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vblagoje

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lfqa

like 16

{ "a_id": [ "e0pf536", "e0pgybi", "e0phaw7" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Context is important. I'm not surprised to see a hot dog at a hot dog stand. I'd be surprised if I opened my wallet to pay for a hot dog and it only had a hot dog inside.\n\nI'm not surprised to see beach clothing at a beach, but would be concerned if I'm about to go into surgery and the surgeon shows up in a speedo.", "Take your beach underwear and go to a mall nowhere near an ocean. People will still freak out. Like others has said, context. ", "No exact reason other than cultural norms and fashion.\n\nUnderwear evolved slowly just kike the swimsuit and bikini did, just at different paces.\n\nBut I guess is there is an arbitrary line, similar to a quote from a famous supreme court case\n\n\"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [\"hard-core pornography\"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...\"\n\n\nKeep the idea of the words open and then compare that to the difference between underwear and swimwear (not pornography)\n\nSo the idea is there is such a fine line between a bikini and underwear that you have to see it to discern between the two sometimes." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "djaet4m" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Pretty much, yeah. Your brain can adapt pretty fast. An experiment with upside down glasses revealed that it takes a few weeks for the brain to adjust. The person's brain literally adapted to it, and his vision flipped itself rightside up.\n\nYour brain just got used to a slightly blurred vision and adjusted accordingly. Now you give it super sharp vision, which is kinda like seeing everything slightly magnified. You'll adjust fairly quickly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ch914vf", "ch91608", "ch916x7" ], "score": [ 6, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Same reason water stays in a bucket when you swing it over your head. Centrifugal force.", "Because pilots use banking turns. They bank the plane (making the wings vertical) at the same time as they increase the pitch (raise the nose). If a skilled pilot does both at once, then you won't notice the banking, because your own inertia, pressing against the plane and resisting the acceleration is approximately equal to what you experience under normal gravity. ", "Youve never been in a plane with wings semi vertical. Commercial airliners only turn at 30degree bank. And they yaw very slowly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4fb6fm" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There's really a ton of misinformation about this. \n\nPeople will tell you that nicotine releases dopamine because it's pleasurable, or it's pleasurable because it releases dopamine, but neither of those is very accurate at all.\n\nFirst off, there is no such thing as your \"dopamine level\". Neurotransmitters are not like hormones. Hormones get released into your body's general circulation, and if there's more testosterone (for example) in your system, then testosterone receptors throughout your body will get stimulated more.\n\nBut with neurotransmitters, one group of neurons can be using neurotransmitter X to send a particular message to some other group of neurons, and a different group of neurons (even in the same area) could be using the same neurotransmitter to communicate with some other group of neurons about something completely different.\n\nAs for nicotine:\n\nNicotine blocks nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter, and nicotinic ACh receptors are a subtype of that receptor, which is also present in most of your muscles). \n\nONE of the systems in your brain that uses dopamine, the mesolimbic system, is related to motivation / goal directed behavior (this is often misrepresented as being a \"reward system\" but that's quite wrong). This is often called a dopaminergic system, but that is still misleading, because only a small part of the system is dopaminergic. As with most neural circuits, it's composed of many different groups of neurons that send signals to each other using various neurotransmitters, including glutamate, GABA, dopamine, acetylcholine, and others. \n\nSome parts of the system have nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, and nicotine affects these.\n\nELI5:\n\nThere are systems in your brain that help govern goal directed behavior. A small part of one of these systems is dopaminergic, but most of it uses other neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine. Nicotine blocks acetylcholine receptors, changing the behavior of the system." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4z7oyv", "c4z9otx" ], "score": [ 8, 6 ], "text": [ "Blind people simply can’t see. They will never understand colour, or what it means for things to look beautiful, but they still have their other senses.\n\nDon’t underestimate how good sound is for building up an understanding of the space you are standing in. Blind people can also touch things and easily understand their shape. Without vision you can build up a pretty good idea of the world around you. If you were born blind then you will have learnt naturally how to utilise your other senses to understand the world and would not need to be taught by someone else how to understand it.\n\nMost people who are considered legally blind are not fully blind, they can see to some extent. Of course this is not true for all blind people, but the majority of blind people have some vision. ", "This is called the Molyneux problem in philosophy and you can read up on it here _URL_0_ \n\nThe short answer is that people who are blind from birth or early childhood do not have a visual conception of the world. Those whose sight is restored in later life can not recognise objects by sight alone at first and this is a skill that must be learnt. \n\nThere is a related thought experiment on perceptions of colour called 'Mary's room' _URL_1_ which postulates that no matter how well someone may understand the concept of a sense, they can't actually understand what it is to experience it unless they themselves do so. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molyneux%27s_Problem", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_room" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cir5up1" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "In England, it would depend on a couple of things.\n\nIf the real property were held in fee tail (Entailed) a person would need the agreement of the heir to break the fee tail.\n\nIf a tail could not be broken, the ancestor/father could leave all of his personal property,money or unentailed real property any way that he chose. Theoretically an heir could inherit a parcel of land/estate and have no financial means to keep it up.\n\nAn heir could voluntarily abjure a title. _URL_1_.\n\nI am not aware of a means to force an heir out unless the parent filed a writ to have him declared a bastard. Until the 20th century bastards could not inherit a title or take from a parent who died intestate.\n\nOn teh Continent, in what we call France and some of teh German principalities, Sa;ic Law governed civil law issues including inheritance.\n\nI am less familiar with Salic Law provisions\n\n_URL_0_\n\n" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dgz6ak3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hangovers, in ELI5 terms, are a specific case of dehydration. Caffeine is a diuretic, meaning it makes you pee more, which doesn't help the dehydration causing you to feel like crap.\n\nHowever, hangovers leave you feeling sluggish, tired and achey. Caffeine is a stimulant, which helps to perk your body up, helping you overcome several of the \"worn down\" symptoms of the hangover.\n\nCaffeine also makes veins constrict a bit, which slows blood flow especially in the brain, which means it can do a little to help with headaches." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chimhyo", "chimkow", "chimq7a", "chims5e", "chin1tq", "chin225", "chingiw", "chinjl4", "chins2h", "chintsa", "chinvv1", "chiocon", "chiox3p", "chip8z7", "chipand", "chipjlr", "chipkuv", "chiporn", "chipqmx", "chipvhh", "chiq1fj", "chiq3it", "chiq4i1", "chiqafh", "chiqp2a", "chiqsxo", "chiqtud", "chiqu4z", "chir4zt", "chirc9n", "chirwpw", "chirx5n", "chis43f", "chiserz", "chisf4w", "chisqdw", "chit4d8", "chitnan", "chitqny", "chitx0b", "chiu3g6", "chiu5eo", "chiu8nx", "chiubuj", "chiuevf", "chiuj0k", "chiujw5", "chiukkk", "chiv9t1", "chivqba", "chivutr", "chiw1fd", "chiwolm", "chiwp3d", "chiwqxs", "chiwr4l", "chiwt68", "chiwwwl", "chix0h9", "chixigg", "chixvvq", "chiy05z", "chiy7gl", "chiyg11", "chiyzk8", "chizfmo", "chizfmv", "chj0dnz", "chj0f1r", "chj0icc", "chj0l7b", "chj1199", "chj1bb5", "chj1t4s", "chj21fx", "chj2ip8", "chj3b36", "chj3xim", "chj3ysr", "chj4m7x", "chj4w1f", "chj526u", "chj5zxy", "chj6b4t", "chj785j", "chj7r8u", "chj7swu", "chj8djl", "chj8kbu", "chj8zfn", "chj9406", "chj9as6", "chj9rhx", "chj9ypl", "chjbe5u", "chjbwf2", "chjc63e", "chjczcb", "chjestn", "chjex6b", "chjeyr9", "chjfe83", "chjgocf", "chjhehb", "chjhei0", "chji93y", "chjigex", "chjoowd", "ci1h9zp" ], "score": [ 3, 10, 216, 56, 3, 2898, 40, 21, 89, 1244, 2, 2, 5, 4, 8, 2, 4, 2, 2, 5, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 56, 8, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 16, 2, 2, 159, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 6, 5, 3, 3, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 16, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There are though. A lot of bacteria helps you digest stuff. Also, I'm in total belief that a lot of non-microbial diseases are actually failed attempts at evolution...", "There are no good diseases because the definition of the word disease is typically something regarded as abnormal and harmful.", "Well, diseases are generally defined as anything which impairs normal functioning. So a \"positive disease\" doesn't make any sense. \n\nThere are beneficial bacteria though. There are very few cases of viruses being directly beneficial though, although I just read about a case where they are helpful for wasps who use them to as a means to defend larva against the immune system of the caterpillar they are using as a walking food source. Not sure if that's really \"helpful\". It's obviously harmful to the caterpillar, but it repopulates within the wasp.", "Well by definition, a disease is something that has a negative impact on you.\n\nAnyways, if there was some big good quality that could be added to our bodies just with the introduction of a few bacteria/viruses, evolution probably would've already \"figured it out\". In fact, biology seems to be full of examples of organisms basically incorporating other creatures into their larger whole. \n\nSome biologists believe that mitochondria (which are a key component in our cells, providing much of the chemical energy that keeps us alive) originally evolved as a separate form of bacteria, before being \"hijacked\" by larger cells and becoming an integral part of much of life for billions of years. \n\n", "If i remember well, Richard Dawkins said something \"a bit related\" in \"The Selfish Gene\".\nSnails can be parasited by something that causes their shell to be more resistant. You would think that it's a good thing, but if it were, then natural selection would have produced a pressure on snails to develop such a solid shell without requiring the parasite.\nIn fact, while the shell is more solid, it's also heavier, and so the parasite does more harm than good to its host: the snail cannot reproduce as much as before. But the parasite doesn't care, because its way to reproduce is totally unrelated to the way the snail reproduces, so they have different, incompatible objectives.\nIf, to reproduce, the parasite needed that the snail reproduces as well, they would become more and more dependent from each other, to the point that they would form a single entity.\n", "Yes, there are good diseases. For instance, retroviruses and bornaviruses account for 8-9% of the human genetic code, and the same is true for most mammals and birds. One pretty useful thing retroviruses help with is the formation of the placenta and differentiation early in fetal development. These genes have been proven to come from multiple strains of human endogenous retrovirus (herv), and suppressing them slows and hinders development and the ability to latch onto the uterine wall. Just one example of a beneficial virus, and 8-9% of our DNA comes from them.\n\nThere are a surprising number of retrovirus genes that protect and aid the development of the fetus. It is kinda strange, but it fascinates me. ", "The whole principle of vaccination was discovered because Edward Jenner investigated the idea that a relatively benign illness called cowpox made a person immune to smallpox (which is often deadly). Seems pretty beneficial to me.\n\nThe microorganisms associated with disease don't particularly have your interests at heart so that's why they'll often cause disease. As people have mentioned in other posts there are plenty of microorganisms in the human body that do beneficial things (when your interests and the interests of a microorganism happen to align), in some animals there are separate microorganisms that do things that are downright essential, in these cases we don't call the effect these things have on the body \"diseases\". If you're interested in that kind of stuff there was a [TED talk](_URL_0_) about the potential medical relevance of our natural fauna.", "You shouldn't have used the word \"disease\", you are only getting bad answers :(", "A *'disease that is good for us'* would probably just be called a *'symbiosis.'*\n\nThe most straightforward example is your gut flora, where the 'infection' helps you digest your food.", "There are. We just don't call them diseases.\n\nBiologically, there's little difference between the bacteria that causes illness and the bacteria that works in your gut to help digest food or on your skin to help remove impurities. The difference is that if a bacteria isn't causing any harm to the body (at least, on an evolutionary timescale), the body (generally) won't fight it off. That means the bacteria can stick around, grow, and populate. The bacteria needs a food source of its own, so it starts eating something in the body that the body has no use for. This may then play a beneficial function for the body.\n\nOr, put more simply: digestion is a \"disease\" caused by bacteria.", "Diseases are by definition bad.\n\nIf you're talking about bacteria/microbes doing good things, there are tonnes. Only 1/10 of the cells in your body are human, the rest are bacteria in different forms. They keep you alive and functioning. \n\nNot to mention, scientists are now using some diseases to battle other diseases. ", "Best example would be Escherichia Coli, who, while a disease if they get into your blood or your stomach, are very important to have in your large intestine. _URL_0_\n\nThey basically just chill there, eat leftovers, build vitamins for you and compete for resources with harmful other bacteria, which helps to keep them out.\n\nSo no superpowers, just a significantly more healthy digestion, brought about by something that can also cause a disease.", "There's a news article going around right now about doctors who've cured a woman's cancer with a high dose of the measles virus: _URL_0_\n\nOtherwise, I would wager most people who have mental abnormalities or forms of autism that confer benefits such as remarkable memory or mathematics skill wouldn't be in a rush to cure their \"disease.\"", "_URL_0_\n\nStraight from /r/news", "The toxoplasma gondii parasite makes women more randy. I suppose one could argue that's a good thing?\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt also increases the likelihood of suicide, so that's kinda not so good...", "Sickle cell (which sucks) helps prevent malaria. \n\nPlease understand this is a vague answer and there is a lot involved. The trait, not the disease...\n\n_URL_0_", "Actually there are a lot of diseases that do confer benefits, read the book \"Survival of the Sickest\".\n\nFor example, Hemacromatosis (Basically, your body produces way too much iron) is good protection against the plague.\n\nSickle Cell Anemia protects against malaria.", "Some mental disorders can be beneficial in the right context, and it's not hard to see the benefits rise to the level of evolutionary forces. People who have Bipolar Disorder can be brilliant, fearless, and unstoppable when they are on the upswing. People who are [hypomanic can be seen as \"the life of the party.\"](_URL_0_) Depression, whether by itself or as part of bipolar disorder, can be crippling, of course, but there is a bleak realism to mild depression that serves as an antidote to over-optimistic or unrealistic plans.\n\nThis shouldn't be seen as a Just So story, however. Bipolar Disorder is likely also prevalent in humans because people in manic moods can sometimes be hypersexual, heedless of risk. That's going to leave some babies behind. \n\n", "Gut bacteria. Also, disease by definition means abnormal and almost always means bad. Good health and proper bodily function is considered normal, so the word choice of your question is flawed.\n\nBut ya, Gut Bacteria is good, even if it might in different circumstances or for different organisms become a disease. Also, all of the smart genetic stuff the top poster said.", "I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that getting hookworms could possibly protect against severe allergies. Radiolab had an intersesting show on it: _URL_0_", "First thing that came to mind was Botulism and Botox. I wouldn't get it, but I guess some people like it. \n\nSecond thing was the bacteria present in yogurt and other food that help digestion.", "There are viruses that do good stuff!!!\n\nThere are non pathogenic viruses used in gene therapy as vectors. They enter and replicate in certain body cells in order to inhibit/excite certain proteins for positive health benefits.\n\nIn other words, the bad stuff the virus done is turned off but they can still trigger your body do good stuff like regrow important cells and tissues. ", "You could also consider the bacteria that live in your intestines a disease, but without them you couldn't properly digest your food.", "Dis-ease. The word itself means something that makes you feel bad. If you felt bad, you'd study it to find a way to not get it again. If it made you feel good you wouldn't call it dis-ease, you'd just think you were having a really good day.", "There is a mutation in the cd4 receptor of a person's cells that confers HIV resistance. It's not a disease but it's definitely a mutation and not 'normal'\n\nAlso sickle cell anaemia was pretty much the standard example of a disease that could benefit humans.\n\n", "I have \"Gilbert's Syndrome\" which means that my Kidneys don't process Bilirubin properly. This means A) when I get sick my eyes turn yellow (jaundice) and B) I have lower chance of getting certain kinds of Heart disease. \n\n\ntl;dr I can change colors and am resistant to one of the leading killers of American males.", "Well your mitochondria and chloroplasts in plants are two pretty food examples of good diseases. ", "_URL_0_\n\nCheck the above link out, grabbed from trending post on Reddit.\n\n", "I think most people are doing a good job of explaining how there are beneficial viruses and bacteria that are integral to human survival. \n\nBut I think they're missing the heart of OP's question, which is: why aren't there microbes or viruses that give us extraordinary (as in, not subtle) advantages over other people if we catch them. \n\nAs far as the why, I think it's just because the genetic lottery hasn't produced anything like this yet. You've gotta remember, the fitness of the virus or microbe has to benefit before it benefits the host. And second, if such a disease did pop up, the entire population would flock to infected people to get it themselves. \n\n**Interesting Note**: Anyone immune to said anti-disease would, interestingly in this case, be at a DISadvantage and they'd be considered less fit, evolution-wise, if this meant they couldn't have as many thriving offspring.", "Alright kid listen up. Viruses are usually bad. It's not their fault. They are only bad because the sole purpose for them to exist is to make more of themselves. To do that, they need to steal the stuff in your body to do it, also known as your bodies cells. They take really bad care of your stuff(your cells) and they use it until they break it without paying you back. When they get out of control, they will break all your stuff and make you sick or kill you, although sometimes, they don't really hurt your stuff very much at all, but your body gets so angry that the viruses are using your stuff, it will go on a rampage trying to punish the viruses which will cause much more damage to your stuff then if the virus just was allowed to do its thing.\n\nOne last thing, we also have problems with bacteria and other microorganisms trying to eat our cells, or trying to steal our food, or trying to live inside of us without an invitation. Bacteria cells are very small, compared to a red blood cell, a bacteria is like a person standing in a football field. Viruses are even smaller, compared to a bacteria, a virus is like a person standing between TWO football fields. The best part is that viruses come in all varieties, and they like to steal or highjack the stuff from bacteria or other microorganisms just as much as they like to steal your stuff too. They all look the same to a virus when your that small.\n\nIn the future, we may be able to specifically train viruses to attack only specific bacteria or other harmful microorganisms or even cancer cells that are making us sick. Once they are done, and the harmful organism/cancer is dead, they will die off as well, leaving us alone to get well again.\n\n\nThe end.\n\nFor more information, they did a really good podcast episode of This Week in Virology on this subject, called \"Viruses that make you better.\" \nCheck it out here:\n_URL_0_", "I was just reading about a woman infested with cancer that was miraculously saved by a virus infusion:\n\n_URL_0_", "Gastro-enteritis is good for my weight loss.", "There are plenty of conditions which result from your body simply fighting off that which is foreign, wherein the foreign agent is not itself directly harmful. Your immune system attacks that which it doesn't recognize as being part of you. The flu doesn't make you sweat; your body does that while trying to combat the virus. In something so fine-tuned and perfectly balanced as the human body, with all of its systems working in more or less harmonious accord despite decades of what amounts to the average person's complete disregard of their health, a sudden and unexpected change is more likely to produce negative effects than positive ones. Our bodies have evolved to fend off change as a result.\n\nThere are diseases which manifest certain positive side effects, as well as disease \"combos\" which do likewise. A brain tumor in the right place can result in heightened moods and enhanced creativity, for instance. That being said, they're still likely to result in your death, your disability... at the very least, your temporary discomfort.", "I have Thalassemia which means my red blood cells are smaller than normal, but with that I am immune to Malaria, so I got that going for me, which is nice", "We constantly ingest thousands, maybe millions of types of bacteriophages that infect bacteria within us. Some are lytic, others lysogenic, but one way or another, these viruses not only change the genome of the bacterial species (for instance, the botulinum toxin is encoded by a specific gene that was provided by an ancient bacteriophage.\nAs mentioned elsewhere in this thread, top comment from SharktoothTony, acknowledges the presence of viruses that we've managed to notice clinically and the many more than have accidentally contributed to our coding genome.\nAlso check out r/science! Measles virus just was rewired to kill multiple myeloma! Totally cool, and almost identical to the plot of I am Legend...", "Some people have good examples of some instances that viruses and bacteria that can be helpful, but I feel like some are missing the point of your question a little bit.\n\nI took it to mean \"Why don't I ever get infected by something and feel better in some way (instead of getting sick)?\"\n\nAll pathogens are, in some way, using your body's resources. Viruses exploit your cellular machinery to make new virions. That takes energy, DNA base pairs, amino acids, and other resources that your cell needs to survive. The majority of viruses need to burst the cell on the way out, as well. \n\nAt best, the effect will be minimal, but sometimes it can be life threatening. HIV, for example kills T cells, which leave you immunocompromised. \n\nI have been taught that newer, deadlier viruses are that way because they are more poorly adapted to humans (such as swine flu, or any other virus that has recently made the jump to human hosts). A virus does not \"want\" to kill you immediately, because then you will not be able to spread it for very long. The better adapted viruses will keep you infected for quite a long time (without being cleared or killing you) so you are releasing a ton of infections particles.\n\nThat was a bit of a tangent, but long story short. Any pathogen will need to grow and exploit the resources some part of your body needs. A pathogen is a parasite, so the vast majority will hurt you and it is a rare case for it to do more good than harm.", "If you think of bacteria that causes disease... there's lots of good bacteria in our stomachs and women's genitals.\n ^^^What!? ^^^It's ^^^true!", "There are tons of bacteria that live in your body that you actually would die without. Thats why antibiotics can really screw you up by killing them off. There's even a theory that the power generating mitochondria in your own cells started out as an independent bacterial organism. There's lots of good-guy microbes, we just take them for granted.", "If they are good for us, they wouldn't be diseases, would they. Or put another way. Look in any person's gastrointestinal tract, and it's full of zillions of microbes, including multiple flavors of e-coli that help digest food. Without intestinal flora, we would die.", "There is whole sickle cell anemia and malaria deal. The malaria parasite infects healthy red blood cells. Sickle cell anemia makes sickle shaped cells. Think crescent moon vs. full moon. \nMalaria is deadly and so is sickle cell anemia. But nature has done something awesome. If someone only possesses one part of the sickle cell anemia code, only some of their cells are affected. Malaria cannot infect these cells. These people stay alive because the SCA won't kill them and the malaria parasite cannot infect there. So, bam, beneficial disease!\nHighly prevalent in Africa. ", "Mitochondria in all of your cells is hypothesized to have originally been bacteria that lived inside eukaryotic cells and carried out functions that the eukaryote couldn't.", "Herpes virus has been know to attack cancer", "You know what? This is a great question. Why don't we have any temporary diseases or symptoms that turn us better than normal? Just imagine the possibilities.\n\n\"I can't come to work today.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"I've got one of those 24 Hour bouts of super strength. So I'm going to go fight some crime.\"\n\n\"Okay, get normal soon.\"", "I like everybody giving you discussion on the things viruses and bacteria do that are good for us, but the answer is simpler than that. The term \"disease\" implies \"dis-ease\". It's something that will affect your daily life negatively. All these viruses that are being turned into cures, vaccines, treatments, etc. are no longer diseases.\n\nIt just comes down to terminology, really.", "Some diseases like Mumps actually protect us from specific Cancers, there are also observations that after Measles a child's artistic ability would leap forward. These diseases are doing more than we realize.\n\nThe immune system is linked to the nervous system and the brain, so if our immune system is improved by fighting off a disease naturally then it also helps our body in other ways that are less obvious.\n\n**Benefits of Measles (Lancet)**\n\n_URL_0_", "There are some infections that have positive benefits on the body. For example, oncolytic viruses. These viruses help our body find and destroy potentially malignant tumors.Oncolytic viruses use overexpressed surface antigens on tumor cells as receptors for endocytosis. Once inside the cell, these viruses elicit an immune response. Since tumors are quite effective at evading the immune system, the viral infection is actually quite benficial.\nCool concept if you ask me", "The bacteria and viruses that do good things for us are permanently incorporated into our systems. Our bodies keep the things that make us stronger. ", "I read that sickle cell anemia come with resistance to malaria?", "If you're heterozygous for sickle cell anemia you have a much lower chance of getting malaria\n\nIt's know as heterozygous advantage", "There are plenty of examples of viruses and prokaryotes doing good things for us eukaryotes. For example, there is evidence to suggest that mitochondria and chloroplasts were once free-living prokaryotes adopted by our cells as symbionts. Going from getting our ATP from substrate level phosphorylation alone to achieving oxidative phosphorylation may well have seemed like a superpower in its day, to say nothing of the acquisition of autotrophy.\n\nThere is also a newer school of thought known as the Hologenome Theory of evolution. Put forth by Zilber-Rosenberg et al some years ago, it holds that the \"holobiont\" (an organism and its associated microbes) is the unit of selection in evolution, not the organism alone. For example, two evenly matched termites have different gut flora, one that breaks down cellulose better. Who will survive to reproduction? Or, take amphibians for example. They are being decimated worldwide by the pathogenic chytrid fungus, but some happen to have \"good\" cutaneous microbes that inhibit the fungus on the animal's skin before it can cause disease. These bacteria are species that happen to be picked up in the animal's environment, and the \"power\" they confer is simply the ability to not die. In these cases, the \"good\" done for the organism by bacteria would simply be seen as a competitive advantage on an evolutionary timescale. \n\nSo, some bacteria may have given us (meaning eukaryotes) oxidative phosphorylation, photosynthesis, and some may have conferred various evolutionary advantages upon us as symbionts. But what about viruses? There has been some indication that large chunks of our DNA may be viral in origin, and among bacteria, research has shown the temperate bacteriophages may inadvertently transfer genes between hosts (for example, antibiotic resistance). So there's good evidence out there that viruses have moved DNA around between organisms, sometimes to the organism's gain. \n\nSo overall, the benefits conferred upon eukaryotes by prokaryotes and viruses are real, but are often subtle and realized over an evolutionary timescale. The sort of cellular restructuring and morphological changes needed for a virus to confer \"super strength\" (I say virus because that could only be achieved - in wildly speculative theory - through some sort of nucleic acid introduction) would be so dramatic as to be wholly implausible. \n\nSo, \"bad\" microbes cause \"disease\" and \"good\" microbes simply confer evolutionary advantages. Your \"superpower\" is simply an improved cellular process (oxidative phosphorylation) or the ability to survive and fight another day. It's not as awesome as \"coming down with a case of super strength\", as stated below, but next time you have to move quickly to escape something that means you harm, I bet you'll be glad that you're not relying solely on substrate-level phosphorylation to get your ATP.\n\nTL;DR: Bacteria and viruses can help eukaryotes, but the benefits are often subtle and realized over the evolutionary timescale.\n\nDisclaimer: I don't have access to go through all my PDFs and get sources for all the theories/studies I referenced right now. If anyone wants further reading or citations for any point above, ask for it in the comments and I'll get to it later. ", "Short answer could be found on the front page just now: _URL_0_", "Both [Mitochondria and Cholorplasts](_URL_0_) are thought to be bacteria who originally tried to infect the cell, and instead gained resources from the cell, lost their flagella and traded resources for energy. (I'm not sure if that's the exact theory but that's what I remember from the top of my head.) Also, to back this up, both of these structures have their own DNA.", "I've always been convinced viruses are responsible for transmitting beneficial mutations between species. Totally explains the eye-thing.", "There ARE good bacteria. Since they are good, they are not called diseases.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis link was literally underneath this question on the front page....\n\nAlso a lot of diseases do provide benefits. For instance Sickle Cell Anemia provides a level of immunity against malaria.\n\nYou can find with a lot of virus etc that whilst the general effects on a person might not be great there is something they DO protect of fight off for us.", "There is a spider (Brazilian wandering spider) that will give you a prolonged erection if it bites you, I am pretty sure this would be classified as good.\nSource: _URL_0_", "If it was beneficial, it wouldn't be a disease.\n\nYour body is however, swarming with bacteria that are good for you. Staph lives on your skin, Strep lives in your throat. E. Coli lives in your gut, and without it you wouldn't be able to get vitamin K.", "There are. We have billions of bacteria in our gut that help us digest food. Without them, everyone would shit...well, like I do... :(\n\nDon't laugh at me, I have colitis.\n\nOk you can laugh.", "Sickle-cell anemia makes you immune to malaria. Does that count?", "It's called a disease because it puts you at the opposite of ease. IF ti helped, it'd be named something else :P", "So this was also on the front page: _URL_0_\n\nLooks like someone already posted it but this is reddit so, I reposted it for you.", "Over 80% of bacteria are helpful, and/or indifferent, to the human body. E. coli is one of them, without which the digestive system would not be able to function. Its just that everyone has his/her own strain of E.Coli, which is completely toxic to any other person.", "Sickle cell anemia protects against malaria.", "[Eero Mäntyranta](_URL_0_) was a Finnish skier who won multiple Olympic Gold medals. Per Wikipedia:\n\n > Mäntyranta had primary familial and congenital polycythemia (PFCP) causing an increase in red blood cell mass and hemoglobin due to a mutation in the erythropoietin receptor (EPOR) gene, which was identified following a DNA study done on over 200 members of his family, as reported in 1993. **This condition results in an increase of up to 50% in the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, a large advantage when participating in endurance events.**", "The word literally means 'to make more difficult'. Something that did us good would not be a dis-ease. That's why.", "Sickle cell anemia will [protect](_URL_0_) you from malaria.", "This has probably been mentioned but, back in the day, mitochondria...", "Reminds me of a Red Dwarf episode where a luck virus helps the crew get out of a tricky situation. \n\n_URL_0_", "We are colonized with millions of bacteria and viruses that help maintain our health. We don't call them diseases because a disease is specifically defined as something harmful. I've worked in a micro lab and when we culture a sample - we are looking for too much of one thing indicating it has taken over or something that shouldn't be there at all. If we find all kinds of bugs - they're probably good for you. A gigantic simplification but generally correct", "Another lens might be this: the word itself essentially means \"lack of ease\".\n\nWhen our bodies are colonized by bacteria or viruses that cause problems, we call it a disease.\n\nBut our bodies are also colonized by bacteria and viruses that have a neutral or positive effect - it's just that in that case, we don't call it a disease.", "I **highly** recommend the book Survival of the Sickest: Why We Need Disease, by Sharon Moalem. In a very easy to understand manner, it covers why certain diseases we current dislike, served a very important role in keeping us alive in past human-history. A very good read.\n_URL_0_", "In Africa Sickle-Cell Anemia allows them to be completely immune to the effects of Malaria", "Diseases do benefit you in that they've killed off millions of people before you that were weak, but the strong have survived. You are an offspring of those strong survivors and can now pass on those genes, until a disease takes you out and then those genes will slowly fade away by natural selection. You are a stronger and healthier person because of this process. ", "A virus works by hijacking the moral, healthy cells of your body and using them as hosts to reproduce itself. It's sort of how the face hugger aliens work. The reason there are no good viruses is because of this fact. Taking normal, healthy cells and destroying them en masse is never a good thing. \n\nThe reason there are no good diseases is because the very definition of a disease (not at ease) is that it is something which negatively affects your quality of life. \n\nLots of people are pointing out that there are beneficial bacteria, which is absolutely true. We have evolved symbiotic relationships with thousands of species of bacteria to provide us with proper digestion among other things. However, bacteria are not viruses. They do not invade the cells of your body to reproduce and they more or less function independently of you. Some bacteria cause disease, but through a different mechanism than viruses. ", "Your GI tract is actually colonized with tons of bacteria-- in fact, there are about 10 times the number of bacteria in your body than cells, that play a vital part in your day to day functioning. \n\n\"Disease\" is caused by something that throws off your body's homeostasis, which is why you get symptoms (your body doesn't like any type of change), and diseases by definition change it. A good example is mood-- on one side, an imbalance can cause you to have a severe depression with low amounts of dopamine. But on the flip side, if you have overactivity, you'll get mania-- which is an elevated mood (so people usually feel good) but has all sorts of bad other effects, like psychotic behavior, racing thoughts, and many are unable to control themselves. If you think of disease in the \"imbalance\" way, it's a much better way to answer your question. \n\n\n\n_URL_0_ ", "Back when Small Pox was killing hundreds of thousands a year mysteriously some milk maids were untouched. They had contracted Cow Pox from milking infected cows this caused them to have small blisters on their hands after being infected but additionally stimulated an immune response giving them immunity to the related Small Pox Virus both a type of herpes. So contracting this relatively minor ailment conferred protection against one of the most deadly diseases in the history of man. These observations led Edward Jenner to conduct experiments with cow pox and allow him to create the first man made vaccine. So you could say Cow Pox was the naturally occurring vaccine disease that inspired all the vaccines we have today which have saved innumerable lives. ", "There is one that you have a huge, raging infection of right now.\n\nIt's called E Coli. If you cure your E Coli you won't be able to digest food properly until it regrows.", "Most of your vitamin K comes from the bacteria in your gut. Since newborns aren't colonized with the bacteria of the world yet, we give them a vitamin K shot at birth. Usually they just need the one, after that, the bacteria will move into place and start helping out. We do this because vitamin K helps with blood clotting; without which there is a tendency for \"hemorrhagic disease of the newborn\", i.e. the babies randomly just bleed to death. ", "There are! I am currently reading \"Survival of the Sickest\" which takes a look at genetic diseases and how they can be so prevalent if they have the potential to kill us. It seems that some genetic diseases give the person with it the ability to survive immediate dangers with the trade off being that the disease could kill you later in life. Hemochromatosis for example is a disease where iron builds up in the body and causes organ failure. One in three or four people of Western European ancestry have a copy of the gene that causes this disease. The reason it's so prevalent? During 300 years or so, starting in 1347 the bubonic plague killed approximately 25 million people in Europe. Those people who had hemochromatosis were more resistant to the disease, and since they weren't dying of plague they were able to reproduce and pass on the mutation. A disease that may kill you in middle age, but keeps you from having your lymph nodes explode in bubonic nastiness sounds like a pretty great disease to me!", "Tl;DR we're not even *us.* We're just a bunch of shit that tried to *move into us* and started working together, and functions pretty well with our infrastructure. ", "There is an interesting theory in Matt Ridley's book 'Genome - The Autobiography of a Species' that people with the genes (as many as 15) that 'cause' asthma would have been protected from internal parasites in the rural stone age because genes linked to asthma would produce histamines that flushed harmful parasites from the body. \n\nSo in theory asthma would be beneficial because the parasites were more of a threat to life at that time.\n\nAnother disease to look at is Sickle cell anaemia. I believe it gives a degree of protection against malaria and depending on your environment that might be something that saves your life.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n", "Also, there are many bacteria that live in us and on us.\nWhen it is not exclusively \"bad for us\" they call it a symbiotic relationship, and not a disease?\n", "Google \"Normal Bowel Flora\" and become acquainted with our friendly neighbors that live in the nether regions up our anus.\n", "I don't know if this is exactly what you mean. But I have an illness that effects my neurological system. When I first got sick my senses were hypersensitive. I was tasting, smelling, and hearing things like superman. \n\nOne simple example... I could smell the gas from a stove burner misfiring from basically anywhere in the neighborhood. I was once sitting on the deck outside, said I smelled gas, everyone looked at me like I was crazy, my mom came out and confirmed I was right. ", "MITOCHONDRIA- an ancient infection that now lets us better utilize oxygen.", "Lots of diseases are good for you. The two that come to my mind immediately are cystic fibrosis and sickle cell.\n\nFor sickle cell, being even a heterozygote makes you virtually immune to malaria. They believe that's what that particular disorder was selected for. Sickle cell was most seen in areas that are endemic for malaria. That's why the percentage is so high in black people. \n\nFor cystic fibrosis, it is thought that it prevents the devastating effects of vibrio cholerae. If your ion channels are messed up, you can't get the voluminous diarrhea. CF is also seen more in white people. \n\n", "Carrying the sickle cell anemia trait actually makes the carrier immune to malaria. ", "Putting aside the definition of disease as pointed out below, there sort of are.\n\nSickle-cell anemia comes from having two copies of a mutated gene that causes crippling malformation of blood cells. But getting only one copy of the mutation only modifies the cells enough to confer some immunity to malaria. In the pre-historic tropics, that was very beneficial.\n\nCertain parasitic infections appear to cure inflamitory bowl disease.\n\nAnother mutation caused early hominids to have crippled jaw muscles---and made way for a larger brain.\n\n\"Good\" and \"bad\" have no meaning in nature. Those are judgements we come along and apply after the fact.", "Your intestines, specifically what's inside it.\n\nDiseases/viruses are usually used to describe shit that harms you. Bacteria sounds negative but in fact there's a magiiicalll bacteria living in your gut that's in a very important symbiotic relationship with us. However when you die, decomposition starts in your gut due to that bacteria. I won't lie, there's a fuckload of diseases/viruses/bacteria that wants to see the world burn.", "It should be said that there are tons of microorganisms that are good for us. We just call them \"gut biota\" instead of \"diseases\". ", "Toxoplasmosa gondii parasites have a bad rap. :(\n\nPeople most often associate toxoplasmosis with the reason pregnant women shouldn't scoop kitty litter. However, infection is actually associated with many qualities that we could consider \"positive\"!\n\n_URL_0_\n\n1) Want to be taller? Infected males are 2-3 cm taller than their non-infected counterparts. \n\n2) Sharp jawline, masculine look? Infected males are described by independent and blinded female taters as appearing more \"masculine\" and having more manly features.\n\n3). Tough guy! Infected male humans have higher serum levels of testosterone. The longer you have been infected, the higher your testosterone, the higher your sex drive! If you are worried about your performance, perhaps you should consider getting a kitty! \n\n4). Winning personality! Infected women were compared with uninfected women. Toxoplasmosis appears to give women more kind, empathetic, and easy-going personalities. \n\n5). Ensuring your family line. Infected women had a higher incidence of having a male baby! This is believed to be due to suppression of the immune system. Apparently male zygotes are more likely to have slight imperfections that cause them to be rejected by the immune system. So when immunity is suppressed, those babies that would have been rejected end up being born. Many of them are normal, but babies with Down syndrome are much more likely to be born to women infected with toxoplasmosis. \n\nSo sure, this little buggy (parasite that passes through the blood-brain barrier and makes a home) has some negative effects, but most infected individuals have what is called \"asymptomatic infection.\" In fact, a whopping 30% of the population is already infected. Most show no negative symptoms! However, pregnant women should still beware because if you are not already infected, getting infected while you are pregnant can put you and your baby at risk! \n\nHow's that for a TIL?\n\nTLDR: 30% of the U.S. population has \"asymptomatic\" toxoplasmosis infection with pleasant side effects like taller stature, more pleasant personality, and even changes to fertility! Infected men are more manly and infected women are more pleasant, on average! So get yourself a cat, today!\n\n", "Humans are already like a machine. Random intervention is almost always disruptive, making it run worse. It would be like throwing dirt, squirrels and random car parts at an engine and making it run faster.", "One example is malaria protection from sickle cell anemia. The deformities to the red blood cells interfere with the development of malaria symptoms. Sickle cell disease is more common in areas where malaria is more prevalent as a result. \n \nIf you were looking for something purely beneficial it's not a perfect example, but it is at least a benefit from a disease.", "Ever heard of probiotics?", "I watched THE BEST documentary ever the other night about how good it can be for you to get certain types of infestation and infection. Life on Us.\n\nThey had this scientist dude hanging out underneath toilet blocks in Uganda trying to find this one tape-worm, and this other doctor giving people fecal implants to try to get certain types of bacteria into people. \n\nFECAL. TRANSPLANTS. Watch this show to see a mega syringe full of shit go into somebody, if for no other reason.\n\nAnyway the point is that a lot of \"infections\" are things we need. And other infections are things we've gotten so used to fighting that now we don't have them, our immune systems go berko and we get allergies, asthma, diabetes, even depression. They were curing all this shit by putting bugs in people. IT WAS AMAZING.\n\nYou can maybe see it here: _URL_1_\n\nand here's the production company behind it: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nand some examples of the benefits of worms.\n_URL_2_\n\n\n\n", "I think no one got the point of the OP question ", "Sorry but the question is the question is worded incorrectly. By definition a disease describes a pathological condition and is thus harming us by definition. However if the question is \"are there any microorganism that by invading our bodies does good rather than harm, well, we are full of it! \nFor a start, without our normal micro-flora (microbes that normally live on us, especially in our guts and on our skin) we would not survive. Bacteria in our gut help us to synthesize essential vitamins, digest our food, strengthen our immune system and even regulate hormones.\nBacteria on our skin protect us from invading bacteria by competing for resources or even by actively engaging and destroying potential pathogens.\nMoreover, at some earlier evolutionary stage, some bacteria and viruses became so bounded in this mutually beneficial relationship that they became part of us: e.g. our mitochondria has bacterial origins an its own DNA, many rota-viruses' DNA has recombine with our own and is now part of what it is to be human.\nTo sum up, yes they exists, and we would not even exist without them. However since they are part of the normal functioning of our bodies we do not recognize them as diseases. ", "Gout is neuroprotective. Sickle cell (disease/trait) protects from malaria infection. A lot of people who are heterozygous (one normal & one abnormal gene) for many diseases actually have reproductive advantages.", "So, as explained below, there are some symbiotic bacteria and viruses. I think the question is fairly valid though - in general, contagious diseases have deleterious effects on the body. There are several reasons why you expect them to be mostly bad -\n\n1) Most changes you can make to an organism will hurt it - if there was some easy fix to our biochemistry that would give us +2 charisma, evolution would probably already have made that change. It's going to be unlikely for a pathogen to evolve one of the few things that could help us.\n\n2) Even if it did, anything that helps us will probably come at the cost of resources the pathogen could be using to reproduce. Note that most pathogens are not actively *trying* to kill us - pathogens very rarely produce poisons intended to hurt their host (and god help us when they do - e.g. the S aureus bacteria which cause toxic shock syndrome). They hurt us as a side effect of reproducing.\n\n3)Our immune system is still going to be working against a beneficial pathogen, barring a long process of coevolution in which we evolve to tolerate that specific pathogen, without losing immunity to its' relatives.\n\n4)Even when this does actually happen, the pathogen will pretty rapidly reach 100% infection - and will become one of our symbionts - like the bacteria or retroviruses mentioned below. I.e. it won't be considered a pathogen anymore.", "This was a recurrent theme in Red Dwarf. [Link](_URL_0_)", "Dis ease. Good things don't take away your ease. It's a definition thing. ", "There are. Your gut bacteria comes to mind immediately.", "Because viruses and bacteria that are good for you/ harmless aren't called diseases.", "Sickle Cell makes you resistant to malaria.", "If no one has mentioned it, there is a kind of tapeworm that nullifies all your allergies and asthma...", "Am I the only one thinking of Frys gas station egg salad from the men's room?", "There are certain spiders which, if they bite you, bestow great powers (but also great responsibilities).", "There are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells.\n", "Because the pathogen is using resources and its environment for its own purposes. This causes problems in the function of the host." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_eisen_meet_your_microbes" ], [], [], [], [], [ "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli" ], [ "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2628617/Could-measles-cure-cancer-First-trial-experimental-treatment-leaves-49-year-old-woman-complete-remission.html" ], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/" ], [ "http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1602/2749.full" ], [ "http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2F14651858.CD003489.pub2" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomania" ], [], [ "www.radiolab.org/story/91951-an-update-on-hookworms/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/" ], [], [ "http://www.twiv.tv/2011/03/13/twiv-124-viruses-that-make-you-better/" ], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://youtu.be/NlONviNLSg4?t=3m38s" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://imgur.com/lLPx7hR" ], [ "http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/ap/ap_prep/cem2s5_1.jpg" ], [], [], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_wandering_spider" ], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/15/womans-cancer-killed-by-measles-virus-in-unprecedented-trial/" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_M%C3%A4ntyranta" ], [], [ "http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110428123931.htm" ], [], [ "http://youtu.be/hKHLOo1WgDQ" ], [], [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Sickest-Surprising-Connections-Longevity/dp/0060889667" ], [], [], [], [ "http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/zen-photo/m/microbiome" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20450-how-sicklecell-carriers-fend-off-malaria.html#.U3VlFXZv9n4" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://m.jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/127.long" ], [], [], [], [ "http://smithandnasht.com/portfolio/life-on-us/", "http://www.sbs.com.au/programs/life-on-us/video/234273859563/Life-On-Us-Ep2", "http://www.besthealthmag.ca/get-healthy/health/can-hookworms-cure-allergies" ], [], [], [], [], [ "http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Positive_Viruses" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e0f8pu6" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ " > I just did deep enough and then there's water?\n\nbasically. if you had a cup of water, and added sand until the top was dry, you would have a water table. you can do this near the beach. dig down a bit and the sand is wet. \n\nthe earth is a bit more complicated, though. for instance, certain materials can form a barrier to water. clay is quite famous for it. a layer of clay can trap the water and keep it lower than it normally would be, or elevate it so its closer to the surface than you would expect because the water can't slip through.\n\nsolid rock can also keep water out, and the water in the ground will go around it.\n\n > Why aren't deep caves flooded then?\n\nmost of them are. the ones that aren't are the exception, and mines spend huge amounts of resources keeping water out.\n\nmost caves are formed by water. a small fissure in rock has water flow through it for millions of years and it slowly erodes it, opening the fissure wider and lower as gravity pulls it down. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crezfm4" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "From what we know (from texts and palaeobotanic studies), there were many spices that are also used in modern Middle Eastern cuisine, such as onion, garlic, coriander, cumin, fennel, cress, dill, mint, thyme, cardamom... \n\nIn addition, we have words for spices attested in the texts where we are not entirely sure what plant/spice they refer to.\n\nI'm not a 100% sure that the word for sumac has been correctly identified, but it is a fair assumption that it would have been used in cooking." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cugnhtf", "cugpyt7", "cugrgsu", "cugrl0g", "cugs497", "cugs7rg", "cugsywe" ], "score": [ 54, 204, 15, 2, 3, 24, 4 ], "text": [ "Well besides being inconvenient, its not lethal, so natural selection saw no reason to weed it out. Take myopia (Needing glasses) for instance, besides being more than inconvenient, its not automatically lethal so we still see it today.", "I've read that as we were evolving to allow for complex speech, the larynx dropped lower in our throats. This makes it a lot easier for us to choke, though. So it's just an annoying trade-off for being able to speak.", "Because there's no other way to do things randomly than at random?", "You might have a hole in your esophagus like myself and my Mother. When we swallow, sometimes the saliva goes down the wrong tube and we cough like a smoker. Also, sometimes we can hear a clicking noise when we gulp down a drink.", "I'm surprised I didn't see dysphagia as a top answer. It can happen to anyone. I work in a residential care facility and have to texturize food for our clients, as they have difficulty swallowing, most as a side effect of medications. ", "Because human beings are incredibly poorly designed.\n\nWe have two sets of tubes, one of which processes gasses and needs to be devoid of solids and liquids at all times to avoid catastrophic failure, and another set of tube to process solids and liquids. So why in the universe would you have both of those systems share the exact same pipe? Other animals like dolphins have two completely separate sets of pipes (the blowhole is not connected to the mouth in any way, so they can't breath through their mouth) to make choking on food impossible, but humans demonstrate a remarkable lack of basic design sensibilities in their construction and use a series of small trapdoors to try and keep liquids out of your lungs.\n\nDon't even get me started on how stupidly the human eye is designed when compared to the blindspot-free squid eye.", "This is so bizarre, I can't believe it. \n\nI just turned 60, and in a blinding display of synchronicity, *just two days ago* this happened to me for the first time in my life.\n\nI was seriously in distress! I coughed my throat raw… and then I see it on Reddit. Weird." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dep793l", "dep8u26", "dep97u1", "depa7nj", "depabib", "depamgv", "depatui" ], "score": [ 5, 35, 7, 8, 2, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "If something goes wrong, you've got a person to call who will do cartwheels to make it right for you. Any and all of it. ", "My friend is one. She sells travel packages to people who just don't want to deal with it, and there are a lot of people like that. There are people who don't \"use the internet\" or \"trust the internet\", there are people who just want to go somewhere and don't want to bother with the details of finding a hotel, flight, car, etc. they just want to walk in to an office, talk to a real person and say: i want to take my family of 4 on a 2 week vacation in may, we want to go to Paris, can you get us there and arrange everything?\n\n There'd also people who are going on their first vacation, first flight, etc. to some people planning flights is hard.\n\nAnd finally there's also people who maybe don't have the confidence of organizing themselves. Maybe they don't speak the language that well. Maybe they're worried about shady hotels. Maybe maybe maybe.\n\nThey provide a service to all of these people and more.\n\nMy friend also hates her job because it's 99% a sales job. She's forced to upsell and to sell expensive packages. To an internet savvy person with some common sense you could arrange everything yourself for a better deal, but that's not their audience. ", "I want to add that travel agents allow you to book a holiday and pay it off slowly before it gets to your departure date (at no fee). \n\nIf you're paying online you have to stump all the cash up front there and then (which for some people is not an option)\n\nThis therefore makes it more attractive to people who like to book their holiday far in advance and find it hard to save\n\n", "Travel isn't all about booking flights and hotels.\n\nWe travelled to Africa a couple of years ago on an organised tour and used a travel agent. Three were a number of advantages to using an agent:\n\n- Agents travel to experience what they are selling their clients. They learn what the different companies offer, what's at different destinations and what's worth seeing.\n\n- they knew what countries needed visas beforehand and what could be walked into, they also organised it all.\n\n- they knew the currencies and how much of each we should have.\n\n- they knew how to get us those little things that make it special (made sure the for company knew we were on Our honeymoon)\n\n- we paid one bill to one company instead of little bits all over the place.\n", "I use a travel agent because there are so many things you can't do when booking yourself. Extra day or two in Hawaii on your way to Japan? Check. Getting a last minute hotel room for the same price as a hostel in Amsterdam? No problem. Changing a flight time for free? Easy-cheesey! Always costs less with more room for adaptability. ", "Tigured I'd throw in a perspective I didnt see mentioned yet: Travel agents make big bucks on buisness and groups. \n\nI just ordered a 3 week round trip for 40 people trough one because I could not imagine having to deal with making sure there were enough seats on the plane to book, finding reasonable hotels without much experience and booking bus companies that only deal in a foreign language.\n\nA travel agent did that for about $100. The rest of their profit were from comissions, and we actually made money using them because they found us cheaper tickets.", "In airports, most of the hotels etc. one can communicate in English (and native language of the country).\n\nNow imagine a tourists from non-English speaking country. It could be a person who wants to spend winter holiday in tropical country (enjoy hotel, beaches etc.), but does not know enough of English to talk to border guards, taxi drivers, hotel staff... The person might be a little xenophobic and prefer to be surrounded by people of the same nationality, speaking his native language. \nTravel agency is able to gather a group of such minded people. Send a guide who speaks both English and native language. Book them to a single hotel, so they can enjoy holiday in each others company.\nThe guide usually knows culture of people going for holidays and local culture of the place. So he/she can warn tourists about non-obvious laws or taboos and smooth the situation with locals in case of problems." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdbv43w" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "They kept records of these guys and their families. Each soldier wears tags identifying them, find a body with tags a telegram is dispatched. If they don't find a body but the soldier fails to appear or report in they are missing and after a while missing and presumed dead." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e3rsmuo", "e3w87bi" ], "score": [ 5, 270 ], "text": [ "There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the section [Human Sacrifice and Blood Sacrifice](_URL_0_) in the Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) portion of our FAQ will answer your inquiry.", "I'll try and cover a few of your specific points, starting with the fact *Apocalypto* did not intend to portray the Aztecs, but the Maya. The film does (poorly) mash in some aspects of Aztec sacrifice, if only to further its goal of being colonialist apologia and torture porn. Fortunately, the sheer awfulness of the movie makes it a good jumping off point to talk about actual practices of sacrifice.\n\nTo start with, there were slaves in the Aztec world and a portion of them did come from slave raids. The whole notion of actual warriors going out to get slaves for sacrifices, however, is a bit ridiculous. While slaves would sometimes be used for sacrifices in particular circumstances, the majority of sacrifices stemmed from war captives. Taking a captive was considered a rite of passage for a young warrior and a requirement for military and social advancement. Note, however, that simply snatching up some schmuck from a podunk village was not a standard practice; the expectation was taking a captive *in battle*. Also, later in the Imperial phase of the Aztecs, certain opponents became so little regarded that even taking several of them in battle earned little more than a shrug, as this passage from Sahagun illustrates:\n\n > And if six, or seven, or ten Huaxtecs, or barbarians, were taken, he gained thereby no renown. \n\nConversely, taking captive from more formidable opponents, such as those from Atlixco and Huexotzinco (which were coincidentally in the hard-fought borderland with Tlaxcala), earned great acclaim. So the notion of Aztec warriors raiding villages too small to apparently even have maize fields does not make sense. \n\nOnce captives were taken there are some scant mentions of using cages. From the same book of Sahagun:\n\n > And there in battle was when captives were taken. When it had come to pass that they went against and conquered the city, then the captives were counted, there, in wooden cages: how many had been taken by Tenochtitlan, how many by Tlatilulco...\n\nSo using cages was a real thing, but there's no indication they were anything but temporary measures. For instance, they were also used during the sale of slaves, or when holding prisoners during trials. Captives were not simply rounded up and kept indefinitely like cattle in pens. Instead, captives were treated, well, like slaves, to be housed by their captors until the time of their sacrifice.\n\nWere those sarifices a public spectacle? Well, yes and no. Many of the sacrifices were public events, and some specifically so in a way that demonstrated the power of the Aztec state. Rulers and dignitaries of foreign, even enemy, nations would be invited to witness these displays as a form a intimidation.*Apocalypto* portrays these sorts of events as a wild bacchanal of primitives gyrating in a wild, unhinged frenzy. In fact, if we turn to sources like Duran or Sahagun, we see that even the most public and bloody ceremonies were highly regimented rituals of specific songs, dances, offerings, and adornments, each with its own meaning. There was an aspect of spectacle, but ultimately these were religious rites.\n\nWe can see the combination of somber and spectacle in accounts of the \"gladiatorial\" sacrifice which took place during Tlacaxipehualiztli. After weeks of preliminary rituals, captors would bring their captives to a particular *calmecac*, Yopico, in the Sacred Precinct. There the captor would lead his captive up to a raised platform upon which lay a large heavy stone. Tied to the stone and armed with a macuahuitl whose blades were feathers, the captive would face up to four elite warriors (and a fifth left-handed one if he managed to \"defeat\" the four), but would ultimately be sacrificed on that stone once he faltered.\n\nSo there's certainly some spectacle there and the whole notion of \"gladiatorial\" combat evokes the Colosseum, but there's some substantial differences. For one, there's some dispute as to the \"public-ness\" of this event. Sahagun mentions no one but the priests and the warriors, which does not preclude the presence of others. Duran, meanwhile, says the \"entire city was present,\" although the location of the particular calmecac where the combat took place was a smaller building off in one corner of the Sacred Precinct, which present problems for mass viewing. \n\nMore importantly though, the intentions were different. Even this particular sacrifice, which was among the largest (dozens are mentioned as sacrificed over the course of a day) and the combat making it among the most dramatic, the core aim was not to provide tititallation, but serve both as a sort of graduation ceremony for warriors who had taken a captive and also a way of providing \"sustenance\" to the gods. On that latter part, just as important as the actual combat was the captor taking the blood of his sacrifice, collected by the priests in a bowl, and going from idol to idol having them take a \"drink\" from the bowl. Considering the symbolic impetus of Aztec warfare was to engage in battle in order to \"feed\" the gods, this act not only completed that divine onus, but the entire gladiatorial spectacle re-created the process of warfare/capture/sacrifice. This was not just bread and circuses, in other words.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/mesoamerica#wiki_human_sacrifice_and_blood_sacrifice" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnc3140", "cnc32w0" ], "score": [ 8, 2 ], "text": [ "Slow light is the propagation of an optical pulse or other modulation of an optical carrier at a very low group velocity. Slow light occurs when a propagating pulse is substantially slowed down by the interaction with the medium in which the propagation takes place.\n\nIn 1998, Danish physicist Lene Vestergaard Hau led a combined team from Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science which succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 meters per second, and researchers at UC Berkeley slowed the speed of light traveling through a semiconductor to 9.7 kilometers per second in 2004. Hau later succeeded in stopping light completely, and developed methods by which it can be stopped and later restarted. This was in an effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.\n\nIn 2005, IBM created a microchip that can slow down light, fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.\n\nLifted from _URL_0_", "We have managed to actually stop and store light in a crystal. It only lasted a minute but its possible. _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light" ], [ "http://www.gizmag.com/stopping-light-inside-crystal/28610/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0waqfp", "d0wb0bq", "d0wdb86" ], "score": [ 8, 11, 7 ], "text": [ "Would you mind if someone from the modteam provides screencaps of your ban messages? You were temp banned as your third warning in this subreddit, not your first. ", "Rule #1 of reddit: Mods are dictators by nature of the system. \n\nThis sub understands that better than any around. Sounds like you were being a bit stone-minded about reposting an already removed comment. That *does* make perfect sense, and doesn't merit an extra rule in the list, as far as I'm concerned as a non-mod. The rules list is not meant to be a \"Here is a point-for-point explanation of what is and is not appropriate\". Else it'd be filled with every little arbitrary rule they could think of. \n\nThat's ridiculous. Rules of subreddits are not *laws*. They don't have to be enforced to the letter, or even posted at all. \n\nI get that you think that it should be simple enough for a mod to simply message and ask courteously, but compound that by a thousands. That's how often they'd have to do it. Because you're just one user among thousands. When you've received two warnings already, I think a temp ban for the third is totally justifiable. ", "Welcome back :)\n\nr/askhistorians, much like the academic discipline we strive to emulate, is a community, and like all other communities there are occasional unpleasant interactions as our ~~cruel overlords~~ gentle moderators do their best to keep things working smoothly.\n\nI'm sorry you were temporarily banned, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that I hope you stick around, learn from your interactions with the mod team about r/askhistorians's unique customs and querks, and continue to enjoy this sub." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu8adac", "cu8btf8", "cu8fnw1", "cu8p94o", "cu8v92q", "cu8we8v", "cu8x1cx", "cu91dqt" ], "score": [ 507, 40, 20, 13, 8, 5, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Voice major here...\n\nVibrato ensures a continuous airstream from your diaphragm. It's an easy way to keep your muscles from gumming things up in the throat/jaw area, which can change the sound. Having your muscles truly loose and relaxed while singing makes for a truer more beautiful sound, and vibrato ensures that the muscles don't mess up the airstream. It's a healthy way to sing that will preserve stamina, something opera singers need to get through 4 hours of Wagner.\n\nTrue ELI5?\n\nVibrating their voice like that forces them to keep their muscles loosey goosey, which makes singing easier and more beautiful.\n", "Consensus among singers that I know is that the unamplified voice when projecting naturally vibrates.\n\nThat being said the amount of vibrato used is often dependent on style. For example: [baroque opera](_URL_0_) and [contemporary opera](_URL_1_) tend to use less vibrato while [bel canto](_URL_4_) and [Wagner operas](_URL_3_) tend to use more. \n\nIt also changes through history. Right now the fashion is to use less vibrato while older recordings tend to use more.\n\nWhile vibrato certainly helps project the voice, an excessive amount of vibrato is what is referred to as a \"wobble\" and is generally considered a sign of bad vocal health. \n\nI think the stereotype of opera singers with excessive vibrato comes from when [Maria Callas](_URL_2_) was older and she developed a wobble in her voice. She was perhaps the most famous opera singer of her time, so the stereotype stuck.\n\nThat and [Bugs Bunny](_URL_5_). \n\nSource: I'm a composer dating an opera singer", "Excellent question Vivifica, I think I am in a place to answer it for you. The empirical truth is no one knows why vibrato (as opposed to a wobble or tremolo which are a sign of problems) appears by nature in the classically trained voice. We can turn it off and influence it to some extent but every voice trained to sing operatically develops vibrato. \n\nWhile we don't know exactly why, we do know that an even vibrato is a sign that the tone is being produced in a healthy manner. Singing in an 1800 seat auditorium over a sixty piece orchestra is an act on par with being an Olympic athlete and, just like those athletes, there are a number of ways to injure yourself. That vibrato you hear is a sign that everything is working efficiently. If you push air though the vocal chords with two much force, one of two opposite things happens. Either the vibrato goes away completely or it widens and slows into almost countable pulses. Either is a sign that things aren't right. \n\nThat got wordy, and I find I want to type six more paragraphs. The short answer is that vibrato is a side effect of healthy athletic singing which is expected to carry in an opera house over an orchestra. We as singers (should have said this earlier, I make my living as an opera singer) only think about vibrato when things are off. We don't add it or create it on purpose. \n", "Conductor here.\n\nVolume and relaxed voice are part of it, but not the number one reason. \n\nGreat orchestras work together by matching, blending, and combining frequencies. When the fit together just right (aka in tune). Vibrato is a consistently shifting cycle around a frequency, which does not blend. \n\nA soloist on any instrument must either use vibrato or amplification in order to be heard. In the 300 years of Opera productions before amplification, vocalists developed that vibrato sound that you know now as the \"Opera singer\", in order to be heard over an orchestra.", "Opera signers don't \"put vibrato on\" everything. They train the muscles related to the voice to be completely free and relaxed while simultaneously supporting the sound with a tremendous force of air (stomach is very tough). Vibrato is a result of that freedom. While you can turn vibrato on and off, turning it off involves tightening the throat to some extent, whereas turning it off involves letting everything relax. ", "Another Voice Major here:\nVibrato is caused by muscles around the vocal chords vibrating as a result of the vibrations of the vocal chords themselves. True vibrato is only achieved when the singer's arytenoids (voice box muscles) are completely relaxed.", "I'm sitting in opera rehearsal at the moment... \n\nOptimal efficiency is required for operatic singing, meaning little tension in the vocal folds. The music lies in a high range and tessituras, plus you are singing over an orchestra. \n\nVibrato results naturally when there is no tension to inhibit it, and a sufficiently fast flow of air to produce a full tone. It goes hand in hand with projecting a full, clear tone. According to Miller \"The Structure of Singing,\" it's probably caused from the pulse of your muscular nerves, like when you can't keep your hand from shaking. But no one is sure, AFAIK. \n\nOther singers today are usually amplified, and the repertoire lies in a more modest tessitura. Optimal efficiency is not required. Vibrato is thus a choice for those singers to do as they see fit. \n\nBut for opera, you usually need optimal efficiency of producing sound to hit the high notes in the upper head notes and for endurance. In opera, you sing everything. Opera is hard. ", "Voice major here, also knowledgable about acoustics, etc. \n\nDitto about vibrato being a sign of a relaxed singing apparatus. This is true. \n\nBut also, consider this. A varying volume, like what happens in vibrato, is acoustically identical to two tones slightly detuned from each other. It's common in electronic dance music to combine slightly detuned sounds for a \"fatter\" sound. \n\nSo basically, vibrato makes the sound fatter, psychoacoustically. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savmzf7AssE", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa7aeRzqS3U", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1mO7_C3tCs", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOGs8TtnwoI", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqFbCJaSLA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX1ljYx3g3k" ], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dd3ru8x", "dd3s21n", "dd3t3j6" ], "score": [ 8, 6, 7 ], "text": [ "Pop music is written around a formula that bastardizes the idea of the hook, which is the part of a song that draws you in and usually it's the part that gets stuck in your head. It's not a new idea for pop songs to just repeat the same lines over and over. It's been a popular method since the 1980s at least. Songs like Electric Boogie, Gonna Make You Sweat, Stayin' alive, etc. all depend on that initial chorus.", "Essentially over the last decade our consumption habits have changed massively. Where once we'd buy full albums, listen to them from the first track to the last, examining album artwork and lyric sheets; now we download tracks. I obviously use 'we' is the collective habit sense here as that is what dictates the products that are produced. \n\nThe age of 24/7 news, instant communication and technology has caused us to be impatient. To want instantaneous gratification in the quickest, most effective form. This has become the norm so much that it has actually filtered into the songs themselves. Why wait for two verses a bridge and a build to a chorus when songs can simply come chorus-laden, no doubt remixed by a DJ on loop so that the chorus induced euphoria can be constant and unrelenting. \n\nIn esence we've become lovers of short-term, immediate pleasure, in spite of something more worthwhile, substantial and authentic. \n\nNot just in music but in every area of life. ", "Have you listened to The Beatles? Quite a few of their hits have repetitive lines: Love Me Do, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, All You Need is Love, Hey Jude, Yesterday. \n\nThis applies to many of the hits from the 60s and 70s. It's not something new. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fcq9552", "fcqb2jy", "fcqo84i", "fcqqb6p", "fcqr994" ], "score": [ 36, 23, 5, 10, 7 ], "text": [ "when we use light in that statement we mean the entire spectrum, not just visible light. So essentially 'radiation' is the fastest thing in the universe", "All massless particles travel through vacuum at *c*. It's a feature of our universe's spacetime, not of the particles travelling through it.", "When we say light, we mean the whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves,\n\nI.e radio waves, micro waves, infra red, visible light, ultraviolet, x rays, and gamma rays.\n\nAll of them travel at the speed of light, 299792458 meters per sec, and that is the fastest possible speed to achieve.\nThat is to say, nothing can go faster than the speed of light.\n\nAs to why it is the fastest, light particles, called photons, are essentially massless.\n\nAccording to Einstein's general theory of relativity as an object moves faster it's mass increases, while it's length contracts.\nAt the speed of light, such an object will have infinite mass while it's length would be zero.\nWhich is an impossibility.\n\nSince photons are massless, and photons make up light, light can go at the speed of light.\n\n\nPlease note : Light ( all electromagnetic waves ) are dual natured. Which is to say they are expressed as having both a particulate nature as well as a wave nature.", "As it turns out, gravity travels at the speed of light which might mean that c is a property of the universe and not one of light", "The speed of light is determined by how much the stuff it is going through slows it down. When it is in a vacuum it has nothing to slow it down, so it travels as fast as possible which we call \"C\"(what you were probably thaught in school as the speed of light). \n\nFrom our current understanding of physics, \"C\" would be more accurately described as the speed of causality. It is like a speed limit on how away something is in space-time that can affect something else." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpg2jiu", "cpgf7zi" ], "score": [ 58, 15 ], "text": [ "While you wait for more qualified people to answer, here's a section of the FAQ that may tide you over:\n\n_URL_5_\n\n\nAlso, you'll need to be a little more specific about time frame and/or location within Europe, as well as which level of society you're asking about. My understanding is that in 12th-century England and northern France, for the lower classes, they ate a mostly vegetarian diet of barley, rye, beans, and leafy vegetables like kale and spinach. Herbs like rosemary, lavender, basil, sage, thyme, and garlic were all available through foraging. People also ate flowers, something we don't do much nowadays. People drank water, small beer (produced on a household level, often by women), cider, mead, and whey. Meat was rare, especially beef since cows needed a lot of food. Pork was relatively common since people could let their pigs wander and feed in the woods for most of the year. Hunting and fishing were tightly regulated by the local lord, who also usually had a monopoly on millstones and ovens for making bread. Overall their diet was pretty good, lots of high quality protein and fiber.\n\nReading you may be interested in:\n\n[Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society](_URL_0_) (Examines cultural attitudes toward food.)\n\n[Food in Medieval Times](_URL_4_) (More focused on what was generally available to the average person.)\n\n[The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages](_URL_3_) (This is more focused on the upper classes.)\n\nEDIT: Here is some information concerning [forest laws](_URL_1_) and [charters of free-warren](_URL_2_), which should help cast some light on the kinds of restrictions that common people faced in finding food.\n\nAlso, as mentioned below, I forgot to say that dairy in general was pretty important. It was a good source of nutrition, especially since cheese keeps forever. Cows were generally more valuable alive and producing milk than dead and eaten.", "Half of getting a good answer is how you ask the question.\n\nThere was never a wall between Europe, Asia, and Africa. The various seas and gulfs were more like highways than barriers. Mesopotamia and East Africa traded with the Indus and Saraswati river valleys before history. Southern Europe traded with North Africa. The Bell Beaker folk came out of the Mediterranean and settled the Atlantic coasts, even unto Britain, while penetrating deeply into modern France. They foreshadowed the later spread of the Phoenicians/Carthaginians.\n\nDid spices travel along these trade routes? We know the Greek states supported a huge trade in expensive silphium from Africa, and one of the few Sumerian-based words in English is \"cumin.\" (Via Akkadian, Greek, Latin). Cumin originated in the Eastern Mediterranean and was traded & eventually grown as far as India, and into Europe.\n\n(Silphium is an unknown bitter/hot herb that later fell out of cultivation or became extinct. The flavour has been likened to horseradish or asafoetida.)\n\nSo, \"before Asian spices\" is really prehistoric, and archaeologists can tell you what people were eating from what the paleobotanists identify.\n\nThat being said, I think what you're trying to ask is something like, \"before the spice trade I heard of in school, that happened in the Renaissance, in the Middle Ages (or at least early Middle Ages), what was eating in Europe like? What tastes did they have?\"\n\nAs pointed out, that depends on where in Europe you are, and what your income is.\n\nIf you're a fisherman, you eat more fish than an inland farmer, and you also get shellfish, and even have edible seaweeds. Your cash crop is salt fish, sold inland and to the cities, especially once the Christian business of Lent settles into the culture. You catch fish and you boil out your own salt. On the other hand, the pagan Britons didn't eat fish, apparently through taboo.\n\nYour poor peasant farmer doesn't eat anything he doesn't grow or forage in the woods. But that's quite a bit! The list from fyreNL is good, because onions are a big flavour boost. The average peasant ate them like apples, just peel them and bite in. \n\nWitch trials often list what was served at supposed midnight feasts, and they amount to a peasant's idea of good things. Most notable is that butter is served in big hunks and eaten, not as a thin spread on bread, but in quantities like it was a soft cheese. The meat your peasant eats is probably bacon, the current flitch hung in the chimney to keep it smoked, the rest out in the smoke house. This is added to the daily soup, so it adds a smoky/salty flavour to the collection of beans and greens in the pot. \n\nOnce late in the year was the big hog slaughter, and they made blood sausage and head cheese, black broth and chitlins, and undoubtedly roasted the pig's ears like some of my neighbors do. No middle or upper class person would eat this, or record this, but I can't imagine it being let go to waste.\n\nSoup is what your peasant lives on.\n\n \"Soupe la soir, soupe le matin,\n\n C'est l'ordinaire du bon chretien.\"\n\n (\"Soup in the evening, and soup in the morning,\n\n Is the everyday food of a good Christian.\")\n\n(and notice that they eat basically two meals a day.) Another rhyming proverb:\n\n \"Lever a six, diner a dix,\n\n Souper a six, coucher a dix,\n\n Fait vivre l'homme dix fois dix.\"\n\n (\"To rise at six, dine at ten,\n\n Sup at six, to bed at ten,\n\n Makes man live ten times ten.\")\n\nSoup is important, because it is boiled water, and safe to drink. They did not value the thick stew, as a result. They needed to rehydrate.\n\n > As the Gauls, according to Athenaeus, generally ate their meat boiled, we must presume that they made soup with the water in which it was cooked. It is related that one day Gregory of Tours was sitting at the table of King Chilperic, when the latter offered him a soup specially made in his honour from chicken. The poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries mention soups made of peas, of bacon, of vegetables, and of groats. In the southern provinces there were soups made of almonds, and of olive oil. When Du Gueselin went out to fight the English knight William of Blancbourg in single combat, he first ate three sorts of soup made with wine, \"in honour of the three persons in the Holy Trinity.\"\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/fast-and-feast-food-in-medieval-society/oclc/2213221&referer=brief_results", "http://www.medievalhistories.com/medieval-forest-laws-in-england-and-normandy-in-the-twelfth-century/", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/40274574?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-cookery-in-the-middle-ages/oclc/32132932&referer=brief_results", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/food-in-medieval-times/oclc/55738647&referer=brief_results", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/dailylife#wiki_food_seasonings" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cloh6hi" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The same question can e asked of why men have two testicles - the are developmentally synonymous. Procreation is the fundamental root of evolutionary biology, thus our ancestors with two gonads were likely more successful in reporducing" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5ht6oy", "c5hwcjl" ], "score": [ 30, 3 ], "text": [ "The average Roman didn't think much of Judaism, because they didn't think of them at all. Among those who actually cared about such matters, Judaism was likely seen as another weird Eastern cult, but with respectable venerability. Jews themselves had a poor reputation, at least going by Tacitus, who stereotyped them as bandits, essentially. However, I should note that this is not particularly unusual of Tacitus, who was pretty grumpy.\n\nEDIT: I should probably provide quotes. Two lengthy Tacitus quotes, followed by a quick Juvenal and a Varro that is quite interesting:\n\nGreat, irrelevant quote from Tacitus: \"This force was accompanied by twenty cohorts of allied troops and eight squadrons of cavalry, by the two kings Agrippa and Sohemus, by the auxiliary forces of king Antiochus, by a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbors...\" Some things don't change. More relevant quotes:\n\nTacitus (again) \n\n > \"Moses, wishing to secure for the future his authority over the nation, gave them a novel form of worship, opposed to all that is practised by other men. Things sacred with us, with them have no sanctity, while they allow what with us is forbidden. In their holy place they have consecrated an image of the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance from their long and thirsty wanderings. They slay the ram, seemingly in derision of Hammon, and they sacrifice the ox, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They abstain from swine's flesh, in consideration of what they suffered when they were infected by the leprosy to which this animal is liable. [etc]\"\n\nMore pointedly,\n\n > This worship, however introduced, is upheld by its antiquity; all their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness. The most degraded out of other races, scorning their national beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful. Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men. Those who come over to their religion adopt the practice, and have this lesson first instilled into them, to despise all gods, to disown their country, and set at nought parents, children, and brethren. Still they provide for the increase of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead, following in this the Egyptian cus tom; they bestow the same care on the dead, and they hold the same belief about the lower world. Quite different is their faith about things divine. The Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the Jews have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this honour to our Emperors. From the fact, however, that their priests used to chant to the music of flutes and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a golden vine was found in the temple, some have thought that they worshipped father Liber, the conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by any means harmonize with the theory; for Liber established a festive and cheerful worship, while the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean.\n\nFrom Juvenal (VI.542-547):\n\n > No sooner has that fellow departed than a palsied Jewess, leaving her basket and her truss of hay,[68] comes begging to her secret ear; she is an interpreter of the laws of Jerusalem, a high priestess of the tree,[69] a trusty go-between of highest heaven. She, too, fills her palm, but more sparingly, for a Jew will tell you dreams of any kind you please for the minutest of coins.\n\nBy Juvenal's standards, that is fairly tame. I think that sums up the \"weird eastern cult\" aspect.\n\nVarro's opinion was rather higher. Transmitted through Augustine:\n\n > For more than 170 years, the Romans of old worshipped the gods without an image. If this practice had remained down to the present day’, he [Varro] says, ‘the gods would have been worshipped with greater purity’ (castius dii observarentur). In support of thisopinion, he cites, among other things, the testimony of the Jewish nation\n\n > (frg. 18Cardauns; Aug.,The City of God 4.31).\n\nAdd that to the long list of why I want to read Varro's *Divine Antiquities*.", "Rome was a hodgepodge of religions, and most people didn't care who you worshipped in private as long as your publicly paid lip service to the official state religion of Jupiter and the like. \n\nJudaism was seen as just another such religion. Many roman soldiers converted to middle eastern religions during wars there and spread them around the empire.\n\nBut where Judaism ran into problems was that it mingles government and religion. Their king was chosen by god, so pledging loyalty to another leader and religion was tantamount to blasphemy, which led to plenty of political problems for both sides. Hence Jesus' call to render unto caesar what is due or however that passage goes. \n\nThis also explains why christianity was pretty much ignored and tolerated when it was still a small religion; it was just another cult. But when it became large enough and its followers refused to publicly worship the traditional roman gods, they clashed with the government. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cas80a5", "casbrxo" ], "score": [ 13, 2 ], "text": [ "For an understanding of how to do this and make it work, ie keep the water--in this case seas water--there and grow things with it, see the [Sahara Forest Project](_URL_0_). Their proposals involve using solar power to desalinize sea water, that would then be used to grow crops and trees, initially in an onsite greenhouse, and later outside around the facility. They opened a pilot site in Qatar last year to test the system.", "Related question, are there deserts which are dry because they dissipate moisture particularly quickly, or are all deserts dry because they receive little rainfall?" ] }

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[ [ "http://saharaforestproject.com" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "df54hsg", "df550ck", "df55g64" ], "score": [ 13, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "Heat is also transferred by radiation, which does not require a medium (particles, like air/water/etc). Your object in space would radiate heat and start to cool, but you also have to account for incoming radiation (from the Sun, for one example). So, your answer depends quite a lot on where you put the object. If the object is radiating more heat than it's receiving, it will get colder.", "Matter actually emits electromagnetic radiation based on its temperature, usually in accordance with what's called the [black body spectrum](_URL_1_). This is why you can measure/\"see\" temperature using an infrared camera. Hotter things emit more light and different colors, which is why metal glows red (initially) when hot, and it also determines the colors of stars.\n\nSo, if you place an object in space where it can't change it's temperature by interacting with other matter, it will *probably* cool down. However, light from everything else in space that hits it will also heat it up, so at some point the amount of heat it's losing will balance with what it's gaining.\n\nIn fact, while I am not entirely sure, this temperature will probably be governed by the [\"cosmic microwave background radiation\"](_URL_0_), which is basically the ambient temperature of the universe.\n\nIn any case, this process will take a long time, as something at room temperature won't lose heat very quickly.", "Heat transfer through matter, either conduction, or convection with fluids, while it is the quickest way for something to lose heat, is not the only way.\n\nHeat can also radiate off of an object, in the form of essentially light (misleadingly radiators actually heat rooms mostly by convection). Radiation doesn't require anything for heat to transfer to, since that heat energy is in the form electromagnetic radiation (you can think of it as photons) and that can travel in a perfect vacuum.\n\nSo the lack of a medium is not necessarily a perfect insulator - if it's not gaining any by other means, your object in space will gradually lose heat by emitting EM." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c1zbtpy", "c1zbzcn", "c1zc42m", "c1zc7va", "c1zd3w4" ], "score": [ 12, 2, 6, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "There is a psychology term known as [Flow](_URL_0_)\n\n > Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.[1]\n\n > According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task[2] although flow is also described (below) as a deep focus on nothing but the activity - not even oneself or one's emotions.\n\n > Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the moment, present, in the zone, wired in, in the groove, or keeping your head in the game.\n\nWhether there are hormonal changes going on is something I can't help you with but it seems likely.", "It has to be statistically inevitable to some degree.", "While **I'm no expert**, I am a sportsman, and I have found myself 'in the zone' a number of times. *My best guess* as to what it is is a combination of good focus and letting your muscle memory do its job. \n \nMuscle memory is the effect where if you repeat an action over and over, it strengthens the neural pathways involved in performing that action, so eventually it becomes second nature, a subconscious action (like riding a bike or even just walking). \nAs far as good focus goes, *I'd guess that* if all you're concentrating on is the task at hand, your mind is free to concentrate on that specific set of actions, and so can perform them to the best of its ability. Also, chances are as you focus more and more, it forms a self reinforcing loop, where your success reinforces the fact you're doing it right, so you continue what you're doing, as well as causing your brain to release endorphins, making you feel good.\n \nHowever, I feel like I'm missing something important, both because when I'm in the zone it feels so much more than just concentration and muscle memory, like I'm performing well above what my skill level suggests I should be, though that could be all in my head. \nFurthermore, it doesn't explain how you can get 'in the zone' for something like chess, or snooker, or even just studying. \n \nAs an aside, it is hypothesized that when people choke under pressure, it's because they concentrate too hard on what they're doing, overriding their muscle memory, which does a far better job of controlling your body than 'manual control'.", "I recall watching a documentary on discovery channel about the human body. It mentioned Adrenaline (AKA epinephrine) and how our body uses it in important heart pounding situations. The documentary stated that it allows our brain to process twice as fast, almost living in slow-mo. I cannot find any evidence to support this other than my own experiences noticing a difference in how much I pay attention to my surroundings.", "I'm not an expert in this area of science but I was an elite athlete and can certainly attest to being in vs out of the zone. I would describe it best as being in a good mental place without distractions and excellent focus. Being able to continue a certain technique or strategy is good and having to change up is difficult. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Components_of_flow" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfylyqn", "cfylz1f", "cfylz2d", "cfylzpj", "cfym564", "cfym5fi", "cfym60z", "cfym6s8", "cfym6yy", "cfym7zg", "cfym97j", "cfymeje", "cfymf25", "cfymnrw", "cfymrlt", "cfymrzd", "cfymuct", "cfymupq", "cfymvot", "cfyn0c7", "cfyn0oh", "cfyn1yv", "cfyn97k", "cfynfbh", "cfynfvs", "cfyng3p", "cfyngpm", "cfynqo8", "cfyny2x", "cfyo0m2", "cfyo0t4", "cfyo8q1", "cfyod0n", "cfyodo5", "cfyogpp", "cfyopuf", "cfyp1nr", "cfyp4rr", "cfyq04r", "cfyr2wv", "cfyr9rm", "cfyrfkl", "cfyro8l", "cfyrp6r", "cfyrqlm", "cfyrryo", "cfyrsgp", "cfyrujr", "cfys47t", "cfyse7h", "cfyslog", "cfyt0ni", "cfytct4", "cfyu366", "cfyu69p", "cfyvjvx", "cfyvnp8", "cfyx1h8", "cfyzdh0", "cfyziyi", "cfz8uo1" ], "score": [ 432, 78, 124, 61, 138, 28, 31, 5, 12, 391, 39, 76, 57, 4, 296, 72, 53, 86, 5, 12, 3, 34, 11, 266, 9, 103, 33, 25, 2, 2, 12, 834, 8, 2, 28, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 18, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Is it just me, or is that asteroid belt way too dense? Not to mention the Kuiper belt. On a related note, how dense are the rings of Saturn? Would you see a thicket of iceballs whizzing past you if you actually flew a spacecraft through them?", "Does the Voyager 1 really have music that plays constantly? ", "At the beginning of the show, the narrator says that the great red spot on Jupiter is a giant hurricane three times the size of Earth that has been raging for centuries. When is the great red spot estimated to dissipate and the giant storm end? ", "How did we decide what direction to send Voyager I, and isn't it pretty much guaranteed that it'll just crash/burn/be destroyed as soon as something else's gravity grabs it?", "I've always been enamored with the giant storm on Jupiter. What is unique about Jupiters atmosphere that enables such a large and lasting disturbance? ", "how is this whole universe upon universe culminating in the cosmos proven to us? how do we know all this?\n", "Does light ever reach a point where it dissipates into nothing, or does light continue to move infinitely? Do stronger or brighter lights travel further than weak lights, or do all lights travel the same distance? What happens when a light reaches the point where it no longer is detectable? ", "Is there any way we could potentially uncover how long the Great Red Spot has been storming across Jupiter? Or, do we have any idea of how long it might continue to exist? ", "From what i remember, Voyager 1 is powered by RTGs...but how long until the power fully deteriorates and what exactly happens to the craft after it loses power? Does it just continue it's trajectory until it is pulled on by something?", "The animation of the multiverse sent chills down my spine. What evidence is there for the multiverse theory?", "What's with the dark spaces in the last image of the cosmos? ", "How accurate is our image of the milky way? Obviously we've never seen the angle that is often shown and used in the show showing us in one of the outer arms. Is it actually based just on data we can gather from our perspective? Or is it assumption based on how other galaxies look that we can see from a different perspective, and we just assume ours looks the same? ", "Why is it that there exists parts of the universe from which light hasn't reached us if we theoretically all came from the same point in the big bang?", "I have a question about the \"storm\" on Jupiter. What is it made of? I'm assuming there's no air there, so what's moving around? Or is it air?", "What's the \"tidal friction\" that caused the moon to go away?", "How do we know the universe was compressed to a size smaller than an atom? ", "\"Back in 1599 everyone knew the Sun planets and stars were just lights in the sky that revolved around the Earth\"\n\nHope he gets to [Aristarchus](_URL_0_):\n\n > Aristarchus of Samos (/ˌærəˈstɑrkəs/; Ἀρίσταρχος, Aristarkhos; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it (see Solar system). He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but he identified the \"central fire\" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.[1] His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.", "What formed the oceans? ", "How did we know that the moon was closer? How did it change orbit without leaving orbit or crashing into the Earth?", "When he talked about the moon and how close it was, he said something about it moving away. He said it was caused by \"tidal friction\". \n\nWhat is that? How long did it take? ", "Regarding the origin of the moon, I've heard the 2 separate theories about whether it was free floating and trapped in gravitational pull or formed slowly over time. What evidence was the 'tipping point' between the theories that makes us confident it wasn't trapped? I know for a fact I was taught the wrong info in high school less than 10 years ago, I'm hoping it was proven since then...", "I always thought the moon was created from a meteor striking earth. Cosmos said it was created from gravity swirling together the remnants of when the Earth was made. When did this change?", "This may be an obvious question, and I'm pretty confident I know the answer to the first part, but is the center of the Milky Way just densely packed stars and planets (Relatively, of course)? If so, is it likely that that's where we'll find life eventually, since there's so many stars and possible planets there?", "Has anything that Carl Sagan mentioned in his original Cosmos series been completely disproven as of now?", "What does it mean to say the universe is expanding? \n\nThat sequence where we saw the visible universe then multiverse made me think about the \"expanding universe\" in a completely new way. He said a comment about the visible universe just being the depth of light that has gotten/travelled to us. Does this mean the universe isn't truely expanding rather it's being exposed to us? As time goes on more and more light reaches our view. ", "Does the universe really look like a sponge as depicted in the show? ", "How do we know about the existence of rogue planets?", "Every time the big bang is discussed, the universe is described as containing nothing but hydrogen and dust. If there was nothing before, and hydrogen now, what was the dust? ", "When they show the zoomed out Cosmos are the densities of light emitting matter they show in line with our current observations. ", "If a planet were to fall out of its orbit, would its moon(s) not continue to fall into the gravitational pull of the sun? If so, would that then not classify said moon as a planet? If not, what is the distinction for classification of a planet?", "How do we know that the gravitational pull of one asteroid pulled another asteriod so that it helped form Earth?", "When I majored in astrophysics, I was taught that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. In Cosmos tonight, Neil deGrasse Tyson was saying 13.8 billion years. Has it really been that long since I was in university?", "Why was there a period of darkness after teh big bang?", "I'm really impressed. When i first saw all the CGI and the space craft thing I was a little skeptical. But this is truly one of the few shows that I have ever been immersed in. Its great to see some quality television. I'm even more excited to have the opportunity to see Neil speak in two weeks!", "Why aren't we sending out space crafts similar to the Voyager I on a regular basis? If you are stranded on an island and have enough glass bottles to send out many messages, why stop? Is it more of a symbolic gesture? Political? I realize it isn't much in the vastness of the universe, but just as Neil referred to the asteroid being shifted an inch and that being all it took (so to speak), it is hard to comprehend the implications such a small thing can have, so I was just wondering if there is any deciding factor that has stopped us from doing it more often?", "With all the storminess of Jupiter, are there warm spots due to friction? If so, how warm are these spots?", "So, what caused the asteroid belt, then? As a kid I had visions of colossal planetary destruction. I imagine the truth to be far less exciting. Is it just left over debris from the formation of our solar system?", "Did I understand him right that flowers formed on Earth AFTER animals crawled out of the sea? At what point on this year of time calendar did plants begin to grow on the rocks/the Earth went green?", "How round actually are the gas giants? When showing the red spot it looked like there was an immense level of depth there? I always imagined them as perfect round spheres.", "On the first shot of the Andromeda Galaxy, what were the two spiral companions? They couldn't be M32 and M110, they're elliptical. I suppose one could be M33, but so far as I know, the field of view was too small for that. Even so, there's nothing to account for the other one. What am I missing?", "The show appeared to show the moon formed from accretion already within the Earth's orbit. Is this the generally accepted theory, and does the \"capture versus impact\" argument I'm vaguely aware of more detail the origins of the proto-moon, which then swept up debris surrounding the Earth into the full moon?", "\"Everyone you've ever heard of was born in the last 14 seconds [of the Cosmic Calendar].\"\n\nWhat about Ardi and Lucy?", "Excluding the multiverse theory do we know the shape of our viewable universe? \n\nLike with how energy goes out does it create a sphere shooting out in all possible directions or does the force of gravity pull everything down so it's shaped like...saturn's rings?\n\nAlso this may sound stupid but do all the planets rotate in the same direction? I know movement is relative but if some how I was to stay in the same spot in space could I look in front of me and behind me and see everything move \"the same way\"? If so why?", "Hi all! Thanks!. My native language is not English but I’ll try my best formulating this question: Does atoms surrounding a supernova star are the same size as the atoms surrounding our stars? I find incredible that, as our measurements are related to our own size, then intelligent alien-life thousand times bigger than us will have such a hard time discovering sub-atomic particles, or even better, really small intelligent alien-life will easily discover sub-atomic existence for the same reason they are such closer to their size? For ford’s sake, I hope I made my self clear. Thanks.", "One thing I was wondering about was why did Saturn develop Rings while we developed a moon? I understand that our assumption is that we think a large planet sized object collided with our world. This collision shot tons of debris into orbit around Earth. Why did this coalesce into a moon instead of something like the rings of Saturn? In the same respect, if our moon was the norm in that the debris should snowball into a moon-like object, why did Saturn develop rings?", "I recently read an interesting news story from /r/science about using spectroscopic signals from extraterrestrial atmospheres to detect planets with potential life.\n\nLink here: _URL_0_\n\nDuring the debut, the example of the immense size of the Oort cloud in comparison to our solar system was given. If this sort of barrier is around every star, what sort of signal-to-noise ratios can be expected with all these objects in the way? Can these sort of techniques be only because of the extreme magnification of the telescopes we use? I'm interested to learn more about the feasibilty of such techniques with so much frozen space junk in the way.", "When the Big Bang occurred, what did we \"expand\" into?\n\nIf we are a multiverse like it was alluded to... does that mean we \"pushed\" other universes away?\n\nIf we're a universe... the potential for space existed and space was created as the universe expanded?", "Where did Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson film the first scene of the show? I am currently in California and was wondering if I could maybe visit the location! ", "Neil says the universe started out as a point smaller than an atom. Did he mean our observable universe or the infinite universe? I was under the impression that the big bang was more an event going from high uniform density to lower density where the observable universe was condensed into the space of an atom but that it was only one of an infinite number of other points who similarly expanded during the big bang.", "Why do orbiting bodies like the moon stay in orbit? I know the tablecloth analogy for relativity but when I try that, a planet gets destroyed by a moon, or the moon rolls off the table (maybe after a small bend in direction). \n\nIt seems reasonable to only have like a razor thin area where it would actually stay in orbit, otherwise either flinging out or crashing in. Why isn't it?", "so is it possible that there are parts of the universe that light has not reached yet, because the universe expanded for a good amount of time while stars were getting it together? Are there parts of the universe where there is nothing at all, even the radiation left over from the Big Bang?", "My understanding was that the most probable explanation of the moon is that a ~mars sized object impacted the earth after it had mostly coalesced and knocked much of the lighter surface material back into orbit to form the moon. The video seems to show this collision, but tyson doesn't mention anything special. \n\nam I wrong or did they just gloss over it? ", "It was mentioned in the show that after the big bang there was darkness for nearly 200 million years until gravity took control. i always thought that big bang was a huge flash of light and our known universe came out of it. If energy exploded out of the same big bang, how come there was darkness for so long? and how long after big bang did the darkness engulf everything?", "Did it kind of irk anyone else the depiction of the Big Bang? I know this is a show that needs to *show* something, much like the over-exaggeration of the density of the Asteroid and Kuiper Belts, but I felt like these were good opportunities to *debunk* these misconceptions. What I'm referring to is that the big bang was more of a gradual widening, rather than a burst of fireworks and light. \n\nI mean, I really like how it looks, and can't wait to watch it every week, but it's little stuff like that. *Especially* after how nit-picky DeGrasse Tyson was over the physics in Gravity, you would think he'd give the animation in a show featuring himself a little more scrutiny. ", "If the Voyager I is planned to keep traveling into deep space even after we lose connection with it, how likely is it to get caught in some interstellar body's gravitational pull and get destroyed by either a collision, burn up in some terrestrial body's atmosphere, or any other way?\n\nDid the makers of voyager have a plan to have it keep going undisturbed for as long as possible to increase our chances of communicating with alien life? If so, how?", "Sorry I'm late to the party, but I was wondering how it was determined that the asteroid that nudged the asteroid that would later become Earth was the same one that would strike Earth once more and lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs?", "In the picture of earth \"250 million years from now\" there was a superstructure in orbit that seems like it supports a major percentage of human life. I imagine this was not just a crazy drawing and actually is based on some good theories. Do you know what they are? For example, humans would have had to survive a couple of extinction events, so would it become necessary to live as the Jetsons from time to time?", "I thought the distances between asteroids in the asteroid belt were astronomical, and that you could navigate right through it without having to alter your course much, or at all. I guess it's not a question, but it would have been nice to cover that fact instead of making it like the Star Wars asteroid belt. ", "Hey, I have a very noob question here.\n\nI am definitely an amateur of astronomy and I've read a few books on the subject but this always confuses me.\n\nAt what point is the universe expanding? I get the balloon analogy but are the galaxies moving away from each other or individual stars? Or clusters of galaxies? I don't get it. I know andromeda and the milky way are getting closer and closer so which bodies are actually moving AWAY from each other? \n\nThanks!", "The close-up on the Great Red Spot on Jupiter was fascinating. From that angle, the edges of the storm look like huge canyon walls. How much do we know about the exact topography of the storm? How accurate was that segment?", "During the cosmic 'calendar' segment, when visiting the Big Bang Neil DeGrasse Tyson says \"...it's as far back as we can see in time, for now.\" \nI've always been in the belief that space and time were created at the Big Bang and that it's nonsensical to try and imagine something observable prior to it; is there some sort of theory being thrown around that says otherwise? \n\n*n.b. Sorry if this question has been asked already, I tried searching through the comments and couldn't find it*" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1zz1on/cosmos_a_spacetime_odyssey_discussion_thread/", "http://www.hulu.com/watch/604551#i0,p0,d0", "http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/200c6i/cosmos_a_spacetime_odyssey_episode_1_standing_up/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/Cosmos/comments/1zg9tl/cosmos_a_spacetime_odyssey_episode_guide_info_on/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/index", "http://www.globaltv.com/cosmos/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/Cosmos/comments/2004px/cosmos_a_spacetime_odyssey_episode_1_standing_up/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/200b64/cosmos_a_spacetime_odyssey_episode_1_standing_up/" ]

[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/03/scienceshot-new-tool-could-help-spot-alien-life" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fld3qlw", "fld4bdy" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "Antibodies are made as you require them. They are made by lymphocytes, after an infection you havea low number lymphocytes called memory cells in your blood these can build the antibodies required if you are exposed to the pathogen again.\n\nThe original process of producing an antibody for an infection is a random process.\n\nImmunity comes about because correct antibodies can be produced faster the second time you have an infection.", "Im not entirely sure but your body makes antibodies on request. There is not necessarily an entire flood of antibodies in your bloodstream because you fended off a lot of disseases. You have memory cells that are formed by B-helpercells whenever your body encounters a pathogen and survives. The next time your body encounters the same pathogen your body will react more rapidly and the memory cells that were made will immediately make antibodies to fend that pathogen off again. It is very possible that you have some antibodies in your bloodstream as we speak but I dont think the antibodies to all the pathogens youve faced before are in your bloodstream at the same time and I dont think there is a limit to having memory cells in your body if that was what you were asking. \n\nPlease do correct me if im wrong in any way good people of reddit. Hopefully I helped you." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cep90yq", "cep95ky", "cepbj22" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because people want plastic things, a lot. The innovation of plastic products completely changed the world. People in general don't want to stop using plastic.", "The people who really makes tons of money from using plastic are very rich. They often have several homes far away from land-fills and dumps, so it doesn't bother them at all. They don't care at all about the people who DO live near dumps. \n\nThey have many millions of dollars to give away to influence law-makers and help law-makers get re-elected. \nThe law-makers want to get or stay in office so they do what they are told to do.\n\nI see it every single day. The company I work for has many locations and throws many tons of plastics into the dumpsters every day. this is not an exaggeration. The people who make the rules make millions of dollars every year. They don't care about the dump. They would not make as much if they had to do business differently. It's all about profit, not about the environment.", "[A lot of counties in CA have reusable bag laws such as this one in Alameda County.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d06ncd7", "d06r31r", "d06z2yx" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 8 ], "text": [ "Is she focusing on a specific area? I doubt \"childhood as an invention\" in the 1400s was a global phenomenon.", "Hmm... I was sure there were several great threads on the development of the ideas of childhood, teenagers, etc, but have only been able to find one. Hopefully this is useful to you: an old thread with a response by /u/melaniedaniels\n\n* [Childhood - How & Why Invented](_URL_0_)", "I'm not familiar with Firestone's book, but I've written a few times on childhood and adolescence in the premodern world here on AH.\n\n* [Historiography of children and childhood](_URL_0_)\n* [Is adolescence an invention of the 20th century?](_URL_1_) (This has more to do with teenage-hood as a distinct life stage)\n\nMentioned in the second post, Shahar and Hanawalt provide some of the clearest evidence that medieval boys, specifically, were not merely \"little men.\" They show how boys (into teenagehood!) did spend some of their leisure time engaging in some activities practiced by men--but they were still excluded from some, and they still spent some of their time in children's/women's activities. Latin chroniclers also distinguish between youths and boys of \"full maturity.\"\n\nParents writing letters to their sons at university (think ages 15-20) seem quite sure that those sons are not ready to be fully functioning adults, what with how they throw money away on frivolties and neglect their studies and brawl violently at bars." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wyynl/childhood_how_why_invented/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/41953k/what_are_some_good_histories_of_childhood_and/cz0xth9", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pode8/is_adolescence_an_invention_of_the_20th_century/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6yh26y", "c6yiutk" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Might I be able to also ask a question regarding black holes, their shape etc.?\n\nFrom what I understand, there's a region on the edge of the event horizon is a photon sphere where photons moving on a tangent to this will become trapped in orbit. \n\nHowever when I've seen pictures regarding black holes - particularly showing the 'corona' around the event horizon where light behind the hole is bending around it - it is shown as just that: a corona-like light with a void in the middle.\n\nHow can the photon sphere be just that - spherical - yet not actually show up as a mass of photons when viewed in xray /infra-red etc? Surely if these photons are in a sphere around the event horizon it would appear almost like a star, right?", "According to an outside observer, the event horizon is *defined* by the fact that the time dilation there is infinite. So in a sense, yes.\n\nTo an observer falling *into* a black hole, time never comes to a standstill, and in fact the event horizon should be no different to such an observer than any other part of her descent." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3lfba0" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The doctors and nurses don't even *know* how much shit costs. They just say what work they've done & the billing department handles the prices.\n\nBilling can't give you a straight answer because they have different rates for cash payments or insurance. Every insurance company negotiates a set of rates they'll pay for procedures but how much you're left paying depends on the terms of your insurance plan. Then, if you're poor, you might be able to negotiate an even *lower* price so the hospital can at least get *something* out of you.\n\nThe whole system is confusing and inefficient. Those inefficiencies only serve to drive costs up while making insurance companies rich. This is one of the many reasons that people think a single-payer system - where the government is the only insurer for everyone - would be superior." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnk8xtk", "cnk9vjl", "cnka4gr", "cnkatdv", "cnkf9ec" ], "score": [ 35, 11, 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Using Lumosity regularly makes you better at Lumosity. It might be of more benefit to your cognition than staring at a wall and picking your nose, but it's mostly hype and pseudoscience", "I visited a friend who is getting his masters for psychology. He told me about a friend of his in the same program but older who was planning on doing his thesis on actually measuring the benefits of lumosity. Right before he was set to get started, they changed their policy to say that no one can use a lumosity account for research purposes, only their internal guys can do it. His entire thesis was wrecked. \n\nTo answer your question... No, it's not measurable by anyone in any valuable way. Just the way they want it. ", "If it improved performance on things that are not itself, in measurable ways, or even was based on things that do, they'd cite the studies they were basing that on, because that'd be way cooler for marketing than just \"designed by scientists.\"\n\nUnfortunately there is no science for games to do what they want to do. That's not to say their claims are false - mostly that they simply haven't been studied. But as a general rule of thumb, assume advertisers make the strongest claims they can truthfully make about the benefits of their product, and Lumosity stops short of claiming any measurable benefit (though they do claim some people subjectively feel smarter). That's a clue.", "I can't find the article I read last month where a neurologist said that it can't raise your intelligence, but like any form of practice you will get better at the thing being practiced, so you are better off choosing something important to you and giving that particular focus your all.\n\nBut in case you still want to work your brain with games, [this study found that you are better off thinking in portals](_URL_0_)", "I'd like to weigh in here with some very little undergrad information I just learned, but basically going to back up what everyone else is saying. You'll get better at lumosity, but it has no real measurable impact on plasticity or fighting off alzheimers. Sorry no references. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/portal-2-improves-cognitive-skills-more-lumosity-does-study-finds" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dprq2mo" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The sun's photosphere is cooler than the regions below it, creating absorption lines. If you point a spectrometer at the sun you don't get a continuous spectrum, you get a continuous spectrum superimposed with black lines where the particular wavelength was absorbed by the cooler upper atmosphere. Those absorption lines are in the exact place that emission lines are, so if we see absorption lines in the sun that we haven't been able to find a matching emission line then we know we have an element in the sun that we have yet to find and get emission lines for. Here is a picture of the whole visible wavelength spectrum of the sun _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/images/large_image_for_image_content/sun_spectrum_lines_noao_900x600.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyi9fh4", "cyiglor" ], "score": [ 19, 3 ], "text": [ "Unpredictability. The equations of motion lose existence and uniqueness. Given a certain initial condition at time t, there might not exist a solution to later time, or there might be infinite equally valid. Essentially the Universe doesn't know what to do with itself, and even if it does, there is no way of predicting anything even having knowledge of the equations of motion and initial condition. Physics is dead.\n\nThat loss of existence and uniqueness actually occurs has been studied for various cases, including the motion of a rigid ball in a spacetime with a wormhole allowing timetravel (see e.g. the works of Novikov & Thorne), or classical field theories in the presence of CTCs.\n\nThe exceptions are free theories, but these are boring, no actual physics can happen in them. As soon as you add interactions of any kind it's over.\n\nAnother sort of consideration comes from thermodynamics. We have a second law because our Universe has two temporal extremities with different entropies. So entropy increases when moving from one to the other; we call the low-entropy one the Big Bang and the direction of increasing entropy gives the arrow of time, and interesting stuff happens following the Universe in this direction.\n\nIf you have a region with CTCs where, say, you can think of time as a circle, there is no way of course for entropy to always increase in one direction. The most probable situation is to always have constant maximum entropy, that is thermal equilibrium.", "You are asking for consequences of acausality which is almost by definition the lack of consequences. Thus the answer would be none.\n\nThe word causal has a more restricted meaning about how events that influence each other are arranged into nice neighborliness relations. If you had A causing B causing C and there is no restriction on where B can be located in regards to A and C in the timeblock of the universe B could for example be totally surrounded by events which have nothing to do with this A- > B- > C process. If we don't posit any additional acausal mechanics to exist there is no guarantee that stuff just fails to exist in the next time instant given that there remains any sense to talk about there being a time.\n\nNow it would be interesting if the every \"happening\" would require for there to be a \"consequence\" but there would be no restriction on chronal placement. For example the idea in retrocausality would not be causal in the \"timeoriented causing\" sense but would still have causes and consequences. We are so entrenched in the idea that we don't need to individuate these two effects that we just call it \"causality\" without having any good established words for the two aspects. Anything that would not be causal but would not be total chaos would be so weird that any of our usual strategies would pretty much fall flat." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "djbdivh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The metabolism of alcohol requires the presence of water, and alcohol itself is a diuretic which results in less available water in your body. \n\nEdit: To expand on this, the amount of water in your mixed drink is probably insufficient to hold off dehydration after your body has processed the alcohol. Everyone has an individual water requirement to maintain themselves. You may just not be reaching yours when you drink, and have to compensate by drinking more water in the morning. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmajtii", "dmany5f" ], "score": [ 2, 8 ], "text": [ "I have similar experiences as runner. However, I don't often run on a treadmill so I experience this phenomena on the road. Also, I tend to feel the worst, including feeling out of breath, at the very start of my run. After about a mile my breathing usually regulates itself, however my legs usually still feel far to heavy. \nI have always assumed that I start to feel better after my pulmonary and blood vessels adjust to the strain my opening up, allowing air and blood flow to finally start matching my effort. But I am no scientist. Hell, I am barely conscious, so what do I know?", "It actually comes from where your body gets it's energy from. For the first 15-20 minutes your body is burning it's glycogen storage which comes from sugar. After your body has run out of its primary source of energy it runs on fumes until your body starts burning your fat storage. This doesn't kick in until around that 30 minute mark because your body has to turn that fat back into sugar for it to use which takes a while. \n\nSource: avid runner for 10+ year and worked in a running store for almost 8 years and have had to explain this to people lots" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7h1nac", "d7h456b" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "In the early 1900's at National Cash Register (NCR) there were high-ranking employees who were let go, and they were informed of this by seeing that their desks were carried outside and set on fire.\n\nHence, they got \"fired\".", "[Etymology Online](_URL_0_) says it is recorded by 1885 (with out; 1887 alone) in American English. This probably is a play on the two meanings of discharge (v.): \"to dismiss from a position,\" and \"to fire a gun,\" influenced by the earlier general sense \"throw (someone) out\" of some place (1871). To fire out \"drive out by or as if by fire\" (1520s) is in Shakespeare and Chapman. Fired up \"angry\" is from 1824 (to fire up \"become angry\" is from 1798)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=fired" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cll7ktl", "cll7otc", "cllbh4a" ], "score": [ 103, 23, 4 ], "text": [ "That's a very interesting question, and relates a lot to a common perception that, once a certain level of authority is reached, the individual is less likely to participate in combat.\n\nThat is a very generalised view, of course, and as such not entirely correct. An army is a very rigid organization and must be tightly controlled and led. The closer that leadership is to the fighting, the more effective it can be. The balance, of course is to not expose high ranking leadership to the dangers of the front unnecessarily. Also, the larger formation one commands would dictate having to be further removed from the front on the basis of the scale of numbers a Division, Corps or Army commander would be dealing with.\n\nThere also lies a difference in the role of particular persons-what is known as \"the Divisional Wedge\"- which describes the ratio of those engaged in combat to those supporting combat operations. A Lt Col as a battalion commander would very likely advance with his men, while a Lieutenant assigned to General Headquarters might not ever hear a shot fired in anger. Likewise for NCO's. A farrier Corporal would be well removed from fighting, performing his job of shoeing horses, whilst a Sergeant in an infantry platoon would certainly see his fair share of the war.\n\nMaj Gordon Corrigan illustrates that even high rank did not exempt one from the dangers of the war: \"Altogether four British lieutenant generals, twelve major generals and eighty-one brigadier generals died or were killed between 1914-1918. A further 146 were wounded or taken prisoner. Whatever else the generals were doing, they were certainly not sitting in comfortable chateaux.\" *Mud, Blood and Poppycock* Cassell Press, 2003. ", "I don’t think there is a simple answer for this question.\n\nCertainly battalion commanders would be expected to participate in an attack, while a Lt. General would almost certainly be at Corps rather than participating in the fighting. Between the two – brigade and divisional command – the activity of the commanding officer would vary according to the local situation and the practice of the officer himself.\n\nBut it wasn’t unknown for higher ranking officers to be killed in action. Even being a Field Marshall was no guarantee of safety – Field Marshall Lord Kitchener was killed when his ship struck a mine and Field Marshall Lord Roberts of Khandahar VC died of pneumonia he contracted this when visiting Indian troops. He refused a great coat, insisting he should not be more comfortable than the troops he was inspecting (As an aside, Roberts career was quite amazing as it encompassed the Duke of Wellington, through to aeroplanes, chemical warfare, and armoured cars).\n\nSome 78 British Generals were killed in action during the war (See Bloody Red Tabs by Davies). The breakdown is given as roughly 40% to shellfire, 30% to small arms fire (half of whom at least half were to snipers) with the rest down to accidents, drowning, or not determined.\n\nThe stats are interesting as overall casualties tended to be much more heavily weighted towards artillery (usual figure given as c60% to artillery), whereas Generals seemed to suffer far more small arms fire and particularly sniper fire. This may just be a statistical artefact due to the low sample size, but it’s likely that Generals visiting the front were prime targets for snipers who could identify them by their clothing and other accoutrements. \n\nOn the other hand, you could be a plain old Lieutenant at GHQ in mid 1915 and never see the front. Staff officers were strongly discouraged from visiting the front as the casualties they incurred early in the war were unsustainable and qualified staff officers were a rare commodity indeed (See Gary Sheffield – Command & Control on the Western Front). \n\nOverall, you were probably better off as a private soldier than an officer.\n\n\n\n", "As an addendum to my answers below, and a helpful guide to remembering what unit is larger than the other in organisational tables is this mnemonic:\n\n\"Such Pleasant Company Being Right Beside Dedicated Comrades Always\"\n\nfor\n\n\"Section Platoon Company Battalion Regiment Brigade Division Corps Army\" \n\nFor a more detailed treatise on organisational structure, including approximate numbers in a particular formation [please see my essay posted here](_URL_0_)\n\nedit:formatting" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://ifyebreakfaith.blogspot.ca/2011/08/order-of-battle.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch7tuya" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You'd have to ask the people who made the decision to add them, we don't know. The thought process for each individual mod invite was probably different.\n\nI'm not sure but it's also possible that they did stuff like CSS work. There are some people who do design and CSS stuff for lots of subreddits so they have mod powers, but they don't actually moderate much. We had /u/gavin19 on our staff here for a while while he helped us out with some stuff, for example, and we could have left him on if we wanted even though he never did any moddy work." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d15u0g6" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I'm not an expert on The Soviet Union but I have a strong interest in and experience with tech. So a Soviet expert may be able to add a lot to the discussion. But to quickly answer your main question, the main format used popularly in the USSR was VHS and the VCR.\n\nThere were other forms of magnetic recording devices used mostly by professionals but I don't know much about them. You seem most interested in personal use though. \n\nAccording to several US news articles the machines first appeared by being brought back by those who had travelled to the West. Demand for the devices began to grow and video parlors had opened by 1985 using the VHS format. \n\nHere's a [link](_URL_0_) to a book called \"Split Signals\" by Ellen Propper Mickiewicz. \n\nThis book was published in 1988 and she wrote about television in the USSR during this time and has a section just on VCR production and usage. Highlighted is a reference to the Elektronika VM-12 which was one of the first Soviet produced VCRs. \n\nElectronika is a brand name used to describe consumer products created by Soviet military industrial engineers. It's still in use today in Belarus. Although according to Mickiewicz the VM-12 was produced in Voronezh a Russian city south of Moscow. \n\nUnfortunately I'm unaware of the ability of these Soviet produced machines to record as well as playback. The way Mickiewicz describes the machines it seems like the government wanted to be able to control what was available and supplant a growing black market for video watching with approved materials. \n\nLinks to contemporary news articles:\n\n\n*[Chicago Tribune](_URL_1_) Discusses early use and has some pretty slanted views on Vodka vs Video as a hobby. \n\n\n*[LA Times](_URL_2_) Discusses copy protection and privacy. \n\n\n*[Baltimore Sun](_URL_3_) Written by a Soviet immigrant to America, it has an interesting personal perspective on the format and the exchange of culture it allowed. \n" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=JpzVaLjRqqcC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=elektronika+vm-12&source=bl&ots=N0u_5SjAIO&sig=GcjR2TdpDrwQd_RTOpbETXXH87s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs7qmwmM3LAhUPx2MKHcPJAScQ6AEISDAL#v=onepage&q=elektronika%20vm-12&f=false", "http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-12-27/entertainment/8503300057_1_soviet-vcr-video-recorders-komsomolskaya-pravda", "http://articles.latimes.com/1991-06-15/entertainment/ca-528_1_video-pirates", "http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-01-04/features/1991004130_1_soviet-union-hippies-movies" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e1pr16v", "e1pr3t4", "e1pr7w8", "e1prk6a", "e1prlso" ], "score": [ 5, 4, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There's a lot more to diving than just putting on a mask and swimming. For example, if one of the boys gets scared and holds his breath, then ascends, his lungs could rupture quite easily. They need to make sure that the boys can dive safely before they can use that as an escape method.", "Cave diving is really dangerous, even for very experienced people. It's VERY dark and very easy to get turned around or end up upside down. It's not like open water diving, it's a whole other skill set and it's incredibly dangerous. \n\nEven if the child were physically attached to the experienced diver, the child could still panic in an enclosed space and wind up drowning both of them. \n\nThey need to be taught how to breath using the respirator and tank, they need to be taught how to navigate and communicate while under water and they need to be taught the basic skills of making a cave dive. ", "Caves and tunnels are often extremely tight and dirty, which means the water is going to be so cloudy that visibility would be zero. Trying to navigate through dark tunnels, completely blind, without training is suicide. Even trained divers can lose their way, can start to panic (which depletes oxygen even faster), and experience extreme muscle fatigue from long swims. \nThe tunnels in question are four miles long. This is an absolute nightmare, from a diving perspective.", "Also to address your point directly... none of the boys can swim. It’s been reported that it’s almost a mile of twisty cave routes out. I’d struggle to swim a mile in those conditions never mind being shit scared, unable to see, hungry, dehydrated and... unable to swim ", "Diving is dangerous when your not trained or just comfortable under water with almost zero visibility.\n\nIf they where to give them the crash course in diving they would dive with another professional diver and using the professional divers spare regulator. If victim panics he is a danger to himself and the diver. \n\nThen there is the knowledge of actually breathing correctly on ascend and the fact that it is cave diving. Cave diving is no joke not even for the professionals\n\nThere are so many factors that in effect are so dangerous for both the victims and the rescuer that I understand why the diving plan is the last thing they want to do. \n\nI’m a 10 year CMAS 3 star" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fgplkxh", "fgplmw5" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Really? The _vast_ majority of polling is very accurate - we just only pay attention to it in the few situations where the polling was \"wrong\".\n\nPolling is difficult because you are trying to take a small sample of people and extrapolate what you learn from them to a population as a whole. Ensuring that the sample is representative of the population is tricky, as is making sure that you get honest answers from those people.\n\nReputable pollsters work very hard to try to eliminate bias in their questions and their samples to make the results as accurate as possible, but they know that anytime you sample you won't get perfect results. That is why they also publish confidence intervals and margins of error - how accurate they feel the polling to be.", "People lie. People refuse to take the survey. The populations polled aren't representative of the population voting. Pollsters weigh one population over the other. Human error in interpreting the data. Polls are run by companies with political agendas. \n\nTake your pick and/or mix and match" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f45hggn", "f45nyls" ], "score": [ 11, 2 ], "text": [ "A big part is just convienece and choice. Animals with \"higher\" capacity for reason can figure out optimal ways to get food and therefore the option to be picky.\n\nMost animals don't have the range primarily because they're both evolved to live in a certain area and they have a lower count of things that they're required to to on a day to day basis.\n\nMost animals can be lumped into predator/prey and have diets that fit their lifestyle and activities accordingly.\n\nOther animals, like our cousins the chimp which fall into both and have a wider range of day to day activities and behaviors, actually do have a pretty diverse diet. They eat lots of plants but they also eat eggs, honey, meat, etc.\n\nHumans don't really \"NEED\" a diverse diet. We just choose to have one.", "Mostly we have been told it is complex from agriculture lobbyists who created things like the Food Pyramid and other guidelines that aren't based on any science, so they can sell you more non-essential things like cow's milk.\n\nSecondly, advances in processed food have created an entire industry of terrible food with weird ingredients. So we have more complex food and have to understand our diets in more detail in modern society." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "conu3vh" ], "score": [ 20 ], "text": [ "Traditionally this has been ascribed either to the influence of humans on the environment or climate change, although occasionally disease has been tossed around as a hypothesis. Lately, many scientists have been siding with the climate change view.\n\n[This study suggests otherwise.](_URL_0_) It would appear from global analysis of extinctions of megafauna over time that while most of these species had already survived numerous climatic shifts at the time of their demise, nearly all coincided with the earliest evidence of human presence in the area. It seems no accident that (large-bodied) mammoths survived later in North America, and were extinct within a few thousand years of humans reaching the continent.\n\nRemember that most of the species that died off, the 'megafauna' were large creatures with metabolisms that required large amounts of food and had slow gestation and growth rates. Driving them to extinction by hunting wouldn't have required killing every single one, only enough to reduce the population by a little bit each year. The populations would have been particularly devastated if too many females were killed, as we see with modern day elephant populations. Also, the presence of a large population of humans foraging and gathering edible plant material might have reduced the amount of nutrition available to the animals, although I don't know if they would have been enough to have an impact on that or even ate the same vegetation. Certainly a systematic, if slow, reduction of the prey populations would have resulted in a decrease of large predators like dire wolves and cave lions, which probably suited the early humans just fine.\n\nAnother thing to note is that the extinction probably didn't happen very quickly. There would never have been a generation that saw the megafauna disappear. There would have been fewer and fewer mammoths each generation, until finally only grandpa remembered having seen one. The mammoths weren't literally all being slaughtered, they were just having more and more trouble finding mates and being able to maintain a sustainable population.\n\nHope that helps a bit. I'm not an expert on the topic, although I do follow it closely and know a fair bit about it. I've heard evidence supporting both cases and while I see this one as more likely, I don't deny that climate change may well and probably did add to the decrease in megafauna populations.\n\nInteresting fact: the only continent with a diversity of sustainable megafauna populations is Africa, the continent on which humans evolved... Currently, biodiversity of large mammals is at a critical low, thanks to the Pleistocene extinctions. Ecosystems like the Siberian tundra and the American west are barely sustainable because of the absence of the megafauna that were once part of that equilibrium. At least I have read this several times, someone might be able to elaborate or correct me on that.\n\nEdit: you tagged your question as biology, but it might be more accurately tagged as paleontology. I know the paleontology tag doesn't appear in the sidebar, but there is one!" ] }

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[ [ "http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1787/20133254" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccb8y70" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "An IPv4 address is just 4 bytes; each number between the dots is in a range of 0 to 255.\n\nTake 192.168.60.1\nIn binary that's 11000000.10101000.00111100.00000001.\n\nNow take a subnet like 255.255.224.0\nIn binary that's 11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000\nNotice how all of the bits are together? The part of the address that identifies the network are where the ones are. The part that describes the address on the network are where the zeros are. This is why it's called a subnet [mask](_URL_0_)\n\nSo, with our previous example\n\n 11000000.10101000.00111100.00000001 - IPv4 Address\n 11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000 - Subnet mask\n 11000000.10101000.00110000.00000000 - Network part (192.168.48.0)\n 00000000.00000000.00001100.00000001 - Node address of node on network" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask_(computing\\)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c76mjzj", "c76mtsd", "c7711qw" ], "score": [ 38, 8, 2 ], "text": [ "No, these are two different phenomena (which are, by the way, both accounted for in the mathematics, so aren't being mistaken for one another!). Two observers who are moving at different speeds will measure lengths differently - this is what you're referring to with contraction - but there's no such set-up in cosmology, we're essentially at rest (in our own reference frame) and watching galaxies and galaxy clusters move away from us in all directions.", "Relativistic contraction happens only in the direction of movement. This is not the same as an isotropic expansíon/contraction and can therefore not be confounded.", "I too have considered this in the past, but I could not even think of a way that this effect could occur... but its still an interesting thought to entertain.\n\nWith special relativity, a very small constant acceleration or deceleration would in fact create the expansion/contraction effect in a single direction. The interesting thing with the special relativity mechanics is that things further away appear to move much further distances during expansion/contraction. Length contracts as a matter of percentage. This means at a contraction of .0001% per second, something a foot away from your would be unnoticeable. However, something 1000 light years away would appear to be moving immensely fast. This is what we see when we look at the universe expansion, and it is what piqued my interest in the concept.\n\nThe big problem is that length contraction in general relativity doesn't quite work that way. Distances can appear distorted in GR, but not in a way that might cause the entire universe to contract/expand.\n\nI've tried to think of hypothetical scenarios where you might get some sort of similar effect through some local gravitational/spatial manipulation, but I have never really come up with anything. If apparent distance was so easily manipulated by local forces, you'd see some very weird stuff when there was an eclipse, or the planets changed position... the universe would probably also look very different depending on the direction we looked, but of course it does not.\n\nI do agree, that the effect of length contraction in special relativity is very curious. The fact that a local change could have a dramatic effect on the appearance of the universe is very interesting, and so is the similarity to the expansion of the universe... but I can't even a think of a way that they may be related." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ewksvas", "ewksvfd", "ewksz36", "ewkt40j", "ewkt6ys", "ewkuaec" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 4, 3, 11, 2 ], "text": [ "Everything you see is in the past to some degree. Distance and the effects of gravity are the main factors impacting your perception.", "hi so I’m not a scientist by any measure but I’m pretty sure because of the distance we’re actually seeing the stars and planet from the past, as in because of the time it takes light to travel through space we’re seeing things technically from the past. I could be totally wrong bc like I said I don’t know cosmology just seen a couple of Cosmos episodes lol", "everything we observe is subject to the delay of \\_at least\\_ the speed of light. Even watching a plane overhead has a minuscule delay due to the time it takes the light of that plane going by to reach your eye. It also depends on what we are using to \"observe\" - e.g. different forms of detection use types of signals that have different speeds, so the delay due to the speed of light is the \\_least\\_ delay we can imagine.", "The specific event would have been seen roughly 40 minutes after it actually happened.\n\n_URL_0_", "everything you see is delayed. you seeing the sun is 8 minutes delayed. you watching the moon is 1.3seconds delayed. you looking at jupiter yesterday was 35-52minutes delayed. you looking at the North star 323 YEARS delayed. when you look thru a telescope at andromeda galaxy, you're looking 2.25 million years delayed\n\nyou reading this text on the screen is 0.0000000001 seconds delayed from when the computer monitor first displayed it.", "The distance between Jupiter and the Earth is always changing due to their respective orbits. When Earth and Jupiter are closest, it takes 32.7 minutes for us on Earth to see the light from Jupiter. When farthest away from Earth it takes 53.8 minutes.\n\nSo when you look at Jupiter, either with your eye, or through a telescope, you are seeing it as it was a half an hour to an hour in the past." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+earth+and+jupiter%2Fspeed+of+light" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7mhjsj", "c7mhk2d", "c7mhzlo" ], "score": [ 55, 10, 12 ], "text": [ "Red blood cells! It actually makes quite a bit of sense, because red blood cells exist in order to transport oxygen, and if they required oxygen, they would be much less efficient in that endeavor.", "Ninety-nine percent of the bacteria in the gut are anaerobic, meaning that they do not require oxygen. These are housed in your digestive system (notably, the intestines). They are not human cells, but are in the human body.", "There is one notable exception to the rule that blood carries oxygen to all cells in the body: the [corneas](_URL_0_) absorb oxygen directly from the air (first paragraph, \"The cornea has no blood supply; it gets oxygen directly through the air. Oxygen first dissolves in the tears and then diffuses throughout the cornea to keep it healthy.\")." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cak1on6" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You're not the only one who loves swords! I was just saying the other day how much I miss the old *Highlander* TV series, but anyway... here's my quick round-up of posts discussing sword-making techniques. If anyone remembers any more, add the link as a reply & we'll create an entry in the \"popular questions\" wiki. - thx!\n\n[How quickly did swords become too blunt to be effective during battle?](_URL_6_) (probably my all-time favourite post)\n\n[what is the most effective sword/swordsmithing process that history has seen?](_URL_4_)\n\n[Did any nation/culture even begin to approach the level of sword-making of Japan?](_URL_0_)\n\n[What would be the primary differences between a cheap sword and an expensive sword, taking into account different time periods and methods of manufacture?](_URL_3_)\n\n[Thursday Focus | Weaponry](_URL_1_)\n\n[I just watched a NOVA episode on Ulfberht viking swords. There doesn't seem to be much about them elsewhere. Does anyone know a bit more about them, and maybe others like Ingelrii swords?](_URL_5_)\n\n[Armor and/or weapon making resources? (Books, webpages, documentaries, articles?)](_URL_2_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13pr8b/did_any_nationculture_even_begin_to_approach_the/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zgiqx/thursday_focus_weaponry/c64j4kt", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xp0ox/armor_andor_weapon_making_resources_books/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dxnak/what_would_be_the_primary_differences_between_a/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bl53n/what_is_the_most_effective_swordswordsmithing/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12nono/i_just_watched_a_nova_episode_on_ulfberht_viking/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1avgu4/how_quickly_did_swords_become_too_blunt_to_be/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2zszqu", "d2ztwua" ], "score": [ 6, 18 ], "text": [ "In London, certain view lines are [protected](_URL_0_), which severely limits the options for erecting tall buildings. Not only that but the land London is built on is an unstable river plain, so subsidence is a problem which would be more significant for heavier/taller buildings. Big Ben is tilting because of this.\n\nIn contrast New York has a nice slab of rock underneath it, not too far from the surface, coupled with no restrictions for old buildings like St. Paul's Cathedral. So skyscrapers all over the place!", "There's quite a few reasons.\n\n* Higher buildings mean a denser downtown core, causing greater traffic and possibly pollution issues as people come to work from bedroom communities and search for a place to park. So unless you have good public transport (which can be quite expensive to build if not in place already), concentrating things too much can be problematic.\n\n* They block light and create major wind tunnels.\n\n* They can go against the character of the place they're in. For example, some Caribbean island residents want to retain their island's quaintness and don't want to turn it into a mass of forty-story condo buildings so they have a \"palm tree maximum height\" rule.\n\n* They can be more prone to safety problems like life-taking fires (e.g. 9-11) or earthquake response.\n\n* The ground underneath them might not be suitably strong enough." ] }

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[ [ "http://i.imgur.com/JMUP1k6.jpg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4t8171", "e4t8qyr" ], "score": [ 48, 6 ], "text": [ "Most likely because you wear shoes which keep your feet baby soft.\n\nMy kids go barefoot a lot and can walk across gravel without a problem.", "That depends on you and how you treat your feet. Skin calluses and hardens as you use it, so you'll have rough spots where you need them and \"normal\" skin where you don't. We tend to wear socks and soft shoes these days and have many more opportunities to sit and relax, so our feet get pampered and stay baby soft. If you needed to run barefoot suddenly, you'd struggle a bit. But over time, your feet would harden, and it would become easier for you as new skin grew in.\n\nI have an awkward callus on the lower knuckle of my right middle finger, because that's where my pen/pencil sits, and I tend to write pretty hard. As a kid, my friend was barefoot all the time at the beach and marina with really rocky/shelly sand and has leather-rough feet that are basically numb to pain. He walked everywhere barefoot and continues to, because he can. Meanwhile, I was always his friend walking around in flip flops or water shoes, because everything was too hot and too sharp." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dzq14qd", "dzr54tj" ], "score": [ 15, 5 ], "text": [ "This answer focuses on the Anglo-Norman period, so earlier than the 13th century. But since OP was interested in English knights fighting on foot before the 14th century, I guess this will still be of interest. \n \nIn \"Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066-1135\", Stephen Morrillo argues that combined arms tactics was central to many battles in this period, and also points out that sometimes dismounted knights played the part of the heavy infantry. In particular, dismounted knights appear in the Battle of Tinchebrai (1106), the Battle of Brémule (1119) and the Battle of Bourgthérolde (1124), although often along mounted knights and other infantry. Although the example of three battles seems to be quite small, considering the fact that battles were rare in this period (Morillo counts 7 battles, C. W. Hollister counts 5 battles of significance), this actually accounts for a significant number of Anglo-Norman battles. \n \nSo why did this dismounting occur? A knight on horseback can easily retreat, while a knight on foot has less chance of escaping a rout unharmed. Forced into this situation, a dismounted knight must either conquer or die. Indeed, this is often the reason given in the sources for the dismounting of knights. Dismounting has a psychological effect, helping to counteract the fear of harm and death that pervaded every battlefield. In particular, having the knights, the military elite, join the battle lines on foot seems to have been massively encouraging to the common infantry as well. Leaders would often be part of the dismounted to further boost morale. For example, King Henry I seemed to have been on foot in the Battle of Tinchebrai and Brémule, and at Bourgthérolde, Odo Borleng was dismounted with the knights under his command. In this case, dismounting can be done to reinforce and stiffen an existing infantry line, instead of making up the entire infantry line themselves. \n \nAs for how the Anglo-Norman army was able to put this into practice, Morillo argues that it stems from the relatively more centralized nature of Anglo-Norman government. He argues that the superiority of medieval cavalry actually stems from the inferior quality of medieval infantry, which requires cohesion brought about by a strong military tradition and/or professional training, both of which were hard to provide in medieval Western Europe. However, due to the more centralized nature of the Anglo-Norman realm and the professionalism of the Famillia Regis (the king's household), there was a strong core force of knights who could function as effective heavy infantry when dismounted. \n \nOn the other hand, in the article \"Battles in England and Normandy, 1066-1154\", Jim Bradbury argues that the dismounting of knights wasn't unique to the Anglo-Normans, but was in fact common in Western Europe. He cites several earlier examples of dismounted knights (such as the Battle of the Dyle in 891) and argues that it grew out of ordinary Frankish tactics, as part of the combined arms response (along with archers and mounted knights) to the threat of a cavalry charge. \n \nThis suggests that the practice of dismounting was not uncommon amongst English knights before the 14th century, an might not even be unique to the English. Dismounting was done as part of a wider combined arms battle plan, and deliberately organised. In these cases, the knights would've fought on foot even when not knocked off their horse, since their horse might not even be on the battlefield to begin with. \n \nSources: \n \n* Stephan Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066-1135 \n* Stephan Morillo, [The \"Age of Cavalry\" Revisited](_URL_0_) \n* Jim Bradbury, Battles in England and Normandy, 1066-1154 (Part of \"Anglo-Norman Warfare\", edited by Matthew Strickland) ", "As /u/darthturtle3 has written, knights fighting on foot was very nearly the rule in English warfare from the mid 11th to the mid 12th centuries and was probably part of a larger trend that dates back several centuries. The Anglo-Norman knight, as were their contemporary counterparts and ancestors, was a highly versatile warrior who chose to dismount or charge according to the circumstances he faced.\n\nHowever, by the middle of the 12th century, this had changed substantially. The Battle of Lincoln, in 1141, is probably the last battle of any significance where substantial elements of the army dismounted to fight, though there were obviously some exceptions to this rule as circumstance dictated. However, on the whole, the trend was overwhelming towards knights fighting battles exclusively on horseback.\n\nWhy this occurred is much harder to answer. The tournament began some time in the very late 11th or early 12th century, and reached the height of its popularity in northern France in the 1160s to 1170s. The increased focus on horsemanship and the change in tactics from multiple styles of lance use (over head thrust, uncouched underarm thrust, throwing and couching) a single form (couching) that required considerable training to use properly, in addition to the increasing chivalric tradition, may have reduced the prestige and focus on fighting on foot in general warfare.\n\nAt the same time, there was increasing use of town militias for infantry, and some of these forces became quite skilled at warfare during the period. The arms requirements for service in a town militia, combined with the increased number of men who could afford the equipment due to the increased money economy and overall economic boom may have resulted in sufficiently large bodies of well equipped infantry that dismounting knights to supplement their numbers was no longer considered necessary. Civic pride, the close relationships between the townsmen and the use of town banners could also have increased their willingness and ability to stand up and fight that the morale boost of having knights in the line with them was considered unnecessary. \n\nHowever, these are just theories. We have no clear indication of why fighting on foot was abandoned by knights, just that it occurred. In all the battles fought by the English in the 13th century, knights did not dismount and fight on foot, except during sieges. Even when faced by Welsh and Scottish pike formations, English knights preferred to stay mounted and try to either charge in the hope that the enemy would dissolve in panic or wait until their archers or crossbowmen had thinned the enemy ranks out enough that a charge became viable. It wasn't until after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 that the English knights began to dismount with any frequency (such as Boroughbridge in 1322). \n\nThis was not yet universal, though, and the initial intention of the English during the Weardale Campaign was to charge the Scots on horseback. Only the treacherous terrain and lack of room to make a charge cause the English to dismount and prepare to fight. Though no battle was fought, this suggests that fighting on foot was not yet the primary mode of fighting for English knights. It wasn't until the Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332 and Halidon Hill in 1333 that we see dismounted men-at-arms as the primary mode of warfare for the English.\n\nAs for your other questions, I'm afraid that I'm also not able to provide an adequate answer.\n\n**References**\n\n*The Great Warbow*, by Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy\n\n*Tournaments*, by Richard Barker and Juliet Barber\n\n*The Art of Warfare in Western Europe*, by J.F. Verbruggen\n\n*The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel*, tr. Nigel Bryant\n\n*Infantry Warfare in the Fourteenth Century*, by Kelly DeVries" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.academia.edu/439213/The_Age_of_Cavalry_Revisited" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dosgna7" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "....an official currency coinage is only ever worth exactly its face value.\n\nare you thinking about those tv commercials for gold clad coins? those coins are produced by a company named National Mint or something stupid like that. those are collector scams. they're not worth anything." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmmue8l", "cmmumbe", "cmn9sar" ], "score": [ 29, 42, 3 ], "text": [ "The latest charge by armoured cavalry that I know of occurred during the Battle of Mars-La-Tour in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. These were a mixed force of Curassiers (armoured cavalry), Dragoons (mounted rifle men) and Uhlans (light cavalry), who participated in what is today known as Von Bredows death ride. \nThe Curassiers in question wore a half breastplate, which was the common armour for units of that type during that period. Armour weights had been declining in European armies since the 30 years war when The House of Orange and the Duchy of Savoy fielded very heavily armoured \"Totenkopf\" contingents in large numbers.", "If you by \"knights\" mean armoured cavalry consisting solely of noblemen, then the charge of the Polish crown army consisting of mostly [Polish winged hussars](_URL_0_), although they had stopped wearing the wings at that time, in the Battle of [Kliszow 1702](_URL_1_). The Polish cavalry threw the Swedish cavalry into disorder and then charged the Swedish infantry twice, but was repulsed both times. The Swedish cavalry then attacked and drove the Poles from the field.", "There really wasn't a \"last charge by knights in armor.\" Armor simply became (and was perceived as) less effective, and over time, people just left more and more parts of it behind in camp or at home when they went out to fight. Classical, full-body, articulated plate armor was pretty much out of fashion in western Europe by the second quarter of the 1500s, but people kept wearing various bits and pieces of it [right up to and during the beginning of the first world war.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Polish_Hussar_half-armour_Winged_Riders.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Klissow" ], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/French_heavy_cavalry_Paris_August_1914.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csyx2o6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "They (typically. Some people tried some crazy things) just went through known passes, which is why mountains are such great natural defenses. If there are only a small number of passes the defending army knows exactly where their enemy is coming through and can wait for them. Many mountain passes (esp. high mountain passes) are not very wide, either, meaning that armies could only pass through slowly and with great care. It is a pretty dangerous business. \n\nI've been talking about the Mongols too much in this sub recently, but they were going on a raid against Russia and decided to cross the Caucasus Mountains in the middle of the winter. Unfortunately there was only one real passable spot, at Derbent. So they had to \"hire\" (bribe/threaten) guides, but the guides were able to run up ahead and warn everyone on the other side of the mountain that the mongols were coming for an invasion. (Genghis Khan and the Mongol War Machine By Chris Peers). Don't worry, the Mongols win and then kill everyone and terrify all of the Russian Princes for years, but the Mongols also REALLY want to find a better way to get through (they eventually just take over the city of Derbent, which makes it easier). \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvlufk3", "cvlut9q" ], "score": [ 2, 10 ], "text": [ "This is probably the biggest problem with pro gaming as a whole. Pro gamers have the shortest career of any \"sport\", and the potential fallback isnt much. A good amount of pros have presences on streaming platforms like twitch, so that + the tech experience they have getting a job at a gaming company isnt unreasonable. ", "It's a bit of a tough question to answer as the pro gaming industry hasn't delivered that many retirements so far.\n\nHowever, if they follow a gathering based on not just their skill, but also their personality, they could complete a full career by Twitch (subscriptions, ads, donations) and YouTube (ads, sponsorships, Patreon), even if they can no longer compete at -the- top level.\n\nOr their knowledge on games could indeed land them a job in a gaming company.\n\nIn my opinion it can be compared to \"normal\" sports in this regard, as sports knowledge (- > coach, manager...) or personality (media personality) can allow you to continue your career even after retirement from actual top level competition." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2z17ky", "d2z18it", "d2z2oeg", "d2zc5yc" ], "score": [ 11, 5, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "With VOIP and cheap offshore labor, it costs virtually nothing to make those calls - partly *because* no one answers, or hangs up immediately. If you make 10,000 calls - that's every number in an exchange - and get three or four bites, you've made money.", "It costs nearly nothing to make a call. They can fail 1,000,000 times before getting a hit and make money.", "Currently sitting at my desk working as an IT for a fundraising call center. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nStep one: Dialing systems. I'm actually in the process of compiling data to better configure our rate of dial or CPA (calls per agent). As more people wait to get connected to someone, more calls are made. My goal atm, is to have my agents wait no longer than 30s between calls, but also make sure there are no drops (when you pick up and no one is there. Everyone hates that.)This is just getting people to pick up. lets say on average 35% of people pick up the phone. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nStep 2: People hang up, many do. But, many don't however. Also it's illegal to call cellphones, so generally people at home on lan lines are more likely to be available to talk. Now this where the product often comes in to play. The company I work for does fundraising for things like breast cancer etc. Something more people are willing to hear about than say a TV salesman. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nStep 3: Percentage of donation, this is mainly just for fundraisers. Like any business you have to pay your employees and overhead etc. The server room, dialer software, support, custom databases etc arent cheap (although 2 of my computers use win98 and XP). Hell my salary and I maybe do about 10 hours of real work a week praying the system/database doesn't crash. But they need to pay me just like any other business because if it does their SOL without me. You often hear people complain about these companies that alot is payed to fundraisers. Why do they do it? 20% of a large large pie, is a lot better than 100% of a small pie. A recent article was recently written about my company, and it was funny despite all the poor remarks, at the very bottom the paper inserted the bottom line comment from the fundraiser that they've raised over 40 times the amount of money for their charity by utilizing telemarketers, compared to just raising locally with volunteers. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nIf anyone has any questions I can give some insight. Not as bad of a service than people think, at least with fundraising I should say my expertise is limited to.", "believe me, there are people who buy it. i work for telemarketing before and among the 100 person that i ring up to, about 70% does listen to me for about 30 seconds at least, among these 70%, about 20% sounded more interested, among these 20%, about 90% of them willing to listen to more of what i have and can offer and lastly among the 90%, there are about 30 ~ 50% of them willing to give it a try.\n\nthat is about 2 ~ 4 people per 100 try out my product that i'm selling.\n\nand i get commission for getting them to liaise with the salesperson. which give me $20/pax and that is on top of my pay.\n\nworth it? yes it is. generally i'm getting about $50 per day and i work for 5 hours daily ( 5pm to 10pm ). of course that was where i pick up my sales talking skill, i'm an telecom engineer now and have a running business." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f8tfkjn", "f8tfksv", "f8tl37d", "f8to58j", "f8tt9ht", "f8tzo9y", "f8whgg6" ], "score": [ 8, 19, 3, 3, 8, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "_URL_0_\n\nIt's been recommended for a few decades now.\n\n > Aspirin can help prevent heart attacks in people with coronary artery disease and in those who have a higher than average risk. Only low dose, usually just 81 a day, is needed. But people who think they may be having an attack need an extra 325 mg of aspirin, and they need it as quickly as possible.", "Taking too many NSAIDs gives you stomach ulcers for starters. There's lots of side effects to antiinflammatories.", " A recent trial giving NSAIDs to prevent Alzheimers disease was stopped due to \"safety\" i.e. there were a lot of adverse events. Also no apparent benefit 8-(.\n\nNSAIDs raise blood pressure, increase bleeding, and can cause kidney damage in addition to the stomach ulcers mentioned. Kidneys are especially at risk if you are \"volume depleted\" e.g running a marathon.\n\n\nNSAIDs are not innocuous. Prostaglandins rock", "Inflammation is good when it is needed. You must have good health habits to prevent it from getting out of control.", "Inflammation is both a good and a bad thing depend on the context.\n\nInflammation often says somethings wrong and is the body's way of saying \"send help\", and the body respons in various ways such as increased blood flow and immunological response.\n\nOne of the primary ways the body handles inflammation is by prostaglandins, produced by COX 1 & 2 enzymes. (primarily 2 is the target for anti-inflammatory agents).\n\nNSAIDS inhibit the formation of prostaglandins by inhibiting COX enzymes. But by doing so they also CAN affect other things such as blood flow to the kidneys (ibuprofen) or NSAID induced asthma (aspirin). One of their most widely reported and known side effects is blood on the stool from affecting the mucosa in the stomach.\n\nThis is because prostaglandins also serve other functions outside of inflammation. Like most things in the body, one molecule/target can serve multiple functions, and if you're interfering with the chain you end up with side effects.\n\nThey also have a negative effect on the risk of heart disease during prolonged use (etc). \n\nInflammation can be caused by many different things, and NSAIDS may not always be the right kind of treatment for the inflammation depending on the cause and origin.", "We barely understand inflammation. Inflammation isn't a like this meter where TOO MUCH = BAD, and TOO LITTLE = BAD. \"Inflammation\" is a generic term used to describe a very large and complex interaction of molecules from different cells in the body. We understand that some of these interactions are very beneficial, and that having excesses (or deficiencies) of some of them can be harmful. The solution isn't to just take steroids or Non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs.", "Woah, hold up. Cancer can be cause inflammation as a symptom, but it isn't caused by inflammation. Neither is heart disease, but again, inflammation can be a symptom.\n\nInflammation on its own isn't actually a bad thing. It's a vital part of what's known as the innate immune system - this aspect of the immune system has many features, but it's the one we're born with. It's not very specific, but it's fast, and it can do a whole number of things, including destroying foreign substances (by creating a fever or the phagocytosis, a process in which certain white blood cells engulf and digest the foreign body) and promoting healing. It does the latter primarily in two ways; by increasing blood flow to the injured area and by initiating the secretion of \"repair factors\" to replace damaged tissue.\nInflammation primarily becomes dangerous when it goes unchecked, usually in the case of allergies or a rheumatoid disease. \n\nSo off the bat we can see why getting rid of all inflammation wouldn't be a good idea. But even in cases where we do want to reduce inflammation (it's causing pain, it's overactive and damaging cells) we have to target a specific aspect of inflammation. It's not a singular process, but instead it's a constellation of processes. It's hard to explain without getting super technical, but ibuprofen, as in your example, works by targeting an enzyme involved in the production of certain prostaglandins - hormones involved in regulating the inflammation response as well as inducing fevers.\n\nAnother drug, montelukast, is not remotely related to the NSAID drug category, but is arguably a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug nonetheless. It's used in treatment of chronic asthma, and works by inhibiting leukotrine, an inflammatory factor released by basophils (a type of white blood cell) primarily in the lungs. This reduces a specific inflammation, but is fairly specific. Taking this won't reduce inflammation from, say, a sprained ankle.\n\nHumira, a drug used to treat a number of autoimmune and rheumatoid illnesses, works by inhibiting yet another inflammatory factor called TNF - tumor necrosis factor. TNF can cause fevers, swelling, and apoptosis, aka programmed cell death. In certain illnesses, TNF can cause prolonged inflammation, or can target the wrong cells. But humira still won't prevent swelling from a sprained ankle, because TNF isn't really involved in injury-repair.\n\nSo while inflammation can sometimes be dangerous, it's usually quite helpful, and the kind of inflammation that is cause for concern can't really be helped with NSAIDs like ibuprofen." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/aspirin-for-heart-attack-chew-or-swallow" ], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqy59qh" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "How would we know what an \"average citizen\" thought? Every text we have is produced by the elite class. Whether people lost friends or family is impossible to know in the specifics.\n\nWe do know that military disaster did not affect the political careers of the generals involved. Rosenstein in *Imperatores Victi* demonstrates very well that statistically military defeat had little or no impact on the further career of a general. Losing, as long as you got out alive, simply didn't matter.\n\nOn the personal level, among the elite, we do have evidence for friends and family grieving for loved ones. Both Catullus and Propertius write about that. Logically you would by extension think the \"average citizen\" would have similar feelings. There might be stele that can give more of a middle class view of the matter, but I don't know them and I don't have the resources to get them right now." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2cyjcl", "c2cyjcl" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Things Android phones can do *without* being rooted (the same level of permission you currently have on the iPhone):\n\n* Change the keyboard input. [8pen](_URL_1_), [SwiftKey](_URL_0_), and [Swype](_URL_9_) are some good examples.\n* Use any appstore or download apps directly from web pages. The [Amazon AppStore](_URL_10_) even has one free (as in, a 100% discounted) app every day.\n* Put widgets on your home screen, like the HTC clock/weather widgets, calendar widgets, [gReader](_URL_2_) widgets, and battery management/service widgets for turning on/off features like 4G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. \n* Explore your filesystem with apps like [ASTRO File Manager](_URL_3_).\n* *Admittedly there are fewer games out for Android than iPhone* (in surveys a while back, a statistically significant percentage of people said they got an iPhone primarily for the games) but there is a great family of video game console emulators like [SNESoid](_URL_4_) for the Super NES, NESoid for the NES, and GENSoid for the Sega Genesis among others. \n\nThings you can do *with* a rooted phone:\n\n* Install a custom ROM (an operating system like OSX or Windows 7) like [CM7](_URL_5_).\n* Underclock/overclock the processor to improve battery live or improve performance. \n* Use your phone as a wireless hotspot without paying the extra $25/month for the service.\n* Create comprehensive recovery files (backups) with [Clockwork Mod](_URL_6_). Additionally backup, freeze and delete apps on your phone through [Titanium Backup](_URL_7_).\n\nNo iPhone supports 4G, at least one Android phone now supports Netflix, and Android is [open source](_URL_8_).\n\nBut Steve Jobs and Apple will always be the king of \"it just works.\" So if you want to sacrifice all/most of those features to never have to learn a phone that you'll probably be owning for the next 1 or 2 years, Apple might be the phone for you. I just wanted to enumerate all of the reasons why Android phones are for me.\n\nIf it's any credit to Apple, their products have definitely been successful at bringing space-age technology to the baby boomers. ", "Things Android phones can do *without* being rooted (the same level of permission you currently have on the iPhone):\n\n* Change the keyboard input. [8pen](_URL_1_), [SwiftKey](_URL_0_), and [Swype](_URL_9_) are some good examples.\n* Use any appstore or download apps directly from web pages. The [Amazon AppStore](_URL_10_) even has one free (as in, a 100% discounted) app every day.\n* Put widgets on your home screen, like the HTC clock/weather widgets, calendar widgets, [gReader](_URL_2_) widgets, and battery management/service widgets for turning on/off features like 4G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. \n* Explore your filesystem with apps like [ASTRO File Manager](_URL_3_).\n* *Admittedly there are fewer games out for Android than iPhone* (in surveys a while back, a statistically significant percentage of people said they got an iPhone primarily for the games) but there is a great family of video game console emulators like [SNESoid](_URL_4_) for the Super NES, NESoid for the NES, and GENSoid for the Sega Genesis among others. \n\nThings you can do *with* a rooted phone:\n\n* Install a custom ROM (an operating system like OSX or Windows 7) like [CM7](_URL_5_).\n* Underclock/overclock the processor to improve battery live or improve performance. \n* Use your phone as a wireless hotspot without paying the extra $25/month for the service.\n* Create comprehensive recovery files (backups) with [Clockwork Mod](_URL_6_). Additionally backup, freeze and delete apps on your phone through [Titanium Backup](_URL_7_).\n\nNo iPhone supports 4G, at least one Android phone now supports Netflix, and Android is [open source](_URL_8_).\n\nBut Steve Jobs and Apple will always be the king of \"it just works.\" So if you want to sacrifice all/most of those features to never have to learn a phone that you'll probably be owning for the next 1 or 2 years, Apple might be the phone for you. I just wanted to enumerate all of the reasons why Android phones are for me.\n\nIf it's any credit to Apple, their products have definitely been successful at bringing space-age technology to the baby boomers. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.swiftkey.net", "http://www.8pen.com", "https://market.android.com/details?id=com.noinnion.android.greader.readerpro&hl=en", "https://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro&hl=en", "http://www.snesoid.com", "http://www.cyanogenmod.com", "http://www.clockworkmod.com", "http://www.matrixrewriter.com/android/", "http://www.source.android.com", "http://www.swypeinc.com/", "http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011" ], [ "http://www.swiftkey.net", "http://www.8pen.com", "https://market.android.com/details?id=com.noinnion.android.greader.readerpro&hl=en", "https://market.android.com/details?id=com.metago.astro&hl=en", "http://www.snesoid.com", "http://www.cyanogenmod.com", "http://www.clockworkmod.com", "http://www.matrixrewriter.com/android/", "http://www.source.android.com", "http://www.swypeinc.com/", "http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7p3lsn", "c7p3luu" ], "score": [ 8, 3 ], "text": [ "what is the reference point?\n\nthis question is asked all the time and it's always the same.. \n\n1. Do a search this has been asked before\n\n2. What exactly are we calling our fixed reference point? (the entire universe is in flux)\n", "All motion is relative to the observer.\n\n > So given a fixed reference point, how fast are we actually going?\n\nThere is no \"fixed reference point.\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dns4uod", "dns5462", "dns6jat", "dns74hz", "dnsjmet" ], "score": [ 2, 6, 2, 3, 4 ], "text": [ "Well, the Scots and some other parts of the UK might not agree with that.\n\nSpain was assembled by a more recent war, and the Franco dictatorship didn't really accomplish much harmony.", "While I don't disagree with your question, let me find you some examples which invalidate it:\n\n- Belgium is part French part Dutch, different languages, different traditions, different cultures.\n\n- Yugoslavia, but that was only a stable country under Tito.\n\n- Turkey and its Kurdistan part.\n\n- UK (or was it GB?) and Scotland and Northern-Ireland.\n\n- The former east and west parts of Germany, still cultural very different.\n\n- Czech and Slovakia were split up in the late 1990s IIRC.\n\n- Italy and Sicily.\n \n", "The Bavarians would disagree. High German and Low German exist somewhere in there. As would the Sicilians. Parisians. And asking if that applies to Northern Ireland and Ireland Ireland just ends up with a fight. Don't people still speak Welsh in some places? \n\nHere in the states we've got the hoosiers up north that are practically swedish-canadian. The creole types down in Louisiana. Every part of NYC used to have their own flavor, but Brooklyn has deeper roots apparently. California is a mess, but thank GOD that valley-girl cliche went out of style. And they can all bow before the midwestern accent which is widely acknowledged to be \"American Standard English\". Alll y'alls people dun be talkin' funny-likes.\n\nOf course that's all being taken over by Spanish. ", "they dont. sicilian , neopolitan tuscan in italy . in fact much of europe have lesser known areas.. ask a parisian.. thier dialect different from someone from nice or provance", "Other nations in Europe aren't more culturally and linguistically uniform. It's just that the tensions in Spain right now are violent and more extreme. This is likely due to some 20th century historical events. Spain had an extremely ugly and deadly, some would say genocidal, civil war in the 1930s. It was won by the fascists, led by Francisco Franco. He was a brutal dictator and ruled Spain from 1939 until 1975 when he died. There was a lot of unhappiness and repression in Spain during those years. This exacerbated tensions between Catalonia and the Basque regions and their feelings for being part of Spain. There are 7 Basque regions in Europe--4 are in Spain, 3 are in France. There have been tensions between these Basque regions and the government of the nation they are in. But the tensions are far greater between the Basques in Spain and the Spanish government, than there are between the French and the Basques living in France. I mean, it's a popular fantasy/dream/wish among all the Basques to have their own nation. But the Spanish Basques are more violent and more active in their separatism than the French Basques. The reason can probably be attributed to the French Basques experiencing less repression and violence than the Spanish Basques, so they're less angry. And they have less to gain by being separatists since their lives aren't as bad overall and they didn't have, for example, the same language repression in France that the Basques in Spain had. The situation for the Spanish improved greatly following Franco's death but the independence movements were already established. Lately, there have been various economic problems in Spain so that has heated up the discontent that residents of Catalonia feel.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cklivo7", "cklkqda" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Because it gets them off. Depends on which side of the scale between mother superior and super-horny fairy-queen the recipient is.\n\nSource: I'm the latter, generally speaking.", "Men are very visual creatures, and quick to arouse. A man can go from no arousal to immediately turned on just with a quick flash of a girl's boobs. As a result of this nature, many men don't grasp that women don't work the same way, and aren't interested much in seeing a dick unless already aroused.\n\nCombine that with the general negative effect that arousal tends to have on your ability to make good decisions, and you have horny men sending what they think are arousing pictures to someone who is in no mood for them." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e2b003z", "e2b0fhq", "e2b0oso" ], "score": [ 10, 83, 6 ], "text": [ "The \"recommended\" is a bullshit number brought on by lobbyists.\n\nHave you noticed how much you urinate when you drink so much water? Your body purges excess water.\n\nDrink when you're thirsty. Not because you're on a goddamn schedule.", "The recommended two litres of water a day is junk science invented by drinks manufacturers to sell more products. Actual scientists say you should drink when thirsty, and not drink when not thirsty (unless you are sick or actually dehydrated).\n\nClean water was difficult to find, and at first humans settled wherever they could find fresh water. Later, they learned how to dig wells, giving them access to more fresh water.\n\nOf course, by our standards, the water wasn't exactly clean. But people had immune systems to cope: being exposed to all the common pathogens very early in life helped give people the immunity they needed.\n\nIt was still possible to pick up parasites through the water, though, so it wasn't totally safe, and infant mortality in particular was very high. But the human race compensated for that by not having birth control in those days: those that did survive childhood could usually go on to live long and relatively healthy lives (the average life expectancy of around 40 is so low because of the high infant mortality, and because of constant wars and battles).\n\nThis is where beer comes in. Beer is mentioned in Ancient Egypt, although it was quite different from modern beer. Essentially, it was liquid bread, with a much lower alcohol content than we're used to now, so it could be given to children. In mediaeval Europe it was an important supplement to a peasant's diet (the belief that beer is considered a \"foodstuff\" in Bavaria is a complete urban myth, but not an implausible one). The process of brewing the beer killed off most of the germs and parasites, and the alcohol killed off the rest.\n\nBasically, a combination of humans not actually needing as much water as the Coca-Cola Corp wants you to believe, a more robust immune system, and the discovery of the brewing process.", "Definitely difficult, unless you lived near a river, lake, water reserve, mountain, watery crops (melon or the like), collected rain water, ice, or had slaves/pesants gathering water for you. Maybe they didn’t get their “recommended” two liters. Maybe you can live just drinking 1 L a day, although it might not be optimum.\n\nI believe you loss your ability to feel thirsty when you age. This is why old people die from dehydration during summertime. They simply forget to drink... so maybe its fine to drink a recommended amount.\n\nIn Denmark the water is almost free. Our land is filled with tremendous amounts of extreme pure water. Our non-profit health organization recommends (as a rule of thumb) that you drink 1/3 you weight in deciliters. For instance if you weigh 60 kg you should drink 20 dL which corresponds to 2 L. Off course you should drink a little more when you exercise or when its hot and visa versa." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2xemg6", "c2xetw9", "c2xid3q", "c2xemg6", "c2xetw9", "c2xid3q" ], "score": [ 2, 8, 2, 2, 8, 2 ], "text": [ "All matter has mass, and on Earth, weight.\n\nYour experiment sounds reasonable. Another idea would be to weigh an air filter before and after it absorbed smoke.", "Smoke has weight, yes, but that experiment is no way to find it. For example, try it with a piece of magnesium instead of a cigarette. If you burn magnesium, it gives off some smoke, and at the end the ashes are actually **heavier** than the original piece of magnesium. How? Burning is just rapid oxidation, and what's left is magnesium oxide, which contains oxygen from the air, which has mass. Burning takes mass out of the air and adds it to the ashes and the smoke, and the proposed experiment doesn't take that into account.\n\nMuch of a cigarette burning is carbon, so when that oxidises it becomes carbon dioxide (or monoxide), both of which are gasses which dissipate away. Do they count as part of the smoke? Probably not, but they do in that experiment.\n\nI don't know how to formulate an experiment to weigh smoke, but the experiment given in the film is flawed.\n\nEdit: Also, because this way of thinking about fire seems so intuitively reasonable, it was pretty much our best scientific model of it for a long time. They called it [phlogiston theory](_URL_0_).", "If you wanted to empirically measure the mass of the smoke, you'd have to do it in a closed environment. The movie's experiment wouldn't work, because some of the new mass would include oxidation byproducts from the combustion of the cigarette. Those byproducts may have absorbed other atoms or molecules from the air. Consequently it would not be possible to measure smoke that way.\n\nA better way that doesn't involve anything other than a scale and a vacuum is to put a known quantity of air in a sealed box. Weigh the box and the air inside, and subtract the mass of the box to get the mass of the air (call this m_air). Put the cigarette-match system in the box. Then light the cigarette with the match. What's left behind is the cigarette and match, solid byproducts, and smoke. Weigh the result (m_all).\n\nOnce it's done burning, suck out all the gases; weigh the new result and call this (m_solids).\n\nSince there's nothing in the `m_all` other than smoke, the cigarette, air, and the solid byproducts, the total mass of `m_all` must be:\n\n m_all = m_smoke + m_solids + m_air\n\nWe know what `m_all` is because we measured it, and we know what `m_air` and `m_solids` are because we measured those too. So let's solve for `m_smoke`:\n\n m_smoke = m_all - m_solids - m_air\n\nPlugging those values in will give you the mass of the smoke.", "All matter has mass, and on Earth, weight.\n\nYour experiment sounds reasonable. Another idea would be to weigh an air filter before and after it absorbed smoke.", "Smoke has weight, yes, but that experiment is no way to find it. For example, try it with a piece of magnesium instead of a cigarette. If you burn magnesium, it gives off some smoke, and at the end the ashes are actually **heavier** than the original piece of magnesium. How? Burning is just rapid oxidation, and what's left is magnesium oxide, which contains oxygen from the air, which has mass. Burning takes mass out of the air and adds it to the ashes and the smoke, and the proposed experiment doesn't take that into account.\n\nMuch of a cigarette burning is carbon, so when that oxidises it becomes carbon dioxide (or monoxide), both of which are gasses which dissipate away. Do they count as part of the smoke? Probably not, but they do in that experiment.\n\nI don't know how to formulate an experiment to weigh smoke, but the experiment given in the film is flawed.\n\nEdit: Also, because this way of thinking about fire seems so intuitively reasonable, it was pretty much our best scientific model of it for a long time. They called it [phlogiston theory](_URL_0_).", "If you wanted to empirically measure the mass of the smoke, you'd have to do it in a closed environment. The movie's experiment wouldn't work, because some of the new mass would include oxidation byproducts from the combustion of the cigarette. Those byproducts may have absorbed other atoms or molecules from the air. Consequently it would not be possible to measure smoke that way.\n\nA better way that doesn't involve anything other than a scale and a vacuum is to put a known quantity of air in a sealed box. Weigh the box and the air inside, and subtract the mass of the box to get the mass of the air (call this m_air). Put the cigarette-match system in the box. Then light the cigarette with the match. What's left behind is the cigarette and match, solid byproducts, and smoke. Weigh the result (m_all).\n\nOnce it's done burning, suck out all the gases; weigh the new result and call this (m_solids).\n\nSince there's nothing in the `m_all` other than smoke, the cigarette, air, and the solid byproducts, the total mass of `m_all` must be:\n\n m_all = m_smoke + m_solids + m_air\n\nWe know what `m_all` is because we measured it, and we know what `m_air` and `m_solids` are because we measured those too. So let's solve for `m_smoke`:\n\n m_smoke = m_all - m_solids - m_air\n\nPlugging those values in will give you the mass of the smoke." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddxy0g9", "ddxy3wc", "ddxy6nz", "ddxyz4b", "ddxzg6q", "ddy10l8", "ddy12zx", "ddy1jr5" ], "score": [ 8, 11, 22, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Whether or not they have a fractured chest does not have any relevance to Cpr.\n\nThe important thing is the forced contaction of the heart, damaged or not. \n\nIf they are dead they are dead regardless of whether or not their Ribs are being pushed into their heart. You cant make them more dead.\n\nIf they are revived good job. If they are revived with a bum ticker, good job. \n\nTldr; a broken ribcage dosnt matter as they are already dead.\n\nSource 7 years primary care paramedic\n", " > So in a situation where a person needs CPR but also has fractured his chest bones wouldn't simulating heartbeats do more harm?\n\nMore harm than having no heartbeat? I can't see how.\n\nIf done properly those chest compressions will likely break ribs anyway, even if they were fine to start with. Keeping the brain alive with moving oxygenated blood supercedes all other concerns including broken ribs.", "In a situation when a person actually needs CPR a beating heart takes precedence over anything else even a fractured sternum/ribs. if the ribs puncture your lung and give you a pneumothorax, they can still fix you up later, but if the heart stop beating only for 5 minutes your brain cells will start to become necrotic right away (with the hippocampus being the most vulnerable). \nSource: took a CPR class in med school, asked the same question that was my instructor answer. ", "That just makes it easier. Those bones are going to break during CPR anyway, this just means you don't have to break them.", "how do the fractured ribs not puncture the heart?\n", "They're gonna break anyways....I'm sure if the person was to survive which thank to Hollywood it's actually success is a hell if a lot lower than believed, they would probably rather wake up with a sore chest than not at all", "First time I did CPR the snap of the rib scared the shit out of me. Didn't matter as the person didn't make it. Had they, it would be better to be alive with a broken rib than dead with your ribs intact. ", "If you need to do CPR, that is because the person has no pulse/is not breathing/heart has stopped. In any case, your heart beating, you having a pulse, and you breathing indicate that you're alive and well, which means this will always take priority over any other injury. Rupturing a lung can be fixed, further fracturing chest bones can be fixed, any other consequence of this can typically be fixed. Your heart ceasing to beat and blood and oxygen not making it to your brain cannot be fixed. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czolbar" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "For about 40 years the US and Japan had been on a collision course. A whole host of factors made it so that the nations and populations felt each other was a natural foe, and that when war came it would be particularly brutal. \n\nTo go through a few:\n\n1. Residual Colonialism clashing with Japan's desire to make good its industrialization and ascendancy. The US and UK were still committed to the \"Open Door Policy\" and Western domination of Chinese and nearby markets, while Japan sought a greater sphere of influence itself after smashing Russian power in 1905, and proving itself able to be a colonial power in its own right. \n\n2. Race based policy and rhetoric on both sides. California for instance had some particularly heavy handed anti Asian policies,a nd immigration was severely limited. And deeply held beliefs that immigrants owed allegiance to the Emperor over Washington. Meanwhile 3 generations of Japanese were fed the nationalist narrative of the Yamato Race, one people focused on greatness brought together under the Divine Emperor, and who would replace the Colonial powers as the new dominant power of the Asian peoples. \n\n3. The feelings of dishonor and anger over the Naval Treaties. In the 20's and 30's at the Washington and London Conferences Japan was pressured into accepting a 5:5:3 ratio in Battleships and in general naval tonnage compared to the US and UK. That was seen not as a recognition of global vs regional interests, but as a move to hinder the growth of the rising sun of Japan. There was then national rage and mourning when multiple unfinished battleships were taken from the dockyards and scuttled. \n\n4. Progressive tightening of economic screws by FDR. When Japanese officers in Manchuria repeatedly either acted without prior approval or created crisis, Japan found itself in its long awaited move to conquer China. In response FDR went through a series of restriction to prevent the US from feeding the war machine for a conflict he was against. Items such as scrap metal were not allowed to be sold to Japanese customers. Finally Oil was embargoed, and this then would have either forced an end to the war, or the IJA and IJN would have ground to a halt. \n\n5. Prevailing thought on how to fix that weakness was to snatch up the Dutch East Indies, and Malaysia from the Netherlands and the UK. However the US controlled Philippines stood in the way, and even without a direct attack the fear was that the US would come to its allies aid, and either way a general war would commence. \n\nSo the key becomes, with a smaller navy, how do you secure the resources needed to wage war, while also fighting off an enemy fleet equal your own?\n\nFrom that problem was born the plan to attack pearl Harbor and try to remove one of those considerations for a time. Thus the war would go A. Knock the USN off balance and freeze them B. Seize the resources you need to keep going in the South pacific. C. Prepare a string of Islands through the Pacific to use as bastions to bleed the USN when it did come to fight, then a giant climactic battle could be joined to sink the rest of them. D. Then hopefully the US would be tired of war and open negotiations which would leave Japan with the territory it needed to be resource independent. \n\nExcellent Sources: War Plan Ornage by Edward S. Miller\n\nPacific Crucible by Ian W. Toll\n\nand Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dfqb5jq" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Metal working is *way* past caveman times. \n\nWe figured out fire, and we figured out how to make *hot* fire (which we needed to make strong pottery, which we needed for storage because we figured out agriculture which, incidentally, meant we needed to figure out writing). \n\nA lot of this is, necessarily, speculative, but the likely scenario is someone put some metal in a hot fire and noticed it melted. Possibly people found free-lying metal deposits, or someone had rocks with a high degree of iron impurities. \n\nA lot of stuff like this happens *by accident*, and then possibly someone *eventually* thinks of something to do with it. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbcjw4d", "cbcnt69", "cbcp5jj", "cbcr1c1", "cbcyab0" ], "score": [ 18, 26, 2, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "A great example of gunpowder changing siege warfare, in my opinion, is the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. Sultan Mehmed used a corp of cannons to weaken and bring down the walls, ending the reign of a fortress that had only been taken once before. (The Fall of Constantinople, by Nicolle, Hardon, and Turnbull - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon)\n--Also, the mere fact that gunpowder weapons were more powerful than the previous incarnations of siege weapons changed the face of warfare. What's the point of having massive walls around everything that are expensive to make and maintain when the enemy can roll up with some cannons and knock them down or severely damage them? The entire culture of warfare shifted once gunpowder became more prevalent. ", "They ended up not changing the strategic nature of siege warfare that much at all, except perhaps making the defender even stronger then they had been in previous centuries (how much so varies). Siege tactics, however, changed much more - but less than you'd expect.\n\nThere was a brief period from about the late 14th century to the early 15th century in which advanced cannon (corned powder, bronze barrels, iron shot) were sufficiently new that they let badly-built castles fall quickly, but it was fairly soon after their introduction that defensive countermeasures were introduced.\n\nBut even without those countermeasures, writers of the era noted that *the defender will always bring more guns to bear*. Any castle or fortification is going to be able to outrange and outgun any attacker, as the attacker will only have so many cannon that he can bring into firing range. When you combine this with how incredibly close the attacker needs to bring his weapons to have any effect on the massive walls, this creates a situation that is hugely tilted to the defender's advantage.\n\nDefensive tactics became concerned with overlapping fields of fire, angled walls to deflect cannon balls, and secondary defenses to fall back too. The attacker would have to fight their way up a horrific outer killzone in which any given approach would have the defender's full firepower focused on them (usually by constructing trenches and earthworks inch by inch in a process that might take weeks or months), try their best to knock out the defender's well protected guns near the section of wall they sought to breach (if they didn't, any attack would be blown to shreds), make at least three breaches in the wall, and then launch a simultaneous assault - one that was usually unsuccessful.\n\n[A comparison of pre and post gunpowder \"ideal\" fortifications from David Eltis' *The Military Revolution in Sixteenth Century Europe.*](_URL_1_)\n\nIt was unsuccessful because the defender at this point would have built the famous \"semi-circle\" around the breach points - a massed amount of artillery, arquebusiers, musketeers, and pikemen with their weapons aimed at the small breach in the wall and ensconced safely behind cover. When the enemy troops charged in, everyone would fire. And keep firing. Once the smoke cleared, the pikemen would charge the disoriented enemy and rout them - and the process would begin again.\n\nEven the most outdated of castles could be decently well defended in this situation, by allowing the attacker to breach the walls and killing him when he got in. Custom designed fortifications were even more impossible to take - I'd recommend reading up on the Second Siege of Rhodes and the Siege of Malta to see exactly what faced an attacker who assaulted a fortified position with a determined defender.\n\n**Bibliography:**\n\nEltis, David. *The Military Revolution in Sixteenth Century Europe.* New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1998. Print.\n\nHall, Bert. *Weapons & Warfare in Renaissance Europe.* London: The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., 1997. Print.\n\n**Other comments:**\n\n > It's my understanding that cannons were around before handheld gunpowder weapons, and were used in Europe as far back as the 1300s, so I'm hoping there must be some examples of sieges using these weapons.\n\nA common opinion, but it's actually unclear. The current historiography has \"handheld\" (two man) weapons as the first to emerge, which makes sense when you think of how complicated it is to cast the barrel for/successfully use large gunpowder weapons.\n\n > On a related note, I'm also interested in learning about military strategy and tactics from the introduction of gunpowder weapons up until the 1800s, so are there any books or other resources that would help me out? I'm looking for a fairly general overview of how gunpowder changed warfare, especially in Europe, and while I appreciate that this is a very big field I'm quite keen to learn about it, so any books or other resources would be a great help.\n\nHa, I came to this subreddit with almost the exact same question about 8 months ago. After I had learned a lot about the subject, [I answered my own question here] (_URL_0_) along with some other ones that I had. You might be interested.", "Some good sources that immediately spring to mind:\nSiege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494-1660 by Christopher Duffy.\nMilitary Architecture by Quentin Hughes.\nThe Fortress series by Osprey books covers pretty much everything, and several books in the series cover the time period in which you're interested (I own nearly all of them).\nArcher Jones and Bert Hall are both excellent.", "Disclaimer: I am not a professional academic but I have written a senior paper on the subject, no access to it now but I can remember most of how it went. \n\nThis is a pretty complicated topic, certainly things changed in terms of the mechanics of how sieges worked logistically. The thing is that this really gets a bit muddled because almost as soon as guns came into general use defenders began adapting to them. This culminated with the invention and adoption of the Trace Italienne which, as others have indicated, would end reversing the advantage in sieges from the attacking to the defending forces. \n\nLet's start at the beginning, around the Hundred Years' War, which saw the first widespread use of cannons in the West. It is possible that cannons were used earlier, at the Siege of Cordova in 1280, but devices at this event are not certain. In any event, the practice of bringing cannons to sieges became commonplace around 1370. Clearly these weapons demonstrated their advantage quickly, in at least one instance, at Ardres in 1377, Phillip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was able to force a surrender just demonstrating that he had cannons. In other cases as few as 3 shots would have been needed, not necessarily even hitting the walls of the fortification. I should, at this point, mention the fact that even bringing cannons to a siege, while common, was a big deal. It was really hard to move these gunpowder weapons around in the 14th century, and they were prone to failure (catastrophically in fact); cannons were also incredibly expensive. So expensive that they were only affordable to the richest men in Europe (I believe there are paper relating the expenses of gunpowder to centralization in Europe but I can't recall any specific authors). \n\n\nSo this sounds like a pretty big game changer right? We all know how the story ends, with Italians inventing the Trace in the second half of the 15th century, but was there nearly 100 years of irresistible sieges taking place in the interim? The answer is no. Almost as soon as guns started knocking down walls military planners started devising defenses. Interestingly Kelly DeVries (one of my favourite scholars of the period) argues that these advances took place mostly in France and the Low Countries than in Italy since they were constantly at war in the period. \n\n\nWhat features were common on these proto Star Forts? Mostly gun ports, artillery towers, boulevards, brickwork construction & c. \n\nSo, in closing, while the Vauban and his forerunners were able to neutralize the impact of gunpowder in the length and outcome of sieges there are a number of curious side effects. My favourite of which is the fact that fortifications prudently became very, very expensive. So expensive that many states literally could not afford them. The fortifications of Antwerp cost over 1 million florins during this period, and the Republic of Siena met its demise when fortifications were so expensive that it could no longer pay for an army. Some scholars view the need for these fortifications as one of the major motivators away from the medieval system towards early modern states. \n\nI have to apologize that I only have some brief notes on my work computer from a paper I once wrote, no access to the sources here. I'll remember to add some links in a few hours, although almost all of them will be on JSTOR and behind the paywall. If you are interested in the military history of this period I can't recommend papers written by De Vries, who was mentioned above, enough. ", "There's a general misconception that cannon instantly changed siege warfare, made castles useless and thereby made minor feudal lords powerless to oppose their cannon-owning lieges, and made battles more common than sieges. This isn't really true; it took a long time for siege warfare to change and, if anything, they lasted longer and became more difficult, expensive, and common. What is true is that cannon were adopted very quickly and were used wholeheartedly. Even though there was chivalric and religious opposition to gunpowder, this didn't prevent it being used by pragmatic rulers. Cannon were used on the battlefield at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers in 1356, mere decades after the technology had appeared. They were a staple of siege warfare by the start of the fifteenth century, used extensively in (and to a large part responsible for) Henry V's successful invasion of Normandy in 1417-19 and by the French in their counter-invasion. Several key English commanders were killed by cannon, and they were instrumental in French victory at Castillon. Developments in fortification also advanced quickly, with gunports appearing in conventional fortifications around the 1370s and trace-italienne fortifications--of the type which would become ubiquitous into the 19th century--becoming increasingly popular around the end of the fifteenth century. It was seen as a sign of prestige to own a large artillery train, despite the fact that, as we will see, they probably didn't justify the expense. So there was very little hesitation in using gunpowder to the fullest extent possible.\n\nHowever, it's doubtful whether it had as meaningful an influence on warfare as some have assumed. The initial vulnerability of fortresses led to a brief renaissance for heavy cavalry, which were naturally restricted in wars which were primarily siege-based, but sieges quickly became common once again when fortification technology caught up. The Charles V of France's campaign to Naples in 1494-5 provides a good case-study of the effectiveness of artillery in sieges. Chronicler Guicciardini made much of the size and modernity of Charles' artillery train, claiming that 'such artillery rendered Charles' army very formidable to all Italy'. This view wasn't borne out by events. Two modern fortresses, incorporating deep, wide ditches, round bastions for artillery and triangular outworks to enfilade the walls, stopped the French army in its tracks. Its attacks made no headway before a diplomatic solution was reached which allowed Charles to advance south by another route; his artillery hadn't been able to defeat modern fortifications. Even Naples, which was protected only by essentially medieval fortifications with minor modifications (such as a firing platform round the base of the walls of the Castel Nuovo, the main fortification), proved a tough nut to crack. The siege was fairly rapid by medieval terms, less than a month long, but considering that the French employed a constant bombardment by around 70 guns, day and night, the performance of the artillery wasn't especially impressive; after 10 days of bombardment only superficial damage had been done to the Castel Nuovo. The indifferent performance of the guns caused the French to resort to frontal assaults, and the castle eventually fell because an ammunition explosion (a fluke event, which could have been caused by accident rather than as a result of the bombardment) broke the shaky morale of the Aragonese defenders. Given a more resolute garrison the city could have held out for longer, as is indicated by the five-month siege that took place when the French were themselves besieged there two months later. The Aragonese artillery was also unsuccessful in dislodging the defenders and they too resorted to conventional methods--assaults and a mine dug under the castle. This was filled with gunpowder and blown up in conjunction with an infantry assault--possibly the first time in history this method was used. If this shows that gunpowder had useful applications in siege warfare, it also shows that older methods were still viable, and that artillery didn't revolutionise siege warfare. It was conventional escalade and mining, not artillery bombardment, which captured Naples on both occasions. The prestige granted by cannon, and their percieved effectiveness (Charles' artillery probably caused artillery and fortification development in Italy to accelerate) were not really matched by their effectiveness, and sieges were, certainly for the first couple of centuries in which cannon were used, usually concluded by older, proven methods.\n\nTL;DR: Cannon weren't as revolutionary as everyone thinks.\n\n**Sources**: \n\n* Simon Pepper, Castles and Cannon in the Naples campaign of 1494‐95, in David Abulafia, *The French Descent into Italy 1494‐95* (1995), pp.263‐293.\n* J.R. Hale, Gunpowder and the Renaissance, J.R. Hale, *Renaissance War Studies* (1983), pp.389‐420.\n\nBert S. Hall, *Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe* (1997) is a great in-depth study of how gunpowder weaponry developed and how it influenced tactics. Also very useful is Thomas Arnold, *The Renaissance at War* (2001), especially the chapter on 'The New Legions'. Keep in mind when you're reading that gunpowder weaponry went hand-in-hand with other developments (perhaps most importantly the formation of standing armies emulating Swiss pikemen, which led directly the the introduction of drill). Gunpowder was never the only (or even the most important) factor, even though you might get that impression since it tends to be the focus of most works." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1i58ys/friday_freeforall_july_12_2013/cb16qss", "http://imgur.com/B0dyLz0" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dwbq72h" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Do you mean, why did the State of Israel call itself “Israel” and not “Palestine”? The end of the British mandate on 14 May coincided precisely with the declaration of the State of Israel, which was made that evening. A few minutes later the United States recognized Israel. Recognition from other countries would arrive in the coming hours and days.\n\nOther than that I’m not sure I understand the question?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgckgh0" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Crudely, wavefunction collapse means the following. You allow your quantum system S to interact with a set of degrees of freedom M. The interaction entangles the state of S with the state of M, so that the probability distribution of some observable OS of S are correlated with observable OM of M. But perhaps you don't care about OM and only want the marginal distribution for OS. Averaging over OM produces an effective collapse: the probabilities governing future behavior of S now behave as though, at the time of interaction with M, OS took various values with probability set by the Born rule. This is what you would expect from classical probability theory, but differs from quantum mechanics because it eliminates the effects of interference between quantum mechanical amplitudes.\n\nSo, you might think that everything is interacting with gravity, and we don't care about the state of the gravitational field, so why doesn't averaging over it classicalize all probabilities? The reason is that gravity is weak: interactions with gravitons are rare. The quantum systems we look at are affected by gravity in the sense that their motion is influenced by the background gravitational field, but they are very unlikely to change the state of that field by entangling with a graviton." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f4y33p4", "f4y4b6i", "f4y4b6l", "f4y57yx", "f4y5rbe", "f4yc0d3", "f4yoiao", "f4yy97d", "f4ziri4" ], "score": [ 25, 5, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I believe that the answer lies in the fact that, if you crush up glass to extremely fine fragments, it is essentially sand. Plastic, as it breaks down, continues to float, pollute, and also mimics small water-borne organisms that larger organisms feed upon. Broken glass (sand) sinks, and essentially returns to the lifecycle of a rock.", "Glass is about 100% reusable - most plastics are not, or is most costly to turn them “raw” again in order to be beneficial.", "Glass is often used to reusable stuff and even if it's use a lot more energy to produce (a lot I insist) you can mitigate it by a longer life expectancy and no microplastic as someone already told you", "Glass is chemically the same as quartz, one of the earth’s most abundant minerals. It is not reactive and poses no threat to life.", "When you throw glas into the ocean, it won't hurt any animal unlike plastic. Because even when it is broken, it will lose it's sharpness when it is long enough in the sea, it frictions with sand and stone underwater. And if you would pick it up you can melt it again, just like sand and make some kind of glass or other building materials with it.", "Glass is 100% recyclable and is basically just melted sand. You can melt and reshape the same piece of glass forever. Glass does not require the use of hydrocarbons (plastics are made from oil), Glass, again, being basically melted sand, doesn't have harmful chemicals in it like BPAs and phalates that are both bad for human consumers and bad for the environment. Since it doesn't contain these chemicals in the first place, it can't leech them into the soil and water. Since glass is hard and has a unique shape and texture, animals do not mistake it for food, which means they won't ingest it and get sick/die.", "Glass bottles are pretty much chemically inert (they won’t poison anything), and 100% recyclable. \n\nIf you throw an (open) bottle in the ocean, in a year it’ll be rocks, and in 20 years it will be sand.", "Glass is a mineral essentially, as others have said. While plastics break down into some really nasty stuff. Also recycling plastics is really hard. Glass and metal can pretty much be melted down and formed into new items over and over again with very little loss of material. Of all the plastics produced we've only successfully recycled like 10%. And the material is degraded by the recycling process so more advanced plastics cannot be made out of recycled material.", "You don’t even have to melt glass to recycle. Back in my day, soft drink companies used to take back glass bottles, wash em, and refill em. \n\nWe used to get a deposit back for returning glass bottles to the store." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7obpl3", "c7oefps" ], "score": [ 14, 68 ], "text": [ "No-one wanted it, no-one wanted to move there. The Portuguese, who were there first, described it as the worst place imaginable. At that time, there were lots of places to go if you wanted to leave your homeland, like the freshly depopulated Americas. Even the British didn't see much more use in it than to punish convicts by sending them there. Some of the best places were also protected by the Great Barrier Reef and the likes. Also, there was very little actively planned colonisation efforts, it was more about establishing trading outposts and getting resources. Australia was too far off to do either economically.", " > It just changed hands once(between European powers), and rather peacefully, correct?\n\nIt never changed hands between European powers. The Dutch, who were the first Europeans to map Australia, never claimed it. They mapped it and named it (New Holland), but nothing more than that. The first – and only – European power to make any claim to the continent of Australia was England.\n\nAnd, the reason the Dutch didn’t make a claim to Australia was because the part they saw – the western and north-western coast – was mostly uninhabitable. The north-west portion of the continent is mostly arid land or desert. There was no benefit to be seen in this land. The logs of the ship *Duyfken* [described what they saw in 1606](_URL_0_):\n\n\n > for the greatest part desert, but in some places inhabited by wild, cruel, black savages, by whom some of the crew were murdered, for which reason they could not learn anything of the land or waters as had been desired of them.\n\nThe captain of that ship [also wrote](_URL_5_):\n\n > “... that vast regions were for the greater part uncultivated, and certain parts inhabited by savage, cruel black barbarians who slew some of our sailors, so that no information was obtained touching the exact situation of the country and regarding the commodities obtainable and in demand there.... “ He found the land to be swampy and infertile, forcing them eventually to give up and return to Bantam due to their lack of “... provisions and other necessaries ....”\n\nIt wasn’t an attractive land!\n\nIt was only much later, when Captain James Cook mapped the *east* coast of Australia, that Europeans learned that this mysterious southern land had fertile areas.\n\nThe first European claim to Australia was made on 7th February 1788, when the officers of the recently arrived First Fleet read out the King’s documents, announcing his claim to the land of “New South Wales” – but only as far west as [longitude of 135°E](_URL_4_) (this was later revised to [longitude 129°E](_URL_2_), where the current border of Western Australia is). The reason for not claiming the whole southern continent was not because the Dutch had claimed the western portion - they hadn’t - but to prevent offending the Dutch in case they *wanted* to claim that portion. However, in 1829, the British started a settlement on the west coast of Australia with no protest from the Dutch – obviously they’d worked out by then that the Dutch really didn’t want the place.\n\nThe race to settle and claim the continent of Australia over the next century was not between the British and the Dutch – the British saw their rivals as the French, who were expanding their holdings in the Pacific.\nIn 1803, Governor King wrote to an official in the office of the British Admiralty that:\n\n > It was reported to me soon after the French Ships sailed that a principal object of their voyage was to fix on a Place at Van Diemens Land for a Settlement [...] with this Information I considered it my duty to establish His Majesty’s Right to that Island being within the limits of this Territory [New South Wales], I therefore despatched a Colonial Vessel [which made] an accurate Survey of King’s Island and Port Phillip at the West entrance of Basses Straits.\n\n > Making the French Commodore acquainted with my intentions of Settling Van Dieman’s Land, was all I sought by this Voyage\n\n > Under all these circumstances I judged it expedient to form a Settlement at Risdon Cove in the River Derwent [modern-day Hobart]\n\n > My reasons for making this Settlement are :– the necessity there appears of preventing the French gaining a footing on the East side of these Islands [etc]\n\nAt the time, [Britain was officially at war with France]( _URL_1_).\n\nThe expedition King mentions was led by Captain David Collins of the *Calcutta*. He did start [a settlement in Port Phillip in 1803]( _URL_3_), in order to prevent the French from using the area as a base for military actions. However, he abandoned the settlement after only eight months, due to conflict with the local Aboriginals, and poor outlook for farming. He moved on to the Derwent River, where he founded Hobart Town.\n\nNearly a hundred years later, the French were still seen as a threat by Australians. The threat of French military action in the Pacific in the late 1800s was one of the many motivations for federating the colonies into a single country.\n\nHowever, there was never a war over Australia, nor did it ever change hands from one European power to another. As to why not... that’s a mystery. People didn’t write down their motives for not starting a war which didn’t happen. However, I can speculate:\n\n* The Dutch saw no reason to go to war over a continent which they knew about 150 years before the English, but which they’d never bothered to claim because it was inhospitable. \n\n* France, the other major player, was too busy with revolutions and defensive wars in Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s to take action in the Pacific arena on the other side of the world. They did posture a lot, and did claim many islands in the Pacific near Australia, but never actually moved on the colonies themselves.\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://gutenberg.net.au/ausexplore/ausexpl0-intro1.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars#War_between_Britain_and_France.2C_1803.E2.80.931814", "http://atlas.nsw.gov.au/49224f8044cef2a4b9bfbdd82b1b1b2f/NSW%2b1825_1831_v2.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Victoria#1803_British_settlement", "http://atlas.nsw.gov.au/453f3c8044cee01ab992bdd82b1b1b2f/NSW%2b1787_1825_v2.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janszoon_voyage_of_1606#Turnabout" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dhywq4f" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "John Oliver made a video a few years back and one weeks ago that touches on the subject well. Basically with net neutrality, everybody's internet speed gets treated equally regardless of what websites, browsers, etc. you use." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6veyuh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I can't answer our question, but I can add some more sources of waste that would be eliminated by self-driving cars.\n\nIn theory, you would not longer need to stop at intersections. The computer algorithm could very quickly work out a way to get everyone through [with nobody stopping](_URL_0_).\n\nIn cases where the roadways are clear, there would be no traffic. The cars could communicate and get out of each-others' way so that none of them would need to brake or swerve unexpectedly.\n\nThe fuel costs of sitting at lights and sitting in traffic would be effectively eliminated." ] }

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[ [ "http://vimeo.com/37751380#" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fapfq5y", "fapgyog" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "\n > So why is it that people can go years before they catch this bug again when you’re immunity only lasts for about 6 weeks? \n\nSome people are born with a lifetime resistance/immunity. Their dna prevents them from getting sick when they encounter the virus. That's a lot longer than 6 weeks.\n\nI'm one of them. I've never had it at all. My genes protect me.\n\nOne example of this is:\n > Mutation in FUT2 on chromosome 19 protects one in five individuals from most common norovirus infections.\n\nIf you get sick 10 times and I never get sick then we're sick an average of 5 times (10/2=5)", "Most extreme pathogens are caught early by food manufacturers. All of them are required to have up to date HACCP plans, food safety plans, and as of 2018 putting more emphasis on CoA of raw materials and doing due diligence on them. Check out the recalls. Almost all of these are 100% voluntary and require a lot effort and oversight. Look at blue bell. They got hit with listeria twice and after 8 years they are only just now coming back to the size they once were. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasic fact is that food companies, most of the time, catch these nasties before you get them. Of course norovirus is special because a sick worker at a tacobell wont take time off and then everything they look at is contaminated. Its rare that this happens and only spreads so far before everyone is healed. Also the immunity of norovirus varies from person to person but is usually a short amount of time." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cb158l5", "cb15d16", "cb16yqj", "cb1aa5z" ], "score": [ 9, 6, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Debit cards are fine, you just don't build credit with them. You're using cash you actually have in an account, as opposed to using a credit line.\n\nCredit is important because at some point in life, you will invariably need money you don't have. For example, you may need to take out a loan for a house, finance a car, etc. If you're doing business in an individual capacity or as the representative of a company, it also helps to have a good credit score for much the same reason. A bank is more likely to lend to a business if its guarantors have good credit.\n\nFor my part, I think it's advisable to build credit to a point where you can shred the cards and go cash-only in like in ye olden tymes. I've read studies saying you spend (waste) less money that way, and nothing's quite as baller as paying for everything in bills like a prohibition-era gangster.", "Credit cards are also arguably more secure. If someone steals your debit card, it's a lot more trouble to get the money they spend back because it has been taken directly out of your bank account. Usually, you have to go get a notarized statement saying you lost your card. For a credit card, you haven't technically lost any money until you pay your credit statement at the end of the month. You have an opportunity to talk to the credit card company and tell them what happened. Generally, they are fairly understanding and so this is much easier than going to a notary.", "Credit, as in your credit score is basically a record of how good you are at borrowing money. If you come to a point where you want to borrow money, having a good record makes it easier to get a loan with affordable payments or even lower intrest. Good credit basically gives you more options for borrowing money.\n\nAs far as the cards are concerned, a credit card lets you borrow money whereas a debit card lets you spend your own money. If you are spending your own money, you aren't building a record of how well you repay loans. If you use a credit card, it builds a record of you taking out loans and repaying them, which is useful to lenders.", "Credit cards:\n\n* establish a credit history\n* allow you to spend money you don't have just yet\n* have legal fraud protections debit cards don't\n* often have perks, like cashback or miles" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc77if7" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Pollen can act as a significant vector for viruses (_URL_0_ you can only see the abstract, but that's enough to know that pollen is a viral vector), however pollen doesn't actually increase the amount of pathogenic particles leaving someone with a transferable disease unless they are allergic." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.py.31.090193.002111" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e66hhxm" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Scientists were able to determine the genetic sequence of the 1918 virus using samples from a woman who had died of the virus and was buried in permafrost. Then, they used the sequence to rebuild the virus, likely by expressing the genome within a cell, which would produce viral proteins that assembled into infectious viruses. This was done in 2005 by the CDC. The primary goal of recreating this virus is to study what made it more deadly than current viruses, as well as what made it a pandemic. There is also a hypothesis that it is safer to work with, because it has similarities to the H1N1 virus that many people were exposed to or inoculated against in 2009, and thus would not act like a pandemic flu if it were released accidentally. Hopefully, this is never tested and remains a hypothesis." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "coc5g2r" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It doesn't do anything chemically to the earwax, other than possibly diluting it. It works mechanically. The bubbles help loosen the wax. The bubbles are caused by an enzyme called catalase that exists in the dead skin cells in the wax. This enzyme rapidly breaks down the hydrogen peroxide, releasing bubbles of oxygen. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1dqaaa", "c1dqfho" ], "score": [ 2, 10 ], "text": [ "If you go to the following forums: _URL_2_, _URL_0_ and _URL_1_ you will find a shit load of information. Now, don't get me wrong, they focus on growing one particular plant, but grow room design is essentially the same.\n\nThat said, lots of people use mylar, the issue with mylar is that if it isn't perfectly flat, it can create \"hot spots\", which are areas of focused light. That ORCA film you posted seems to get past this, I am not sure if it is hype or not.\n\nLots of people also just paint the walls with a flat white paint. If you go this route, get something that is oil based so it is water resistant, and possibly also get something that is mold and mildew resistant.\n\nHowever, when I do eventually rebuild my grow room, I will be using a material like Foylon. It is similar to mylar, but it is polyester based, so it is far, far, far more durable than mylar, and it is easier to clean, because it won't easily tear. It is more expensive though.\n\n[Here](_URL_3_) is a website that has mylar and that ORCA stuff, as well as some other products, of all the things on this page, I would probably go for the Diamond Diffusion product.\n\n", "Hahaha, c'mon man, just say it. \"I'm growing pot, help plz?\"\n\nEven if you aren't though, you might just want to go to /r/trees and ask for growing tips. Same function really." ] }

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[ "http://www.orcagrowfilm.com/", "http://www.mylarstoreonline.com/" ]

[ [ "http://www.rollitup.org", "http://www.grasscity.com", "http://www.icmag.com", "http://www.bghydro.com/BGH/items.asp?Cc=MY&iTpStatus=1&Tp=" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eb67q0b", "eb6bjpt", "eb6rdso" ], "score": [ 2, 8, 6 ], "text": [ "The basics are that because of the shape of the wing, air travels faster over the top side of the wing than the bottom side, which means there is more pressure on the bottom side of the wing (this is called Bernoulli's Principle), and because there is a larger pressure on the bottom side of the wing, the airplane counteracts the effect of gravity and stays in the air.\n\n_URL_0_", "Ever stuck your hand out a car window and tilted it? You feel a force pushing your hand up or down, this is Lift. Lift counteracts Weight from gravity and enables flight.\n\nWhile the shape of the wing provides some lift, the majority of it comes from the angle that the wing is going into the wind at (angle of attack). If you want to go up then you tilt the nose up, if you want to go down you tilt the nose down just like angling your hand out the car window.\n\nBut tilting your hand also creates a force which pushes it backwards, this is called Drag. To counteract drag you need Thrust which we get from engines that drive propellers or giant fans(jet engines).\n\nAnd those are the four basic forces of flight - Lift, Weight, Drag, and Thrust. If you've got enough Lift to overcome your Weight then you can fly but it generally takes high speed to generate that lift so you need enough Thrust to overcome the Drag.", "There's flight in the context of aircraft and helicopters, technically these are due to [both Bernoulli's Principle and Newton's third law of motion](_URL_3_). (The traditional concept we are taught about Bernoulli and the shape of the wing making air take longer to travel on one side, [is mostly incorrect](_URL_1_)). \n\nFlight is kind of a big topic.\n\nFlight can occur in one of three basic ways: having wings that push down on the air to make the thing go upwards, which you can demonstrate with a tilted hand out the car window; having something spit out gas really fast to propel the aircraft in any direction, which you can demonstrate by letting go of a blown-up balloon; or making something lighter than the surrounding atmosphere so it rises up, which you could demonstrate with either a helium balloon, a sky lantern (eg. candle and a plastic bag) or by showing something buoyant in water and explaining how that can happen in air too.\n\nFurther to these three categories, there are three things that can be important for flight: lift, thrust, and control. Lift is what pushes us upwards from the ground. Thrust is what pushes us forwards. Control is what lets us use flight to go where we want to be. Sometimes these things can be interrelated, eg. thrust is required to give lift, or the mechanism providing lift can also give thrust and/or control.\n\nThere's also a couple other words you might want to define. Altitude is how high in the sky the aircraft is. Drag is when the air pushes against you, causing you to slow down. From these principles, we can look at different kinds of flight.\n\n**Helicopter**, and other tilt-rotor aircraft (eg. Osprey)\n\n*Lift*: A spinning horizontal wing called a rotor pushes down on the air to make the aircraft go up. The rotor is powered by an engine that uses fuel.\n\n*Thrust*: No separate thrust is needed, since the spinning rotor provides lift by itself and controls direction.\n\n*Control*: The rotor can be tilted to go forwards, backwards, left or right. You can go up or down by changing the angle of the rotor blades to generate more or less lift. In helicopters with one main rotor, the spinning will naturally cause the helicopter body to spin the opposite direction. To stop that you use a vertical tail rotor to keep the cockpit facing the direction we want. You can spin left or right by changing the angle of the tail rotor.\n\n**Aeroplane**, aka fixed-wing aircraft\n\n*Lift*: The wings are angled and shaped to push air downwards, but it only works while something else provides the thrust. This kind of flight is most directly demonstrated by the hand out the car window, where the car provides the thrust and your arm/hand is the fixed wing.\n\n*Thrust*: Forward thrust uses [different types of engines](_URL_4_), but common ones are propellers (a vertical rotor), turbine/jet/ramjet (uses fuel to burn incoming air and spit it out really fast backwards), and rockets (burns only the fuel onboard to spit hot air backwards even faster than a jet).\n\n*Control*: Controlling the thrust can cause the aircraft to gain or lose altitude. Flaps are pieces of the wing that can be extended to provide extra lift, or retracted to decrease drag in flight. [Elevators, ailerons and rudders](_URL_2_) are sections of the plane wings and tail that can be tilted to control pitch (pointing the plane up or down along a horizontal axis from left to right), roll (spinning the plane left or right like a corkscrew along a horizontal axis from front to back) and yaw (rotating the direction of the cockpit left or right along a vertical axis from top to bottom) respectively.\n\n**Hot Air Balloon**\n\n*Lift*: The balloon part of the craft, called the envelope, traps hot air. As we know, hot air rises because it is lighter than ambient air, so if you trap enough hot air you can cause the whole craft to rise to different altitudes. In a traditional hot air balloon called a Montgolfier, a fire below the envelope called a burner heats the air inside the envelope. Some hot air balloons called Roziere use lighter-than-air gases like helium or hydrogen as well or instead of hot air, while others called solar balloons use the sun to heat the air.\n\n*Thrust*: No separate thrust is needed.\n\n*Control*: In Montgolfier or hybrid Roziere balloons, the pilot can control the strength of the burner to create more hot air to go up. A vent or valve on top of the envelope allows them to release hot air or the lighter-than-air gas, to go down. Hot air will also naturally cool down, lowering the balloon. Direction is entirely dependent on the wind, but since the wind goes different directions at different altitudes, the pilot can control the direction by changing altitude.\n\n**Animals** (birds, insects etc)\n\n*Lift*: Most flying animals have wings that they can flap really fast to create lift. This is in conjunction with body structures that evolved to allow to flight: light bodies, light wings with high surface area etc. Some animals are small enough to use wind or thermal air currents to get lift. For example some spiders can throw silk in the air which gets caught by the wind to carry them somewhere. Most birds only flap to increase altitude, and glide the majority of the time. Most winged insects have to constantly flap to stay in flight.\n\n*Thrust*: No thrust.\n\n*Control*: Winged animals can move or contort their wings and bodies different ways to fly or glide in the desired direction. [Birds can control roll, pitch and yaw](_URL_0_) just like aeroplanes, while insects simply change the direction they flap their wings. Smaller insects without flapping wings are stuck with wherever the wind takes them.\n\n**Space craft/Rockets**\n\n*Lift/Thrust*: Lift and thrust are the same in a rocket. A big rocket thruster burns fuel to expel hot air to push the rocket. Some of our space craft also have fixed wings to control their return to Earth. Rocket engines are needed because most of the other types of thruster require air, which gets thinner and disappears as you get further away from Earth. Once in orbit, lift and thrust aren't a problem, you just need Control. If you plan to go a long distance in space, rocket thrusters become a problem due to needing fuel, so we've come up with different kinds of thrusters with different energy sources.\n\n*Control*: There are [four ways to control a rocket](_URL_5_). *Moveable fins* can control where the rocket points, similar to the rudder etc on an aeroplane. *Gimbaled thrust* allows the rocket thruster to be rotated in the required direction. *Vernier rockets* are small rockets that can thrust in different directions to control the rocket's direction. *Thrust vanes* can be used to direct the exhaust from the rocket engine. Once in space, space craft are steered with small thrusters, called RCS thrusters, in different places on the craft to steer different directions, these are still powered with fuel or gas." ] }

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[ [ "https://blog.klm.com/how-does-an-aircraft-fly/" ], [], [ "https://howthingsfly.si.edu/ask-an-explainer/how-do-birds-change-direction-flight", "https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/wrong1.html", "http://howthingsfly.si.edu/flight-dynamics/roll-pitch-and-yaw", "https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/bernnew.html", "https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/thrust1.html", "https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/rocket/rktcontrl.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cacmf33", "cacoyj3", "cacqtev", "cacxp09" ], "score": [ 29, 4, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "This will be a little complicated.\n\nFat is energy, but it's not immediately usable as energy; since cells are the smallest living unit, fat has to be broken down into parts that the cells can use before it is actually usable. Of course, breaking down molecules takes time, as well.\n\nBreaking down the fat releases the usable parts (glucose) into the bloodstream. Your body automatically tries to keep the blood glucose level steady. Why? Because too much blood glucose is inefficient; too little blood glucose is dangerous.\n\nSo when you exercise, you are using up blood glucose. Once the level gets too low, your body will start breaking things down to bring the levels back up. It starts with carbohydrates, because those are easily broken down into glucose. Once those are almost gone, then it starts breaking down the fats. If the fats are running out, then it will turn to proteins and muscle. Light exercise will burn up the carbohydrates. Strenuous or extended exercise will start burning up fats. Flight-or-fight, life-or-death situations will most likely cut into your muscles and proteins.\n\nBecause of this order of energy consumption, your body doesn't like to use too much energy. It doesn't like to start burning up fat, because that is the \"reserve\" energy that the body can use before it goes into full panic mode (burning muscle).\n\nSo when you exercise a lot, your body will grudgingly start breaking up fat. That's why you have to do a lot of strenuous exercise to lose fat; you have to force the body to use its reserve energy.\n\nThe other side of this coin is energy storage. After a meal, when your blood is full of glucose, your body will start storing the energy away for a rainy day. Your body will start turning the extra blood glucose into fats, and storing those fats away for later use. That's why you don't have a huge burst of energy after a meal; all that extra glucose that you are digesting is being turned into fats.", "Body fat is able to provide most of your energy when you're at rest. But when you exercise, your muscles require energy at too high of a rate for fat tissue to continue supplying it, so they start using glycogen, which is the substance your body uses to store carbohydrates. The more fit and muscular you are, the more glycogen you can store in your muscles, but since glycogen is mostly water, your glycogen stores can never even approach your fat stores in terms of total energy. Now take your average Joe who isn't in incredible shape and he can only store a few hundred calories worth of glycogen in his muscles at any given time. Average Joe goes on a run and his muscles need a lot of energy to sustain that activity, and about 70% of that energy will come from glycogen rather than fat. Running burns a lot of calories and within a few minutes his brain will detect the loss in muscle glycogen and send out various signals to make him stop running so he doesn't run out of energy. (Note: if you're in the fight-or-flight mode, your body releases adrenaline which diverts more energy to your muscles while taking it away from other systems. So if you're running from a tiger, you'll be able to run longer.) In addition, Joe's muscles are ill-equipped for running long distances as they don't have many mitochondria (which convert glycogen or fat into ATP) and his heart and lungs aren't that strong (he could improve all of these metrics by increasing his fitness). This is why he'll tire of running after several minutes even though he still has thousands of calories worth of energy locked up in his fat tissue. \n\nIf Joe decided to walk instead, his fat would be able to supply most of his energy since walking isn't as intensive. As a result, most people can walk much longer than they can run, and even burn more calories. (Running is just a lot more time-efficient). However here we run into another problem: the body fat set point. Your brain knows precisely how much body fat your body has and it generally hates losing too much of it. (Your brain doesn't mind gaining body fat though--humans have evolved literally dozens of redundant mechanisms to prevent body fat loss, but only a few weak mechanisms to prevent fat gain.) If you lose two pounds of body fat, your brain will slow down your metabolism and ramp up your appetite until homeostasis is restored. This means you won't feel energetic enough to exercise if your brain has detected a drop in body fat. The main hormone that mediates this process is leptin. The higher your leptin, the lower your appetite, and vice versa. But losing just a few pounds is enough to make your leptin levels plummet by 75%, which is of course disproportionate to how much body fat you actually have. That illustrates the brain's unwillingness to give up body fat.", "The body can only convert so much fat into energy at a time. There's a rough daily limit based on your size and fat % how much fat can be burned in a day. The more fat you have, the more your body can burn.\n\nThis is one of the reasons very overweight people lose a lot of fat quickly at first, then as they get slimmer, it takes longer and longer to lose more. ", "I'm going to use money metaphors here.\n\nThe two sources of energy are fat & sugar, each of them with their own pros and cons. Fat is like a check while sugar is cash. The energy from fat is only limited by how much fat one has in your body, or the bank account. The problem is that, often times, it will take several days for the \"checks\" to clear before that money is useable. So, just because there is a request to use more energy, it will take a while to actually mobilize the fat into useable funds from your bank account (body). \n\nSugar, on the other hand, is like cash. You can use it immediately for as long as you have it available. Only problem is that the body is nearly as good at storing sugar, just like your wallet only has so much room for immediately available funds.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eb6h2j8", "eb6x80d", "eb769v8", "ek20auv" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The Accutane molecule is similar in shape to Vitamin A. It stops sebaceous glands from working. Think of it as turning off the faucet that pumps the gunk into the acne. It doesn't work for everyone because it doesn't work for every time of acne. It works best for the big nodular acne, because that is mostly caused by overproduction from sebaceous glands. Other types of acne have different causes.\n\nI don't quite understand what you mean by it affecting the body system.\n\nI hope this helps.", "It's a Vitamin A derivative. Basically it shuts down some of your skin glands which makes your skin super dry. The lack of oils on your skin causes acne to stop and often some other symptoms associated with dry skin such as chapped lips, flakiness, and dry eyes. \n\nIn order to affect your skin, it also enters and travels through most of your body, including blood, pancreas, bowels, and cardiovascular system. Because of it's strength, it can have negative impacts on those parts of your body. \n\nSome people's bodies handle these impacts better than others, in the same way that everyone has a different reaction to alcohol or weed. For instance, people with a family history of psychiatric problems will be more likely to experience similar problems on Accutane. The same applies to most drugs and most side effects. \n\nI was on Accutane about 4 years ago. If you're on or about to go on, I'd be more than happy to talk about my experience. Hope all is well and this helped", "Not a doctor here but I was on accutane for 6 months during high school. \n\nPainfully dry skin and horribly chapped lips were definitely there. \n\nI had no psychiatric problems before but I was definitely affected by depression for those entire 6 months. No suicidal thoughts but it was really bad. No joy left in me on a daily basis. When I stopped taking accutane the depression lifted. \n\nI know it’s anecdotal evidence but something to consider...", "Hey, accutane is actually isotretinoin. I remember suffering from severe acne in high school. I cannot really describe the types of acne I used to have but I can sure say that they didn’t stick to a particular type, they varied. I was put on isotretinoin 20mg for about 3 months (oral administration of the mentioned medicine). I did not really face many side effects but it did dry my skin up, my doctor had prescribed a moisturiser along with the meds for that. Except for that, fortunately nothing went wrong and it worked like magic. It’s been 2 years I’ve been off those meds now and my skin is clear, actually very clear.\n\nMy personal advice would be to have them and try them if prescribed. Side effects vary from people to people. It isn’t necessary that you’ll face the same side effects as me or anybody else who’s been on isotretinoin. If you face any severe side effects in the first few weeks of having them, you should immediately let your doctor know about it. If you don’t, you’re most probably good to go but I’d again ask you to be under regular guidance of your doctor. If you’re worried about your skin drying up as it is the most common side effect (as per my knowledge), make sure you ask your doctor about it and ask him/her for a medicated/non medicated moisturiser to help with the dry skin.\n\n\nYour doctor might also prescribe you an ointment for immediate relief from the existing acne. In my case it was Retino A 0.025. It worked pretty well for me but if applied more than the desired quantity it ended up burning my skin. So be careful about the ointments too, ask for instructions. \n\n\n\nDon’t search the internet too much, I tried the same. There’s nothing here besides people’s opinions. Honestly speaking, acne makes you feel embarrassed and miserable but it’s just a phase really. Don’t let it get into you, there are greater things in life to do than fussing over this. You’ll get the treatment, you’ll be better. Don’t worry, good luck. :) " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbeifhn", "cbej42g", "cbejgva", "cbes8kc", "cbf3v7e" ], "score": [ 6, 6, 14, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I recommend reading the first few chapters of \"Face of Battle\" by Keegan. It describes, with some detail, hand-to-hand combat in the Hundred Years War. It doesn't get into the classic hoplite battles you are probably referencing but it does go into things like the types of wounds suffered from blade weapons, maces, battle axes, cavalry charges, arrows, etc. This was a few hundred years before we saw the wide-scale use of firearms and artillery.", "Robert L. O'Connell's *The Ghosts of Cannae* opens with a fairly detailed description of the legendary Roman defeat.\n\nNot sure how much I'm allowed to transcribe into this reply, but the overarching picture is one of chaos and desperation. Men savagely slashing at one another's vitals in the suffocating heat of summer, wounded soldiers crying in agony, and the unimaginable terror and despair experienced by the Romans when they realised retreat had been cut off.", "It really varies wildly based on culture, time, technology, organization, numbers, etc. Despite being from a post-gunpowder era, I feel you might be interested in a clash of pikes.\n\nDrawing from my study, the early 16th century, if serious combat was joined it was likely to be a clash of equally matched pike formations. If one side had a serious advantage due to flanking, supporting gunfire, or other factors then the combat was likely to end quickly in a rout or retreat (or massacre). Otherwise, you'd have the famous \"bad war\" or \"push of pike\".\n\nWhile one side might brace to receive a charge, it was more common for both to charge as soon as they were close enough to try and gain an advantage in the ensuing melee. The two formations would slam together, and pikes would pierce people and throw them to the ground. The armored front ranks might fare surprisingly well, but the pikes would reach back to the greener troops behind the first few ranks who would have less complete suits of plate and slice into their flesh. The formations would push and shove against each other in a horrid mass of pikes, men, and mud as the earth beneath their feet stirred into dust. Soldiers further back would try and drag their wounded friends away from the melee, and humanely dispatch mortally wounded enemies with a quick thrust of a sidearm (dagger or sword), but there was serious risk of being trampled to death if wounded.\n\nAdditional pike formations might join the clash or create others nearby, but eventually enough time would pass that auxiliary infantry would be able to join, or they might have already been attached to the formation. These are dedicated troops that are meant to turn the tide in a push of pike, and whichever formation had included more of them would have a serious advantage. Soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire might bring along two-handed swordsmen, who would try to hack their way into the enemy formation or (maybe) cut the enemy's pikes into pieces. The Swiss would have their halberdiers join their pikemen in pushing, but the halberds could be drawn backwards and forwards to saw through armor and into men's bodies. The Spanish would send fighter in plate armor, steel shields, and nimble swords to slip past/under/to the side of enemy pikes and stab at the men in the formation - even sliding/wriggling over the ground if it was muddy enough.\n\nThis screaming, cursing, struggling mass of men would continue shoving against each other until one side had enough and fled, often dropping their pikes in the process, or disengaged and retreated. This could be caused by flank attacks by cavalry or other infantry, the soldiers suffering too much psychological trauma to go on, or point blank arquebus and/or crossbow fire breaking their cohesion. Officers would seek to prevent this by quickly directing troops to gaps, keeping an eye out for flankers or missile troops, and rallying the troops to keep fighting.\n\nDuring these battles, small units of arquebusiers or crossbowmen would often be intermingled with the formation and fire point blank into the enemy's faces. In the Battle of Ceresole, the French included an entire line of arquebusiers right behind the first rank of Swiss pikemen. They caused a dreadful slaughter among the opposing Landschneckt, but must have not enjoyed it when the lines met. Regardless, bullets and crossbow bolts would be flying into the front ranks and flanks, who would trust to luck and their armor to deflect the worst of the damage.\n\nYou can see how critical morale would be in this kind of warfare - a single man dropping his pike and fleeing could be enough to start a rout. \"Bad war\" was deeply feared by all soldiers, and pike formations tried their best to ensure that the clash was on terms that was very favorable to them - but the realities of combat meant that matched encounters of pikes occurred in most major battles.", "[Here](_URL_0_) is a my favorite article about this. It's called the Face of Roman Battle (playing off of the Face of Battle) and it seeks to answer the question of what, exactly, occurred in the Roman infantry battle. \n\nHe uses the times we have for battles (many of which are hours long) to reconstruct what could have happened. Basically, for battles that long, you can't have that much actual sword fighting going on as it would tire people too quickly. So he proposes something very similar to a combination of your points: the lines drawn up a few (maybe more like 20) meters apart, taunting and using missile weapons, then a charge b one side or the other. The charged side would either move back ('driving the enemy back' is a common phrase that gets tossed around by ancient writers) or take the charge, at which point there would be a brief clash with weapons and then one side or the other would withdraw. It is the job of the Centurions or equivalent NCO types to make sure that your side is the one charging and the one moving forward rather than back. This is very hard because people don't want to be stabbed (even less than they want to be shot--think about how scary bayonets were/are).\n\nThis, of course, doesn't answer your question for anything non-Roman, especially the raging debate over what happened in hoplite battle (pushing? stabbing?) but I hope it helps at least with that.", "If you're looking for a very detailed description of hoplite warfare, Victor Hanson, _The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece_ has a _lot_ of detail in it. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/300198?uid=3739560&uid=4583032757&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21102517809957" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "do7andv", "do7by9m", "do7fjda" ], "score": [ 5, 23, 2 ], "text": [ "The other answers are right, but I'll add that sometimes there is something sort of \"burning\" on spaceships that is relevant to your question. One of the most effective ways to passively cool anything exposed to conditions as extreme as reentry or the inside of a rocket nozzle is to coat it with an [ablative layer](_URL_0_) that is designed to vaporize in the heat. This is how most heat shields work. The heating effects are conducted by the coating which then vaporizes, and the resulting vapor forms a protective cushion between the incoming air and the vessel. I believe the process also passively removes some of the heat from the shield as a side effect since it's carried away by the hot vapor.\n\nThis method is also used in the nozzles of some rocket engines in cases where it would be excessively expensive or heavy to incorporate an active cooling system (such as the often-used method of piping the cryogenic propellant through the walls of the nozzle before combustion, which is effective but complex).", "There is not burning from reentry, but heat to the point where the air becomes ionized and a plasma, and the material is red hot and begins to vaporize. \n\nWhat is occurring is shock heating, or heat due to change in pressure. It is known that when a gas expands, it cools, and in the same way, when it is compressed it heats up. \n\nOn several miles a second projectiles, the pressure will be so extreme that temperatures reach thousands of degrees. ", "Very good answers given already. But there is a peculiar footnote in the annals of space technology that early Chinese spacecrafts designed for reentry/recovery used heat shields made of wood. It really did \"burn\" as it ablated away to protect its payload from the ordeal of returning into the Earth's atmosphere. [Vintage space has a good write up.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry#Ablative" ], [], [ "https://vintagespace.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/can-a-wood-heat-shield-really-work/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dqdqpu4" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Because there are different compounds interacting with different receptors.\nPeppers have capsaicin, which triggers the same receptors as hot temperature receptors.\n\nWasabi and mustards have isothiocyanates, a different compound. They are also short lived due to not being oily and volatile, meaning they can easily be washed away, or they evaporate away." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqkq9sw" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Most of this is because the mapping of symbols on the page to sounds is arbitrary. When speaking you're mapping sounds to meaning. This is something you brain has specifically evolved to handle.\n\nFor written text we've invented some arbitrary symbols, we've decided that they map to specific phonemes (or they map in a context dependant manner). Mapping shapes on a page to sounds/words and then mapping that to meaning is something you specifically have to learn. It's an additional skill above and beyond learning to speak a language and you need to learn it. I can speak a number of things in Thai and Korean but I literally have no idea what those things look like on the page nor have any understanding of what sounds their lettering represents.\n\nAlongside this many, many people have dyslexia or related issues with written comprehension which make learning to read non-trivial for them.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dsb6123" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "fire from natural gas (or whatever the gas source is) being pushed through the vents via a blower fan" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5189c4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "If you did mean set on fire as in a spark causing the hyrdrogen to ignite, no. Oxygen is required for hydrogen to combust, and the composition of Jupiter as far as we're aware contains only a very small amount oxygen.\n\nAlso although not a very scientific approach, considering that it's 4.5billion years old now, if it were possible for it to spontaneously combust it probably would have done by now anyway." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cybl16p", "cybmwbi", "cybn8rm" ], "score": [ 50, 2, 11 ], "text": [ "**Steam Trading Cards are virtual cards earned by playing games on Steam. Sets of cards can be turned into game badges and tradable Steam community items.**\n\n**Once you’ve collected a set of cards you can craft them into a game badge. Like the current badges, they are tied to your account and are shown on your profile. Unlike the current badges, crafting game badges earns you marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons.**\n\n**Level up your badge by collecting the set again and earning more items.**\n\n**All badges now have XP which contributes to your Steam Level, a summary of your badge collection. You can view someone’s Steam Level by hovering over their avatar. Leveling up earns you non-tradable items like profile showcases, extra friends list slots, and more.**", "You can turn a set of trading cards in and craft them in order to make a unique emotion/background/% off coupon, then you can use the background on your steam profile and the emoticons and what not (see _URL_0_ and my plutia background made from hyperdimension neptunia re;birth 3 cards)... if you need more information feel free to add me on steam and ask. ", "Its a silly collectible thing. Just sell all your cards, they suggest a price based on market trends. You'll get a few cents per card, but it'll add up over time." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.steamcommunity.com/id/plutiepie" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d7elex2" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Genetics, Stressers and muscle memory. \n\nGenes is the first thing, you can't change these this can cause things from your skin, your face shape and where fat wants to reside. \n\nStressers like age, sun damage and sleep deprivations as well as allergic reactions affect the look of your face beyond genetics. \n\nAnd muscle memory affects your expression based off of how your face usually is, doing it's best to give them impression the majority of the time. Usually people have a resting face that is mostly expressionless, but it might have a hint of excitement or a hint of disgust for example that gives the impression of a happy person or a \"Resting Bitchy Face\". It doesn't recessarily mean if you're angry all the time you will get an angry resting face, it just means that facial expressions can overtime affect your resting face. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crlsanh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "By February 1916 the Germans had c. 50 divisions on the eastern front; by September of that year, the number had risen to c. 70 divisions. When the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, there were 1.5 million German troops in the East, of which 500 000 were shifted to the Western Front by the spring of 1918, starting already in late 1917. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2ni87w", "c2ni87w" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The magic bullet theory is that for the every person in the world when effected by a specific message will have a specific reaction.\n\nThe general concept was that if a person was presented with advertising or propaganda they would react in a specific way as a passive participant in the process, being immediately effected by the information. Or your message is fired like a magic bullet into the person brain.\n\nThe theory is generally considered disproved by studies of election results which showed the marketing and propaganda effect different audience and groups differently even though the marketing was the same. People who were subject to propaganda were often not effected by the material and were more effect by the attitude of their social group when choosing who to vote for.", "The magic bullet theory is that for the every person in the world when effected by a specific message will have a specific reaction.\n\nThe general concept was that if a person was presented with advertising or propaganda they would react in a specific way as a passive participant in the process, being immediately effected by the information. Or your message is fired like a magic bullet into the person brain.\n\nThe theory is generally considered disproved by studies of election results which showed the marketing and propaganda effect different audience and groups differently even though the marketing was the same. People who were subject to propaganda were often not effected by the material and were more effect by the attitude of their social group when choosing who to vote for." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2teycd" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Yes. The simplest example would be phantom limb syndrome. There are no nerves to stimulate in this situation. Phantom limb is considered neuropathic pain, but we still don't quite fully understand the mechanism behind it.\n\nBeyond that there are disorders that can lead to allodynia. This is when you experience pain from normally non-noxious stimuli such as a breeze. It is thought to be due to a central process in the brain. Allodynia is most notably implicated in migraines and fibromylagia. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1ik1xb", "d1ix76c" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "AA are not \"stronger\" than AAA, they just have more power reserve. \n\nThey both put out the same voltage though AA can probably do so at a higher amperage if required. \n\n\nBy arranging the batteries in different combinations of parallel and series you can get different combinations of \"power\" (voltage) or battery life (mAh). ", "Voltage is determined by battery chemistry (the metal plates and the electrolyte solution between them), not size. Garden variety alkaline D, C, AA, and AAA cells all supply 1.5V. The bigger ones just supply that voltage for longer. A single alkaline battery with the chemistry of a AAA battery but the size of a shipping container would still only supply 1.5V, but it will probably supply that 1.5V until you die of old age.\n\nIf the 4 AAA are used in series because they need to add up to 6V, then you'd have to replace them with 4 of another size, which would give you longer run time. If the 4 AAA are used in parallel because they need to supply 1.5 or 3V for longer run time, you could indeed replace them with 2 AA." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dofyna7", "dofzic9", "dog6mjw", "doh436h" ], "score": [ 230, 4, 15, 4 ], "text": [ "The science advisor for interstellar was Kip Thorne, who just shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his modelling of the gravitational waveform emitted by two merging black holes. He had the movie studio run a relativistic ray tracing code to generate the images of the black hole (given a small accretion disk in place around it). The simulation was the most detailed of its type ever made, and resulted in the publication of 2 academic papers. It did not include magneto-hydrodynamic modelling of the material in the disc, and left out some effects such as doppler boosting, doppler shifting, and gravitational redshifting, but the Einstein ring around the black hole is entirely a result of the light travel paths around the black hole in accordance with GR. \n\nSo yes!", "Matter attraction via gravity clumps material. Little material, little form control resulting in some irregular shapes. The more mass, the more spherical the object as the stronger and stronger gravity attempts to cram maximum matter into a single spot. It doesn't take much, as even the asteroid Ceres attempts to gather spherically. There is only so much room for the molecules to gather so they collect in a ball/spherical shape as they grow and absorb matter (accretion). Some planets and stars may have bulges that make them lightly asymmetrical, but it's not likely in a blackhole. One thing that could distort a black holes appearance is if has relativistic ion jets. But A black hole is a sphere in the sense that everything that goes within its Schwarzschild radius (the distance from the center of the black hole to the event horizon) cannot escape its gravity. Thus, there is a dark sphere ", "Interstellar is probably the most accurate model of a black hole we have made thus far (as someone else also mentioned). And yes a black hole would appear spherical, black holes are made when matter is compacted into such a small volume that not even light can escape the gravitational pull near it, and the black sphere you would see is the area that light can't escape from.\n\nBut black holes are super interesting. Inside of a black hole is a weird place, spacetime is so twisted that no matter which \"direction\" you move you are moving in towards the center of it. Another fun fact is that you can never see something cross the event horizon (the black area that looks like the \"surface\" of it) since the light leaving something would come to a standstill (and be red shifted out of the visible spectrum) and never reach you. But unless you get close to/inside a black hole you wouldn't experience much unusual, at the end of the day it's just a really a really dense object. If our moon was suddenly replaced by a black hole of the same mass not much would change other than our night sky being darker.", "I wonder if the question was meant to be about wormholes, as in the movie they mentioned why it's a sphere.\n\nIt would be another interesting question anyways; I've always wondered if going through one would really be like a rollercoaster ride as in Interstellar, Contact, etc, or would extremely distant objects simply be(come) closer and we would just travel between them without noticing the wormhole." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cuqhw3c" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Yes. If you give the bowling ball momentum in one direction, you will have the same momentum in the opposite direction. This is the same principle that allows rockets to work: exhaust goes in one direction, rocket goes in the other." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjszwct" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm no expert so I don't have any answer, but could you clarify what you're talking about a little? If I look at some easy-to-find sources (wikipedia, etc.) on the history of Ukraine, I'm not seeing anything that looks like this:\n\n > Ukraine was in a completely different part of Europe than we think of today (That is to say, more towards central-eastern Europe)\n\nBorders have changed a bit of course, but everything I saw seemed to be situated around the western/central regions of modern Ukraine. Maybe you have a map illustrating what you mean?\n\nThis might just be me not finding good sources, of course - I've not spent so long looking, and most searches for \"historical Ukraine\" and the like are just full of information about historical sites within Ukraine... " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9ndkro" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "This will work better if you're nearsighted, but should work even if you're not. Look at something in the distance that's blurry because it's far away. Now squint--see how, for a little moment, it's easier to see because you're squinting? Cameras essentially focus by 'squinting' -- adjusting the lens so that the focus is on something different." ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera#Focus" ]

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