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ugjl6/eli5_why_do_i_sometimes_suddenly_hear_a_ringing/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "datvnzf" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Holy crud, this is a neat idea. Here's some speculation, until we can get a concrete answer from Ol' Amazon themselves.\n\n* since you need the app, and need to apparently launch it when walking in, that's probably how the store determines that you in particular are the person who just entered. Bluetooth might also be involved, as that's a short-range wireless technology that can provide a unique identifier and help it accurately ballpark who's where in the building.\n* cameras in the store are connected to a computer system that can tell people apart (that'd be some machine learning bit right there) and since it knows who just walked in the door, can keep an eye on you as you move about the building.\n* sensors on the shelves know when an object has been taken. If it detects that a pudding cup got picked up, and knows by the cameras that you are standing right in front of the pudding, it assumes that you're the person who did so." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9vkj0b", "d9vlxi7", "d9vmkrl", "d9vmnhj", "d9vmzg3", "d9vn8ho", "d9vnnbj", "d9vo2fj", "d9vo79h", "d9vo8kz", "d9vodjk", "d9vodjx", "d9vofz1", "d9vofz5", "d9voj09", "d9vonso", "d9vouqz", "d9vpduq", "d9vpmln" ], "score": [ 371, 521, 102, 21, 45, 198, 39, 11, 7, 10, 9, 36, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "So... the main thing is that the Democratic National Committee didn't want Bernie to win. We didn't need leaked e-mails to know this. Hillary had been the Democratic Party's plan for years, they had been preparing her. No one else was going to run against her as they knew that was the score. \n\nAnd at the last minute Bernie decided to switch from Independent to Democrat so he could run for president as a Democrat and stand a chance. \n\nNow, Bernie lost the primaries. There are a lot of people who supported Bernie who couldn't imagine any way he'd seriously lose, after all they voted for him and so did all of their friends. So they thought that it must have been rigged, how else could he have lost?\n\nBut...\n\nHillary had more money at her disposal than Bernie. Hillary had the benefit of being a household name that everyone knew, for better or worse. Hillary had more support from the rest of the Democratic party. At the end, the odds were against Bernie. And he lost. Bernie didn't do as well with Black voters. Bernie did great with the youth, but not so much with the older Democrats who felt he was far too radical. But the folks who hang out on Reddit don't hang out with those demographics. \n\nDid the DNC make things unfair for Bernie? Yes. Did they rig the election? There's absolutely no actual proof.\n\nEDIT: I want to make something clear. I voted for Bernie. I really wish that he won. I agree that the DNC did make things unfair for him. My definition of \"rigging\" and the one I think many people who hear the term use is actual manipulation of the votes. They did not do that. They did pretty much everything else, yes, but they did not alter actual votes made by the people. ", "The DNC is supposed to be neutral. The e-mails released by wikileaks from the DNC showed that they were actively trying to help Hilary's nomination and hurt Bernie's. That was a violation of their charter. In addition, after the leaks and subsequent calls for her resignation, the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, was immediately appointed as chair of one of Hilary's election committees. In short, it was not a fair primary for Bernie or his supporters. ", "Well, Donna Brazille who is currently DNC chair after DWS [who was ousted in June days before the DNC for obvious collusion with the HRC camp] leaked questions directly to the Clinton camp before a debate. \nThere was the Brooklyn voter purge days before that primary. \nThere were the emails. Just.. i mean like honestly like read all those emails.\nThey didn't just collude to \"bring up Bernie's atheism\" \nThey conspired to attack his family structure, his ethnicity, his wearing a red swimsuit by the pool at a Congress function [???] \nThe media consulted HRC's campaign consistently before publishing ANYTHING . This is collusion. It is \"rigging\" \n", "DNC is supposed to be impartial, but they favored Hillary. DNC and Hillary's campaign pooled their resources in going after Bernie during the primaries. There is no evidence of voter fraud, but this is the case of establishment looking out for their chosen candidate.\n\nThe media colluded with Hillary's campaign against Trump too, but the same people who claim primaries were rigged against Bernie, have no problem that the odds were artificially stacked against Trump. \n\nSo for the most part, the claims of rigging is false, favoritism yes. People who express anger at the \"rigging\" are hypocrites.", "Anomalies existed between exit polls and final results. Also, Sanders did much much better in states that used paper ballots instead of electronic voting. _URL_1_\n\nAnd Clinton was given a couple of the debate questions ahead of time by Donna Brazile. _URL_0_", "Urban areas and college towns, where many of Bernie's supporters could be found, saw huge lines at the polling stations because the numbers of polling stations in those areas were reduced. Voters were left standing in lines for hours and hours, and many voting officials tried to tell them that they had to go home without a ballot. Meanwhile, neighborhoods that had a lot of Clinton supporters had no lines whatsoever.\n\nThousands of voters discovered that their party affiliation had been changed, or that their names were completely removed from the records, and many of them were unable to get it changed back in time to vote in the primary.\n\nFundraisers were held for the Democratic Party, with donors being told that their money would go towards helping *all* Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. Allegedly, all of that money was given to the Clinton campaign.\n\nMedia coverage of the two candidates was incredibly lopsided. Hillary would give a speech to a few hundred people and it would be shown on television and reported on by every major media outlet. At the same time, Bernie would hold rallies with tens of thousands of supporters and barely get a blurb on the back page.", "It helps when you promise Tim Kaine (the DNC chairman at the time) a VP role for stepping down, put a former employee from your last presidential run (Debbie Wasserman Shultz) into the DNC chairman role, and use the entire party's political might and money to sabotage a popular candidate when the rank and file membership have extensive knowledge of chosen candidate's widescale corruption but are forbidden from dissenting. They call complaining \"being ridiculous\". The Clintonites destabilized their own party for personal profit and power. Exactly like their candidate has a tendency to do.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis is a link to Election Justice USA's 96 page document proving Bernie won the primary. Hillary benefitted from several different kinds of election fraud, resulting in -184 estimated delegates lost for Bernie; enough to make him the true victor.\n\nIn other words, this loss is on Hillary. She didnt give a modicum of a shit about the USA, or democracy, or 'democratic' values. Literally all Hillbot cares about is MONEY, and her MONEY GIVING constituents. This was blatantly obvious to so many people she couldnt trick more than half of us. EVEN WITH Trump as a wikileaks-proven 'pied piper' candidate. Even with Trump as blackmail.\n\nIn the age of information, its almost like you have to actually have positive traits to win it. Like BERNIE SANDERS had. That guy DESTROYED Trump EVERY SINGLE DAY of the year with his straight forward message of love, for the benefit of everyone; not just the top .1%.", "My understanding is that, among other things, debate questions were leaked to HRC, but not to BS. This allowed her to prepare unfairly.", "Another aspect of the rigged primary allegations (not really sure if I'm comfortable calling it rigged but will for arguments sake) are the way the DNC allocates delegates.\n\nEach state elects delegates who pledge to a candidate based on the state's primary or caucus. You can sort of imagine them as being similar to electoral votes, except candidates don't win all or nothing. If a state votes 50% for Bernie and 50% for Hillary, then theoretically each should get half the delegates from the state.\n\nAlongside delegates exist superdelegates, who are free to vote for whomever they choose, and our not bound to constituents. \nThere are 712 superdelegates; to win the democratic primaries a candidate needs 2382 delegate votes.\n\nWhen the democratic primary race was called hillary had 571 superdelegates pledged to her (80%) with another 95 undecided (13%); or put another way, she was a quarter of a way to the nomination before any votes were tallied. \n\nThis basically means Bernie would have had to received a resounding popular vote in the primaries to receive the nomination. Perhaps not so much rigged as stacked incredibly in her favor.", " > On November 3, WikiLeaks released Part 27 of their emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.\n\n > In an April 2014 email, campaign manager Robby Mook discusses coordinating the schedule of the Democratic primaries to maximize benefit for Hillary Clinton. “We agreed that if she gets a significant primary challenger, we need to consider changing course and getting N.Y., N.J. and maybe others to move their dates earlier to give her hefty early wins,” Mook wrote. “We may need allies to help in this process but we’re going to look at each state one step at a time, limiting as much as possible the perception of direct intervention by the principals.” The email provides further evidence that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign colluded to rig the primaries for Hillary Clinton.\n\n > Other emails released by WikiLeaks confirmed the debate schedule was coordinated to the Clinton campaign’s preference. A recent thread revealed then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was directed to hold phony meetings with other Democratic candidates to provide the Clinton campaign and DNC with plausible deniability that they were coordinating with one another.\n\n > In stark violation of its own charter, the DNC undermined democracy to ensure Clinton’s coronation as the Democratic presidential nominee. It may be the first time the Democratic Party has nominated a woman to be president, but equally historic is the extent of corruption exercised within the Democratic Party to rig the election for her.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "So far all these answers are incomplete. It's nigh-deplorable that there isn't a simple bullet point copy-and-paste document ready to answer your question. \n\nWhat happened was about far more than money and influence. It was about far more than media coverage. It was about far more than an open or a closed primary. \n\n\n - In New York, over 100,000 people were purged from the voter roll. \n\n\"Of the 126,000 Democratic voters taken off from the rolls in Brooklyn, Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said 12,000 had moved out of borough, while 44,000 more had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and, having failed to vote in two successive federal elections or respond to cancel notices, were removed.\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWere these voters pro-Sanders? Perhaps, Bernie Sanders hails from Brooklyn and his support from young people was well documented. \n\nIn New York, over 1,000 people complained on the day of the primary. By contrast, 150 people complained on the day of the 2012 election. \n\n - In Iowa, some precincts were decided by coin flip. \n\n - In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton explicitly broke the law by campaigning inside polling places. \n\n_URL_2_\n\n - In Nevada, the February vote was followed by a contentious and Kafkaeque April convention. \n\n - In California, one key issue was the crossover ballot, the independent voter, and the training that was given to staff about whether to give crossover ballots to independent voters.\n\nUnless independent voters asked specifically for crossover ballots, they weren't given a chance to vote for the nominee. \n\nWere these independent voters pro-Sanders? Perhaps, they are Californian Independents so it's likely they hold progressive viewpoints. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nI don't have anywhere near all the facts. I don't have a dog in this fight. On Tuesday, I wrote-in Jeb. But I do think there were enough tactics to disenfranchise likely Sanders voters that the word 'rigged' is appropriate. \n\nThese bullet points are what I could throw together in fifteen minutes. There should be a much longer list of concise examples backed by indisputable media sources. ", "Has literally everyone in this thread forgotten about the Nevada incident earlier in the year?", "First, lemme say I've been 100% pro-Bernie Sanders. He'd make a great President, imo. That being said, please remember when you're reading these responses that Bernie wasn't a Democrat until it was convenient to be a Democrat. He was an Independent for his entire career. When things were going wrong with the country, it benefitted him to be able to point a finger at Republicans AND Democrats for equal blame. Therefore, the idea that the DNC should have treated him and Hillary (a lifelong Democrat) fairly is, and always has been, insane. Like it or not, I completely understand why the DNC would support Hillary more than Bernie\nEDIT: Anybody with an argument against my comment, what about this scenario: Take Bernie completely out of the equation and insert Donald Trump. What if Trump thought that his easiest path to the White House was to run as a Democrat? What if he decided to take on Hillary instead of the DOZEN+ Republicans? Are you still complaining about the DNC's actions? Seriously, check yo selves", "I am a Bernie Supporter, who also supported Hillary with all my heart. I'm deeply involved in local politics in my state and understood how important the top of the ticket is to down ballot candidates. \n\nI know that a lot of the stuff that Clinton and crew (and the DNC) did looks shady. I wish they'd taken a different tack, but the other edge of that sword is allowing room for a lunatic like Trump to hijack a major party. The fact is, despite a lot of folks in this thread saying, \"the Primary is supposed to be neutral [etc.],\" the primary process in the US is more democratic than in any other democracy, and it's still not *supposed* to be neutral. The people who've built/invested in/sweated and bled for and as Democrats wanted Hillary, and so did the primary voters when it was all said and done. \n\nThe top commenter noted that Bernie switched to being a Dem to run this year. This is key. The Democratic Party Primary is not enshrined in the Constitution. This is a private political entity--a club--where your cache is determined by how much you've put in to the collective whole of the organization. The rules were stacked against Bernie, but they were stacked by people who hava lot more invested in the Party than Bernie does. The whole time Bernie was an Independent Senator caucusing with the D's, Hillary was out *investing* in the party: Fundraising, stumping, building relationships with the Dems in each state who move the core of the party, whether its a Presidential election or a school board election. The Party gets to make the rules on how it chooses its nominee, and that is in no way \"rigging.\"\n\nI wish Bernie would have won, but I don't think Hillary was a bad candidate. Countless malevolent forces have been working to sandbag her for a long time, just because she's a capable, ambitious woman. She did a lifetime's work of building up the Democratic Party. \n\nBernie shares most (D) values, but he was not really even a member of the Party, other than for the opportunity to highlight his platform. His success was inspiring and powerful. He did not have the capital in the Party to wrest the process from someone like Hillary, who has been building relationships at state and local levels for 30 years. ", "All of this was revealed by Wikileaks: Back in 2014, the DNC was working with Team Hillary to set the primary dates so her best states would be early, giving her a likely lead and this momentum. That is election rigging. Arguably what happened in Nevada was election rigging (chair asks for a voice vote that clearly favors bernie then says it favors Clinton). \n\nThere are other concrete examples of the DNC rigging the primary--they planted negative articles in media about Bernie; they circulated a picture of him sunbathing (to body shame; or imply he's lazy I guess?); they pushed his Jewish religion as a negative in Christian states; they minimized the number of debates and had awkward debate times, limiting his exposure; Donna Brazile got caught sharing at leave four debate questions with Team Clinton. \n\nThat's the stuff we know about. The DNC was not about to let another Barack Obama beat their girl, and yet Bernie still got 46% of the pledged delegates. If the DNC had not meddled, he would have been the nominee. And he would be president-elect instead of Donald Trump. ", "What is your standard for 'rigging'? Does 'rigging' only mean 'vote flipping'? Is an unfair primary 'rigged'? Or is it simply a reality any outsider candidate must deal with? \n\nIf you mean literally flipping votes, there's no hard evidence of that, despite that oft circulated Election Justice USA statistical analysis which alleges this happened. \n\nIf you mean collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC and/or the media to sabotage Sanders, there is some evidence of this. \n\nFor example Donna Brazile, now the interim DNC chair, was a pundit on CNN during the primaries. She was proven to have given debate questions to the HRC campaign in advance (proven via leaked emails), and CNN severed ties with her over this.\n\nAfter this things get more into the realm of speculation and 'where there's smoke there's fire' thinking. \n\nThere are leaked DNC emails discussing ways to attack Sanders, and emails documenting general antipathy towards his campaign. However AFAIK there is no direct link between any of these discussions and actual attacks made on Sanders. All they directly prove is prejudice, and that the HRC campaign and the DNC were close (further proven when Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, had to resign over the email leaks and was immediately hired by the Hilary campaign). \n\nEven in the absence of top down directives to sabotage Sanders, institution wide prejudice will have an effect. When all the people operating the party machinery favor one side, a thousand little things can become harder. Harder to get your side counted accurately at a caucus. Harder to get your people registered properly and on time. Etc.\n\nOne example of this is the Nevada democratic convention, where dozens of Bernie delegates were disqualified (fairly in the view of the DNC, unfairly in the view of Sanders supporters) and the chairwoman attempted to push through some rules that Sanders supporters felt unfairly marginalized them. DNC officials almost certainly did not give the chairwoman top down orders to disenfranchise Sanders supporters, but institutional bias could certainly lead to such a situation organically.\n\nThe Nevada incident segways us into the idea of 'rigging' by the media, who widely publicized a claim by the Nevada Democratic Party that Sanders supporters had violently thrown a chair, painting them in a negative light. Snopes has rated that claim false. \n\nIn general, the media gave Sanders relatively little airtime vs. Hilary. However, they were both dwarfed by Trump, and Hilary got a lot of negative airtime from her scandals. \n\nLastly, the superdelegate system, where hundreds of delegate votes were pledged to Hilary from day 1 and shown in media delegate counts, are clearly a system meant to work against populist uprisings like the Sanders campaign. \n\ntldr: There was no rigging through a grand conspiracy with a predetermined outcome via vote flipping. There was a little bit of definitively proven collusion/cheating, a lot of alleged/speculated cheating/collusion, and proven institutional bias against Sanders and close ties with the Clinton campaign. These could have been instrumental in Sanders' loss. Or maybe they ultimately didn't matter other than improving Clinton's margin of victory. \n\n", "Rigged basically means cheating to gain an unfair advantage. Hillary had a huge unfair advantage over every other candidate including Bernie Sanders by not only being the DNCs chosen golden girl, but also by [being fed debate questions giving her time to craft the perfect answer.](_URL_0_) Not to mention that she had the mainstream media at her command, which is apparent by the wording of this article which is *carefully worded* to sound like someone just got fired from CNN for some reason.", "It's worth mentioning that the Associated Press declared Hillary the presumptive Democratic nominee on June 6th, the night before the California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, Puerto Rico, South and North Dakota primaries. Bernie still had a chance at this time, but I'm sure the announcement dissuaded some (that otherwise would have voted for Bernie) from voting for him/voting at all. Ultimately, Hilary won five out of seven of those states/territories, getting quite a few delegates. I still wonder if the results would have been (at the very least) a bit different had the AP not made that announcement. \n\nI can understand the DNC wanting party unity, but this was the AP..." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/hacked-emails-suggest-trump-was-right-after-all-clinton-got-previews-of-some-debate-questions/", "http://www.snopes.com/stanford-study-proves-election-fraud-through-exit-poll-discrepancies/" ], [], [], [ "https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5O9I4XJdSISNzJyaWIxaWpZWnM/view" ], [], [], [ "http://observer.com/2016/11/wikileaks-clinton-camp-rigging-primaries-as-early-as-2014/" ], [ "http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-primary-results-confusing-20160711-snap-story.html", "http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/19/politics/new-york-primary-voter-problem-polls-sanders-de-blasio/", "http://www.salon.com/2016/03/02/bill_clinton_may_have_broken_massachusetts_law_by_telling_people_at_polling_locations_to_vote_for_hillary/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cnn-drops-donna-brazile-as-pundit-over-wikileaks-revelations/2016/10/31/2f1c6abc-9f92-11e6-8d63-3e0a660f1f04_story.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d8v1yux", "d8v2dok", "d8v7skc", "d8v8ed0", "d8va3s7", "d8vbe26", "d8vc70e", "d8vc746", "d8vcvay", "d8vd1w3", "d8vdsga", "d8vfi83", "d8vgvnw", "d8vhiin", "d8vj0un", "d8vmlrb", "d8vmnzs", "d8vqxau", "d8vyj8f", "d8vyspy", "d8vzhcx" ], "score": [ 14, 797, 57, 15, 44, 274, 4, 17, 1155, 3, 12, 19, 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Back then, conversion was a big part of *your* salvation because it was your duty as a Christian to get more followers. Also, the bible condones slavery so that makes it a bit easier to control your slaves.", "* they wanted to prevent them practicing their native religions, which they considered devil worship\n* there are benefits to having slaves believe in a religion that condones slavery\n* there are passages in the Bible that were taken to mean that blacks were specifically supposed to be slaves\n* religion in general has been a tool the powerful use to control those under them", "\"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.\"\n\n_URL_0_", "People misinterpreting shit all over the place. Religion is the opiate of the masses, telling oppressed slaves they'll receive their reward in the afterlife as long as they behave and \"turn the other cheek\" is a good way of keeping them docile and well behaved. There are some old testament passages in the Bible that condone slavery, but they don't really jive with Jesus's message of love and equality in the eyes of God, which is a much more central tenant of Christianity.", "It wasn't so much saving their souls as it was breaking them of any other identity. \n\nIf they had the religion of their homeland then part of their identity involves being free. Take that religion away, replace it with one that has become a slave religion, and suddenly their religion reinforces the idea of being a slave rather than freedom.", "One crucial point that no one else has mentioned thus far:\n\nconversion (to Christianity) was the primary theological and social justification *for* slavery. \n\nMany religious figures (pastors, theologians) were content with the idea that a lifetime of suffering was absolutely worth the price of eternal life. \n\nPurchasing African slaves from \"heathens\", then working them to death on the St. Domingue or Brazilian sugar plantations, was considered morally justifiable *if* the slaves thereby gained access to the word of Christ (and thereby the possibility for eternal Salvation.) \n\nIf you ask me, I suspect that 17th, 18th, and 19th century Europeans and Americans recognized at some deep level that slavery was morally reprehensible, and this idea of \"converting\" them (and thereby \"saving\" them) helped ease their consciences. ", "I don't think this is as intentional as a lot of people here think. It was so they weren't practicing their own religion. You notice how they didn't get to keep their language or cuisine either? It's stripping them of their savage roots, and bringing them into the bosom of civilization. Or at least that's how the slaveowners saw it. And they were Christian, so why not convert them to Christianity? ", "Most of the comments on here are pretty poor. The slave holders wanted 'em Christian so they could beat 'em more or some such garbage they got from watching a Tarantino film and supposing that this equals history.\n\nNote, in this version, Christianity is the justification for having/mistreating slaves. I am sure some understood Christianity in this way, and used it as such.\n\nI am willing to wager though that many didn't instrumentalize Christianity for their blood-lust, but simply thought slavery is the natural state of affairs (true, except mostly for the last 200 years), and that Christianity was also true. So if slavery was true, and Christianity was true, then the only option as good Christians who owned slaves would be to teach your slaves Christianity - in the same way you teach your kids.\n\nThe animus toward Christianity blinds so many people...good grief we get it, you don't like it...but to say those filthy Christians must have all been awful like communists indoctrinating kids is just stupid.", "All the answers here are correct for a certain historical period. However, it's important to remember that for the majority of the time the Atlantic slave trade was in operation, religious conversion was not a priority. There were a number of reasons for this:\n\n1. In many colonies the average slave lived only 5-10 years, so conversion was deemed not worth the effort. This was especially true in the Caribbean. It was only when the mortality rate dropped and whites began to see established intergenerational slave communities that anyone thought it might be worth trying to make new converts.\n\n2. In colonies with a higher proportion of slaves (e.g. Barbados, where whites numbered less than 10% of the total population) there was a constant fear of slave uprisings. The authorities wanted to restrict Christianity because they feared that some of the Bible's more humane messages might give their slaves some revolutionary ideas.\n\n3. More generally, slave owners throughout the Americas were (kind of) concerned about the theological implications of making their slaves Christians. There are all kinds of warnings in the Bible and in Catholic and Anglican texts about enslaving co-religionists. Slave owners didn't think it would cause much trouble, but they were concerned that if they converted their human chattel there might be a chance that the authorities would then declare the enslavement of Christians unlawful. And that would be a very expensive mistake.\n\nNow, in the British colonies in continental North America, the people who made religious decisions and the people who mad economic decisions were one and the same. So there was no danger of the local plantation owner having his slaves preached at by the church deacon, because there was a good chance that they were the same man. Religion at the time was about hierarchy, but, contrary to the responses here, the best way to keep a slave population at the bottom of the social hierarchy is to never initiate them into it in the first place.\n\nWhat ended up happening (again, in the 13 colonies - my knowledge of non-British slave systems is patchy) was that in the early-mid 18th century, the first in a series of religious revivals swept across the colonies. Now religion was rendered less hierarchical, and people started to think that anyone could talk to (a) God, and (b) other people about God. So now it's not only the local vicar who can convert heathens, it's any God-fearing Christian. \n\nThe situation as it subsequently developed was not therefore of the slave-owning class's making. Zealous individuals converted slaves of their own initiative and against the express wishes of the colonial elite. Once that damage was done, the slave owners just had to make the best of a bad situation by emphasising (as others here have pointed out) the hierarchical bits of Christianity. But it's wrong to say that the beneficiaries of the slave system actively converted anyone.\n\n**TLDR: Slave owners never really converted anyone because slaves were easier to handle if they weren't Christian. It was only at the tail end of the Atlantic slave era that any widespread conversions started to happen.**\n\nSOURCE: *Inhuman Bondage* by David Brion Davis.", "Apart from what everyone mentioned, Christianity (except Calvinism) has a missionary culture to it, and this was especially true during colonization and early Euro-American history. It was considered the duty of every Christian to convert others to Christianity- this included slaves. ", "After reading 66 comments here, I notice that a lot of us are critical of religion and the use of it. It's a tempting and convenient attitude and belief system. It seems that part of the trouble is that life isn't necessarily so simple , (unless you adopt a belief system that says it is, and that becomes your \"truth\"). \n\nSaying that religion and the use of it has been \"wrong\" is also based on axiomatic moral beliefs, just as religion is. It's ironic to hear people essentially say \"thou shalt not _____\" when condemning religion. Religious people believe in their belief-system just as you believe in yours. \n\nWe also so easily fall prey to fear and hatred because the experience of life can be quite scary, even terrifying, and it seems like facing that often requires something more, something else to rise above it; be it: faith, or love, or maybe higher knowledge and intelligence, or courage/bravery/trust (which are perhaps similar to faith and/or love), in other words some sort of guiding belief or principle. \n\nAnd if one is Zen and doesn't necessarily need any sort of guiding belief or principle, then I suppose one has no need to ask non-rhetorical questions and expect a non-rhetorical answer. ", "I'm taking a class about the Southern history of the United States (assuming you are curious about US slavery). The supplemental journals of contemporaries of the the time mentioned many a time the fact that the once colonies, now a newly formed republic moved from the Anglican church and to more revolutionary christian denominations, the main ones in favor of conversion being evangelical, Presbyterian, and baptism (may be wrong on baptism, nevertheless point made). These denominations spread very rapidly within the slave owning states, and actually encouraged slave owners to worship with their _URL_0_ pervious people stated, yes life expectancy was a factor, as well as the justifications within the bible, but it was mostly about the new ideas within the new denominations that were growing within the south. \nIn many cases, against popular belief, this caused the large majority of slave owners to in fact free their slaves, only problem was those that actually freed their slaves owned only 1-5 slaves, and the elite of the time owned about 100 per plantation they owned. An example would be the Carter family, they owned over 500 slaves, but the owner freed every single one after his death. \nIn essence, some justified slavery as a method to christianize the \"savage\" slaves, but after the slave trade was abolished, their main reason for slavery was economical not religious. After the rebellion led by Nat Turner, who believed the bible was a symbol for slaves to revolt, they banned the bible within the slave community. In reality there was no concrete reason to convert their slaves to christianity, except the \"paternal\" aspect of ownership, many owners saw slaves as something along the lines of a dog or a child, and needed to be raised in the correct path of their society, yet they were still beaten, abused, etc. Mostly, the reasons for slavery were entirely economic, or in based upon early english republicanistic principles of landless masses destroying liberty.\nApologies for the long text\n\ntl;dr: Conversion was about the denomination mostly in later days, conversion caused many small slave owning families to free, not the elite though. Most justification for slavery was based on republican ideals and economics, as well as \"paternalism\" slave owners felt towards their slaves.", "your question presupposes that \"slavery\" refers exclusively to the atlantic slave trade of the 17-1800s. There was slavery before Christ, and there is slavery now, none of which involves conversion to Christianity.", "Christianity taught slaves to peacefully submit and serve their masters as good slaves so that they will be rewarded in the afterlife. So, preaching Christianity to slaves made them more peaceful and less likely to violently revolt.\n\nFor the slave masters, their conscience told them that slavery was wrong. But the bible and the preachers said it was good. So, I'd say it allowed the masters to do what they did and have a nice guilt free sleep in the nighttime. ", "Fear of hell kept many people in line. The scene in Django unchained when Candy is talking about his father being shaved brings a good point too. They always expected to be freed because they were given special jobs. They used religion to break them of their own beliefs. Why did we convert the natives if we were going to slaughter them anyway? They were easier to wipe out after God was introduced. Public relations were handled by priests. You would never expect a man of God to go back on his word or cause you harm. In reality they were some of the worst. They had to wipe out the modern day Philistines. Religious soldiers.", "Can someone answer my question? If slaves were considered to be not people, not human, then wouldn't their owners conclude that they didn't have souls? If they WERE considered to have souls worth saving, then how could their masters enslave beings with souls? The whole thing is disgusting and inhumane of course, but how could masters mentally justify enslaving beings that, in the masters minds, have souls???", "\"They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races.\"\n \n \nFreeman, Douglas S. (1934). R. E. Lee, A Biography.", "Religion gives everyone a place in the social order. You're more likely to outright reject a structure that simply holds that you aren't human, rather than one that says you are human BUT you aren't mature, it's the white man's burden to lead and guide you, this is your lot to bear, and you have spiritual rewards for doing so. People didn't own slaves because they were extra special evil, it was because they could rationalize it. Slave owners wouldn't have emancipated their slaves any more than they'd emancipate their wives or children. You have to remember there's a difference between the white and black experience in slavery (beside the obvious). The vast majority of slaves lived and died in huge plantations where the slaves were socially entirely separated and it was all business. Working someone to death was easier to rationalize from that distance. We still do it today when we buy cheap clothing and other goods and we *know* about the exploitation of the workers making them, but it's vague and far away and most humans are good at ignoring that. Most whites however had a different experience of slavery that was more like an extension of a patriarchal family. They were nowhere near that wealthy and would own one or perhaps two slaves and their family working on a small farm, and knew them in a personal way. Treating them as dependents is a way to rationalize why they can't be freed. As fewer whites were themselves indentured and more whites themselves experienced more independence and freedom, support for slavery as an institution dropped. That was partly due to resentment in competing as you tried to sell your goods against plantations that ran off free labor though... because humans are self interested just as readily as they are empathetic.", "Your question is flawed. Not everyone considered them only property. Not everyone wanted to convert them to Christianity. And finally many of the positions and actions taken by Slaveholders were hypocritical.", "I've always believed on some level that most structured religions were established with at least some intent to control the masses. At least IMO. If you have a higher, almighty power for the crowds to fear and tell them certain behaviors will help them avoid eternal damnation, it would stand to reason many of them would follow said behaviors.", "It is your duty, as a Christian, to convert non-believers. This was one of the times where you could use whips." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbhtm0e", "cbhts5b", "cbhug2j", "cbhz3wp" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Injections, if through an IV, go straight into the bloodstream. Pills have to be digested before entering the bloodstream, so generally less gets in (or if something is meant to work in the gastrointestinal tract it would be taken as a pill.)\n\nCertain injections might only have a local effect (like a corticosteroid injection for a joint,) which would necessitate injection into a specific body part.", "Direct into the bloodstream has a more immediate effect. Also, some drugs would be destroyed by your digestive juices, others may irritate the stomach.", "To add onto what qbinfinity said. \n \nIf it is a drug that the user can take on his/her own, it is preferred to be a pill. It is more convenient and will last longer is most cases. But some drugs are destroyed in the stomach. Some of these drugs include insulin and testosterone. So they have to be injected. \n \nDespite what most people believe, cough medicines do not need to be a syrup. They can be a pill. ", "All to do with how fast something needs to work and where you want it to do it's thing. If something needs to work fast like local anaesthetic it will be injected so that it's straight into the bloodstream and immediately at the nerve endings etc it's supposed to work on,allowing a procedure to happen quickly. Eg you cut your arm open,get local to numb it and get it stitched before you bleed all over the place and make a damned mess. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dhevejg", "dheygns" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Tl;dr the lining usually doesn't thicken in these cases\n\n\nThe causes of frequently irregular periods (oligomenorrhoea) or complete lack of them (amenorrhoea) are normally always hormones. \n\n To put this into context with an example, breastfeeding results in high levels of the hormone prolactin, which then inhibits release of FSH and LH. These hormones drive oestrogen production, which is responsible for thickening the endometrium - the lining of the uterus. Without this, the uterus may never acquire a thick lining at all. Similarly excess stress releases hormones like cortisol which can also affect FSH and LH.\n\nThere are other, non-endocrine (non hormone related) causes but they're rare. Examples of such conditions include uterine agenesis (congenital - from birth) and endometrial fibrosis (acquired) but I'm not too familiar with those. In the case of the former, hopefully you can see that if the uterus does not form (agenesis) then its lining can't be thickened! \n\nI don't know of the existence of a disease where the uterine lining remains but ovulation doesn't occur. Without progesterone formed by the corpus luteum post-ovulation, the lining would degrade anyway. Perhaps some sort of progesterone-producing tumour might do it but that would be mere speculation since progesterone has effects on FSH and LH anyway.\n\nAnyway I've rambled on for far too long. Hope I helped! ", "What makes you think the uterus is \"accumulating blood\" for a month? The bleeding is caused by the uterus lining breaking down, which only happens at the time of menstruation and not through out the whole month." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dv6iemg", "dv6j3y3" ], "score": [ 14, 5 ], "text": [ "Various kinds of noise. As the light goes down, you get less light (signal) but not less noise. \n\nBut what is the noise? One type of noise is read noise. Read noise is a constant caused by imperfections in the technology used to detect the light. For example, an amplifier might accidentally amplify stray currents and mix that in with the signal. This type of noise gets better with more advanced sensor technology.\n\nAnother type of noise is shot noise. Shot noise is caused by the fact that light is made up of photons. A bright light might shine billions of photons a second, but a very dim light might send 10s of photons a second. If you don't gater enough light to get lots of photons, you get noise. \n\nThe only way to reduce this is to capture more photons by increasing the size of the sensor/objective to gather more light or increasing the time of exposure. \n\nSome cameras have larger sensors and larger aperatures meaning they gather more light. \n\nThere are other kinds of noise, but this shows noise levels in one device vs another is influenced by the quality of the sensor tech and the physical light gathering ability of the optics. ", "A sensor collects photons, and converts the number of photons in a number of electrons. If it's very dark, then you get few photons, and therefore few electrons, you have to boost the signal to get the image bright enough. 2 ways for this: either you collect photons for more time (you increase the *exposure time*), either you boost the signal electrically or numerically (increasing the gain, or the *ISO*). This last method will add noise, random value, and also increase noise that was indepedently there!\n\nNow you get a bright image, but with a boosted noise over it! This should not look grainy but more like \"snow\" on older TV sets: super textured randomness.\n\nEvery camera has an anti-noise filter to try and fight this, and it always works by doing some sort of averaging with neighbouring pixels (neighbours in space, or time ie by using previous images). If the noise is high, then you would need many neighbours to effectively remove the noise, but the camera has limited power or there are limited neighbours that you can average with without making the image super blurry. In consequence, even the average pixel value is noisy itself, but since it's mixed with neighbours then instead of super detailed noise, it looks like *grains*, like you had on old film. The grains you see is the residual noise after the denoising filter of the camera.\n\nBonus: why would the signal from the sensor be noisy even without amplification? Well, even with a huge sensor of super high quality, you have noise: even *the number of photons* coming from a perfectly static scene is itself random! This doesn't show in daylight or bright scenes because the ratio noise to average is actually super low. But in dark scenes, or with super small sensor pixels, the average number of photons you get is small compared to the variations of the number of photons you get!\n\nEnd bonus: now you know how to set-up a camera manually: to avoid noise, you reduce the ISO and you risk motion blur by increasing exposure time. To avoid motion blur, you reduce exposure time, and you expose (ha) yourself to a grainy noise by upping the ISO.\n\nedit: why the grains have color? it's because if you have randomness over the red, green, blue values that make up a pixel, then obviously there's going to be randomness in its hue/tint/whatever. In modern sensors, the channels are multiplixed spatially, meaning there is just one sensor with red, green, red, green pixels in one line, and green, blue, green, blue on the next, and so forth. The way we re-compose a full RGB image also adds artifacts, but even with a perfectly aligned triple sensor, you'd get a random color. Cameras actually blur the hues together near the end of the processing chain to reduce this. We humans are not very sensitive to color variations spatially so it does not ruin the image, and there are ways to be conservative doing this blurring." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6aqdhn", "c6ar7ff", "c6av5qm" ], "score": [ 52, 11, 6 ], "text": [ "Once you eat the cake, it's gone. You don't have it anymore. You cannot have both", "The phrase makes more sense if worded as \"To eat your cake and have it too.\"", "My dad applied this saying in relationship terms, he said \"You can't have your Kate and Edith too.\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "doubnrp", "doux3iw" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "\nThe tesla house battery is a basically a lithium Ion battery,same as yor phone just in Large. Here's a pretty good [link](_URL_0_) to how they work.\n\nBarriers are :the low engie density in these types of. I think the Tesla battery weighs 100KG an can store up to 13.5 Kw/H. That equates to ~4KG of diesel.\n\nAlso the charge degrades over large time spans due to leak currents and even by high temperature. \n\n\nWith our current technologies storing electrical energie is quite inefficient and expensive. And likely to not change all to fast, after all li batterys were around ~1915.\n\nHower a a lot of money and manhours are Invested into research so we might see completely new technologies or a battery operating on simmylar principles but with different materials. ", "As a bit of an amateur battery hobbyist, i can tell you that there is some problems with batteries for large/grid scale energy storage.\n\nThe first and most obvious is batteries degrade and have to be replaced periodically. There are chemistries (Ni-Fe) that will degrade extremely slowly over 30 years or so but these batteries have energy density problems/weight problems. Some new chemistries look promising but so far, li-ion is the most stable.\n\nThe second and lesser known problem is batteries cannot meet peak demand loads without being crazy expensive. Peak demand is when everyone turns their aircons on in summer, or when people boil the kettles in the morning. Batteries have a hard time meeting this demand without huge added costs, turbines are far cheaper and are easier to speed up/down.\n\nSolar panels and some other renewables produce a set amount of power. You cant make a solar panel work harder if you need more energy, which lowers their effectiveness on a large scale.\n\nA solution could be to fit each house with its own energy generation/storage ccapabilitie, but the cost would be mindboggling." ] }

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[ [ "http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_based_batteries" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cm4tj2z", "cm4tjxl", "cm4trnt" ], "score": [ 9, 5, 5 ], "text": [ "Because the trans man has a recognized medical condition and the dude just trying to bulk up doesn't. And because the trans man is only going to normal male levels of testosterone - which are relatively safe - not pushing it to dangerously high levels by adding more on top of typical male production.", "You can get prescribed anabolic steroids from a doctor for particular purposes, including muscle-building. It'll depend a bit on the doctor and what they're willing to give out, but controlled used of anabolic steroids can have positive effects. The problem comes with steroid *abuse*, which for men can cause problems in that we have a natural producer of testosterone. When we start have excessive amounts in our bloodstream for long periods of time, our brain thinks 'oh, I better cut back on production then' which is what leads to hypogonadism.\n\nSince women don't have testes, they don't have this particular issue.", "Because trans people have a medical reason and just wanting it for swole gains isn't really a great reason. Plus added testosterone when your levels are already in a good range can have health issues. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbnc0rg", "cbnd755" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Late Ancient Hebrew did this a ton. Many names were Greek. Variants of \"Alexander\" were especially popular. Other names were Aramaic, but the two languages are so similar that distinguishing them in names is often difficult. Yiddish does this two. Many of the names are Hebrew names or Hebrew words, and though some of them correspond with ones generally used in Europe, they come straight from the Hebrew, rather than through Latin and/or Greek, so they're not really recognizable.", "Many Indian Hindu names are from Sanskrit even though Sanskrit is virtually a dead language like Latin, especially names derived from Hindu gods & goddesses. Sanskrit's influence on the numerous Indian languages is however very varied. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cz1b9x5" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "It's mostly logistical issues. A sultan traveling from Istanbul to Mekka would need a huge army for protection. Traveling there and back would take months even years with a massive entourage which would destabilize the government back home and probably any province they pass through." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fmhqaso", "fmhqb2v", "fmhqt7g" ], "score": [ 9, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Okay, the only difference between summer and winter as far as heat goes is the angle that the sun hits the earth. With the axis, the sun hits at a steeper angle (ie. Straight up/down) which means greater concentration of energy, think: smaller area, same heat energy. That being said, the world and atmosphere absorb a ton of heat, and hold it as well, that is where the heat sticking around at night comes from.", "The Earth's atmosphere acts like a blanket and holds in the heat. Without our thick atmosphere, the heat generated by the sun during the day would just radiate back out into space at night. We need greenhouse gasses to keep earth livable, but too much greenhouse gas would make the earth too hot. Thats why we worry about levels of carbon dioxide rising too fast.", "To answer your first question: take a pot of boiling water. When you turn off the burner, is it suddenly safe to touch? Matter carries heat with it, and it takes time for the heat to leave the matter. It does get colder at night, by 10 to 30 degrees in the summer, but the land and air doesnt lose all if its heat all at once. \n\nFor a deeper understanding; materials radiate energy, always following the law of entropy, higher energy states will disperse their energy toward materials and space with lower energy states. Sometimes this is in the form of visible light. Another form.of light on the Electromagnetic spectrum is infrared, which you give off. We feel infrared as heat. During the day, the land and air, but mostly land, absorb energy. As the energy is absorbed, the particles in the upper portion of the land start to move faster inn accordance with the law of conservation of energy. As the input of energy falls at night, the law of entropy explains why this higher energy state- particles in the upper layer of land will then start to emit the own form of EM radiation; infrared radiation. This will keep the average temperature not intensely cold for the duration of the night. \n\nWhy summers and winters are different: \nSummer: take a flashlight and shine it directly down. Notice how each spot under the light gets more rays, which carry heat, because its brighter. \n\nWinter: take that flashlight and shine it at an angle. Notice how each spot under the light gets less rays, which carry hear, because its dimmer. \n\nNotice how in the summer, the sun is overhead more days. Notice how in the winter the sun is lower in the sky." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "defcreg" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Your quote provides the answer.\n\nThe constitution including the bill of rights defines what the government can, and can't, do. (It does not apply directly to private employers, of course.) \n\nYou don't automatically lose rights as a result of becoming a government employee; but you may waive those rights at times in exchange for something else, such as having a certain job. " ] }

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[ "http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/02/andrew-napolitano-truth-and-nothing-but-truth-about-leaks.html" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cm9gg3r", "cm9h5hj", "cm9jgtu" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I think you've been watching too much Sharknado. It doesn't work that way in real life.\n\nBesides, hurricanes can be hundreds of miles across. There's no way enough explosives could be launched to affect that, especially without causing massive environmental damage.", "hurricanes are earth's way of redirecting energy from a place with a lot of energy to the lower gradient. Conservation of energy means that your bombs wouldn't do shit. All that energy is still there, a hurricane is a massive amount of hot water moving through the atmosphere.", "You could, but salting it would be cheaper. China had an entire ministry in charge of weather control during the Olympics.\n\nLudicrously expensive either way." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4g22w7" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The design is specified by a 1930s law. The alignment of the star is such that one of the points of the star points directly left. So it's aligned \"exactly\" on a horizontal axis -- relative to the crescent -- rather than a vertical axis. See _URL_0_ and the sources cited therein." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/tr.html#con" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "duf8g8j" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It doesn't taste bad at all, you're just losing the carbonation so there isn't that stimulating feeling. If soda was made without carbonation I'm sure there would be a lot less soda drinkers in the world" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ceuekt6", "ceuemai", "ceuemto", "ceugdg1" ], "score": [ 2, 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "/r/nostupidquestions is better suited for this. \n\nI personally don't bother separating them. But most of my whites are socks or work shirts so they don't really matter to me.", "In the past, you would often add bleach to whites to help clean them. However, it would destroy colored dyes, so you would need to separate them first.", "i believe upon first wash (or the first few), some of the dyes can run and influence the color of the whites. i don't fucking know. i've only ever seen it in the movies.", "I don't know if this is still a problem due to modern technology, but it's borne from the fact that washing colors and whites together would cause the dye to leech out of the colors and into the whites, giving your whites a colored shade.\n\nI don't know if this is still something people need to worry about. At worst it's a force of habit, and at best, it's to keep your whites white." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckp5m1f" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The oil is more visible when the peanut butter is spread thin" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjgbjhe", "cjgbkc6", "cjgbkjf", "cjgbmmf", "cjgbqav" ], "score": [ 5, 16, 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "A guess: Read the fine print. The monthly payment likely goes up after 12 or 24 months. The other guess that I have is that your monthly interest comes to... $88. So yes, it's $88/month, but it's $88/month forever!", "You will be paying interest on that car for decades.", "They are really shitty cars. We have a local dealer who does the same. His nice cars are out front, the ones for his Sole Saver Deal are in the back and your lucky if its a '94 Olds.", "The car is probably worth $100. ", "Some other component of the contract will be awful, to compensate. Likely the interest rate. But the dealership has other ways to ensure profitability, so always make sure you read the fine print to find out where it is." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwhjyso", "cwhrscu", "cwi7iwl" ], "score": [ 9, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Generally, no. Archimedes does not apply when you're dissolving a solid.\n\nDepending on the nature of coordination in solution, a solid can dissolve and displace more or less volume than the solid would. If everything behaved like an ideal solution, this wouldn't be the case, but mixtures involve [partial molar properties](_URL_0_) that take place and break away from additive properties like volumes. \n\nChanges in water order can change the local volume in similar ways to how ice takes up more volume than liquid water. ", "'Going to to solution' could be described as just a very specific type of chemical reaction. The solute is simply forming new bonds (e.g. hydrogen bridges) with the solvent molecules. This might involve breaking some of the original solute bonds (e.g. Na+ and Cl- dissociating). And just as with normal chemical reactions, volume is usually not conserved. \n\nGenerally speaking the volume will be smaller than the sum of the original volumes.\n\n", "It depends on the intermolecular interactions. \n\nSome solutions have an increase in total volume, while others have a decrease. Some however, stay the same." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d6y9dt8" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "To the extent I understand it, photons don't have an \"identity\", there is no way to know, and use whatever assumption works for the problem you are solving.\n\nIt is a very unsatisfying answer, but physics has a lot of that." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck1ho9z", "ck1ht8l", "ck1hwah" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It isn't a good way to spread a virus strain.\n\nThat's precisely why these epidemic diseases kill thousands and then burn out. They massacre their food supply and host by accident and die with them.\n\nThe most successful viruses have no symptoms. They live in you and transfer among humanity without alarming our immune system or killing the host.\n\nEbola and others like it have accidentally infected humans instead of their preferred animal hosts where they generate little to no immune response or symptoms.", "If animals, like humans, ultimately die, how do they evolve, or persist to spread?\n\nIt's because it takes a shorter amount of time to spread to a new host than it does to kill the current host.\n\nSimilar to how humans, or other animals, reproduce and spread before they died. They reproduce and the next generation continues on, they go to the new hosts, the new towns, etc. While the virus they were essentially born from stays where they are.\n\nThose small communities with no medical attention ultimately act as their own quarantine. They aren't large enough for regular travel to and from, so the virus doesn't spread.\n\nAnd people ask this kind of question assuming that the virus is intelligent somehow, that it's trying to kill the person and reproduce. It's only intention is reproducing, the death of the host is a side effect of the immune system attacking it.", "Viruses are not intelligent. In fact, they aren't even alive according to most experts. They mindlessly create copies of themselves when they can. To do this, they need materials found inside cells from animals or plants. Not every cell is the same however. Even within a single organism, cells come in a variety of types, but one thing is always they same - they don't want to be infected by a virus. So cells have gotten defenses against viruses to stop them before, during, and after a virus has found and started the infection process. To combat this, viruses have to become more and more potent while also becoming more targeted to specific cells.\n\nEventually, this makes a virus that specifically targets a single animal. Because the viruses have to become so specialized to target a monkey for example, they lose the ability to infect a human. Therefore, humans also lose the ability to fight against that particular virus - it just isn't needed anymore. If the virus mutates such that it can infect humans however, we have a fully potent virus that its host can't fight against. The virus doesn't know any better though, and doesn't dial back its potency, which can result in the death of the host." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clmqb36", "clmrtzz", "clmsep9", "clmsu6x", "clmvf4k", "cln2olu", "cln3wg5" ], "score": [ 87, 68, 14, 1199, 40, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Just to clarify, you took a high school history class where your instructor referred to it as a \"false flag attack?\"\n\nCan you elaborate on what your instructor said? Did he or she use an actual history book referencing this? Or was it mentioned as a theory in passing?", "I think it could be described as \"mixed.\" In other words there is no consensus.\n\nThere have been a number of investigations into the incident. Officially both the Spanish and the U.S. did investigations in 1898, which came to different conclusions. In 1911 the U.S. removed it from the harbor, and took the opportunity to redo the investigation more thoroughly. And the evidence from these three investigations has been pored over for more than a century, with no definitive conclusion.\n\nThe general conclusion has always been the same; the reason the Maine sunk was that its main powder bunker exploded. But what set that off is what people argue about. And given the length and depth of the argument, it seems clear that no definitive answer exists. It could have been an accident, set off by the coal bunker. It could have been set off by a mine outside the ship. And yes, it could have been set off by a small explosive inside the ship.\n\nBut a false flag operation seems implausible to me. The McKinley administration already had enough support to go to war. In fact McKinley seems to be one of the last people to be in favor of war. And the Maine wasn't mentioned by McKinley as a Casus Bellus when he asked for a declaration of war. I suppose it is possible that one of the jingos in the U.S. created the incident to force McKinley's hand. Or it is possible that McKinley was *so* Machiavellian that he pushed he country to war, while appearing opposed. But that seems unlikely.\n\nWhile somewhat dated now (it was written in 1976) *How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed* by Admiral Rickover is the traditional go to for the subject.\n\nEdited for spelling and to correct my slander of Admiral Rickover.", "Secondary question: Where are the remains of the USS Maine now? ", "**The current academic consensus is that there is no consensus.**\n\nLet's review.\n\n[There have been four major investigations into the sinking of the *Maine*:](_URL_0_)\n\n* The first took place in 1898, immediately after the sinking. The McKinley administration created a naval board of inquiry that concluded unanimously that the ship was sunk \"only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship at about frame 18, and somewhat on the port side of the ship.\"\n\n* The second investigation took place in 1911. President Taft ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to study the wreckage. Never to do anything by halves, the Corps built a cofferdam around the ship's wreckage, pumped out all the water and examined the exposed hull. Hundreds of photographs were taken, and the Corps removed much of the wreckage. A revised board of inquiry reaffirmed that a mine sank the ship, but it concluded the mine had detonated at a different place.\n\n* The third investigation came in 1974, when Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy, asked historians to re-examine the case. The historians dredged Spanish archives and consulted with foreign militaries about their own experience with internal explosions. They consulted professional engineers to analyze the 1911 photographs and took into context the \"natural tendency to look for reasons for the loss that did not reflect upon the Navy.\" This study resulted in [*How the Battleship Maine was Destroyed*](_URL_1_). That book concluded the explosion was, \"without a doubt,\" internal.\n\n* The fourth investigation came in 1999 and was conducted by the National Geographic Society. NGS commissioned a study by Advanced Marine Enterprises, which conducted the first detailed computer modeling of the disaster. AME stated that a coal fire within a bunker could have raised the temperature within one of the *Maine*'s magazines to hazardous levels within a few hours. As to a mine strike, AME found that even a simple mine consisting of 100 pounds of black powder and a contact fuse could have sunk the ship. \"If so, the mine must have been perfectly \nplaced, which under the circumstances would have been as much a matter of luck as \nskill.”\nWhile it did not discount either option for the *Maine*'s destruction, AME ultimately concluded (based on the 1911 photographs) that there was more evidence in favor of the *Maine*'s destruction by a mine.\n\n[Let's review the competing evidence for each side, and you can make up your mind](_URL_2_).\n\nFor a mine detonation:\n\n• The Maine carried a type of bituminous coal that rarely spontaneously combusted.\n\n• Bunker A16 was not situated by a boiler or any other external heat source, and spontaneous combustion does not occur unless there is a heat source to speed up the process. \n\n• When Bunker A16 was inspected the morning of the disaster, the temperature was only 59 degrees Fahrenheit. \n\n• The Maine's temperature sensor system did not indicate any dangerous rise in temperature on the morning of the last inspection. \n\n• Discipline on the Maine was excellent, and regular inspections of coal bunkers for hazards, as well as the implementation of precautions for preventing bunker fires, were diligently carried out. \n\n• A number of witnesses stated that they heard two distinct explosions several seconds apart. If anything else besides a mine had triggered the magazine explosion, then witnesses would have only heard one blast, because the only explosion would have been that of the magazines. \n\n• The only reason that two explosions would have been heard is if something besides the magazine had exploded, such as a mine.\n\n• Divers who examined the bottom plates of the Maine reported that they were bent inward. This was subsequently confirmed with 1911 photographs.\n\n• Divers spotted a large hole on the floor of Havana harbor, something that would not have occurred with a magazine explosion. Those are directed upward, toward the path of least resistance. \n\nFor an internal explosion:\n\n• Spontaneous combustion of coal was a fairly frequent problem on ships built after the American Civil War. Coal was exposed to air, oxidized and began burning. The heat was transferred to the ship's magazines, causing an explosion. \n\n• The *Maine*'s bituminous coal was more subject to spontaneous combustion than anthracite coal. Furthermore, higher moisture content increases the danger of spontaneous combustion. The *Maine* had spent most of the previous three months in Key West or nearby, where tropical moisture predominates.\n\n• Bunker A16 had not been inspected since 8 a.m. The explosion occurred around 9:40 p.m. There was ample time (12 hours) for a coal bunker fire to smolder into a disaster. \n\n• From 1894 to 1908, more than 20 coal bunker fires were reported on U.S. Navy ships. \n\n• No one reported seeing a geyser of water thrown up during the explosion, a common sight when mines explode underwater.\n\n• No one reported seeing any dead fish in the harbor and these would have been seen if there had been an external blast. \n\n• Inward bending of the plates could have been caused by water displacement occurring at the same time the front of the ship was breaking away from the rear.\n\n***\n**ADVERTISEMENT:** Read and subscribe to /r/100yearsago", "The *Maine* may not have suffered a boiler malfunction or an intentional attack [be it an external mine/torpedo or an internal act of sabotage].\n\nThere is a third possibility: ***Spontaneous detonation of explosives***.\n\nThe *USS Maine* was equipped to fire armor-piercing shells from its big guns, and the explosive type used in these big shells was wet gun cotton. This is a type of high explosive which would have to be prepared for firing, and so warships had to carry a large amount of it on board in their magazines [a magazine in this context being a specially designed part of the ship where explosives & munitions are stored].\n\nThe volatile nature of gun cotton varies with temperature & humidity. Wet gun cotton ready for firing in an armor piercing shell is relatively inert. But this also means a warship that has traveled from say a cold part of the world to the equator or vice versa, is going to have to have its explosives on board monitored and serviced to keep it within a safe range of temperature & humidity. If some of the explosive falls into an unsafe range it can spontaneously detonate. Once that happens, the whole magazine can go off and destroy the ship fairly quickly.\n\nWet gun cotton was eventually phased out and replaced with things like fulminate of mercury, Maximite, Dunnite [aka Explosive D], Shimosa, cordite, and many other formulas. All of which were so close to each other chemically that there were some pretty intense legal battles over who had actually invented them & was worthy of being compensated with royalties.\n\nI mention this because there is a famous incident that would give credibility to the idea that the *USS Maine* was destroyed by spontaneous detonation: The Japanese warship *Kawachi*. In 1918 the warship exploded. Like with the *USS Maine*, it happened quickly in the same forward-portion of the ship, resulted in the total loss of the ship, and much of the crew. And this was hardly a one-time only event. As Norman Friedman lists off in Naval Firepower (2013):\n\n > \"At first, nitroglycerine made the new powders quite unstable. The French lost two battleships, Iena and Liberte, to their Poudre B. It was recognized as the culprit only in 1911, after a spontaneous powder explosion and fire on board a small boat carrying some of this powder away from a French battleship. Many other ships were lost to similar explosions; examples include the British HMS Vanguard (1917), the Italian Leonardo da Vinci (1916), the Russian Imperatritsa Maria (1916), and the Japanese Kawachi (1918) and Mutsu (1943). Wartime explosions were often attributed to sabotage at the time, probably largely to avoid raising safety questions in the minds of sailors aboard the surviving ships.\" [285]\n\nWhether the US tribunal investigating the *Maine* believed it was spontaneous detonation or intentional malice, do you really believe they could have politically gone on out and publicly said that either, 1- They didn't actually know what happened, or 2- That it was an unavoidable consequence of using the high explosive formulas of the day [something that every ship in the navy had no choice but to carry]?\n\nSuppose someone makes the argument that the *Maine* was destroyed in a so-called \"false flag attack.\" At worst this would involve what, the United States somehow destroying their own ship, so they could use it as an excuse to fight a war with Spain? Yet when President McKinley went to congress to get authorization for fighting a war, the *Maine* was not used as a justification. Instead the actual argument consisted of the belief that Cubans needed to be allowed to self-govern. This is why the Teller Amendment stated that the United States would leave Cuba in event of Spain being defeated, instead of annexing the territory. If the loss of the *Maine* was required for getting into a war, you would expect it to be used as the justification for said war regardless how that destruction came about, wouldn't you agree?\n\nAnother problem, is that these warships were extremely important to national defense. The United States possessed a single battleship fleet, and it was usually in the Atlantic out of concern for the European powers. The United States lacked enough capital ships [that's the bigger warships] to protect both coasts. When Teddy Roosevelt put the capital ships on their famous white fleet tour around the world, this left both coasts of the country exposed to invasion. John Costello writes in The Pacific War (1982) that Kaiser Wilhelm had actually offered Theodore Roosevelt to put part of the German Imperial Navy off the Atlantic coast to protect it from aggression during the publicity stunt [TR turned the offer down].^1 The amount of time and cost it took to build every one of these larger warships, not to mention the political constraints on how many the Navy was given permission to build, all make the idea of destroying the *Maine* intentionally a very unsound one.\n\nNo one had anticipated that the United States would be able to defeat the Spanish at the Battle of Santiago Bay so easily [no warship lost versus 5], so going into the war the assumption was that every large warship was going to be extremely important, each playing a vital role with their biggest guns. The whole premise for the large warships was to make ships as heavily armored & heavily armed as possible, so that these extra big guns could fire armor piercing shells, which would poke a hole in the enemy ships causing them to quickly take on water and sink possibly after suffering a single good hit. That's what the academic theory was, on paper, in the academy. What really happened? Nothing at all like that. The US Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet using their mid-sized rapid fire guns. These guns, instead of sinking ships, were destroying everything above the hulls, causing them to catch fire & become disabled. The United States Naval Institute concluded that rather than phase out some of their mid-sized guns in favor of exponentially larger guns, they might want to return the 8-inch gun to service in future warships.^2 A complete 180 from what the established academic theory was. However, the addiction of supersized warships & their supersized armor piercing shells continued well into WW1, and debate whether *that* was a good idea is a whole other story.\n\n1. John Costello, *The Pacific War*, Harper Collins (1982) 27.\n2. \"Proposed Armament for Our Three Latest Battleships,\" Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, Vol. XXV (1899) 664.", "Further to the excellent comments above, the French Navy suffered from a remarkable number of warship losses from spontaneous combustion of unstable ammunition, the same kind of propellant as the USS Maine used for her secondary armament. The battleships \"Iena\"and \"Liberte\" both blew up in harbour with the causes attributed to spontaneous ignition of propellant. There was also the loss of HMS Doterel at Punta Arenas, the Brazilian battleship \"Aquidaban\" at around the same period. Later examples, all attributed to spontaneous combustion of over-heated propellant, include HMS Bulwark, HMS Natal, IJNS Mikasa and IJNS Matsushima.", "Does anyone know how many US ships the Spanish sank with mines during the war?" ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf", "http://www.iprr.org/reviews/Rickoverreview.html", "http://www.dcte.udel.edu/hlp/resources/overseas/competing_evidence.pdf" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eonrdms", "eonrg6r" ], "score": [ 2, 7 ], "text": [ "Many reasons. Sometimes they need to lower their price point in order to sell into a poorer market. Sometimes they release content differently in some markets (think, censorship in China, for example). Other times it is easier to region lock than to meet all local regulations in all devices.", "It's pretty simple, depending on the region you sell your product the highest price people are ready to pay for your device can differ quite significantly. If you have the same price all over the world you wont sell in some regions. If you have different prices and don't region lock people will just buy from the cheapest region. The \"solution\" is region lock.\nTl;dr: it's because of money." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "de7xi1k", "de9yvyv", "debbd2w" ], "score": [ 16, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The biggest and probably the most famous problem is the P-NP problem. It concerns decision problems (problems that can be answered with a \"yes\" or a \"no\"). There are two important classes of decision problems - P and NP. P problems are those which can be decided in polynomial time. NP problems are those whose solutions can be verified in polynomial time. It's simple to see that P is a subset of NP - if you can solve a problem in polynomial time, you can verify a solution in polynomial time just by solving it. The big question is, is P a proper subset of NP - in other words, are there decision problems whose solutions can be verified in polynomial time, but cannot be solved in polynomial time?\n\nAnother famous problem is the RSA problem - can a semiprime (a product of two distinct primes) be factored efficiently (in polynomial time)? This is related to the P-NP problem, but it's not a decision problem, so it's a bit different. It's called the RSA problem because the RSA cryptosystem relies on semiprimes being difficult to factor. If an efficient factoring method was found, RSA would be easy to crack, which would be bad.", "So the big one as others mentioned is P-NP. Along with this big one are a bunch of other sub-problems regarding the containment of classes like RP (randomized polynomial), BPP (bounded probabilistic polynomial), and Co-NP (complement of NP). There are also questions relating to space complexity, such a whether all languages decidable in deterministic logarithmic space is equal to P.\n\nOther open problems mostly unrelated to P-NP include \"basic\" things like finding a O(n^(2)) algorithm for matrix multiplication, lots of open questions about Lambda Calculus that I don't understand, the problem of detecting, expressing, and resolving failures in distributed systems, and a bunch of things related to computing equilibria in games.\n\n", "Here's one that's sort of math/cs (but I would argue that P vs NP is in the same boat)\n\nA *code* is a set of binary strings of the same length. The *distance* of a code *C* is the shortest distance between two strings in *C* (the distance between two binary strings is the number of differences between them, so the distance between 010 and 100 is 2)\n\nWhat is the largest code whose strings have length *n* and whose distance is *d*?\n\nUpper and lower bounds are known, and it has been solved for small cases. The first open case is something like *n=15,d=8* if I recall correctly.\n\nWhy is this interesting? Codes are useful for error correction. The set of strings in a code are far apart (if *d* is big enough) so if I send you a bit string, and each bit has some small probability of being an error, you can correct to the nearest string in the code." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg3fo74", "cg3jb8d" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I'm just guessing here, but maybe it preyed on larger animals. Those fangs would have sunk deep into flesh.", "No one really know but on of the reason is the instead of going for the throat it bit into the back/spine of an animal keeping it from running or fighting back..back I those time a lot of \"prey\" animals were large an could hold their own in a fight" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "doqdd13", "doqds9f" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It is usually going to be with reference to the body that exerts the dominant gravitational force in the region.\n\nThe speed of a probe sent to orbit Europa would first be expressed with reference to the earth, then the sun, then Jupiter, then finally Europa. Possibly other planets or moons if a gravitational assist was involved.", "It really depends on what that person is talking about. If they say some star is moving away from us at X speed, the reference point implied is us (or the Sun, the difference doesn't matter at this scale). If they say some satellite is orbiting at a speed, they mean with respect to the body being orbited. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjmhc3i", "cjmi7m8" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "In France it is payed by the Social security (healthcare etc..), not the employer.", "Everyone says \"taxes\", and that might be true in some countries, but in most cases the right answer is \"insurance\".\n\nEven though it isn't mandated in the U.S., virtually all salaried employees in the U.S. to get paid maternity leave. To smooth things out, companies use insurance to cover salary while on leave.\n\nHere's how it works: the company pays the insurance company every month based on the number of employees eligible for family leave (maternity, paternity, also sick leave / bereavement, etc.). When an employee goes on leave, the insurance company pays that employee's salary, freeing up the company to spend that money on a temp worker or something else.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d0ky8yk" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "This can be a bit confusing, so I will use *italics for Latinized Russian* and **bold for English translations**\n\nIf you're asking about the Eastern Front of WWII, the single massive continuous front (geographic area) is known by Russians as Великая Отечественная Война (*Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna*), meaning **Great Patriotic War**\n\nThe **Patriotic War** (*Otechestvennaya Voyna*) would be WWI, which is also sometimes known as Вторая Отечественная война (*Vtoraya Otechestvennaya Voyna*), or **Second Fatherland War**, with the **First Fatherland War** being the war of Napoleon's invasion, which confusingly was the original **Patriotic War**\n\nConfusingly for English-speakers, the **Great Patriotic War** consisted of several military units also known as фронт (*front* in Latinized Russian), which in this case means a Soviet military formation equivalent to an army group of most other militaries, and not the geographic area you are asking about. You can see [the flag on the right in this video](_URL_0_) says \"1 БЕЛОРУССКИЙ ФРОНТ\" (*1st Belorussian Front* in Latinized Russian), which most accurately translates to **1st Belorussian Army Group** in American English\n\nBecause of the two meanings for \"front\", it would be confusing to read, \"The **Eastern Front** had many *fronts*.\" The proper translation would be, \"The **Great Patriotic War** involved many **army groups**, some of which were named *1st Belorussian Front* (**1st Belorussian Army Group**), the *2nd Belorussian Front* (**2nd Belorussian Army Group**), and *1st Ukrainian Front* (**1st Ukrainian Army Group**).\"" ] }

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[ [ "https://youtu.be/2gZdQ1i312I?t=238" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9693wj", "c96aniq", "c96cql4", "c96ds8c" ], "score": [ 64, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Stars can only fuse hydrogen (and in the latter stages other elements) in their cores, where the temperature is high enough to start fusion. The vast majority of the hydrogen is outside the core (90% orso) and gets blown away when the star is dieing. This forms the material for the next generation of stars", "Are there stars created from mostly heavier elements left behind from a dead star? I mean what are the chances of a star forming from mostly lithium instead of hydrogen? ", "The hydrogen needed to form a star does not necessarily come from a previously existing star, even if that star's death precipitated the birth of the new star.\n\nThe star's hydrogen may not be lost to fusion alone. The star could lose its envelop of hydrogen before its death due to the solar wind produced by the star. That hydrogen could then take part in star formation.\n\n", "\"Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a condition that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion. We present three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of a massive prestellar core and find that radiation pressure does not halt accretion. Instead, gravitational and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities channel gas onto the star system through nonaxisymmetric disks and filaments that self-shield against radiation while allowing radiation to escape through optically thin bubbles. Gravitational instabilities cause the disk to fragment and form a massive companion to the primary star. Radiation pressure does not limit stellar masses, but the instabilities that allow accretion to continue lead to small multiple systems. \"\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhile this has not been validated in the real world (as far as I know) this computer model indicates that supermassive stars are generated by eating other stars in their vicinity." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/754.abstract" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8iow3x" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Actually way later, up until WW2 right by conquest was recognized as international law. \"War of aggression\" as a crime was only codified in the Nuermberg Principles after WW2 and made a UN resolution in 1974 (UN resolution 3314). \n\nThe principle of Right by Conquest was first diminished in the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) which was, in a very basic summary, a group of countries promising not to declare war to resolve their differences. It didn't work, the nations still went to war, they just didn't declare war, but it was a first step towards the establishment of \"War of aggression\" as a crime under international law." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dchr4qz", "dci4b9n" ], "score": [ 18, 7 ], "text": [ "Not to discourage further discussion, but see /u/uncovered-history's answer in [this post](_URL_0_). He also addresses the Continental Army uniform question a little further down the comment chain.", "I answer this exact question in the post that /u/ForExes mentioned. Essentially, it's a myth and I quote one of the leading historians in the field who wrote about Arnold. Please let me know\nIf you have any follow ups" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mjp43/did_benedict_arnold_regret_his_decision_to_join/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnr2po6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Some cytokines can cross/be actively transported across the blood brain barrier. There are also cytokine receptors that stimulate the vagus nerve, providing feedback to the brain. There was a study specifically investigating the use of an anti-inflammatory drug, infliximab, which antagonizes tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), in people with treatment resistant depression. What they found was that overall, infliximab was not more effective than placebo. However, in those patients with high levels of CRP at pre-treatment, infliximab was more effective than placebo, while in those patients with low CRP, infliximab was *less* effective than placebo. [Here's a picture of that.](_URL_1_) What's noteworthy is that infliximab is too big of a molecule to cross the blood brain barrier, so any direct effects it has happen in the body. [Here's the full text of the source article.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015348/", "http://i.imgur.com/QJX1zTL.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvpvatj" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "This is a complicated question to answer. \n\nFirst and foremost -- Did you upgrade OS versions in the meantime or are you running the same OS and exact same software as before? \n\nIf you upgraded the OS, then that could be part of the problem. Newer versions of Windows and OSX often are designed around newer computers. Older machines just can't keep up -- even if the OS is marketed as capable of running on older hardware. Sometimes newer OS versions fix and address the sins of previous versions, so they can get faster than older versions, but more often than not newer OS's are more \"bloated\". (Bloat is a general euphemism for bigger code that does more, fancier graphics and effects, etc -- all of it taking up resources at runtime and on the disk).\n\nIt depends on the exact OS release, basically. But the overall trend is towards newer OS = more of a resource hog.\n\nSecondly, if you upgraded the installed programs in the meantime (via updates, etc) they can also be resource hogs for the same reason as the OS -- they get bloated over time as the programmers add features and subfeatures and noone complains because the software is assumed to run on newer machines that \"can handle it\".\n\nNewer software assumes you are running a newer machine, so it takes up more CPU and RAM. Programmers sometimes don't bother to optimize their code when it runs \"fast enough\" on a newer machine. Or they allocate more memory than they need or use algorithms that are hungrier for resources. \n\nAdd to that the trend towards slower interpreted languages for more and more software (such as embedding javascript code or other scripting languages in applications to form part of the application logic, etc).\n\nAnother factor could be that your computer's hard disk is fragmented (usually an issue on Windows -- less of an issue on OSX).\n\nAnother factor could be that you have malware/adware or other background programs running that you accumulated over time as you installed more and more hardware and software. Some driver packages or other software you may install like to install all sorts of services and daemons, systray icons, toolbars you don't use, etc. My mouse for example came with an annoying systray icon utility that was absolutely useless but took up RAM and CPU occasionally for no reason.\n\nYet another factor is that if your computer is old, its cooling may be faulty. Your fans may be spinning slower and/or dust may have accumulated as a sort of 'blanket' on your motherboard/logic board. If your computer is running hotter, certain processors (such as Intel), will purposely slow down the CPU so that it doesn't heat up as much. To you, this will look like a performance hit.\n\nIt could be any or all of the above factors, basically.\n\nBut the computer itself, at least in theory, if kept clean inside and the fans are running, etc, doesn't \"age\" like a person does. It should run just as fast 10 years down the line as it did the day you bought it, assuming the hardware hasn't gone faulty (particularly read errors on the disk can delay things) and the cooling is working right.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6bjm0e", "d6bjmey", "d6bwvar", "d6c1q1d", "d6c848q" ], "score": [ 18, 2, 4, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Male gorillas are over twice the size of female gorillas, probably the largest sexual dimorphism among primates. The big [silverbacks](_URL_0_) you see in zoos are all males. Big differences like this are also seen in orangutans, mandrills, baboons, proboscis monkeys, hamadryas.\n\nSperm whale males weigh about 3 times as much as females. Pretty much all pinnipeds (seals, sea lions) show huge sexual dimorphism, with males being much larger than females.\n\nAs for features other than size, it's probably because you're not used to distinguishing between members of other species. Humans are very much attuned to detecting small differences in the facial features of other humans. And not just other humans, we are even more finely attuned to detecting these differences in our own ethnicity or geographical neighborhood. I'm guessing a farmer or herdsman is better able to tell the sex of a domestic animal at a glance than the average person, or a vet, or dog or cat breeder, for example. But sexual dimorphism is very very common among mammals.", "This is somewhat hard to assess, personally I would lean towards humans being very good at recognising small differences in other humans. Confounding/complicating my hypothesis breasts are a somewhat unique secondary sexual display and gender coded clothing also makes it hard to assess what features we are best recognising. \n\nNevertheless The degree of sexual dimorphism in humans (and chimps) is fairly modest in comparison to many mammals. Within the apes males and females are usually strikingly different; Gorillas, baboons and orangutans have a strong degree of dimorphism. Gibbons on the other hand have a near 1:1 size ratio. \n\nThat said By and large male mammals are obviously larger and typically with some obvious secondary sexual display. Additionally some animals have strong differences in sense that are not primary to humans and less easy for humans to recognise. Dogs and ferrets are quite similar visually but can be very different with regards their scent. \n\nNote also that domestication often greatly suppresses the degree of dimorphism in many of the mammals we regularly come across. \n\nI'll add some refs once I'm off mobile at my desk. ", " > Are any mammals as sexually dimorphic as humans?\n\n- Elephant seals in particular (~3000 kg for males, 900 kg for females, plus males have facial display structures that females don't - they don't even really look like the same species), as well as some other pinnipeds.\n\n- Cervids (deer). Males are often considerably larger and often have elaborate display and combat structures that females don't. (Caribou / reindeer are the only cervids in which both sexes have antlers.)", "Other animals may also rely less on sight. To a human, a male and female corgi might look alike, but since dogs are so scent driven, they can tell huge differences between males and females of their species.\n\nSimilarly, a dog might not know/care/recognize the physical differences between human males and females, but would put more weight towards the differences in smell and sound.", "Adding to what others have noted...\n\nMale Lions are larger than females and have manes.\n\nIn most species with horns (ruminants; gazelle, cattle, goats) or antlers (cervids; deer, moose), only the males have them.\n\nAnd it should be noted that in most marsupials, only the females have a pouch.\n\nFrankly, human dimorphism is rather slight, with the mammaries and wide hips the main way of distinguishing the female from the male. Most female mammals have similarly large mammaries, they just aren't as visible in a four-footed stance.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Male_gorilla_in_SF_zoo.jpg" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlb45y5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "To get moving again, they DO spin up their engines.... modern high bypass turbofans have ridiculous thrust, just bumping them up a little from idle is enough to get an airliner moving again. To stop, they have brakes. These brakes are ridiculously powerful, more than enough to stop an airliner moving along a taxiway. Pilots are just careful to use _enough_ brakes to slow the aircraft, if they were to stomp or lean on the brakes hard enough people and improperly secured baggage would fly around the cabin. \n\nIn fact, one of the standard certification tests for a new airliner is a takeoff abort test, or a takeoff \"reject\". (this has nothing to do with your question, but it's super cool). If the plane hasn't reached the critical V1 takeoff speed by a certain point of the runway, they're supposed to abort the takeoff. This means slamming the brakes on and engaging the engine reverse thrust. But to certify, the brakes alone have to be enough to bring the craft to a halt. [Usually this will leave the brake discs red-hot and more often than not pop a few tires due to the heat. Its quite spectacular.](_URL_2_)\n\n[Here's a 777 doing such a test. The brakes are literally on fire.](_URL_0_)\n\n[787-8 rejected takeoff with some good explanation](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr4V680UQ-k", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g6UswiRCF0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUMuOyMTQ8Y" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0s3vs0" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Roman law during the late Republic and most of the Principate made no distinction in punishment between free people of different social rank. By Roman law all Roman citizens were guaranteed the same legal rights, and the only important distinction in court was whether one was a Roman citizen or not. In cases of civil law (i.e. lawsuits) this was *the* only distinction, as slaves could not sue or be sued. In lawsuits the nature of punishment (which almost invariably consisted of a fine) could vary, depending on what exact crime had been committed--it was determined by the judge, either calculated by him or drawn from tables. This fine did not change according to the social status of a citizen at court, and such a distinction would've been both impossible and contrary to Roman legal ideals. \"Plebeian\" does not mean \"anybody who's not a *nobilis*.\" \"Plebeian\" just means anyone not descended from one of the original senators, a very tiny hereditary club that got tinier over time and which had already lost pretty much all its privileges by the end of the 4th Century--the Conflict of the Orders is considered to have ended in 287 with the passage of the *lex Hortensia*, but in reality the major issues (plebeian right to run for magistracy, etc.) had all been secured fifty to a hundred years earlier. By Caesar's day only 14 patrician families still had existing lines, out of more than 50 that we know of originally, and the most of the members of the senatorial class were plebeians. Indeed, since legally one consul each year had to be a plebeian at least half of the consular *nobiles* were also plebeians. Such men of standing as Cicero, Pompey, Crassus, Cassius, Cato, Brutus, Lepidus, Antony, Hortensius, etc. were all plebeian, and it becomes immediately clear that during the late Republic social status was not equivalent to social order, and that the category of patrician and plebeian cannot have been useful in cases of determining punishment. In cases of criminal law the punishment was generally the same for everyone. As criminal law tried capital crimes (murder, treason, etc.) the penalty was almost invariably death, or occasionally *infamia* (loss of citizen rights). The manner of execution might differ according to what crime was committed and whether the convicted was a citizen or not, but beyond that there was no distinction.\n\nI should mention exile separately, though. Exile was not an actual *punishment* during the late Republic and generally during the Principate. During the late Republic exile was not a punishment that could actually be sentenced in court, it was a voluntary punishment. A citizen could voluntarily go into exile to escape the death penalty in a criminal case. He could go into exile before criminal proceedings actually began, but generally exile occurred either shortly before sentencing or in the space between sentence and execution (the *trinundinum*, which could last up to a month or so). So we see, for example, Milo fleeing to Massilia to escape being put to death for the murder of Publius Clodius. By the late Republic anyone who fled a criminal proceeding or the execution of sentence by leaving Italy was considered an exile, but the status of \"exile\" was only applied after the fact, not before--after the criminal fled Italy an *interdictio* would be passed denying him the right to fire and water, that is to say the rights and status of a Roman citizen and a free (or even living, since the death penalty was applied to those who returned to Italy) person within Italy. Officially this was the only type of *exsilium* going way into the Principate, although in point of fact Augustus introduced a couple of new penalties that, while not legally exile, were essentially the same thing. The most common was *relegatio*, which existed during the late Republic but wasn't really used. Under the emperors *relegatio* is used far more often, and it consisted of banishment to a particular place (like the island that Julia was sent to). Tiberius introduced a slightly different version of this penalty, the *deportatio*. There were also a couple of other kinds of *de facto* exile that weren't really exile *per se* or were illegal--this includes fleeing proscription or the illegal (as it was a *privilegium*) *lex Clodia de exsilio Ciceronis* that exiled Cicero\n\nThis is not to say that social status and wealth did not matter as long as citizenship status existed. That's not really true. Obviously in cases of civil law the penalties imposed on the poor would generally be different (if the law allowed it) from the penalties on the rich. In cases of criminal law, though, all penalties were the same, although Roman citizens could not be executed by certain means (crucifixion). During the later part of the Principate, however, we start to see the establishment of the *honestiores* and *humiliores*, social groups that did not exist in the late Republic. The concept probably existed in the late Republic, but it was a social idea that members of the senatorial class or the equites, though largely of the same order as the rest of the population, were not really of the same class--only in the later Principate, especially among the Antonines, does the legal distinction between the two start to emerge. There appears to never have been a legal definition of an *honestior*, and since by the Antonines the social orders had long since stopped being meaningful and the acquisition of magistracies was no longer a good indication of social rank it appears that it was largely left up to the judgement of the court and the emperor. *Honestiores* were exempt from certain penalties in criminal cases, particularly a replacement of the death penalty with *rogatio* (the beginnings of this practice can be seen as early as Augustus). Oddly, by the Antonines it seems that crucifixion had been re-introduced as a penalty for some citizens--*honestiores* were exempt from it, but *humiliores* might be crucified, which was not allowed as a punishment for any citizen in the earlier Principate or the Republic. *Humiliores* could also be sentenced to *damnatio ad ludas* or *ad bestias* or *ad mortem*, whereas *honestiores* could not. But the legality of these proceedings is kind of fuzzy, and this period is not one that I'm especially familiar with--during the late Republic, which is what I know about, criminal penalty was the same for all citizens, no matter their social rank" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dpdn4zk" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I know for a fact that at least some fish do. Some fish have a trade-off feature where they have a red belly which females finds attractive, but they are more visible to predators. Some marine animals also get their color from their diet, so maybe it has something to do with that?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d8isgbp" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Here's a [recent post where I answered a very similar question](_URL_0_). Basically it comes down to two things: solubility in different materials (silicates versus metals, which is why there are Uranium ores on the surface of Earth) and meteor bombardment during the early history of the solar system (which is why there's still some Gold, Platinum, Iridium, etc. in the crust)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54urja/does_the_earths_mantle_have_the_same_composition/d858dhc" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch7zppe", "ch80pjs" ], "score": [ 2, 6 ], "text": [ "We're allowing this question despite our 20-year-rule, because the events straddle the 20-year line, and most of the time in OP is in-bounds. But it's particularly important to not let any answers get into current politics, or the situation closer to the present. Thanks!", "Oh, there's absolutely indication that they intentionally committed genocide.\n\nIn fact, it's internationally recognized as such today.\n\nIf you'd like background on the conflict itself, please check [this thread here](_URL_0_).\n\nEdit: I realized it might be helpful to give you the account of what actually happened in Srebrenica, to make it more effective in explaining how the conclusions were made. My mistake, I don't know if you actually know them!\n\nIn 1993, the UN protection force in Bosnia (UNPROFOR) was tasked with protecting \"safe areas\". One of these safe areas was the Muslim enclave around Srebrenica. In March of 1994 (after agreeing in October 1993), the main force of the Dutch was deployed under UN command to this enclave. One company was stationed in the city, the other in the Potocari compound outside Srebrenica.\n\nOn the 5th of July, 1995, General Mladic of Republika Srpska (basically, the Bosnian Serb army) attacked the enclave. On the 11th of July, they took the city, and the Dutch troops in the city retreated to the Potocari compound. This caused a mass exodus from the area, with 5,000 staying inside the Potocari compound and around 27,000 outside. UN command determined that these people would have to be evacuated, so the Dutch commander began negotiating with Mladic for the evacuation. The Dutch also chose to expel the 5,000 staying inside the compound, which they have accepted responsibility for as being partially responsible for the deaths of those people. Over the next two days, Mladic's forces removed all the people outside and inside the compound via bus and truck, saying they were helping in the evacuation as promised. While they were removing them, they also conducted executions of men who were around military age, and rapes of women. Local UN employees were unharmed generally speaking, if they had UN cards (contrast this with the Rwandan genocide, where the Belgian troops were targeted gruesomely to get the UN to withdraw).\n\nAs people were getting onto the buses and trucks that were going to Bosniak-held territory, the men of military age were separated out. Some younger and older were also separated out, even as young as 14. They were killed, executed.\n\nWitnesses also noted cruel killings of children who were crying, women, and other forms of sexual abuse and torture.\n\nSome buses never made it to the Bosniak territory, and were seen driving away from the Bosniak territory, though it had women on it (not military age men, like the other killings). It's assumed that those on the buses who didn't make it were all killed.\n\nThe Serbs have admitted that they planned and carried out mass executions of the men of military age, which is damning evidence of genocide.\n\nTo get into some of the international recognition, first, before I explain why it was regarded as a definite genocide:\n\n* [The US recognized the actions of Serbia in that entire 1992-1995 span as genocide in 2005](_URL_1_).\n\n* [The ICTY tried Karadzic for genocide in 2010 [PDF Format!], and ruled that Srebrenica was a genocide.](_URL_2_).\n\n* [The ICJ ruled that Srebrenica was a genocide, but that the Serbian government was not responsible or complicit in it](_URL_5_)\n\nSo we know that there's a pretty sizable agreement that this was a genocide. Even the [UN Secretary General agreed it was a genocide](_URL_4_).\n\nNow, how do we know it was definitely a genocide? Let's look at some documents on the subject.\n\nFirst, the US Congress resolution on the subject says this:\n\n > Whereas Bosnian Serb forces deported women, children, and the elderly in buses, held Bosniak males over 16 years of age at collection points and sites in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina under their control, and then summarily executed and buried the captives in mass graves;\n\nThis is pretty crucial. The fact that they separated males over 16 years of age and then summarily executed them is evidence of premeditation in carrying out the massacre. Now, how is this a genocide? Alone, it might not be considered as such, because it's not carried out with the intent to destroy the whole group, or they'd have killed women, children, and the elderly. However, the genocide convention that defines genocide says this:\n\n > ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: \n\n > (a) Killing members of the group; \n\n > (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; \n\n > (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; \n\n > (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; \n \n > (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. \n\nThere are a few things to note here. There is the question of preventing births, there is the question of destroying *in part* a group, which is clearly done in Srebrenica, and there is the question of severe physical and bodily harm done.\n\nNow, let's look at the ICJ case.\n\nThe ICJ, while clearing Serbia of genocide, notes that it failed to prevent genocide. That is a *de facto* admission that it was a genocide. How did they reach this conclusion?\n\nIts decision, for the record, said this:\n\n > The Court concludes that the acts committed at Srebrenica falling within Article II (a) and (b) of the Convention were committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina as such; and accordingly that these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the VRS in and around Srebrenica from about 13 July 1995.\n\nNow, again, how did they determine this to be genocide?\n\nThe case itself is [long [PDF Format!]](_URL_3_), so I'll try to slim it down for you to the important bits if I can. Of course, I recommend you read it; there's a lot of information I *won't* be able to cover.\n\n > At the same time, it also endorses the observation made in the Krstic´ case that “where there is physical or biological destruction there are often simultaneous attacks on the cultural and religious property and symbols of the targeted group as well, attacks which may legitimately be considered as evidence of an intent to physically destroy the group.\"\n\nThis observation was made by the ICTY.\n\nNow here's where it gets into the nitty-gritty. Page 190, if you're following along.\n\nThe Court pretty summarily rejects most arguments that relate to a lowering of the birth rate via male/female separations, rape, etc. It doesn't accept these arguments as constituting the genocide. However, it did examine the Srebrenica Massacre, on page 164 (it's mentioning the Appeals Chamber decision).\n\n > By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group that was emblematic of Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity. The Bosnian Serb forces were aware, when they embarked on this genocidal venture, that the harm they caused would continue to plague the Bosnian Muslims. The Appeals Chamber states unequivocally that the law condemns, in appropriate terms, the deep and lasting injury inflicted, and calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its proper name: genocide.\n\nThis is pretty damning. The court, in examining the actions of those involved, found this. And yes, that is how it went down. The men, as I said, were separated out, and killed in mass executions. Over 20% of the town's population was killed by the time it was over. Muslims were specifically targeted. Those who were deported or otherwise detained were either subjected to harsh conditions as refugees (as the Serbs knew they would be) or were held in camps that the ICJ notes were detestable in conditions and cleanliness and food/water provided.\n\nThere's little doubt that there was every indication for a genocide in Srebrenica today, and though the Serbian government has never officially said so (likely due to pride), it's a fairly clear-cut thing to most everyone who studies the issue. I highly suggest you look at the events themselves again and you'll see what I mean. However, just looking at the attempt to destroy a part of the population (the military age men, though it is also said that it was all men), it qualifies as a genocide under the Genocide Conventions.\n\nSources not cited in-text:\n\nKILLINGS AT SREBRENICA, EFFECTIVE CONTROL, AND THE POWER TO PREVENT UNLAWFUL CONDUCT\nTom Dannenbaum\nThe International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3 (JULY 2012), pp. 713-728" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22tgvg/can_someone_explain_the_bosnian_genocide/cgqbsvp", "http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr109-199", "http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/cis/en/cis_karadzic_en.pdf", "http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/91/13685.pdf", "http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=1570", "http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/02/26/idUSL26638724._CH_.2400" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbdfua2", "dbdnj9o" ], "score": [ 2, 9 ], "text": [ "Most of the goods were shipped in to France. By 1944 German Naval power was not what it used to be and while there were still attacks on supply convoys the Allies did a decent job of establishing Naval dominance. As they moved forward they also established supply bases on the mainland so as not to stretch supply lines as well as massive logistic backing behind each unit. Especially interesting is their concept of airborne units where the entire unit staff is dropped with supplies.\n\nThere's a very good book about the history of military logistics by Martin van Creveld called Supplying War if your interested in that (_URL_0_).", "Logistics were always a key factor in the planning of Overlord. Prior experience showed that capturing ports was difficult as they were a natural focus for defensive efforts, and once captured extensive work would likely be needed to repair sabotage and demolitions carried out by the defenders. Supplies would therefore have to come over the beaches initially, assisted by the artificial Mulberry harbours, until sufficient ports could be taken and cleared. An initial plan was for US forces to have Cherbourg operating by D+11, with a push into Brittany to take Brest and construct a new facility in Quiberon Bay around D+54. (Figures from *Logistical Support of the Armies: May 1941 - September 1944*, Roland G. Ruppenthal).\n\nAs it was Cherbourg only fell at the end of June, and rather than three days it took three weeks for the port to be cleared; Col. Alvin G. Viney described the damage done to the port as \"... a masterful job, beyond a doubt the most complete, intensive, and best-planned demolition in history.\" (*Cross-Channel Attack*, Gordon A. Harrison). The majority of supplies therefore came over the beaches until August when Cherbourg was fully operational, some minor Normandy ports were opened, and Operation Dragoon started to make southern French ports available. The beaches remained in use, though with less traffic as weather worsened, and as the Allies pushed east along the channel coast heavily fortified ports such as Le Havre and Rouen were besieged, captured and repaired.\n\nAfter initial slow progress, behind initial estimates, the breakout from Normandy happened far quicker than expected; by mid-September, about three months into the campaign, Allied forces were reaching objectives they were only planning to capture after a year. Antwerp was captured at the start of September with its docks intact but could not be utilised until the Scheldt estuary had been cleared, which only happened in November, Market Garden proving something of a distraction in the meantime. Ports in Brittany were scarcely used, with Brest heavily damaged and the planned facility in Quiberon Bay not built; by 1945 Antwerp and the Southern French ports were handling about half the supplies being landed, the rest coming into Cherbourg, Le Havre, Rouen and Ghent (Figures from *Logistical Support of the Armies: September 1944 - May 1945*, Roland G. Ruppenthal). \n\nOf course the supplies had to get to the front line after being landed, and the unexpectedly rapid advance caused major logistical headaches. The French railway system had been heavily targeted by the Allied air forces in the run-up to Overlord to prevent German reinforcements being rapidly deployed, and though plans were in place to reconstruct it these could not keep up with the speed of advance. Improvisation was therefore required, primarily in the form of truck convoys; the most famous route for these was the Red Ball Express from Cherbourg, though others including the White Ball from Le Havre and the ABC from Antwerp were also established.\n\nFor further reading Ruppenthal's *Logistical Support of the Armies* is available online ([Volume I] (_URL_1_) and [Volume II] (_URL_0_)), the planning and execution of Overlord being a major theme.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Logistics-Wallenstein-Patton/dp/0521546575" ], [ "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Logistics2/index.html", "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Logistics1/index.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crywzai" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Yes.\n\nConsumerism is generally linked to the rise of industrial production and wasn't a phenomenon (at least outside the upper class) until the late 19th century. Before then you had such figures as Adam Smith, David Hume, Ricardo, Marx, Quesnay, Colbert etc all writing on economics. Adam Smith is considered the defining founding father of modern economics and industrial era economics based much of its premises on the works of Smith and Ricardo." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccxr42n", "ccxrgqn" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Can anyone actually explain this though! Yes it becomes more porous, yes it has active binding sites. But what is actually occurring here. Are particulates getting trapped? Are aldehyde/ketones groups protonating with particulates? Or what is the actual chemical manipulation of this?", "It's not just charcoal that is used, it is activated charcoal. That is charcoal that has been treated in such a way as to increased it's surface area. Surfaces of materials have a degree of unsatisfied coordination, which is to say that they don't 'see' any atoms on one side of them. Increasing surface area usually means that lots of steps, kinks and edges have been created, these corner sites have an even higher unsatisfied coordination.\n\nFrom wikipedia:\n\n > Activated carbon does not bind well to certain chemicals, including alcohols, glycols, strong acids and bases, metals and most inorganics, such as lithium, sodium, iron, lead, arsenic, fluorine, and boric acid... Carbon monoxide is not well adsorbed by activated carbon.\n\nChemicals can adsorb to a surface through two different processes, chemisorption and physisorption. Physisorp is weaker, it is used along with nitrogen at very low temperatures to measure surface areas of materials. Chemisorp is stronger and can occur at room temperature with certain material/gas combination and would require heating to remove the chemical that as adsorbed.\n\nFrom my understanding activated charcoal takes advantage of chemisorption to bind chemicals to itself (relatively) irreversibly at it's operating conditions, heating it would remove them. What makes it useful is it's high surface area allowing for a large amount of chemical clean up and it's low price." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c30tvcw", "c310q1p", "c30tvcw", "c310q1p" ], "score": [ 13, 4, 13, 4 ], "text": [ "Because photons are light. To pass from the source to the detector, they are travelling through the earth. Light won't do that.", "Does anyone know if they compensated for the difference in the distance to the GPS satellites used to sync the clocks and the differing conditions experienced by signal traveling to each GPS receiver? What about the margin of error in the clocks between different satellites?", "Because photons are light. To pass from the source to the detector, they are travelling through the earth. Light won't do that.", "Does anyone know if they compensated for the difference in the distance to the GPS satellites used to sync the clocks and the differing conditions experienced by signal traveling to each GPS receiver? What about the margin of error in the clocks between different satellites?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ekkypy8", "eklx1uz" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ " > Why are there patterns and fractals in nature?\n\nPatterns and fractals are just the large scale result of simple repeating behaviors. Suppose you have a stem that will grow for a bit and then split, then those stems grow for a bit and split, etc. You end up with a branching pattern from simple base behaviors.\n\n > Is math based off of nature?\n\nSort of, in the most simplistic sense it is a way to model reality. People start counting stones and math adopts the behavior that things don't just spontaneously appear or vanish. You pick up one rock and then pick up another rock you will have \"two\" rocks. At this point of abstraction the system takes off behaving with internally consistent rules which yield results consistent with reality (in many cases).\n\nSo while the internally consistent rules can yield things which have no real counterpart (such as imaginary numbers) the application of those rules can allow the deduction of behaviors of the universe which are not immediately apparent via observation. This is again based on the basic observation that the universe behaves according to internally consistent rules and that the fundamental rules of mathematics are based on easily observed behaviors of the universe.", "Lots of systems are just due to minimization of energy. It's why soap bubbles are round, honeycombs are hexagons, balls roll down hills, nuclear reactions happen in the sun, etc, etc. Systems naturally want to find their minimum every state and organisms want to find the way to do something with the least amount of work." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c42jjxq", "c42jntb", "c42r3ii" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The Philippines were important as a strategic outpost in Asia. The US leaders saw China as a market for their goods and they didn't want the European powers to control it alone. Therefore, a base in Asia was important. McKinley probably thought along these lines too.\n\nEspecially McKinley depicted the annexation also as part of a \"civilizing mission\" and the shouldering of the \"White Man's Burden\". \nDon't forget to read the official *Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation*: _URL_0_", "My understanding is he was sort of painted into a geopolitical corner. He hadn't really intended on taking the Phillipines, but now that he had them he couldn't give them to anyone else (because they'd just use them as a base for competition in China), couldn't give them back to Spain (because we had just beat the pants off of them and it would seem like a really pussy thing to do), and couldn't give them independence (because he thought they were a bunch of ignorant savages who couldn't govern themselves). Plus at that time period pretty much any island in the Pacific was useful as a naval coaling station and storehouse for supplies, much less somewhere like the Phillipines where there was the potential for a functional colony rather than just a lagoon and a beach to pile stuff on.", " From 1895 to 1900 imperialism develops very rapidly for the United States with 1898 becoming a turning point due to territorial acquisition after the Spanish-American War. You also have to understand what was going on in America at the time. The context is important because then you know what factors McKinley was dealing with therefore what he was thinking.\n\n**Policy Context:** There are two competing ideas in policy in the 19th century isolationism vs. the sphere of influence ideology. \n\n**Larger Context:** \n1. *There was a European land grab in the 1890s* meaning that Europeans realized their markets were over-saturated with good. In order to fix this surplus they need to find new people and colonies to sell their goods to. In response European nations begin a frantic land grab in Africa & Asia so that these people will be forced to buy \"mother land\" goods.\n\n2. *Social Darwinism* was used in the imperial argument by justifying colonization. Using the \"survival of the fittest\" mentality one nation could argue that some countries are too weak or unfit to rule themselves so it is the responsibility of the stronger countries to take them. This also argued that if colonies/societies are able to be taken over, then perhaps they weren't meant to survive on their own.\n\n3. *Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis* argued in 1893 that the \"frontier was closed\" meaning that Americans had no where to expand and colonize. Policy makers ask themselves \"how do we maintain the idea of conquest?\" and from that they use the frontier thesis as justification to imperialize and take colonies." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.msc.edu.ph/centennial/benevolent.html" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjkthhn" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "British History Podcast. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "de179ro" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I may be wrong but I think it's a light from a sensor that stops the escalator, moving sidewalk, etc. when it sees that there is something caught in the treads e.g. a pantleg, or a shoelace " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cygufwr", "cygujxt", "cygvrql", "cygwxsu", "cygyyat", "cyhb86l", "cyhc2cl", "cyhgkyz" ], "score": [ 2, 238, 4, 2, 16, 13, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Basically, it depends:\n\nWill we ever see taxes start going up, or will they keep being lowered forever?\n\nMany countries balance their budgets, reduce their debts, and maintain positive ratios. It's possible to keep a healthy but ever increasing debt as well due to inflation. But some countries' debts actually do decline over time.\n\nThese countries have much higher tax rates than the US, which has lowered taxes every 4 years since 1945. If this trend were to reverse to where taxes were in 1980, the budget would be balanced today, without any spending cuts needed.", "We'll likely see the national debt fluctuate up and down as this century goes on. The American economy is pretty robust and very very good at generating income. Without multi-trillion dollar wars to fight, and [hopefully] an upcoming rationalization of our economic, tax and social policies the debt will start to drift downwards.\n\nHowever, it will almost certainly never go away. \n\nThis may sound wacky but - America's national debt is the chain that binds the rest of the world to America.\n\nSo long as the US continues to be THE place to invest money at a risk free rate (ie US Treasuries) the entire world has a vested interest in the US continuing to operate productively. In other words, the rest of the world NEEDS the US to be successful or their own economies will suffer. They need America to keep spending money, because America's economy is the beating heart that is pumping all the blood (re: dollars) through the rest of the world.\n\nAs an example, China's growth is impossible without billions of dollars of US money flowing into the country. That money is so critical that they loan that money back to us at pathetically small interest rates so we can keep buying.\n\nThe US is living in the best possible situation - we have the close to unlimited funds... and the appetite to match.", "Under President Bill Clinton we saw the greatest decline in national debt since the end of WWII. The debt began its post war increase with Presidents Regan and Bush Sr., then a large dip, then after 9/11 it's been on a near steady increase. I'm not sure how we managed to keep the national debt low during the combat operations between WWII and 9/11, but until we stop throwing airplanes full of money into the ninth circle of hell our debt will keep on rising.\n\n_URL_0_", "Probably not. The US has very rarely maintained a budget surplus for very long. What usually happens is that we just make it seem smaller. The debt over time is usually shown as debt as a % of gross domestic product (GDP), which is the value of all the goods and services produced in the country. \n\nSo if the budget deficit (the amount added to the debt) is smaller than the increase in GDP, then the debt as a % of GDP decreases. That's what happened after WWII. During the war, the US took out a ton of debt to pay for it. In the 1950s, GDP growth was fairly high, and the deficit wasn't too bad (there were a couple surpluses), so by 1960, as a % of GDP, it had dropped by about half. But in terms of actual dollars it increased by around 10%.", "why would we want it to? We just need to keep it in check to keep it from going up faster than inflation. As long as that is the case and it is a smaller fraction of the GDP it's all good.", "Generally speaking we'll forever want the debt to be a certain percentage of GDP. As long as GDP grows, debt should grow.\n\nWhy? Because it's the optimal benefit. Growth largely comes from building common platforms that makes growth easier, plus then people building individually from the platforms to go higher, from which a piece is taken off the top to invest back into raising the platform for everybody, and so on.\n\nBuilding infrastructure requires investment. Generally the more you can invest the more you can grow. If you borrow $100 to build a platform that helps to general $10,000 of value, then you are left with $9900 of new value. So do you pay back the $100? Not if you have another opportunity to do the same again. And again. More specifically, if the rate of growth that results from investment exceeds the interest payments on the debt used to make the investment, you are always better off borrowing more.\n\nThe missing piece is risk. If growth stops or reverses, you now you have less income per person (more unemployment, etc.) but you also need to pay the interest on debt and ideally owe less or nothing. This is where stability, robustness, statistics, and projections matter. If you expect long term stagnation, you'd better get your debt low. If it's temporary, you can ride it out. To complicate matters, since growth largely results from investment in that growth (statistically speaking), you may want to take on huge debt to kick start the growth and then use that growth to pay down the new debt... maybe.\n\nSo you'll always want some debt -- not for the sake of the debt but because you are losing out on growth opportunity if you have none. And, as long as over the long term you expect growth or that investment will lead to growth, then you will always be better off growing your debt. The aim would be to maintain the debt as a percentage of GDP, assuming all risk factors remain constant. As GDP grows, debt should grow.\n\nUltimately, you can think of it this way. If you have an investment that pays back 5% per year and you have a line of credit at 3%, you are best to borrow every cent you can and make that investment. Deep in debt, but deep in assets too. And you'll want to maintain this situation forever as you are making money, exponentially, doing nothing. But if the investment starts making less than 3%, you'll want to pull out enough money to immediately pay off all of your debt as now you are losing money. That requires your investment to be liquid (able to pull it out immediately). So you need to know the chances of that happening and how liquid your assets are to pay down that debt. But, suppose if you invest more money you'll actually increase the growth in the investment, then you are better off taking on more debt to do that. Finding the balance between these two principles can be tricky.\n\nAnother way to think about the latter case is education. Taking on massive debt to improve your education or skills will increase your future income and more than pay for that debt, so it's a good idea. (You are investing in your own infrastructural growth.) In fact, continual investment in some education as a percentage of your time will tend to grow your income more than it's cost, but you still need most of your time to produce the value that you are being paid for.\n\nFinally, things change when labour can be completely automated. The more machines can do everything better than humans, money, debt, and economics completely change their meaning. But that's too much for this one post.\n\n", "The debt is nothing. Unfunded, off balance sheet liabilities are the real problem -- like pensions for government employees, social security and Medicaid -- totaling over 200 trillion over the next 30 years. \n\nJust sayin'...", "The federal reserve loans money to the banks at a discounted interest rate. The bank then loans said monies at an increased interest rate. The federal reserve never printed monies for that increased interest rate. Where does this money come from to pay for the extra interest paid? It comes in the form of debt. Our entire system is ran like this so this debt must go somewhere because banks are always lending money and the federal reserve is always giving money to the banks at a discounted rate. With this type of financial system it will only be healthy by constant debt increase. No debt increase=stagnant economy...it is designed to go up forever and if it doesn't then our economy isn't spending enough to keep the money flowing " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "c6bx9ub", "c6bxjr3", "c6bxkwg", "c6bxuxy", "c6bxwhw", "c6bxyog", "c6byay8", "c6bycfj", "c6bygl8", "c6byjsg", "c6bz3w8", "c6bz760", "c6bz9zd", "c6bzghb", "c6bzh9k", "c6bzk1y", "c6bztve", "c6c0zng", "c6c1jv3", "c6c2izn", "c6c4rmh", "c6c6e3g", "c6cd56w" ], "score": [ 23, 38, 12, 14, 26, 6, 3, 9, 12, 5, 2, 3, 36, 3, 4, 7, 9, 2, 11, 3, 9, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "[The first Persian-Greco war. The Battle of Marathon.](_URL_0_). After their victory, the Athenians and their allies did something that they had never done before, turn the site of the battle into a memorial for all the dead to commemorate the bravery the dead had shown. Normally the dead would have been brought back home on their hoplite shield. You know how in the movie \"300\" as King Leonidas is walking to war, his wife/queen(?) tells him to return with his shield or on it; well that is how the Athenians viewed their dead, as far as my research seems to stress. So turning the site of the battle into a memorial site for the dead was pretty much unprecedented.\n\n", "The winter war perhaps? _URL_0_\n\nLittle Finland beating off the might of Soviet Russia. 70k casualties against soviet 323k.", "I am not a professional, but I understand that [the Vietnam War](_URL_0_) ended with the surrender and withdrawal of the anti-Communist forces, who numbered more than triple the Communist forces.", "The Byzantine general Belisarius, against the Vandals and the Ostrogoths in the 500's AD.", "The Battle of Rorke's Drift comes to mind.", "Fidel's army did exceptionally well against Batista's forces.", "There was a story about the SAS I saw... I'm trying to find it... I think it was during the Falklands conflict - SAS dug in and defended against much larger forces... ", "Battle of [thermopylae](_URL_1_) and the naval battle at [Artemisium](_URL_4_) for the second invasion of Greece by Xerxes.\n\nVarious engagements during the Crusades, specifically the first and third. More so during the 3rd under Richard I of England. \n\nThe Battle of [Agincourt](_URL_0_) under Henry the V of England \n\nBattle of [Gravelines](_URL_3_)\n\nNearly every engagement fought by [Cortés](_URL_2_) in South America\n\n\nThe early engagements of the American Civil War also come to mind.\n\nHope that helps. ", "The Emu war", "The Battle of Long Tan.\n\n108 soldiers of D Comany, 6 RAR vs 2500 NVA (with some VC) in the rubber plantation at Long Tan of Phuoc Tuy province South Vietnam.\n\nThe Australians suffered 18 KIA while the NVA/VC suffered 245 KIA, even though a captured diary later in the war showed that the NVA/VC dead numbered nearer 1000. They had a habit of carting away their dead after a battle if they could.", "The [St. Nazaire Raid](_URL_1_). There's even a documentary about it narrated by [Jeremy Clarkson](_URL_0_). ", "Some early 17th century battles involving Polish Winged Hussars heavy cavalry were fairly remarkable.\n\n\nBattle of Kircholm (_URL_0_)\n\nBattle of Kokenhausen (_URL_1_)\n\nBattle of Klushino (_URL_2_)\n\n\n", "Definitely the [Battle of Watling Street](_URL_1_), where 10,000 Romans decisively destroyed and massacred a very confident force of 100,000-200,000 Britons by funneling them packed tight into Roman wedge formations, trapped by their own army. Then as they retreated they were hacked down by cavalry and ran into their families who came to watch the battle, who were then also massacred. \n\nHere's a video about it: _URL_0_", "_URL_0_\n\nbattle of lthe lechfeld... combined german forces annihilating the hungarians that were the dominating warforce of that time", "Prussia had a lot of victories like these in the 18th and 19th centuries.\n\nIn the Seven Year's war, the [battle of Rossbach](_URL_1_) followed by the \n[battle of Leuthen](_URL_0_).\n\nIn the Franco-Prussian war, the [battle of Mars-la-Tour](_URL_2_).", "The Cuban Revolution of 1959", "[The Battle of Kluszyn](_URL_1_) (1610) is a great example of the well-trained and equipped [Winged Hussars](_URL_0_) defeating a force that outnumbered them 5 to 1.", "I'm sure someone else can elaborate more, but many of the \"Fireforce\" operations by (then) Rhodesian forces are pretty classic examples of small disciplined forces defeating larger forces. ", "I'm absolutely shocked that no one has mentioned this yet, but the Spanish Armada's defeat at the hands of the Royal Navy was quite stunning. Also incredibly significant because it broke the back of the Spanish Empire, and started the rise of British Colonization.\n\nAlso, the [Battle of The Teutoburg Forest](_URL_0_). Coincidentally I went and toured the exhibit when I was vacationing in Germany this summer without even realizing the historic significance of the site. Really awesome battle, and a surprisingly thorough museum nestled in the middle of no where.", "[The Lost Battalion](_URL_0_) of the US Army during WW1.", "[The Six-Day War](_URL_0_) was the first thing that came to mind for me. The Israeli forces were less than 1/2 of the Arab forces and yet they still managed to take quite a lot of territory. The only caveat is that this was most likely due to technological differences than discipline differences.", "William Walker _URL_0_\n\nbasically showed up in Nicaragua with 60 people and took over the country. He had Vanderbillt's financials support and was joined by another 300 once he arrived, but still pretty incredible. I'll let you read the details, it's a pretty interesting tale.", "Anything involving New Imperialism and the Gatling Gun." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_War" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Fall_of_Saigon" ], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire#Massacre_of_Cholula", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada#Battle_of_Gravelines", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Artemisium" ], [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgF0R4dhUqk", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kircholm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kokenhausen", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Klushino" ], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-j4UAC0Y4Y", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Watling_Street#battle" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lechfeld" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuthen", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rossbach", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mars-la-Tour" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_hussars#Winged_Hussars", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kluszyn" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoberg_Forest" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Battalion_\\(World_War_I\\)" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster)#Conquest_of_Nicaragua" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfz0dlq", "cfz0lei" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "In the USA, if a publicly traded company is acquired, the purchase price will have to be reported publicly in reports to the SEC. Acquisition of a private company won't have to be, although if it is bought by a public company then it will often show up in their SEC reports, although it may be obfuscated. In the case of a large company like Google or Cisco, they may buy so many companies that you won't be able to find the price of any individual one in their reports. \n \nWhether or not to divulge purchase prices is usually dictated by the purchasing company, although the acquired company could potentially make it a condition of sale. I don't know what laws exist that cover acquisitions/mergers. \n \nThere are a variety of reasons to not want to divulge. But usually it seems to be avoidance of criticism. ", "There are a few reasons:\n\n1. when a private company is acquired it is not _automatically_ revealed. If you acquired a public company both the share price and the total number of shares are known, therefore price is known. There are also SEC regulations that apply and require disclosure.\n\n2. when the acquiring company is also public, they have to publish some aspects of their books. There are lots of reasons they may disclose the price - namely it's going to have a big impact on their reported financials and they don't want to cause confusion amongst investors. However, the deal structure can also make it easier to absorb an acquisition into the books. For example, an asset acquisition vs. a c-corp stock deal can be depreciated on the books, but a C-corp can't be.\n\nAdditionally, the forces that make secrecy more or less important are numerous - if I'm making lots of acquisitions in a space I might be more motivated to keep a deal secret as it hurts my negotiating power in the next deal, or perhaps it reveals to a competitor that I was willing to pay a premium for a company because it was of until-then unknown strategic value to the acquirer etc. \n\nThe \"common sense limits\" are far from common :) Ultimately, the acquiring company will make decisions balancing their responsibilities to shareholders, laws, benefits of secrecy, their established accounting practices etc etc. etc. " ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google", "http://www.quora.com/Ishfaque-Faruk" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c48nntu", "c48wpih" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "He's both technically but in my biased opinion he's a freedom fighter. Though he could have planned the rebellion slightly more I believe, like asking a local slave in the dead of night on what he thought the slaves would do perhaps, but really Brown was never going to achieve the full liberation of the slaves as he wanted to. Regardless he's an inspirational figure.", "It's extremely hard to evaluate him from a modern moral standpoint. On the one hand, he killed a lot of people and essentially sought to start a rebellion against his country. On the other hand, he was rebelling against a patently oppressive system and demonstrated incredible moral courage to do what he believed was right. Few people have literally died for the sake of human freedom, and he is easily one of their number. In some respects, he reminds me of the July 20 plotters in Nazi Germany; they knew they were almost certainly not going to win, but they carried through anyway because they believed what they were doing was right for the sake of humanity.\n\nAt the same time, objectively evaluating his legacy, I think it's safe to say he encouraged the tensions (e.g. fear of slave revolts) which culminated in the Civil War. Without him, a very disastrous war might potentially have been averted. It's difficult to say how things would have turned out. But overall, judging by intentions, I would regard him as a hero; judging him by results, I would say he was actually probably detrimental more than anything else." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdp7t4c" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It's an estimate based on how much data there is left to transfer and how fast it is currently getting done." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxs9uy5", "cxs9v4b" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ " An IPO (initial public offering) means that the company is raising cash by selling some of its shares to the public. after the IPO, yes the company keeps the money to fund their growth and make investments.", "The go to various things, depending on the company and its business... the money does literally go into the company's bank accounts, minus fees paid to investment bank doing the underwriter, etc. They may use it to pay back debt, invest in expansion (factories, new stores, inventory), make acquisitions, pay bonuses to founders, etc." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7gqf6k", "d7h0c64", "d7h3tfh" ], "score": [ 1012, 4, 34 ], "text": [ "As you probably know, the speed at which motion picture film runs through the camera determines its frame rate, given in frames per second (fps). When run through a projector (which you can think of as a backwards camera) at the same speed, the movement looks natural to us. If turned more slowly or quickly, however, it plays out in fast or slow motion, respectively (the terms \"undercranking\" and \"overcranking\" are still used for these techniques, derived from the literal cranking mechanism used to run early cameras and projectors).\n\nObviously this enthralled audiences, and early camera operators took advantage of this at times, but the cliche of its ubiquity happened more by accident. In the early days of the medium, both cameras and projectors were usually operated at a lower speed than the 24fps that later became the industry standard (particularly with the advent of synchronized sound in the late 1920s). I've shown silent films while working as a projectionist, and they're often distributed with instructions to be run at 18fps so that movement shows up normally. If shown at 24fps—which has often been done, either because of insufficient equipment or human error—you would be seeing everything at 1.5x the speed of the actual motion, hence the cliche of old films running in fast motion. \n\n", "Simple\n\nold handheld film cameras didn't have electric motors as there was no sufficiently dense or light portable electric power supply. \n\nso what you're seeing is the speed of the person hand cranking the mechanism or the variable speed of the clockwork motor used in handheld cameras such as the Bolex 16 mm. Battery technology was far too primitive to allow for an electrically driven hand held camera. \n", "Why, when restored, don't they fix this then?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clmotia", "clmpun3" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "[We took part in the largest protest in human history](_URL_0_), in 1995 the Million Man March had between 400,000 and 837,000 people, in 1993 the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation had between 300,000 and 1,000,000 people, in 1992 the \"Save our Cities! Save our Children!\" protest had 150,000 people, in 1989 the March for Women's Lives had 500,000. The list goes on, back through history. What are you basing your question's premise on? A guess?", "We have historically had far larger protests as Roflmoo has pointed out. \n\nTo add to his list Occupy Wallstreet protests had 20,000 people in New York and several other cities with well over 1,000 people. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dy1yh3y", "dy1ytnd" ], "score": [ 6, 6 ], "text": [ "Part of the problem is we have a sample size of 1. Basically impossible to draw hard conclusions from. \n\nOne key metric I've seen talked about is the presence of free oxygen. Oxygen is very reactive, if it is present in large quantities in molecular form it seems reasonable to infer that a process like life is creating it (e.g. photosynthesis). \n\nLiquid water also seems to be an important pre-requisite, as life needs a solvent in which to mix all its magical molecules. \n\nIf we spotted a planet at the correct temperature for liquid water that also had large amounts of molecular oxygen people would get very, very excited. ", "It's an interesting question you ask... \n\nBut... there will NEVER be a 100% confidence-probability that an alien planet will be biologically-perfectly suitable for humans (as we exist today), unfortunately! \n\nWhen it comes to real life, in the real world, you can forget about the idea of \"100% guaranteed\". The real universe doesn't come with 100% guarantees of the type you are seeking. \n\nThe term \"100% guaranteed\" is best left with sketchy late night advertised products! \n\nFor example: it's actually considered unethical for doctors and lawyers to use phrasing such as \"100% guaranteed\", because nothing can ever be 100% assured to happen. \n\nSo ya... again: such a test, and such a planet will NEVER exist. \n\n--------------------------------\n\nALSO: \n\nIt's worth noting that Earth is barely habitable to humans... and we evolved here! \n\nOut of nearly 400,000 plant species on planet Earth, barely 100 of them (give or take) are edible to humans! And that's only after countless centuries of gradual cultivation of that plant species to make it more edible for humans. \n\nThat means over 99.9% of plants (on our own home world) will kill us, if you try to eat them in sufficient quantities! \n\nAnd of the tiny few that are eatable and nutritious to us, you can still die by eating them, due to contamination by bacteria and viruses. So even the edible plants can kill us. \n\nOverall, life on Earth is VERY hostile to humans... let alone an alien planet. \n\n--------------------------------\n\nNEXT: \n\nAs for ranking the habitability of alien planets, for humans, the best testing factors to consider will likely be:\n\n--------------------------------\n\n1) Its temperature, \n\n2) Its location in the solar system (warm, habitable zone),\n\n3) Its gravity level,\n\n4) Its day/night cycle,\n\n5) Its geological stability,\n\n6) The stability of its star,\n\n7) The composition of its atmosphere.\n\n--------------------------------\n\nNOTE: Water is, of course, also highly important. But if all the other 7 factors above are there, except for water, then water can \"easily\" be brought in from other parts of the alien-solar-system. \n\n(I say \"easily\" because if we have the technology to make it to another solar system, then shifting water around that other solar system would be trivial.) \n\nSo the presence of water isn't crucial, as many might initially think (provided the other factors listed above are favorable). \n\n--------------------------------\n\nIn order to determine these factors we need LARGE telescope arrays to be launched into space. \n\nSpaceX and Blue Origin might be able to launch those telescope-arrays for us, in the near future, cheaply. (Hopefully!).\n\nUntil we have those telescopes, then forget it: we will not be able to determine a planet's habitability ranking. \n\n--------------------------------\n\nFINALLY... \n\nas for the bonus question you asked, involving some type of \"self destruct\", unfortunately... I don't understand your question at all! \n\nI think perhaps my brain is too foggy this morning, and I'm still too sleepy! But ya, I don't know what you are asking there with that last question?\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3rbtvg" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Cheese, that is, REAL, unprocessed cheese (although some types of pasteurized cheese included as well,) is naturally very pungent. Cut up a bit of Brie or aged white cheddar and tell me this isn't so. If we humans think cheese is very pungent, imagine how much more so dogs would be able to smell it. Dogs tend to have a much more potent sense of smell than we humans, since before dogs had been domesticated, their sense of smell was essential for hunting down their food. \n\nNaturally, regardless of whether or not a dog would recognize that this powerful scent is coming from tasty food, dogs would be curious about the origin of the odor. Some dogs might not even need to witness a human or other animal eating the cheese to consider licking the strange, odorous object, if given the opportunity, to learn more about it. Once licking it, they may discover that it's tasty to them and consequently eat it. \n\nTo some dogs, it may be habitual as you say--like Pavlov's dog. Every time a dog smells this piquant scent, he tends to see a human eating the object the smell is originating from. Eating means food. Food is good to eat.\n\nHowever, even if a dog recognizes the cheese to be a compound originating from lactose, but does not first see a human or other dog/animal eating it does not mean they will brush it off as \"not food.\" This misconception people have that humans are the only mammals that continue to consume milk into adulthood has absolutely no basis in fact. \n\nCliche as it may sound, put a bowl of cow's milk you bought from the supermarket in front of a cat who has neither consumed processed milk nor seen anyone else consume it and tell me she won't drink it. I'm not promising she won't get sick, but 9/10 times, she will drink it, anyway. (And yes, I have tried this numerous times before hearing you're not supposed to do that, but the cat never got sick. Lol)\n\nAnd it's not just cats. Many animals will drink milk if put in front of them because animals know it is rich in fat. From an evolutionary standpoint, fats are a delicacy since they are rich in energy and have only recently become so readily available to us that we haven't been able to turn off that insatiable craving for them yet. \n\nTL;DR \n1. Cheese is pungent, dogs have a good sense of smell. \n2. We're not the only ones who like milk. Milk is rich in fat, and fat is tasty because we need it." ] }

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