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vblagoje

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{ "a_id": [ "diktb8d", "dikuce1" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "There have been court cases over this very issue, and the conclusion that the judges came to is that these body shapes are so common that they are considered to be generic.", "There were a bunch of Japanese guitars in the 1970s that were called [lawsuit guitars] (_URL_0_) for this very reason. They were often superior in construction and quality to the guitars of which they were copies. But by the 80s, Japanese companies such as Ibanez and Yamaha had developed their own designs, while American companies started manufacturing licensed copies in Japan (e.g. Fender's Squier guitars). So the market for unauthorised copies mostly went away after that. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://flypaper.soundfly.com/discover/truth-lawsuit-era-guitars/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsixci7", "dsiy0s5" ], "score": [ 2, 6 ], "text": [ "Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: why don't car alarms go off all the time like they did in the 90's? ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)\n1. [How do tow trucks tow unattended cars without the car alarm going off? ](_URL_6_) ^(_20 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do car alarms work? ](_URL_2_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do some car's alarms go off randomly and why is it so common? ](_URL_5_) ^(_9 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How can thunder make car alarms go off? ](_URL_4_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do alarm systems work and how do they know when your house is broken into through a door or window? ](_URL_3_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [When a car is towed why doesn't the car alarm usually go off? ](_URL_1_) ^(_9 comments_)\n", "It's pretty simple, really. A lot more simple than people think. When a window get smashed, you abruptly change the air pressure inside the car. There is a sensor somewhere inside the car that detects the pressure change.\n\nThe same sensor reacts when you have a large dog barking inside the car too, so most car alarms have a setting where you can turn off that sensor either temporarily or permanently.\n\nAdded to that, some cars have vibration sensors. They detect when the car is lifted, so that you can't steal the rims without the alarm going off.\n\nIncidentally, those sensors also react to things that are unrelated, like earth quakes or when a train passes by a poorly built parking lot.\n\nThen, to make it harder to bypass the alarm, it reacts when the car battery gets disconnected.\n\nSome alarms also react when you try to remove a light bulb (because, you know, if it ain't blinking people won't react quickly enough) and most of them protect themselves from short circuited lamps because that is one of the oldest tricks in the book to cull an old aftermarket alarm system.\n\nTo top it off, the alarm often has its own battery so that it can run the siren independently from the cars electrical system for half an hour or so.\n\nThe rest is about entry control. There is a switch in each door. Including the tank cap and the engine compartment.\n\nSometimes you also replace the central locking motors with motors that are able to lock themselves, because that is also an old trick; if you can physically move the motor in the drivers door, it will typically order all the other motors to open. So if you manage to get access to the motor, the alarm will actually make it EASIER to get into the car. Unless it can lock itself, that is." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e5x96/eli5_why_dont_car_alarms_go_off_all_the_time_like/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/5mtxif/when_a_car_is_towed_why_doesnt_the_car_alarm/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/150ngp/eli5_how_do_car_alarms_work/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/355ife/eli5_how_do_alarm_systems_work_and_how_do_they/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6itvuc/eli5_how_can_thunder_make_car_alarms_go_off/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wx3jm/eli5_why_do_some_cars_alarms_go_off_randomly_and/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/3g4icj/how_do_tow_trucks_tow_unattended_cars_without_the/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmnu1s5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Yes. When solvent evaporates, you'll have a higher concentration of solute. When the concentration is higher than the saturation concentration, the solute will begin to precipitate out.\n\nThis is one way of [recrystallizing](_URL_0_) a desired product in chemistry labs. It's also a way of obtaining large, single crystals by controlling the rate of evaporation such that it occurs slowly." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recrystallization_(chemistry\\)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djbq07s", "djbq8qx" ], "score": [ 12, 48 ], "text": [ "Back when newspapers were a major source of information about the world, there were generally two printings a day. You'd get the morning paper and the evening paper. \nBut if something of great importance happened between printings, the paper would rush out an issue with the breaking news. This was an Extra edition outside of the two regular ones. \nThe newsboys shouting \"EXTRA!\" were announcing that one of these special printing had been done, to entice people to buy a copy and read the breaking news story.", "Newspapers, back when they where the main source of daily news, used to be printed several times a day (each time being updated with newer information or stories) so for example there would be both a morning and an evening edition of the same paper, and maybe more inbetween depending on the size of the paper and the city.\n\nWhen something really important happened an \"Extra\" edition would be immediately printed and rushed to news stands and of course the person selling the newspaper would want to loudly advertise this special event. So the newsboy shouting \"Extra!\" is sort of like the early 20th century version of a \"Breaking News\" story where they cut into regular TV programming." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cstqqz4" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The difference between North and.... Err, between South Europe and the rest of EU is too large. Basically Euro do not allow the southern neighbors to compete with the rest.\n\n Usually this competing would happen by devaluing the currency on hard times, and as such making the wage lower (and also making pensions cost less, inflation adjusted pay somehow never gets put into place) because the wage is paid on the nation's currency, which because of before-mentioned devaluing, well, you get the idea. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbd00tr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " From my reading,not helpful at all,as grains are still broken down into sugar,plus the wheat of today is very different of the wheat of yesteryear. These videos can explain very well what I'm talking about.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/fat-head/", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSDkJEF9aBY" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ehf4kws", "ehg9btr" ], "score": [ 11, 2 ], "text": [ "Most of the area just under the skin on your face is hollow sinus cavities. Obviously there are bones and nerves and other things that go through there, but the majority of the area of your face is just a covering for your mouth, nose, or sinuses. Your ears are connected to the nasal cavity by your eustachian tubes, which means that an infection in your ears will often drain down the eautachian tubes and into the sinuses. It's also why you don't want to grab your nose to block a sneeze, because the pressure of the sneeze will drive garbage from your nasal passages up into your ears and can easily cause an ear infection.", "Because all that stuff is connected, so infections can spread easily. Infections also cause swelling and irritation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgeuadr", "cgeum5k", "cgewf7x", "cgf25zb", "cgflbwn" ], "score": [ 8, 24, 3, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "I don't think I could come close to doing justice to the question, but an excellent, approachable read on the subject can be found in Douglas Hofstadter's *I Am A Strange Loop*. He explains step by step the process and (more relevant to your question) why it is generally applicable in mathematics.", "I'm going to assume you mean formal systems that attempt to describe the natural numbers (i.e. can perform arithmetic) here. While the proofs of Godel's actual theorems are incredibly complex and incomprehensible, how he proved that the theorems applied to all formal systems was actually quite simple. Godel's theorems apply to all formal systems of axioms that express elementary arithmetic and are consistent, and of which theorems may be listed in an effective procedure, i.e. a method for creating and testing statements about the system in a finite number of steps and could theoretically be done by a human. Godel's proofs relied *only* on these assumptions and therefore apply to all of the formal systems that fit his criteria (which, incidentally, any formal system that attempts to characterize the natural numbers must) because his proofs were completed without loss of generality.", "It's explained brilliantly in Douglas Hofstadter (sorry if I get the last name wrong)'s GEB. Essentially, the theorem only applies to \"high fidelity\" formal systems, i.e. formal systems which can generate enough \"true\" statements about number theory. \nSo if there was a formal system that only, say, added two numbers together, you could make theorems, but that system would lack the \"fidelity\" to make any true statements about numbers/math. Therefore, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem would not apply.", "What Godel proved is that every formal system that satisfies certain requirements (namely having a recursively denumerable set of axioms, and being sufficiently rich as to be able to describe basic arithmetic) contains a statement which is true but unprovable. \n\nHe was able to do this because he came up with a way of getting these formal systems to talk about themselves, by coding statements, sequences of statements (ie. proofs) and such as arithmetical statements about natural numbers. \n\nSo that's basically the answer to your question. Any formal system sufficiently rich as to be able to talk about itself in the way Godel designed contains such a statement. ", "Godel figured out that you can rename all the symbols of a formal logical system to numbers in such a way as to make it so that the derivation rules of the system correspond to arithmetic operations on the numbers. To give you a little taste of how this might work, suppose we have a system under which from the string\n\n SO\n\nfor any string `S`, we can derive\n\n SOO\n\nGodel figured out that if you map `S` to some number and `O` to 0, then the derivation rule corresponds to multiplication by 10. Now let `T` be a string in the formal system, and suppose the number that T maps to is 9448. To figure out whether `T` is derivable via that rule in the system, it suffices to determine whether 9448 is divisible by 100—it's not. Thus we can make claims about what is derivable in the formal system by determining whether certain arithmetical statements are true outside of the formal system.\n\nNow suppose that the formal system is capable of making statements about the natural numbers. In particular, suppose there is some well-formed string `K` in the system which translates to \"9448 is not divisible by 100\". That's just the same as saying \"`K` is not derivable in the system\". In this way, Godel twists the system's arm behind its back and forces it to talk about itself, even though Bertrand Russell really really wanted to build a system under which that was impossible.\n\nNow, repeat this for all of the symbols and rules in the system. Then for a given string `M` with associated Godel number (this is what we call the numbers which correspond to the strings) N, we can determine whether `M` is derivable at all in the system by saying something arithmetical about N (\"N is divisible by 2 and 3 and is 9 mod 11\" and so on or whatever). But that arithmetic claim about N can be translated back into the system as some other string `O`, so that `O` says, once properly translated, \"`M` is (or is not) not derivable in this system\".\n\nFrom here, we can form the sentence `G` which says \"this very sentence is not derivable in this system\". Now, suppose `G` is true. Then it is not derivable, i.e. there exists a true sentence which is not provable. If there exists such a sentence in a system then we say the system is \"incomplete\". But suppose it is false. Then it is derivable, in which case the system can derive a false statement. We say that such a system is \"inconsistent\". So a formal system which is capable of making certain types of statements about elementary number theory must be either incomplete or inconsistent." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckk7rwh" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "_URL_0_ \n\nI highly recommend you read the reviews before purchasing." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/Haribo-Sugar-Free-Gummy-Bears/dp/B008JELLCA" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmswvg4", "cmsxaqi", "cmsxaut", "cmt1f3w", "cmtcd60" ], "score": [ 34, 14, 6, 3, 4 ], "text": [ "When dealing with complex roots, you're going to get such results all the time. The fourth roots of unity are 1, -1, i, and -i.\n\nEven if you're just looking for real roots, this result should make it easier for you to understand. \n\n1^4 = 1\n\n(-1)^4 = 1\n\n1 =/= -1\n\nIs the fourth root of 1, 1 or -1? The answer is both.\n", "There is a group of complex numbers called roots of unity, that can equal one when taken to some integer power. You can express these in the form of e^(i2pi/x) for some integer x. In the case of i, x=4.\n\n_URL_0_", "Every positive real number a^2 has two square roots, the solutions to x^(2)-a^(2)=0. We can factor to get (x-a)(x+a)=0 and see that both x=a and x=-a are solutions, i.e., both are square roots of the positive number a^(2).\n\nBy including complex numbers, we can see that even negative numbers have two square roots. x^(2)+a^(2)=x^(2)-(-a^(2))=(x-ai)(x+ai) so both x=ai and x=-ai are square roots of the negative number -a^(2).\n\nIn fact even complex numbers have two square roots. Note that, for instance, (3-2i)^(2)=(-3+2i)^(2)=5-12i.\n\nThis generalizes to the fact that every complex number has n nth roots. For 1, the 4 fourth roots are the solutions to x^(4)-1=0. Factoring yields x^(4)-1=(x^(2)-1)(x^(2)+1)=(x-1)(x+1)(x-i)(x+i) and we get the 4 4th roots of 1 being 1, -1, i, -i.", "Think of complex numbers as a vector or two dimensional number. Multiplication by i means a rotation of 90 degrees. i^4 means rotating by 90 degrees 4 times, or 360 degrees aka a full revolution. \n\nAlso, i = 1xe^(ixpi/2), where e^it is the complex exponential, which is by definition cyclical with period 2xpi because it equals cos(t) + i*sin(t). i^4 would equal e^(4xixpi/2) = e^(ix2xpi) = 1.\n", " > My head hurts.\n\nYour head hurts because we use the same expression \"fourth root of x\" to designate two very different objects. It's a good sign that your head is hurting because it means that you realized that there is something wrong with the definitions you were given. \n\nSo what are those two objects :\n\n* The **fourth root function** is a function defined for positive real number. If x > 0 is the input, the output of the function is the *unique* positive real number y such that y^(4)=x. In this case we say that y is **the fourth root of x**\n\n* The **complex fourth roots** of a complex number x, are *all* the complex numbers y such that y^(4)=x. For such an element y, we say that y is **a fourth root of x**. There can be more than one such element.\n\nIt's really an awful abuse of notation to say \"fourth root of x\" in both situations, but it's too late to change the notation. That's why it's really important to note the subtle difference between the two sentences :\n\n* 1 is **the** fourth root of 1 \n* i is **one of the** fourth root**s** of 1.\n\nNote that we can only talk about **the** fourth root of x when x is a positive real number. It doesn't make sense to talk about the fifth root of -i for example.\n\nNote also that the same is true for square root, cube root, n-th root, ..." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "c49evk4", "c49g3gv", "c49hmtp" ], "score": [ 10, 5, 5 ], "text": [ "x^2.1 is the 10th root of x^21 which is imaginary for negative values of x.\n\nEdit: 2.1 is 21/10 not 21/20, oops.", "x^2.1 = x^21/10, or the 10th root of x^21. Radical functions don't evaluate for real arguments less than zero, so because negative values of x^21 occur at negative values of x, x^2.1 doesn't exist for x < 0, unless the domain is extended into complex numbers, at which point the domain of x^2.1 is all complex numbers.", "Fractional exponents mean that you are no longer multiplying the number with itself, you're also taking *roots*. For instance, x^2.1 is the 10th root of x to the power of 21.\n\nBut taking roots of *negative* numbers is tricky business. You have to leave the real numbers and go the so-called *complex numbers*. The key property of the complex numbers is that they include the \"number\" √(-1), often called i, the imaginary unit. Exercise: why again is there no real numbers whose square is -1?\n\nBut as soon as you are in the realm of complex numbers, it turns out that taking roots is no longer unique. For instance there are three different complex numbers x that fulfill the equation x^3 = 1. You know that x=1 is one of them, but there are two others.\n\nTo make a long story short: the generally accepted convention for taking roots of complex numbers is to leave out the negative numbers altogether." ] }

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[ "http://i.imgur.com/5Y10l.png" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "eqza0rk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There are, they might not rip off the entire car, but components; door latch assemblies, window motors, smaller pieces like that get ripped off all the time and designs get copied." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9h7knz", "d9hcp9t" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Granny smith are a type of apple. It's a brand name as well, like Given Delicious or Pink Lady. ", "Granny Smith is just the name of the apple variety. There are hundreds if not thousands of varieties. \n\nI was at a cider museum in Hereford, England the other day and there was [a display of over 120 varieties of cider apples](_URL_0_), put on by Gillian Bulmer of the Bulmers cider brewing family who is very keen on keeping the rarer trees going. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://imgur.com/gallery/Bvrrb" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c54udic", "c54uunx", "c54y4t7" ], "score": [ 4, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not too knowledgeable on this subject. But, I can say that Asians don't have a natural tendency to be good at math. The school systems in many eastern Asian countries are very rigorous. They attend school 6 days of the week and then they go to a more intense learning program after the regular school day. The stereotype is not anything genetic but rather a difference in the education system.", "In theory, they can. But so far we haven't found any genetic difference that wouldn't be dwarfed by cultural factors. For example you have lots of discussion in academic performance differences between white, black and asian, but when you look closer you find out that in many black communities it's actually a bit shameful to have good grades, while asian families not only respect academic performance, but tend to be above average when it comes to motivating children to learn.\n\nSo in this conditions it's both difficult and pointless to hunt for a pure genetic difference.\n", "From what I understand, we haven't found one yet.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ch97jqh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "with the growth and success of western medicine, public hygiene and quality standards of food production, we created an environment of next to no exposure to parasitic pathogens like worms and protozoa. This sounds good at first, but what also happens is that the part of the immune system that is fending off those parasites is \"out of work\" from the get-go.\n\n\n\nThe immune system is a pretty complex topic, so I'll try to keep it simple: There's a plethora of different types of immune cells (the ones I am refering to are T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes, each having multiple subtypes). The lymphocytes that don't identify with any subtype yet are called naive cells, and these are the ones that can proliferate (ie develop) into any other subtype. anytime immune cells are fighting infections they will recruit more virgin/naive cells, some of which, strangely enough, actually proliferate into cells that *impede*/ease the immune response (so called regulatory T-lymphocytes). Not without reason: overarching immune response is no joke and can be the cause of death (as in SIRS/sepsis, for example).\n\n\n\nWith that in mind, let's assess the situation: since we have lacking exposure to parasitic pathogens, we also lack the mechanism used to regulate/normalize the immune response, and it's hard for the immune system to discern real threats and harmless stuff. Allergens have similar epitopes (antigens) to parasitic lifeforms, hence the immune system confuses them with actual parasites and gives off an immune response as if it was one (specifically IgE immune response and secretion of histamin from mast cells, causing the typical allergic symptoms). And since there's nothing to downregulate the response like (memory) regulatory T-cells, you get full blown allergic symptoms.\n\n\n\nNotice how, for example, allergy is practically unheard of in African, South American and Asian countries, since public hygiene and supervision of food quality is (objectively, don't call me a racist!) worse in those places. Also statistically people from wealthier and/or cleaner households are more susceptible to allergies.\n\nThis is also how desensitizing works: confronting the body with the allergen multiple times gives it a chance to form those regulatory T-lymphocytes, making the reaction less severe with each confrontation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2f4hho", "c2f4hho" ], "score": [ 7, 7 ], "text": [ "no. They don't. Eventually the particles that make you up contribute to a scattering process and many eons later will be released back into the universe in the form of Hawking radiation.", "no. They don't. Eventually the particles that make you up contribute to a scattering process and many eons later will be released back into the universe in the form of Hawking radiation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e8z86l0" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Pre med student!\n\nExternal membranes and skin are the first line of defense in mammals. When your body senses some irritant around the nose or believes that you are sick, correctly or incorrectly, it will signal your nasal membrane to secrete mucus to prevent more pathogens from entering the body. Many pathogens typically enter through your nostrils, so this is the body covering its bases while it works with what it believes to be the matter at hand." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfbtqe9" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Lawyer here! This case presents a great opportunity to look at abandonment and salvage law.\n\nThe bottom line is that Spain - which owned the ship and cargo in question - never abandoned its ownership interest. In order for a person to abandon property, that person must exhibit some sort of *intent* to surrender its ownership of the property. Otherwise, the ownership interest may continue *indefinitely*. This can be done expressly (through a writing, for example) or by implication (through acts that suggest the property is being abandoned). Here, Spain never exhibited any such interest, so it's still the rightful owner of the wreck to this day.\n\nThe fact that 200+ years elapsed is of no moment. The wreck was not discoverable or salvageable until very recently, and the law isn't going to strip you of your ownership of something just because it's literally not recoverable for a few generations. That would hardly be a just outcome.\n\nThat said, the Odyssey should be entitled to recover under salvage law. Courts across the world recognize the right of a \"salvor\" to be compensated for recovering a wreck. While the salvor isn't generally entitled to keep the salvaged property itself (since that's still owned by someone else), they do have a right to be compensated for their services (whether agreed to or not by the rightful owner) through an award commensurate with the value of the property recovered. (I *believe* in this case that Spain *did* ultimately pay Odyssey for their services, but I could be wrong.)\n\nAll that said, this wasn't your typical salvage case. Here, Odyssey sought to keep the salvage for themselves; they didn't want Spain to get its hands on it. So they engaged in some pretty shady practices before and during the lawsuit in order to keep Spain in the dark. That's why Odyssey was hit with a $1M fee award. You can read some of Judge Merryday's reasoning in that article:\n\n > Spain persistently attempted to secure through discovery from Odyssey the claimed identity of the vessel and the evidence supporting that identification,\" Merryday wrote.\n \n > \"Of course, Odyssey knew at all times that Spain, given the information pertinent to identification, possessed the historical information and the expertise to identify immediately whether the wreck in question was a Spanish vessel, … \" he added. \"The fact that Odyssey never asked for Spain's assistance in identifying the vessel reveals much about Odyssey's motives and objectives.\"\n\nBad faith discovery practices, in my experience, are one of the quickest ways to be hit with sanctions in federal court, so it's no real surprise to see this award here.\n\nAlso, as someone who's handled more than a few cases before Judge Merryday, I can tell you that he's very just and capable, and like most judges in his district (and many others), abhors discovery abuses." ] }

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[ "http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/odyssey-marine-ordered-to-pay-spain-1-million-in-black-swan-case/2144658" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cc1d903", "cc1epz1", "cc1g1zu", "cc1g79n" ], "score": [ 2, 6, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Always. The Spanish version is sometimes a stub of the English one.\nEnglish speakers are always majority, and the wiki grows really fast.", "Most other languages simply don't have as many contributors. The German Wiki is actually very good and very active. Some smaller language simply don't have as many editors which greatly limits the amount of subjects they write on.", "Chinese people 25%?\n\nWasn't ready for that at all.", "As a Dutchman, I only use the Dutch version for Dutch topics. For anything else, the English version is far more informative, much longer and and much more detailed. Just generally more complete and as such more reliable." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6a7v6g", "d6b5r7j" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Sure. [The King's Highway](_URL_0_) in Jordan immediately jumps to mind.\n\n > Was there continued development on these roads even after their empires fell?\n\nI'm less familiar with whether or not the development would have been \"continuous\" per se (i.e. whether or not the road ever fell into prolonged periods of neglect or disuse. I strongly suspect it would have.) but it has been used and developed by a succession of empires that controlled the region, down to the present Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.\n\nThere are also roads that by virtue of simple geography have remained in use in the same place, like the Khyber Pass in the Hindu Kush between Afghanistan and Pakistan.", "Roman Emperor Trajan put an inscription on a bridge in AD 98: *Pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula* (I have built a bridge which will last forever). (Credit to Wikipedia for the inscription and translation). The question is the same as Theseus's Ship--at what point does a bridge cease to be the same bridge? This bridge in Alcantara, Spain has been broken and blown up on a number of occasions in the past couple thousand years...but do the repairs make it the same bridge--or is it a different bridge now?\n\nYou decide. Regardless, I think that it is pretty neat that there's a bridge that was commissioned by a *Roman Emperor* out there. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Highway_\\(ancient\\)" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ehe26q6", "ehe4hpz", "ehe7ckh", "eheaen3", "eheilyi", "ehelier", "ehex5nr", "ehf16iq", "ehf4o5c", "ehf53o4", "ehfdsp8", "ehfvi5s", "ehfvv9x", "ehg0aja", "ehg1uzo" ], "score": [ 8, 50, 93, 7291, 441, 245, 10, 4, 20, 7, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Swear words are just words that are considered bad to use. People often quote the bible which say that you should not use Gods name in vain which is a source of a lot of swear words related to deities. Similarly it is bad to call upon the devil or call someone bad names. There are new swear words all the time and you have likely witnessed words become swear words.", "Most swear words can be traced back to either the \"shit\" or \"sacred\" categories. And even \"shit\" really could fit under sacred.\n\nThink of any swear word and it has to do with prevailing religious or other moral codes as they relate to cleanliness, sex, or the nature of God.\n\nMaking oaths using God's name used to be one of the worst things you could say. People would say \"by God's bones\" implying that if they were telling a falsehood God's bones would literally be destroyed.", "They’re words that are meant to offend, get a strong reaction, express extreme emotion, and/or weren’t historically seen as fit to say in high society. Doing a little research into this topic is an interesting dip into the history and evolution of words and how society receives words, and it also shows how there’s never a such thing as a “nice” swear word.\n\n“Bastard” literally means half-breed, and the sting from that one is an echo from a time when your inheritance from your family and recognition in society was partially based on the assumption that you weren’t an illegitimate child. “Bugger” is simply anal rape. “Damn” is short for “Damn you to Hell” which, in my opinion, is probably objectively the worst one on here based on what Hell is, even if the punch of the curse has reduced over the centuries. “Shit” is...um...shit; nothing particularly inspired there, it’s just a more crass way of saying something that you don’t talk about in front of the queen or at the dinner table. \n\nMany words come and go as inappropriate/offensive words in society as time passes—retard, n****r, and pants (yes, pants) are all words that have spent time as both words you just say with no consequence and as words that you wouldn’t be caught dead saying during various times in their usage—some are simply consistently crass throughout the evolution of a language, culture, or changing of definitions.", "Actually very interesting topic, whilst a good number are just insults, the majority of English language swear words are Germanic origin words as opposed to Latin origin words; when the french-speaking Normans conquered England, they would include more french words when they spoke, whereas the Anglo-Saxons, which made up the majority of English population, had all been including German origin words. Wealthy people (both Norman and otherwise) wished to seem more Norman in order to get further ahead in life, so shunned German origin words; eventually this evolves into \"only a poor person says that\" meaning a proper person looking to forward there standing in society would never sound so common, then just flat out rude as people continued to emulate the \"proper people\". Example: cunt is a germanic origin word for vagina, and it's predecessor can be found in 13th century poetry, yet became considered slang, then by the nineteenth century it had the same vulgarity as it does now.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTLDR: Swear words tend to become swear words because poor people used to say them.\n\nEdit: I love that my most upvoted comment is explaining the origin of the word cunt. I'm a true fucking Scotsman", "Apparently apes have swear words too. They are cries of alarm. Swearing when something bad happens is a good social behavior because it alerts others in your tribe to danger. A good swear word tends to be a short one syllable word.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSwearing is so useful that it seems to be hard-wired into a circuit in our brains. This is the mal-functioning circuit involved in tourette's syndrome.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nObviously as society has gotten more complex so has swearing behavior. But I think the above is a good starting point.", "We create swear words out of the things/ideas that repress us as a population. French Canadian swear words are words related to the Church. North American English swear words are words related to sex/nudity\n\n & #x200B;", "The social understanding or meaning placed on a word eventually leads to it being added to the ever growing list of derogatory words. Create your own, use it a few times, wait a couple years as it festers and grows into something extremely toxic and boom there you go, you invented a swear word. \n\n & #x200B;", "I don’t know if this has already been mentioned but evolutionarily speaking, the reaction when you stub your toe in be might and tell a curse word developed because we need to alert ourselves and others to a danger. Long ago certain utterances or sounds were likely used in the case of danger or harm and as such used in a reaction fashion. Now when you curse in reaction to pain or danger it is an echo of that. ", "In Quebec (french), our swear words are religion words.\n\n* Tabarnak = tabernacle (the receptacles for the communion)\n\n* ostie = hostie (the communion white things in catholic religion)\n\n* criss = christ (obvious)\n\n* calice = chalice (the glass for the communion wine)\n\nBasically, it was censored for decades or centuries. In the 60s, when our society started growing out of religion (we have a big proportion of atheists), those words were forbidden and... Well prohibition favors transgressions, so our people started using them as swears.\n\nninja-edit: a word was badly written", "Not sure if it’s been brought up yet, but the “N” word didn’t always pertain to black people(general dark skinned, not just African descent). \n\nWhile the word’s roots mean black/dark(dark skinned, field-hands, mountain-men, Africans,etc)It originally meant ignorant or some variant of in common speech. So if you were the village idiot, you were likely called a N•••••. Since slaves(or anyone of lower standing) were seen as uncivilized/backwards/stupid by western society at the time. \n\nIt became synonymous with slaves during the boom in the slave trade era and further cemented during the American civil war as ‘colored’ and ‘negro’ were seen as more sophisticated and acceptable terms for people of color by Northerners. This trend continued thru the civil rights movement. During the civil war, The south primarily used N••••• to refer to what they believed was property to separate the slaves from ‘proper people’. \n\nAnd then to the present era where we have it primarily as a derogatory term for any dark skinned person but still mainly focused towards African-Americans, used by edgy white kids, racists, or (for reasons that I fail to comprehend still, but that’s a can of worms for another day) a term of familiarity when one black person says it to another. \n\nThere was *a lot* that I glossed over in this explanation. There’s a lot of cultural etc stuff that would take way to long to dive into and this is already a text wall. ", "Ok so I’m late to the party but I like to give it a shot \n\nBengerman k Bergen described curse words as falling under 4 general concepts. The 4 taboos were religion, sex, slurs, and bodily functions. And all curse words tend to fall under one or more of these categories. \n\nBased on your culture, one category may be more offensive than the other. But all of these words, when said in the wrong context, tend to be unacceptable. \n\nFor instance, America tends to lean away from the slur curse words. God damnit doesn’t seem to have as negative association as nigger. But 50 years ago that was backwards. \n\nYou can actually get a good idea of what a community prioritizes based on the words that they find horrible versus just bad. ", "Excuse the French.", "I don’t know if it’s true, but I read somewhere that this legal term for sex w a prostitute became its acronym \nFor\nUnlawful\nCarnal\nKnowledge ", "S.h.i.t. - Ship high in transit\n\nThe lowest part of a ship would always be wet. When they'd ship fertilizer or Pooh, they needed it to stay dry to preserve it. ", "In french (Quebec), our swear words are mostly religious words. For context, Quebec had what we call the \"quiet revolution\" in the 50s where most people got fed up of pastors and bishops telling them how to live their lives, how many kids they should have, etc. So apparently as part of this \"rebellion\", we started going to churcg less but also using religious words to express anger. Ex: Calisse(calice), tabarnak(tabernacle), osti(hostie) ciboire(ciboire) are all instuments, furniture or food used as part of church service." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ejdjwac", "ejdl7z2" ], "score": [ 2, 8 ], "text": [ "Good question. I am guessing the answer has to do with things not occurring uniformly across the globe. There will be more subduction in some areas and less/none in others. By applying uniform average rates you are not taking into account that these processes dont occur uniformly at equal spatial distribution and at equal rates. Some areas are subducting faster, some subduction zones are shallow and others are deeper.", "There are some anomalously old bits of ocean floor knocking around - I believe there’s some parts of the Pacific Ocean basin that are 200ish million years old, and a few slivers in the Mediterranean that are remnants of the Neotethys ocean getting on for 300 million years old. \n\nThis is not really the answer to your question though. The reason why we have fossils from half a billion years ago (and much farther back when we extend it to all the bacterial life before hard parts got going), is because continents don’t get recycled. Continental crust is much more buoyant than oceanic crust and so tends not to subduct. \n\nWhen it does, it’s due to situations where the leading (oceanic) edge of a subducting plate which has continental crust attached behind it is chugging at a good pace down that subduction zone. The continental crust will get dragged in, maybe some of it will be assimilated into the mantle for keeps, but essentially it just pops back up again and we get a nice metamorphic mineral assemblage preserved from our continent’s brief (a few million years) trip into the mantle. \n\nSo all the fossils of stuff we have older than 200 million years-ish is stuff from land. This may be an area that was always land, with land animals and plants preserved; or it may be an area that was once a shallow sea and due to regional tectonic uplift is now land. Shelf seas are just that: seas which are underlain by continental shelves. If they are lifted above water level, or if sea level drops to expose the sea bed, then providing there’s some sort of preservation mechanism (buried organisms, sheltered from weathering etc) then this whole area will not be subducted as it is part of the continental crust. \n\nWe don’t actually have a huge fossil record of vertebrates from the deep water of the oceans proper, simply because we can’t go looking around there quite as effectively or easily as we can on land. There are plenty of research vessels that take core samples of the seafloor sediments though, and these have built up a good record of microfossils for the past 200 million years or so. \n\nIn particular, the tests (shells) of single called organisms known as [foraminifera](_URL_0_) are often found, and can be used to correlate ages of the layers based on the species present; to chart the changing shape of ocean basins and certain ocean currents; and even to reconstruct past climates. There are a few other important groups of microfossils we find in marine sediments, namely diatoms, radiolarians and coccolithophores (actually so small they are technically nanofossils) which can also tell us similar things. \n\nPerhaps there are countless untold fossilised beasts that have been swept out to deep waters and that we will never find unless we happen to be coring in *exactly* the right spot. For the most part though, the deep ocean is a quiet place that has a constant, slow rain of plankton hard parts to the sea-bed and not much else. When things like whale falls occur they are a temporary oasis in a desolate land, and all sorts of creatures big and small will come and devour it until even the bones are gone (I believe hagfish get every last scrap of meat from the bone and then some types of worm can actually digest the bone itself). \n\nIt would have to be a particularly rare occurrence even by fossilisation standards for a big creature to make it to the seafloor *and* get preserved. I know of one such discovery: the best preserved dino we have, [an ankylosaurus discovered by some miners.](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction" ]

[ [], [ "https://i.imgur.com/KNuzaV5.jpg", "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f1a0www" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "A ceramic glaze is a essentially a powdered glass-forming substance that liquefies at high temperatures, forming a smooth glass layer that is bonded with the ceramic itself. There are many different types of glazes that utilize different chemicals to produce different colors and effects. A flux is a substance added to the pre-fired glaze that lowers its melting temperature, making it easier to liquefy." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3dhusq", "c3did0c", "c3die0j", "c3dihpc", "c3dkxn9", "c3dl2jr", "c3dl2qo" ], "score": [ 45, 13, 5, 3, 11, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "Who do you think makes, improves, and interprets those models?", "Meteorologists get a bad rap because many people don't realize that there are a dozen TYPES of them out there! Other than the [four types pointed out in this NASA definition](_URL_0_), there are the more rare breeds, such as Forensic Meteorologists that apply weather to court cases, and Historical (or Archival) Meteorologists that attempt to determine the weather's likely conditions and [impact in the context of specific past events](_URL_1_).\n\nSo depending on what their role is, they need different qualifications, and you better believe that the bad ones will stick out like a sore thumb in certain sub professions! In some cases the impact is minor, such as the sales figures for a candy company being down by 0.1 percent or a history book getting the rainfall wrong for a battlefield.\n\nIn other cases, it's life and death... you know those Storm Chasers? Not the rash of YouTube / TV reality ones, but the pros that work for the [National Severe Storms Laboratory](_URL_2_)? If you're a poor one, you're a dead one.", "Here's a video that might clear it up for you on a basic level.\n\n_URL_0_", "A close friend of mine works as a meteorologist in Australia. If I recall correctly, there are 6 separate computer models that predict Australia's weather. Part of the human's job is to compare the different computer models to see which is the most likely outcome - they can be very different. \n\nThey also take into consideration 'local rules' that represent a database of almost anecdotal observations that they use to modify/interpret the model predictions.\n\nHaving said that, he worked as a meteorologist for an air-force base. That involved drinking cappuccinos and reading the official forecast to pilots.", "Meteorologists still do quite a lot. The field of meteorology is very broad and covers everything from forecasting to tropical storm research to space weather research. For instance, some parts of my job include: utilizing satellite data in new ways to extract information about atmospheric constituents such as volcanic ash, smoke, cloud particle phase, etc; building statistics that describe the different ways that clouds overlap below the scale of our weather models to help provide more statistically accurate radiative transfer profiles; improving models that forecast and now-cast aircraft icing so that pilots can avoid aircraft icing but minimize the area that must be avoided.\n\nI think, though, that you are really asking what forecast meteorologists do, so I'll focus on that. There are many different weather models used for forecasting. Each one is different, and each one has its strengths and weaknesses. A forecaster must be familiar with those strengths and weaknesses and how they apply to their region. In some areas of the globe, one model may get rainfall correct in specific conditions, but fail miserably in other conditions. It is the forecaster's job to assess the current conditions based on ground station observations, satellite products, etc. and build a forecast based partially on the models, but also partially on their knowledge of local meteorology and their intuition.\n\nA good forecast meteorologist will show more [forecast skill](_URL_0_) than a poor one. A very poor one will rely on a single model to produce their forecasts.\n\nBeyond this, though, there are many atmospheric phenomena that our models are poor at or even incapable of forecasting. Volcanic ash plumes would be a good example of this. They are incredibly dangerous for aviation, but our models are not good at handling injected matter, especially since it is very very difficult to come up with a particle size distribution and thus a fall speed for a volcanic plume. \n\nAlso, have you noticed that our forecasts for where a hurricane will make landfall typically give a warning zone? That's because we don't really know where it will hit, how strong it will be, etc. The models are able to make good guesses, but they still require quite a bit of improvement.\n\nAnyway, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.", "While it is approximately true that *television* meteorologists often rely solely on computer-generated forecasts -- research meteorologists (atmospheric scientists) are constantly striving to improve the accuracy (spatial and temporal) of forecast models for a variety of phenomena. \n\nFor example, snowfall forecasts are notoriously bad because snowfall can be very heavy in one small location and light a few miles away -- not to mention that most forecast models do a terrible job at predicting snowfall amounts. My research is explicitly involved with improving our knowledge of snowfall processes which will, eventually, feedback into forecast models. Of course there are other reasons why atmospheric scientists study the weather: climate change, global water cycle, energy cycle, hydrological considerations, flooding/landslide forecasting, soil moisture, etc.\n", "The meteorologists that you are talking about are the operational side of Atmospheric Science. They don't just atmospheric models that give you the daily weather outlook-- there is so much more to it than that. Operational meteorologists are responsible for issuing severe weather warnings. They interpret satellite and radar images to determine where/how quickly storms are moving to issue watches and warnings in the correct time fame. They also work with emergency management crews ahead of big weather events to prepare them for what they should expect before, during, and after a major event like a tornado, hurricane, or flood.\n\nThen there is research that is constantly improving the methods they use to accomplish this and looking into other aspects of the atmosphere we live in. Here is a quick breakdown of each field inside Atmospheric Science. \n\nBioclimatology - This field examines how a changing climate affects the ecosystem and vice versa. One of the current research projects is analyzing how beetle populations in the western US are killing pine trees due to a warming climate. The beetles would normally die off during the winter, but with milder winters the beetles continue to spread and become too much for the pine tree population.\n\nAtmospheric Dynamics - The hard physics behind the atmospheric models that operational meteorologists use everyday. Using fluid dynamics to understand flow in the atmosphere and thermodynamics to help with heat exchange, they are constantly finding new equations that explain how our atmosphere interacts with itself. This can is also coupled with oceanography to see air-sea interactions.\n\nCloud Microphysics - My field of research, looking at physics that revolve around particles inside of clouds. This ranges from how clouds develop with the help of aerosols to how hail formation can affect a thunderstorm. Ever wonder why snow forecasts have such a huge range? Modeling the flow around a snowflake (or dendritic ice particle) is computationally difficult and modeling how they collide and create snow aggregate is even more challenging. Right now forecasters use a rough approximation formula to determine how much snow is going to come from a blizzard.\n\nAtmospheric Modeling - Even though each of the other fields does some kind of modeling in one form or another, atmospheric modeling is looking at which types of mathematical/statistical schemes create the best results. It is torn into two camps right now, numerical and physical. The numerical modeling camp makes compromises in the physical formulas to help the simulation run faster and smoother, whereas the physical camp makes sacrifices in computational speed to create the most accurate results.\n\nRemote Sensing - Uses RADAR and satellites, plus other techniques, to obtain data on the atmosphere. This field is constantly developing more sophisticated equipment and improving accuracy of measurements to get the most realistic picture of the atmosphere at any given time. Satellite meteorologists work on developing products to gain useful information from the raw measurements the satellites collect, among other things. One example of current work in this field is developing ways to use satellites to create vertical profiles of the temperature/water vapor structure of the atmosphere with high temporal and spacial resolution. Typically, these types of measurements only come from widespread locations a few times per day from weather balloon launches, which are quite expensive. \n \nOceanography - Looks specifically at the ocean currents to see how they alter with climate and biological systems. They study ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation, which explains the shift between El Nino and La Nina climates) and are the ones responsible for naming the new ocean last year that encircles Antarctica, the Southern Ocean.\n\nClimatology - Studies current, future, and past climates and what processes define them. Not just looking at global warming. Their climate models contain millions of lines of code and they are adding and changing them constantly.\n\nSynoptic Research - This is as close to operational meteorology as you can get. This group looks at specific weather events, tries to understand what mechanisms were at play, and figures out how to apply that knowledge to future weather events. An example of this is seeing how thunderstorms off the coast of Hawaii result in blizzards in the midwest. There is a emerging breakthrough in this field with something called super-jets. These jets are the result of upper and lower level jets sitting on top of each other, creating a huge potential for tornado outbreaks and other severe weather.\n\nAtmospheric Chemistry - Looks at natural and anthropogenic chemicals and aerosols in the atmosphere and what role each of them plays. This is where a large amount of pollution policy comes from since they are the ones that understand how much of X affects an area.\n\nThese fields of research can also be used in consulting for energy companies, power traders, insurance agencies, etc. So to answer your question on what makes a good meteorologist from a bad one, it is someone who is able to look at all of these fields and apply the research to produce accurate forecasts that we use everyday." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/meteorol.html", "http://www.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/products_services/forensics.asp", "http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/" ], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=oLQH4w4FkJg" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forecast_skill" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crumcto", "crumjv2" ], "score": [ 2, 12 ], "text": [ "Over the course of millions of years, yes.\n\nIn the meantime it would cost a ton of money in shipping and would disrupt the ecosystem. Landfills are cheaper and safer, although far from perfect. \n\nPlus, a lot of garbage floats.", "Trash is all sorts of crazy stuff, including oils that float, plastic bits that float, paper bits that float, wood bits that float and even cans with a little air in them that float. It's also filled with air. And air floats.\n\nSo you'd need to seal it and get all the air out of it to keep it down there. So you Wall-E big cubes of garbage as best you can and seal them somehow. \n\nNow you have to deliver it to the dock, and then load it on a vessel, and then pay that vessel huge amounts of money to transport it to that trench because most are pretty far away from land. \n\nNow you're over the trench. The bottom of the trench is way way down there where the water pressure is super high. Drop a Wall-E cube.\n\nAs it sinks, its irregular shape causes it to tumble and drift off. So you build a giant cable that you hook your delivery vessel and cubes to to they it drop down straight. Delivery system complete...\n\nBut as it falls, the pressure on the cube rises, and any remaining air (because you can't get it all) dramatically increases the chance it's going to rupture if not just float. It does, and all the air and those lovely oils and other chemicals squirt out, and with them comes plastic bits and other pollutants as your case's integrity fails. \n\nA few hours later there's a minor but potently stenchy oil slick under your vessel and that giant floating garbage patch in the middle of the ocean gets just a little bit bigger, and your picture's on a dartboard in Greenpeace offices all over the globe." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnh205w" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ ". comes from ancient greece, there used to be 3 different kinds which sat at varying height, the higher the dot the longer the pause. \n\n! is the latin work Io (joy) with the o smushed under the I.\n\n? derives from the same dots as the period, only it had a squiggle to show that you should raise your voice, like you do when asking a question. It started out being sideways, but was eventually turned upright to work better with other punctuation\n\n, used to be represented by a slash like \"/\", it just got squished down.\n\nBasically, most punctuation is because some ancient guy said so." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6scikr", "c6sclhn", "c6scvi9", "c6se94s", "c6sgpwl", "c6sgtxa" ], "score": [ 26, 3, 8, 5, 7, 4 ], "text": [ "It's pretty much just an affectation of the genre (side note: as a writer of historical fiction, I've run up against this frequently, as I refuse to follow it). People of all time periods used various levels of language depending on the situation and, yes, those levels of language did include slang and \"contractions.\" I put contractions in quotes there as the words they used aren't necessarily the words we would recognize as contractions, but nonetheless serve the same linguistic function.\n\nI think (minor speculation based on experience) that the \"no contractions\" rule is used to make the characters more distant from us so the time period feels more real. Honestly, a sixteenth-century man rightly pissed off saying \"Fuck you and fuck yo' momma\" is going to seem REALLY weird, even if it's a translation of the sentiment. \"A pox on both your houses\" is more of what we would *expect* such a character to say. \n\nIn other words, yes, people would have spoken differently but no, our ancestors were not mysteriously lacking in an informal speech register.", "One factor in that was that much of 18th century English literature was originally published in magazine serials which went over 20 issues and paid for stories per issue.\n\n_URL_1_\nTalks about this business model in regards to the Pickwick Papers\n\n_URL_0_\nThis explains how Dickens was paid. Magazine serials were popular, much in the same way as people having favorite TV series today. Thus, it would behoove an author to write a longer story to be paid more.\n", "[Here's](_URL_3_) a page full of written accounts from Union veterans of the Civil War. You'll notice that the language is very formal. On the other hand you can read the text of *[Tom Sawyer](_URL_2_)* and find plenty of contractions. [This](_URL_1_) is the text of a former slave to his wife which contains the contraction \"don't\". There was a very popular collection of short stories published in 1835, among which is one called \"[A Sage Conversation](_URL_0_)\". The narrator of the story avoids the use of contractions, except when it serves to highlight the conversations he's supposedly reporting on. \n\nSo it seems that (at least for 19th century America) the use of contractions was avoided in formal writing, but wasn't necessarily avoided in speech, even among educated people (In \"A Sage Conversation\" the narrator's companion uses contractions in his speech for example)\n", "Have you read Benjamin Franklin's *Autobiography*? He uses all kinds of abbreviations, although this is a manuscript and not a copy that was intended for publishing, so that is probably why. Examples are \"dy'd\" for \"died\", \"asham'd\" for \"ashamed\", \"procur'd\" for \"procured\", \"continu'd\" for \"continued\" and other things like that.", "It's worth noting that even today English is almost always written in a much more formal register than the author's speech. It's a convention of the language. Since we have no audio recordings from the 1790's, it sounds odd to imagine George Washington saying the era's equivalent of \"um\" in every second sentence, but he very likely did.\n\nIt's largely an artifact of literary convention, and we do it too. Even attempts to write authentic colloquial speech for modern movies or television don't generally sound all that much like real speech, with all its sentence fragments and filler words. There are exceptions of course, but they are much less common than one might think.", "I think what happens is that historical fiction errs on the side of what \"sounds right\" to keep the reader involved in the experience and avoid anything that would draw them out of it. It's sort of the same reason science fiction has sound in space and fantasy lit avoids the anatomical sounding words \"penis\" and \"vagina\" in favor of euphemisms.\n\nSo people read the Gettysburg Address in school, and they watch Ken Burns' _The Civil War_, and end up assuming Abraham Lincoln just talked like that all the time. (The upcoming Lincoln movie promises to be a perfect example of this effect.) Affecting a different style of English from the way we speak helps readers locate themselves in a time and place other than their own. It also helps define the work in a certain way. Fantasy post-Tolkein tends to use prosaic writing, and he himself probably adapted that from real mythical texts. Works about the future cloak themselves in made-up terminology. If characters seemed to speak in a modern way, it would break the illusion, and worse, date the work to the time period it was made in.\n\nSo at some point \"formal\" speech became a marker for \"this work takes place in the past,\" a way of orienting ourselves in a time period before hip hop and weed and when everything was more European. \n\nBut if we could replicate the way people actually talked in any time period, it might not sound right if it isn't what people have learned to expect. Obviously we can't really do that further back than a hundred years or so, but I'd point out that comedic portrayals of how people talked in the 80s or 90s are always more exaggerated than art from that time period, and that's just in living memory." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/by-the-word.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens" ], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=1X0jihz0qpMC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q=sage%20conversation&amp;f=false", "http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/boston.htm", "http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Twa2Tom.html", "http://www.midtneyewitnesses.com/eyewitness-book-series/fort-donelson/union-soldier" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f2trpob" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Because they walk up.\n\nMost people have their blinds angled so that walking up across the blinds takes the fly (through the gaps) to the side where the window is.\n\nTo get out, the fly would have to walk downwards (and upside down) on the blinds, and they don't like to do that, so they kinda get stuck on the window side and die of starvation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnwfmj3", "cnwg156", "cnwjw18", "cnwkdau", "cnwlnm5", "cnwmgar", "cnwnikd", "cnwnj6t", "cnwnu3u", "cnwoaqq", "cnwokk7", "cnwqjaa", "cnwqjo3", "cnwsbd9", "cnwv1fd", "cnwv42l", "cnwvl1f", "cnx0b3x", "cnx181m", "cnx1hi3", "cnx1ph3", "cnx1wl1", "cnx1zt5", "cnx2cna", "cnx2wlj", "cnx3i0r", "cnx3sjc", "cnx3yri", "cnx4zhj", "cnx70kk", "cnx753s", "cnx7d1d", "cnxa2cg", "cnxa6nx", "cnxcrzx", "cnxd195", "cny0bq1" ], "score": [ 2681, 72, 47, 27, 1132, 2, 92, 156, 3, 9, 4, 12, 2, 6, 43, 2, 3, 2, 34, 30, 2, 14, 3, 7, 2, 5, 3, 9, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "by making it an adapter that has a micro usb connection ", "According to [this news article](_URL_0_), that rule could come into force \"as early as 2017\"....", "At the minute, its a guideline that the EU is really happy if you follow, but there is work in progress to make it law. (Apple do sell an adapter for cheap compared to Apple, and I believe they can just put one in the box to comply if it becomes law.)", "Apple agreed with the EU to adopt Micro USB on its phones way back in 2009....then promptly adopted the proprietary and patent encumbered lightning connector.\n\nSo, the EU introduced new regulations that means all phone manufacturers will have to use Micro USB by the end of 2016. \n\nSo just 7 years later then.", "From what I read months ago about this issue, the rule has a loophole that says that it is acceptable as long as an adapter to micro-USB is included in the box. The speculation was that Apple would simply include the adapter with European iPhones.\n\nSince then, more interesting developments have occurred. The USB group is promoting a new connecter standard called \"USB C\" that, like Apple's proprietary Lightning cable, is reversible. *Further*, while Lightning cable is not thought to be able to support full USB 3 transfer speeds (5Gbps) to to a deficiency of pins, the USB C connector standard supports USB 3.1 (10Gbps) *and* a new USB-based standard for carrying power that allowed USB C to carry up to *100 watts*. To put 100 watts in perspective, Apple currently produces 3 different power supply adapters for their laptops: 45 watt for MacBook Airs, 60 watt for 13\" Macbook Pros, and 85 watt for 15\" MacBook Pros. That means that 100 watts is easily enough to power and charge Apple's most powerful laptops.\n\n**Most interestingly**, rumors abound about a new ultra thin and portable Mac laptop that is so thin that it eschews all connectors besides a single headphone port and a single USB C port. As in, you will be using that USB C plug as the primary means of charging the laptop. So if you need to charge your laptop and plug in to USB devices and external displays simultaneously, there will probably be port(s) on the new power supply to allow that.\n\nWith Apple promoting USB C as a major new connector, my bet is that they eventually replace their Lightening ports with USB C, which will be compatible with Euro regulations.\n\n**EDIT:** I dug up some articles\n\n[Overview and history of the 12\" MacBook rumor](_URL_0_)\n\n[Article about the USB C port on the rumored 12\" MacBook](_URL_2_)\n\n[Technical details of the 100 watt power supply and DisplayPort over USB C specifications](_URL_1_)\n\nSo it looks like you are able to get up to up to 10Gbps data transfer, 4K video feed, HD surround sound audio feed, and 100 watts of power simultaneously through 1 USB type C cord if I am understanding the technical details.\n\nTo extrapolate the way Apple has productized in the past, it looks like Apple will be able to make cheap passive adapters to convert the USB C port into: a standard USB connector, a gigabit ethernet connector, a thunderbolt/DisplayPort connector, HDMI, DVI, and VGA connectors, maybe firewire if they feel like continuing to support it.\n\nThere has got to be a way to plug in displays and peripherals when you're charging the thing. Maybe the standard power supply will include at least a pass through USB C connector or 2 that can be adapted to whatever ports you need. Maybe more ports than that.", "I don't know anything about getting around those regulations but damn do I wish we had something like that in the US. It's gotten better now since it's basically the Iphone style or micro USB, but in the past it was a nightmare to try to find a charger when you were at a friends house or something like that.", "Follow up: How would such law address advances in USB technology? Are Europeans just going to be stuck with uUSB forever, or does the law say that when a better product is introduced as a standard companies will be obliged to implement that port into their devices?", "Can someone ELI5 why this is even going to be a law? Most phones already have a micro usb connection, and what does it matter if Apple uses lighting? The regulation should be that all cables end with a USB so that you don't have to buy new bricks/car adapters. \n\nEdit: Yes I remember how phones used to be, I thought this law was proposed after the rise of android when most phones were smartphones and either had micro usb or Apple's connectors. I'll mark this comment as explained. ", "Purely and simply, as far as I'm aware, the ruling isn't actually meant to come into force until 2017, and so as of yet Apple has no obligation to change their European iPhone designs as of yet", "EDIT: After some research I can't seem to actually find the directive text to be able to tell. However Apple were one of the manufacturers that supported it so I'm going to assume they will be changing in the near future.\n\nSo far as I was aware, and I will need to double check this, the rule exists to prevent wastage and duplication. You can make an exemption if your connector is reusable. So although the lightning connector only works with Apple products, as it works with all of them (iPhone, iPad, iPod) it can be classes as reusable. The rule was created mostly to prevent things like some old Samsung and Alcatels using proprietary connectors that only worked for one phone. \n\nAdditionally the rule applies to chargers. The lightening connector is a 50/50 charger and data transfer so may be exempt. \n\nI'll do some research and update though, unless someone else does in the interim.", "Why has the EU made a micro USB connection a rule?", "Why the fuck is the EU imposing rules on what connector types phones can use?", "what if they just say it's a camera/media player which comes with phone functionality? Like tungsten light bulbs being heaters that were able to emit light?", "The law gave companies a grace period of a couple of years to decide on a universal charger and to adapt their models so it doesn't actually come into effect for 2-3 years", "Everyone complaining seems to have forgotten (or never experienced) the days of feature phones when each had a custom power connector.\n\nI guess you people enjoy having to sort through a wall of printer cartridges and then pay through the nose for the only one your printer takes.", "Apple has a specified amount of time to comply with the regulation. I believe they have a few years to go. ", "my understanding of the situation was the the EU pressured the major brands, who complied because they aren't dicks. All except for one.", "I don't care for microusb, I'd like to see a new connector that is faster than what we currently have, and reversible ", "It's a shame and embarassing to see all the Americans come on here and bash the EU for proposing a law that is in favor of their people and environment and NOT large corporate entities. This is a prime example of the difference between how many laws are drafted in the EU versus US.\n\nIt also goes to show the different mentality between people on both continents.\n\nThe purpose of the law is to standardize the method of charging a mobile phone, reduce environmental impact, and to benefit consumers.\n\nIn my opinion, as a consumer, why wouldn't you want all phones to have the same charging port? This avoids what Apple did with the iPhone 5... they changed the charging port and forced everyone to buy a new accessories that adapted to the new port. This is totally unfair to customers.", "First, the council did not specify that it has to be micro USB. Just that it should be a common charger. Second, many here seem to be under the misconception that this is a law. It's a directive, which does work differently.\n\nSo to your question:\n\nThe directive will be effective 2017, so Apple still has nearly two full years to work something out. There has been a voluntary agreement between smartphone producers to use microUSB in 2011, but that has run out since and some firms are already implementing their own solutions, again. Apple simply never signed this 2011 agreement.\n\nSource: [The directive itself](_URL_0_) and [Wikipedia on the common external power supply](_URL_1_).\n", "That's why I walked away from the iPhone 5. Sick of buying proprietary cables. Nokia 925 w. Windows Phone 8.1 rocks and it charges with ANY mico-usb. ", "ITT: People who don't understand why standardisation of common components isn't a step forward.\n\nAnd in answer to the many comments about what happens when USB 3 or another format is available which is better.... The law isn't that Micro USB must be used. It is that all manufacturers must use an agreed connector specification so if the manufactures agree to change, they inform the EU with the date of change and apply the change. ", "On a similar note, why were Microsoft fined and ordered to offer alternatives to Internet Explorer, in Europe at least, and Apple weren't? ", "Actually the EU ruling was, that vendors should agree upon a common power supply specification (voltage, current and connector) to be used for the *chargers* for mobile phones. The EU didn't endorse a particular connector standard at all. USB was just a convenient choice.\n\nAnyway, that EU ruling was only temporary binding and was toned down to a recommendation about a year ago (give or take a few months).\n\nSince the ruling only covered the chargers and not the phones, so that the electronic waste caused by throwing perfectly fine, but obsolete power supplies would be reduced. So Apple just provides a small adaptor chord which allows you to charge an iPhone on an arbitrary USB power supply and thereby fulfilled the requirements.\n\nPersonally I'm not a big fan of Apple, but from an engineering point of view I consider the Lighting connector far superior to Micro-USB-2 and also the new USB-C connector.", "That legislation isn't fully in effect yet, they predict it will be fully In place by 2017. ", "Question should be: \"How does Apple get away with selling iPhones\"", "This.\n\nIphone 6 - ~~£600~~ \n\nIphone 6 - £630 - Complimentary micro usb included. ", "\"Have you got an iPhone charger? Not the old one, the new one\" - every day at every office...", "All phones in the US are also supposed to use the standard Microusb connection. There are a couple good reasons why that law was put in place. \n \nApple doesn't care though, and they argue that their phones are \"Entertainment Devices\" and not Cell Phones, therefore they don't need to follow the rules for Cell Phones. ", "Because people keep buying their products even if they don't. ", "Apple uses legal loopholes to claim that the iPhone is not, in fact, a phone.\n\nAlso, since I have realized how useless it would be to reply individually to the onslaught of people asking:\n\nThis law is also common sense, it may be hard to understand for computer connections, but think of wall outlets. You see that plug in the wall? There are ones like it in most rooms of most buildings in the country, the same power from the same power plants goes to all of them, and works with all the electronic devices you can plug into it. Now, imagine that every time we bought a new TV, or a new computer, or a new video game system, or anything else we plug in, we had to hire a contractor to put in another one of those specifically for the new device before we could use it. That would be awful wouldn't it?", "The ruling was brought in to reduce the amount of waste created by redundant chargers. Just google eu mobile phone charger waste.\nAs for how apple gets away with it, no idea. But I'm going to guess it's down to money. They can probably drag their feet and pay the fines and still not notice any profit loss.", "So, if all mobile phones in the EU must use MicroUSB, and Apple devices require an adapter, do all Apple devices in the EU come with that adapter - or is Apple saying \"fuck you\" and passing the costs of that on to the consumer? Sounds like the latter, and typical Apple.", "Too bad USB has come out with a new connector....", "They have to include a lightning to microusb adapter free to the consumer w/ their purchase of an Iphone.\n\nTo everyone in the thread who says that its stupid...It's to prevent companies from forcing people to buy new proprietary accessories every time they get a new phone.", "So why a EU wide standard in what connects FROM the charger to the device and not one that mandates conformity on connections from the device TO the wall... I HATE travel adaptors :\\", "Follow up question: how will companies ever be able to innovate a better charging method? Will phones in 2236 have to have a microusb charger?" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2580597/All-mobile-phones-EU-charger-European-Parliament-votes-law-attempt-cut-electronic-clutter.html" ], [], [], [ "http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/retina-macbook-air/", "http://www.anandtech.com/show/8558/displayport-alternate-mode-for-usb-typec-announced", "http://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2015/01/11/rumored-12-inch-macbook-9to5macs-mark-gurman-talks-new-connector/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&amp;f=PE%2017%202014%20INIT", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dj3bo0f" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Every lobe in the brain is symmetrical and can be divided into two parts along the medial line. Each side of a lobe contain copies of one another, so if half of somebody's brain is surgically removed, they will be able to function normally over time. The process of converting all brain functions to a given side is not immediate. \nSource: high school anatomy & physiology " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dl88dns", "dl8etlj" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "for atoms and molecules, boiling points/melting points are by and large determined by what are known as noncovalent interactions, which are basically how two different particles of the same molecule/atom interact with each other. \natomic radius determines a lot about noncovalent forces in individual elements. generally speaking, the larger the atom, the more interactions this atom will have with another atom of the same element because of what are known as london dispersion forces.\n\nIf you think of how matter works, a gas is just the same mixture of an element with individual atoms having more freedom to move around and bump into each other. Noncovalent forces hold individual atoms together more frequently and so they have less freedom of movement. SO, you'll see that most of the larger elements will tend to be liquids/solids, while most lighter elements are gases.\nNote that this is an oversimplification of more complex quantum mechanical interactions of orbitals, but it generally holds true", "u/edqiao01 gave a good general answer, but one that is mostly only the full picture when going down a single period of the periodic table. In other words, noncovalent interaction strength explains why Bromine is a liquid and Iodine is a solid at standard temperature and pressure, while Chlorine and Fluorine are gases, but not why Xenon, which is slightly heavier than Iodine, is also a gas.\n\nTo explain the latter case, you have to consider that elements form bonds with each other based on their valence (outermost) electron structures. Atoms of metallic elements, which have partially-filled valence orbitals, tend to share electrons in all directions with other atoms of that metal, which locks all of them into place to form a solid. Atoms of gaseous elements fall into one of two categories. In noble gases (like Xenon), the valence orbitals are completely filled, meaning they don't like to share electrons with other atoms, and the only interactions between them are the very weak london dispersion forces mentioned by u/edqiao01. In other gases like Nitrogen, Chlorine, etc, the atoms are small and their valence orbitals are missing anywhere from 1-3 electrons. These elements can gain a more stable configuration by bonding with one, and *only* one, other atom of themselves, and these *pairs* then interact with each other through weak london dispersion forces.\n\nOf course, there are exceptions to these rules for various reasons. Both of the liquid elements, Bromine and Mercury, are such exceptions. Bromine atoms form pairs, but these pairs happen to be *just* big enough that dispersion forces are strong enough to keep Bromine condensed into a liquid, instead of a gas - but not strong enough to make the element into a solid like Iodine. Mercury, on the other hand, is a metal, but the bonds between mercury atoms happen to be *just* weak enough (for various complex reasons) that Mercury can melt into a liquid below room temperature.\n\nNon-metallic solids such as carbon and sulfur are solid because they also form bonds with multiple other atoms, like metals, but instead of doing so in all directions, the bonds have very specific directionality, which makes these elements solid but not metallic. Each one of these is it's own special case." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnl1qmx" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Drilling - exactly what you think. Like sucking out the milk from a bowl of cereal through a straw, then processing it further.\n\nShale - it's kind of like traditional mining, except what you're removing is a rock that's rich in oil, which, again, has to be processed.\n\nFracking - hydraulic fracturing - essentially using high-pressure liquid to crack open the earth and get to the goodies inside\n\nObviously new techniques for getting oil can create all sorts of problems with the environment (like how fracking can pollute groundwater), so people get angry about this.\n\nOil prices fall for a lot of reasons, but hopefully someone else can ELI5 it for you (I can't)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cuc2ikm", "cuc4owj", "cuc56ts", "cuc8ksg", "cucfown", "cucgb17" ], "score": [ 15, 3, 11, 18, 3, 4 ], "text": [ "As far as I know sparkly water is only normal in Germany. Everywhere else in europe if you ask for water you get a normal, non sparkly water.", "Is this true for Germany? I'm so pumped for going to Germany now", "When I was in Germany, I learned that they even have \"graduations\" of carbonation. I always asked for \"stilles Wasser\", because the \"stronger\" grades would make you burp even while gulping.", "The popularity of bottled water started in Europe, and it started with mineral water from specific famous springs. In a lot of cases, the water from these springs is naturally carbonated. (I say \"in a lot of cases\" because Evian is not carbonated, and neither are a few other French brands.)\n\nFor the most part, in Europe when you buy a bottle of water, what you're getting is the water from that spring as it naturally comes out. \n\nBecause people in Europe who buy bottled water developed a taste for this, they tend to expect bottled water to be mineral water, and for it to be naturally carbonated to at least some extent. \n\nIn America, naturally sparkling mineral water has never been very popular. A lot of people enjoy things like club soda and seltzer, but that's not the same thing at all and not nearly as ubiquitous for everyday drinking. \n\nWhen bottled water became popular here, the companies selling it wanted to make it as appealing as possible to as many people as possible, so they neither looked for naturally carbonated mineral springs nor did they try to sell Americans on carbonated water. Especially because it's cheaper just to use filtered tap water and sell it to people using the magic of branding rather than any genuine claims about the source, ingredients, or flavor.\n\nIn general in the US, carbonated waters are associated with Europe. The two main brands of mineral water are San Pellegrino and Perrier, which are imported from Europe (and gained popularity/established brand positioning via affluent Americans who had tried these waters in Europe first). Even canned carbonated water brands such as La Croix are given a European brand concept, since relatively few people are dedicated seltzer drinkers.", "I've actually been thinking of switching to \"sparkly water\" because I have a soda addiction and I'm trying to lose weight. I'm under the assumption that \"sparkly water\" is better than soda, at least.\nI've tried adding flavor liquids to water but it just isn't the same. I want that carbonation.", "American here, and when I went to Germany several years ago the absolute worst part of the experience was the inability to get non-sparkling water anywhere. I remember one place had sparkling sulfur water and it was probably one of the least enjoyable meals I've ever had." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cei5bwu", "cei79f6" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "I dont know if you watch Doctor Who. But if you do, it's the silence. ", "Absent Mindedness seemingly consists of lapses of concentration or \"zoning out\". This can result in lapses of short or long term memory, depending on when the person in question was in a state of absent-mindedness. Absent-mindedness also relates directly to lapses in attention.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://www.eatmedaily.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/stains.jpg" ]

[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absent-mindedness" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eg3a70l", "eg3ae5s", "eg3cuux", "eg3g19n", "eg4fa3e" ], "score": [ 67, 6, 5, 8, 3 ], "text": [ "You are right, it is a ridiculous thing to say. It is also important to remember two things about people who write these (and any) articles. \n\n1) Their job is to write articles and those articles are products to be consumed. The more readers, the more profitable the site is. This means investing a lot in a few deeply researched and well thought out articles, or cranking out loads of pop science level articles for mass consumption. \n\n2) The authors are not experts on the subject matter. Most don't have advanced degrees or experience in the subject they cover. Spending 15 minutes interviewing an expert doesn't make you an expert.\n\nBeing someone who used to follow _URL_0_, I think they fall squarely in the pop sci arena. Many of their articles are non-discovery based and pointless. And it's not their fault, they cover a subject that progresses slowly over years. But as a business they have to \"engage\" readers multiple times a day. Hence the large amount of fluff.\n\nThis is something to consider when reading articles on any site, science, news, food, entertainment, technology, etc. All authors who have a consumer level understanding of the subject and are trying to rush through work to get home to see their families or friends, just like the rest of us.", "I believe \"discovered\" in this sense just means \"looked at\". The 96% percent comes from the amount of the observable universe we can see and have seen. Since we know the universe is 13.7 billion years old the oldest light we possibly could see is from 13.7 billion light years away (a bit more due to the expansion of space in all directions). So anything beyond that threshold we can't see or interact with. So really who cares, that space is reserved for theoretical physics (aka math).\n\nThe idea that the universe is infinite is another larger question science doesn't yet have an answer for. It could be a 3D projection on a 4D object, spacetime could be a \"sphere\" and if you travel in one direction you just end up back where you started. We could be a simulation. We have no damn clue. ", "As others have said, it's a silly claim, like saying that we only use 10% of our brains.\n\nBut there is a serious way to tackle problems like this. Consider counting the number of fish in a pond. First you catch some, tag them, and put them back. Let the fish mix in, then catch some again. If half of your fish are tagged, then there are 2x as many fish total.\n\nSimilarly, if you're cataloging animals in the rainforest, and only 10% of the animals you find are known species, then there are about 10x more species out there to finish cataloging.", "It's not right to say that 96% hasn't been discovered, but we don't really know the nature of it. If we assume the standard model of cosmology is correct, our best measurements of the universe suggest that it's composed of about 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, and 4% regular matter.\n\n[Regular matter](_URL_1_) is everything we can see... anything from people to cars, from clouds to trees, from stars to galaxies. [Dark matter](_URL_2_) is a type of matter we believe to be out there in the middle of galaxies that would explain various things about the universe, like [gravitational lensing](_URL_0_).\n\n[Dark energy](_URL_3_) is a little bit more complicated, but the amount of it out there is estimated from the expansion rates of the universe. \n\nSo out of everything we believe to be in the universe, we've only \"held\", \"seen\", or studied here on earth enough to confirm it truly exists, about 4% of the universe. \n", "So in cosmology, there's a standard model called the Lambda-CDM model. The details are not important, but a key feature of it is that it lets you predict the outcome of cosmological observations based on what percentage of the energy in the universe is comprised of matter, radiation, dark energy, or the curvature of the universe.\n\nOur measurements show that the radiation and curvature terms are more or less negligible - the universe appears to be almost exactly flat (i.e. two rockets that go flying off side by side in the same direction will neither drift apart nor grow closer together) and the energy of the light emitted by all the stars is very small compared to the mass they have.\n\nThat leaves us with matter and dark energy, and measurements show that it's about 68% dark energy, and 32% matter. However, when it comes to matter, we know by observing galaxies that the gravity they possess is far greater than can be explained just by adding up the mass of all the visible stars and gas clouds and such within them. Scientists then came up with the idea for dark matter, and observations show that of that 32% of the universe that's made up of matter, about 28% of it is dark matter - matter that we can't see through our telescopes, but whose existence we can infer indirectly by its gravitational effect.\n\nThat leaves us with 4% of the universe that's actually made of stuff we know about - mostly just loose hydrogen and helium gas floating around in space, but also stars, planets, elephants, etc." ] }

[ "space.com" ]

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[ [ "Space.com" ], [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6q8lxb", "d6qbylt", "d6qf5tx" ], "score": [ 55, 24, 4 ], "text": [ "The visible universe and the observable universe are two different things. The thing that is 4% is the collective mass of things in the observable universe comprised of ordinary (visible) matter. The other 96% is dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but whose presence can be roughly detected via gravitational effects. From these gravitational effects, we have determined roughly how much dark matter and dark energy there are in the observable universe, and there's a lot. \n\nSpecifically, dark matter impacts rotational velocities of galaxies, and dark matter impacts the rate of expansion of space. Measuring those allowed us to learn how much there is.", "Matter and energy are the same thing when talking about cosmology. We have Einstein to thank for that idea. He took it a bit further and showed that spacetime bends in the presence of energy. People played with his idea a bit and realized that large objects like galaxies should bend light around them because of this effect. \n\nWe also know how to look at glowing matter and figure out what elements it's made of based on the exact frequencies of light (think CSI crime lab stuff). Different elements emit specific wavelengths of light. So we can look at a distant galaxy and say \"given how much light of x y and z color it's emitting, it must have this number of stars that are filled with this much of this and that element\". Since stars are the biggest contributor to the mass of a galaxy (or so we thought) by far (compared to asteroids and planets which are a tiny crumb next to a star), this is a great estimate of the mass of the galaxy (or so we thought).\n\nThen some people used Einstein's idea and check how much light is being bent by the galaxy, and it turns out it's massive. A way bigger effect than we expected from looking at how bright the stars are. So something is causing the galaxies to bend light a lot more and we cant see it and have no idea what it is. It acts in every way exactly like a bunch of heavy stuff that emits no light, hence 'dark matter'. But we dont know what it is.\n\nThere is another similar situation with \"dark energy\" involving the expansion of the universe, but it's a bit longer to explain so I'll skip to the end. Basically some math says that based on how fast stars are moving away from us, some insane amount of energy must be involved, but we have never seen it and dont have a clue what it is. But based on how the stars move, we can compute how much it should be. We cant see it, so again, \"dark energy\".\n\nNow we add the two up, and compare to the visible matter from stars, and we see that stars really are outweighed by whatever causes galaxies to bend more like (and spin faster and some other stuff) and the thing pushing the universe apart. \n\nTo be clear, there could be way more stuff out there doing things we cant see and we havent added them to the total, so when we say 100%, we really mean \"of all the effects in the universe witness, when we calculate how much matter and energy should be causing these effects, and compare to the matter we can actually see directly because it's emitting light, the matter we can actually see would have to be 25 times more abundant to account for everything we observe based on how we understand physics. Hence 4%\"", "Our best measurement of the energy content of the universe comes from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.\n\n* Ade, P. A. R., et al. \"Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters.\" Astronomy & Astrophysics 571 (2014): A16. _URL_0_ \n\nThe basic idea is that the properties of the CMB which is the afterglow of the big bang is greatly influenced by the energy content of the universe. There are two additional measurements used to further constrain things, \n\n* Baryon acoustic oscillations \n\n* Redshift of distant supernovae\n\nGeneral relativity tells us that energy content warps spacetime, therefore if you can measure the global warping (measured as our universe's expansion) of the entire universe, then you know you've accounted for all the stuff inside the universe. The CMB tells us this warping. Also, matter, radiation and dark energy all contribute differently, so we can differentiate between them.\n\nThe result is roughly 70% dark energy and 30% matter. However, normal matter gives off light so we can count how much normal matter there is, and when we do this we get less than 5%. The remaining quarter is dark matter." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.01589" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "du5ud19" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "English is the world's most popular second language. At an international event, you want people from lots of countries to understand your message." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyqfbg0", "cyqgbre", "cyqm7zg" ], "score": [ 5, 22, 6 ], "text": [ "I used to do origami when I was younger. At first you just follow books and learn the basics and eventually after years of practice and folding other patterns and models you begin to see where some things come from. For example many birds are going to have similar bases and starting folds. From their you can just experiment and end up with something new with a little trial and error! I hope this helps! \n\n", "Yes, there is a very mathematical aproach on how to create new and complex models. The easiest one is extending an existing base and adding new details, e.g. toes, mouth etc.. A base being the simplest way of representing a stick figure of the model you want to fold. Next comes circle packing. In it you use the advantage of knowing the correlation between the flat square and the finished model. Each detail represents a circle on the square. So if you add a few squares on a paper and follow the rules on how to combine them, you should get the expected result. Folding in further detail is a challenge to the creator. This works aswell with box packing, replacing the circles by squares, which allows even more complex models like Black Forest Cukkoo Clock or the amazing Ryu-Zin.\nThe best book to get into creating own origami is Robert J. Langs Origami Design Secrets, though it is very long and still pretty challenging.", "Because I take every possible opportunity to recommend Between the Folds, please check out Between the Folds.\n\nOne of the best documentaries on Netflix, and it's all about origami. I put it on as a joke, expecting it to be completely boring but was sucked right in, then watched it several more times because I had to show it to all of my friends.\n\nAnd to answer your question yes mathematics play a heavy role in high level origami, with many of the top origami sculptors being engineers, and mathematicians. \n\nThe documentary had a cool segment where they showed some of the really complicated pieces that have been made recently. One of them was from an MIT student who made two standing, clothed figures, with faces, standing at a podium, with one holding a hammer, and the other holding a book.\n\nHe made all of that detail out of a single piece of square paper. Then the next guy after that blew that one away with this crazy coiled Chinese dragon.\n\nBut then there was this French artist that specialized in making faces, and this other guy that talked about how you can even make a statement with a single fold in paper, so I guess it doesn't have to always involve math. At any rate it was very interesting.\n\nBetween the Folds though. Check it out.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dwtq9cy", "dwumsrn" ], "score": [ 10, 3 ], "text": [ "It's usually a mix of vehicle exhaust products and water vapor that chemically react to create said smog. Fuels/engines that burn dirty (lots of particulates both burnt and unburnt, sulfur, nOX compounds, etc) obviously provide more material for the production of smog.\n\nWhat makes it stick to the ground levels though is something called temperature inversion, wherein a layer of warmer air caps the lower cooler layers of air, preventing convection and keeping the smog trapped close to the ground.", "It all starts with nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is created whenever air is heated to high temperatures, such as inside a car engine. The other major starting ingredient is unburned fuel vapors.\n\nUltraviolet sunlight strikes the NO2, releasing a bare oxygen atom O, which combines with oxygen gas O2 to form ozone O3. That's the same stuff as the helpful \"ozone layer\" high up in the stratosphere, but when it occurs down on the ground it causes lung irritation and asthma.\n\nThe ozone also reacts with unburned fuel vapors to form a wide variety of organic compounds, as gases or small microscopic particles. These have their own risks, but the major danger to health is the ozone.\n\nIt's worth mentioning that while LA is still the worst city in the US due to its size and geography, air pollution there is about 3 times better today than there was in the 1970s, and it's *much* cleaner than modern cities its size in the developing world, China, and India.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://eos.org/features/urbanization-air-pollution-now", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog#Photochemical_smog" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e6nss76" ], "score": [ 45 ], "text": [ "No, there are multiple, different types of filters responsible for removing components of the air.\n\nCarbon Dioxide, being the main culprit, is absorbed on a zeolite and dumped overboard (by reheating).\n\nOther minor impurities (such as methane and thiols from your butt) are captured in Carbon filters, which are regularly replaced and disposed of." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ciel9zs" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It really is 99% work and practice. The first step is developing an ear for music. Listen to and sing along w/ your favorite artists. Surround yourself w/ music.\n\nA good teacher does wonders. There are plenty of You Tube videos, but since everyone's voice is different, this is an area where personalized instruction is especially important. Voice lessons aren't cheap, but they will give you the techniques you need to sound your best." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbmqah1", "cbmrcs9", "cbms8h5", "cbmsnjs", "cbmsxar", "cbmt2a5" ], "score": [ 83, 28, 10, 3, 5, 25 ], "text": [ "In the Scandinavian countries the partial abolishment of patronymics was mostly to do with rising populations in and around the early 1900's. There are only so many patronymics available before things just get confusing. This is also why patronymics are still in use in Iceland, because the population is so small. Hopefully /u/Vonadler can provide a better answer for you.", "The Russians still use patronymics, but they're the middle name of a person. For example: Ivan Nikolayevich (or John son of Nicholas, in English) Bunin.", "Some Welsh people still use patronymics - as in Rhys ap Morgan - Rhys son of Morgan. Lots of British surnames are essentially contractions of this type of name - eg Price - ap Rhys, Pugh - ap Hugh(Huw)", "Also, why did some people in a culture adopt patronymics as surnames, but others within the same culture did not?", "In Spanish such surnames are very common, either ending in \"dez\" or \"ez\" (meaning \"of\") or the beginning with the possesive \"de\". My angle on the issue has to do with the rumor that many crypto-jews around the 16th century began to drop the prefix \"de\" in favor of the suffix \"dez\" in order to confuse and distract the inquisitors. Don't know if this is true.", "In the Netherlands the change from to patronymics to regular surnames happened formally in 1811 during the French occupation when the Civil Registry was set up. Officially the rules had been around since the start of the French occupation, but it was widely ignored. But with a proper registration of all citizens, this became a lot harder to do. Once the French had left the country, the new government didn't change this rule back (and kept the Civil Registry as well). \n \nThe original decree from Napoleon is available online here in [Dutch](_URL_0_), and since Google translate isn't very good with Dutch from 1811, I paraphrase parts of the rules below: \n \n* Art 1. Any person who not yet has a fixed family name is supposed to report their choice of family name to the civil authority in their town of residence before the end of the year. \n \n* Art 2. The name of cities are not allowed as family names. First names can be adapted to last names as long as they comply with the rules set out in the laws from the 2nd germinal from the 2nd year (2nd year is 2nd year in the new French revolutionary calendar and germinal was the 7th month). \n \n* Art 3. The mayors of the towns will report the new names to the central government as well as the people who did not comply with this decree. \n \n* Art 4. Citizens who are well known by, and are currently using, the name of the town as their last name are allowed to keep it. \n \n* Art 6. (skipping 5 because it's confusing). The last name that the father reports, or in case of absence of such, the name of the grandfather from the father's side, will be the family name for any children and grandchildren. And these should be reported by the father as part of choosing the last name. \n \n* Art 7. Anyone who hasn't registered a last name by the end of the year will be punishable by law (I'd have chosen to punish them with a silly name instead :) )." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dii1rl9", "dii1xqs", "dii2c7n", "dii6mkq", "dii7pdu", "dii7z1s", "diiakdc", "diiapus", "diiccbw", "diicxi0", "diid6ne", "diidoy8", "diidsid", "diieadl", "diiehp8", "diiex6h", "diif0dw", "diifhri", "diifush", "diig6eh", "diigjd7", "diigl55", "diigxcl", "diigyow", "diihgzb", "diii41p", "diiin9k", "diijbcq", "diijd7i", "diijpxh", "diil9zp", "diilv1q", "diim95i", "diio1g8", "diioris", "diiouy6", "diiqgsn", "diiqwoe", "diirebu", "diiuhut", "diizc4a", "dij0ydg", "dij1l1f", "dijexsj" ], "score": [ 504, 11742, 1147, 369, 76, 26, 2, 38, 19, 8, 18, 248, 6, 3, 2, 4, 58, 18, 2, 2, 3, 2, 12, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 6, 3, 2, 17, 2, 3, 3, 6, 2, 10, 2, 2, 22, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Note however: Indian, Indonesian, Malay, Korean, Thai, Singaporean... I don't think there's any relation between the \"ese\" ending and Asia.", "We get our language/nationality names from European explorers who first made contact and had to call them something pronounceable.\n\nThose ending in \"ese\" were countries first visited by explorers speaking Italian, Portuguese, or a similar language -- this ending is normal in those languages.\n\nThose ending in something else were first visited by explorers speaking other languages.", "It's actually a matter of origins. For example, the Portuguese explorers were some of the first to have large scale trade expeditions. They coined those words in their conventions, as did Spanish, French and English Speakers. However, most English speakers kept others' conventions. Geography has nothing to do with it. There's Incan, Congolese, and Malaysian, which are supposed counterexamples.", "Most of the Arabic speaking countries have the -i ending because that is the ending in the Arabic language. The countries that have the same name in English as they do in Arabic get the -i ending like Saudi, Omani, Yemeni, Qatari, etc. Countries that have different names in English than Arabic use English conventions like Moraccan, Egyptian, Palestinian, etc.", "The word you're looking for is [Demonym](_URL_0_)\n\nThe Wikipedia article has the answers to your questions.", "What's the demonym for some from New Zealand? I've only heard them referred to as Kiwis. ", "What about microneasian? Tahatian? Polynesian? Okinawan? I think it's just random, there are many exceptions on both sides ", "I don't have an explanation for you, but as an added question:\n\nAre there demonyms for native Americans? Aztec, Lakota, Iroquois. I can't think of any with added suffixes. \n\nEdit: Thought of a few like Incan and Mayan but they seem to be exceptions.", "For \"Korean\" my theory is that the word came from what the people called themselves. \"Korea\" probably came from the old name 고려(ko ryə) and the people were 고려인(ko ryə īn) which isn't far from \"Korean\"", "Malaysian\n\nSingaporean\n\nIndonesian\n\nCambodian\n\nIndian\n\nMongolian\n\nI guess you haven't really thought through this? I can name more Asian nationalities that end with \"an\" than \"ese\"", "And in the middle, there's that central Asian zone where all the countries names end in \"-istan\", based on the primary ethnic population that lives there. Uzbekistan is primarily Uzbek; Turkmenistan is primarily Turkmens; Tajikistan is Tajik; Kazakhstan is Kazakh (although to be Kazakh is just to be from one of seven different ethnicities that all decided to join together to fight off the Chinese and Russians, there is no \"genetic\" Kazakh nation)", "African\nAlbanian\nAlgerian\nAmerican\nAngolan\nArgentinian\nArmenian\nAsian\nAustralian\nAustrian\nBahamian\nBelgian\nBelizean\nBolivian\nBornean\nBosnean\nBrazilian\nBulgarian\nCambodian\nCanadian\nChilean\nColombian\nCroatian*\nCuban\nDjiboutian\nDominican\nEgyptian\nEthiopian\nEuropean\nFijian\nGambian\nGerman\nGuamanian\nGuatemalan\nHaitian\nHonduran\nHungarian\nIndian\nIndonesian\nIranian\nItalian\nJamaican\nKenyan\nKorean\nLaotian\nLiberian\nMadagascan\nMalaysian\nMartian\nMexican\nMongolian*\nMoroccan\nNicaraguan\nNigerian\nNorwegian\nPalestinian\nPanamanian\nParaguayan\nPeruvian\nRomanian\nRussian\nSalvadorian\nSamoan\nSaudi Arabian\nSingaporean\nSri Lankan\nSumatran\nSyrian\nTerran\nTibetan\nTongan\nTunisian\nUgandan\nUruguayan\nVenezuelan\nVenusian\nZambian\nZimbabwean\n\nBritish\nDanish\nEnglish\nFinnish\nIrish\nPolish\nScottish*\nSpanish\nSwedish\nTurkish\n\nChinese\nCongolese\nBhutanese\nBurmese\nFaroese\nGabonese\nGuyanese\nJapanese\nLebanese\nMaltese\nNepalese*\nPortuguese\nSenegalese\nSudanese\nSurinamese\nTaiwanese\nTimorese\nTogolese\nVietnamese\n\nAfghani\nBangladeshi\nBahraini\nIraqi\nIsraeli\nKuwaiti\n*Nepali\nPakistani\nSomali\n\nBasotho\n*Croat\nBurkinabe\nCypriot\nCzech\nDutch\nFrench\nFilipino\nGreek\nGreenlandic\nIcelandic\n*Mongol\nNi-Vanuatu\nNigerien\n*Scots\nSlovak\nSwiss\nThai\nWelsh\n\nI left out many nations whose demonym I don't know, as I was doing all this from my head. Feel free to add (or correct) the list below, but keep in mind this is a list of adjectival demonyms, not nouns (nor languages).\n\nAnd I just realised New Zealander doesn't count as it's a noun, not adjective. I can't think of anything that works... New Zealish? New Zealese? New Zealan? Kiwi? Any ideas?\n\nEdits: thanks to all those who are contributing.", "**-an**\n\n* Mongolian (Asia)\n* Cambodian (Asia)\n* Laotian (Asia)\n* Singaporean (Asia)\n* Formosan (Asia)\n\n**-ese** from outside Asia...\n\n* Congolese (Africa)\n* Senegalese (Africa)\n\n", "I don't know if it is true or not but someone told that Polish people who's name ends in Ski have been honored by poland or something? Its like being knighted or whatever. I should look into that...", "-no for Filipino.\n\nSpanish version for some countries: Mexicano, Americano, Cubano.\n\nI guess the -no version stuck.\n\n", "What the fuck.\n\nDid you read my mind?\n\nI just thought about this this morning, and thought, \"this would be a good idea for an ELI5.\"\n\nAt least I get to learn what I wanted to know!", "The word you were looking for is demonym: A demonym or gentilic is a word used for people or the inhabitants of a place. The name of a people's language is usually the same as this word, for example, the \"English\" (language or people). Some places may not have a word for the people that live there.\n_URL_0_\n", "And how did it come to be that \"Frenchman\" and \"Englishman\" are OK terms but \"Chinaman\" became pejorative?", "e·se\nˈesā/Submit\nnounUSinformal\n(in Spanish-speaking regions) used as a form of address for a man.\n\"I told him all about you, ese\"", "They would've been Chinish, Japanish, and Viatnamish, if not for those damn italian and portuguese who got to name them.", "There are Asian nationalities that end with \"an\" too, like Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian.", "South America is also predominantly -an-. Venezuelan, Colombian, Brazilian, Argentinian for example. Also colonized by European explorers.", "I wonder if it's a English thing. A lot of these that end in -ese require letters that force us English speakers to shut our mouths or make contact with the roof of the mouth (think consonants) whereas the ones ending in open sounds or vowels end in different sounds:\n\n- PortuGuese\n- VietnaMese\n- ChiNese \n- JapaNese\n- SudaNese\n- BeniNese\n\n- ItalYan\n- ColombiAn\n- AmericAn\n- MexicAn\n- MongoliAn\n- KoreAn\n- RussiAn\n- SomaliAn\n\nWeird ones: \n\n- Swedish\n- Finnish\n\n\nMore weird ones (maybe they ended in a different sound?):\n\n- French -- > so turns out \"French\" came from an older English version of Frank: \"Francisc.\" I assume that sounded a lot like the name \"Francesca.\"\n\n- Dutch\n- German\n- Greek -- > \"Greek\" actually comes from the ancient \"Graikoi,\" a supposedly prehistoric name for the Greeks. The Romans then called them \"Graeci,\" old English called them \"Grecas\" and now we say Greek. \n\n- Czech\n\n\nNotice these are weird but also could sound sort of correct if they existed/were common in English:\n\n- BerliNese \n- GermaNese\n", " > edit edit: For instance, Portuguese and Korean are exceptions, and then you have nationalities like \"Czech\" and \"Filipino\" which don't end in \"ese,\" \"an,\" or \"ish.\"\n\nThe Czech Republic is (rather unsuccessfully) trying to rebrand itself as Czechia, which I guess would make it's citizens Czechians.", "Or perhaps the \"an\" and \"Stan\" in middle eastern countries? Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, etc", "I believe it's just \"Salvadorian\", as I had a Spanish teacher who was Salvadorian and would refer to herself as such. \n\nAlso Persian and Azerbaijani", "and who get's to be \"..udlians\"? \n\nLiverpudlians yes but 'Manchesterudlians? Manchudlians. Blackpudlians but 'Londonians'? Lutonians. New Castletonians? blahh", "All language can be traced to a general middle eastern-Indian origin. So there are some traits that remain no matter where you go. These are primitive words that likely can be traced back to Africa as well.\n\nThere's quite a lot of archaic terms in the oldest languages that are shared by all. Take in Korean and Hebrew. Both basically use Abba for father. China uses Ba. Half that. The Turks use Baba, the Mongolians use Avna, which sounds similar to Abba. The Russians actually use it for Grandmother, which is an amusing gender-jump.\n\n\nNewer languages may show more differences. But for isolated cultures that have been rather strict in their language, it tends towards that.\n\nFun fact: All western Alphabets can find their origin in primitive Semitic tribals in the Levant. Every single one of them. From Runes, to Greek, to Latin, to every one. They come from the Semitic tribes in the Levant. It's actually likely they got the ideas from Egypt, but as they were illiterate at first contact, the images are the same, but their meanings totally different. They plagiarized, as we did. Hell, Alphabet? That's basically Hebrew for Aleph-Beth. First two letters. ", "I don't think you can generalize asian countries. How about Korean, Indian, Iranian, Sri Lankan? Also, Mexican, brazilian etc. ", "Because english is weird like that.\n\nIn French, for example, it hardly changes: Americain/Vietnamien, Chinois/Hongrois, Japonais/Francais, Russe/Prusse. \n\nThe Portuguese explorators thing only works for English, it seems, and even then it doesn't uniformly apply, as pointed out by B_CD ", "Well, not all Asian countries end in ese~\n\nIndonesian\nIndian\nCambodian\nLaotian\nMalaysian \nMongolian", "Not only asian/Filipino countries use it, quite a few in Africa, my parents are from Sudan; so they're Sudanese, and residents of Congo are Congolese ", "There are lots of comments here describing the origin of \"-ese\", but I wanted to point out the origin of \"-ish\", which is likely Germanic. In German, nearly every language/nationality ends in -isch, even the Asian ones that the Germans clearly didn't name (Chinese is Chinesisch, Japanese is Japanesisch, etc. Spelling may be a little off. I always thought it was funny that they get two suffixes in German!) The only exception I know of is the word for German (Deutsch) which is pretty close, and Welsh is probably another exception but I'm not sure. \n\nSo English, being a Germanic language, uses the Germanic ending for a lot of European nationalities. As for the -an ending, my gut tells me Latin is the origin (which would make sense, as English is also heavily derived from Latin because it apparently didn't want to commit hard enough to being a Germanic language) but I don't know enough to say that for sure. ", "Isn't/ wasn't Czech actually Czechoslovakian? ", "I don't see an explanation for -ish in the top few comments I read, so I'll add that one.\n\n-ish is from German -isch (Englisch, Italienisch, etc.). Pretty much all the old Germanic nations that existed in some sense back during the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England have Germanic names. \"French\", for instance, is from Germanic \"frankisch\", which became \"francisch\" in Old English (hard C), then \"francisch\" (soft C) later on, and then \"French\" because that's easier to say than \"francisch\". -ic like in \"Icelandic\" is a variation.\n\nInterestingly, the name \"Germany\" itself is from Latin \"Germania\" because it was already \"Germania\" in English before the \"Deutsche\" was a word. ", "Speaking of etymology, how do people make names for other countries in their own language? We call China \"China\" even though they call it \"Zhong guo\" in Mandarin. Nippon (or was it \"Nihon\"?) is what Japanese call Japan, and so forth. How do these come about?", "-an is from the Latin \"anus\" which modifies a noun into an adjective; e.g., Rome/Roman.\n\n-ish is from the Greek \"iskos\". The same thing as the Latin but equivalent to -esque.\n\n-ese is also from Latin; however, while the former Latin term was appropriated by Old English/Germanic (developing into English), -ese was appropriated by Old French, Italian etc., the Romantic languages.\n\nThe difference between the two is based mainly on their early discoveries of the wider world. Marco Polo/French used -ese, Columbus/Armada used -an.\n\nedit: ish not directly related to iskos, rather linguistically cognate (see comment below)", "I've recently moved to Thailand and have learned that the country name Laos is French. Like Illinois in the U.S., it is properly prounounced with the S silent.", "'Filipino' follows the common Spanish method of adding -no to the country name (argentino, chileno, colombiano, mexicano, boliviano, australiano, coreano, sudafricano...)\n\nThe Philippine islands were named after the Spanish King Phillip II (rey Felipe II)", "The -i ending as well in Arab nations. Iraqi, Pakistani, Afghani, Qatari, and some more I'm sure. Saudi as well, which comes from the founding family. ", "Ok... so why \"English\" but not \"Thailish\" or \"Icelish\"?", "As you have observed, there are a lot of ways to make demonyms in English. While we can draw some generalisations for which kinds of place names (toponyms) get which kinds of demonyms, there are no hard and fast rules. The various suffixes come from different linguistic sources, though, and that has some bearing on which ones are used where. We can observe some trends:\n\n#-an / -ian\n\nThe Latin-derived suffixes *-an* and *-ian* are by far the most common choice for English demonyms. One reason is that English names for non-English-speaking places are often Latin-derived: \n\n- *Italian, Croatian, Arabian, Indian, American* (the name predates America's settlement by English speakers)\n\n*-an* is also common for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking places: \n\n- *Mexican, Paraguayan, Mozambican*\n\nThe simple suffix has become the go-to for most newer demonyms, even if the place names are not Latin at all: \n\n- *Hawaiian, New Jerseyan, Chicagoan*\n\nVariations include *Torontonian* and *Panamanian*\n\nFor toponyms that end in *-o* or *-u*, if the suffix is true to its Latin roots it becomes *-vian*: \n\n- *Oslovian, Peruvian*\n\nSome places have Latin-based demonyms even though the English toponym is quite different from its Latin equivalent: \n\n- Guernsey → *Sarnian*\n- Newcastle → *Novocastrian*\n- Halifax → *Haligonian*\n\nAnd of course \n\n- Norway → *Norwegian*\n\nwhich spawned the analogous demonyms \n\n- Galloway → *Galwegian*\n- Glasgow → *Glaswegian*\n\n\n# -ite\n\n*-ite* comes from Greek. Few Greek demonyms have survived into modern English, but the suffix lives in the public consciousness due to its use for nations and tribes in the Old Testament. It has become another common choice for recently coined demonyms: \n\n- *Manhattanite, Wisconsinite, Tokyoite, Delhite, Vancouverite*\n\n# -er\n\nMany places in Germany have identical demonyms in German and English using the suffix *-er*, such as Berliner and my favourites: \n\n- *Hamburger and Frankfurter*\n\n*-er* is Germanic in origin and is used with many toponyms of pure English origin: \n\n- *Londoner, New Yorker, Marylander, Aucklander*\n\nand of other Germanic languages: \n\n- *Amsterdammer, Stockholmer*\n\n# -ish\n\n*-ish* is also Germanic in origin but is less versatile because it's a adjectival suffix; you don't refer to someone as an Irish, a Spanish, a Turkish, or a Swedish. Some places have one demonym for the people collectively, and another for an individual: \n\n- *Irishman, Spaniard, Turk, Swede*\n\nSuffix-less demonyms like \n\n- *Turk, Swede, Dane, Czech, Pole* and *Afghan*\n\nderive from their local languages. In fact, these are not demonyms in the strict sense because they do not derive from place names; rather, they are the opposite phenomenon, wherein the place name derives from the name of an ethnic group or tribe.\n\n*-ch* of *Dutch* and *French*, and *-ic* of *Icelandic* are derivatives of *ish*. *French* deriving from Germanic *frankisch* / Old English *francisch*.\n\n# -ese\n\n*-ese* is Romance in origin. It comes from Latin *-ensis*, which is commonly seen in the scientific names of species. It is common in demonyms for Romance-speaking places and places that became connected with Europe as a result of explorations by Romance speakers, particularly ones in East Asia and French-speaking places in Africa. These demonyms also are more often used as adjectives or collective nouns, rather than referring to individuals. When the toponym ends in -o and isn't Romance in origin, the suffix becomes *-lese* (*Congolese, Togolese*).\n\n# -i\n\nSeveral places in the Middle East and South Asia use the suffix *-i*, which probably has sources in several unrelated languages: \n\n- *Israeli, Iraqi, Emirati, Azerbaijani, Nepali*\n\n# misc\n\nAnd of course there will always be outliers with their own unique linguistic history: \n\n- *German, Swiss, Greek, Icelandic, Argentine, Cypriot, Montenegrin, Edinburgoynian*\n\n\n------------------------------------\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "Lots of European countries have denonyms that end in -ese! Most of them are dead nations though\n\nMilanese, Hollandese, Maltese and Portugese are the only that I can think of off the top of my head \n\nThere's lots of other cool denonyms for older countries though! \n\nPalantine, Provencal, Florentine, and Alpine are the first I can think of.", "No offense but Mongolian, Thai, Indian, Filipino, Malaysian. The selection isn't that narrow." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/61765/rules-for-forming-demonyms" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfp6sas", "cfp6ylt" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "The law varies somewhat but in most states it is not legal to make a prank call. Nevada is an exception, so that's where shows like 'Crank Yankers' operated from. But, even they had to get permission from the targets before they could air the phone call.\n\nYou can usually videotape people in public. If someone is harmed during a prank then the pranker can be sued, just the same as if someone is harmed during a normal non-prank interaction.", "I know in the UK you only need to let someone know you're recording them if you plan to use it as some sort of evidence. For example if I were to have a discussion with my boss in order to get him to spill the beans on something then take the recording to someone higher up it would be null and void whether he actually said that stuff or not. If I were to tell my boss beforehand that I was recording him and he still said that stuff it would be acceptable \"evidence\" of him saying those things.\n\nAs for Entertainment purposes and harassment I think it just comes down to what that individual would consider harassment and sign a waiver saying you acknowledge that you have been recorded without your permission but will allow it to be aired.\n\nI think Johnny Knoxville said the amount of paperwork for the consent of people in his Bad Grampa film was a nightmare!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dp4v15o" ], "score": [ 30 ], "text": [ "This is an excellent question which deserves a nuanced answer. British colonial policy towards HK, as you rightly pointed out, varied in relation to local and cold war politics. I will attempt to answer this question based on four stages of colonial policy, which was chiefly used by legal scholar Benny Tai. \n\nThe First Stage: Rule by law (1840- 1960)\n\nHong Kong was ceded to the British after the Opium Wars chiefly for business and economic interests. The Victoria Harbour in particular was naturally conducive for British trade in China and Southeast Asia. The ideals of imperialism or ‘enlightening the natives’ were not as strong in Hong Kong as in other British colonies. The British pacified the Chinese by allowing local magistrates to continue to apply Chinese customary law (including traditional land and marriage rights) but subject British citizens (and foreigners) to the Common Law system. This dual legal system was only gradually abolished in the mid-1950s.\n\nIn colonial Hong Kong, the governor dominated the colonial government system. The legislature was considered merely an advisory body; it was chaired by the President, the governor. Members of the legislature were not elected; they were either government officials (usually from the UK) or appointed by the governor. In all fairness, the foreign governor often relied on the local Chinese bureaucracy for advice, but there was effectively no checks and balances on his powers. \n\nThe Second Stage: Decolonization 1970s\n\nThe 1960s saw two significant developments. First, decolonization movements elsewhere led Britain to realize that Hong Kong would not become a colony forever. Secondly, the rise of Communist Maoist riots 1967 (coupled with the cultural revolution in China) raised questions on whether Hong Kong could even become an independent state. The plan of self- governance was abandoned, and development was mainly limited to social and economic aspects.\n\nThe British colonial legacy during this era is particularly instrumental in Hong Kong’s development. After the Mao Riots, which in part reflected the abysmal conditions of factory labour, the government expanded social welfare: legislation protecting labour (in particular prohibiting child labour), public housing, free education for nine years. The Mass Transit Railways Corporations (MTR) created an efficient system of rail travel that millions in Hong Kong still rely today. An efficient (and importantly, covered) sewage system was developed, which improved public sanitation. Perhaps most importantly, an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was established to tackle rampant corruption in Hong Kong.\n\nAt the same time, political rights were still severely restricted. The new public order ordinance imposed heavy restrictions on public gatherings and protests. The legislature continued to be unelected, and the governor still exercised great power.\n\nAlthough democratic reform was strictly off the table, aspirations from the local entrepreneur and Chinese middle class rapidly gained influence. To address this, hundreds of advisory committees and consultative organisations allowed the Chinese (esp. elites) to participate in policy making. Eventually, more Chinese unofficial members were appointed to LegCo until they exceeded non-Chinese members. This was the policy of building government by ‘consensus’- building an image of a caring government. \n\nThe Third Stage – Representative Government 1980s\n\nReform in the 1980s was prompted by concerns over HK’s future. The Opium War leased Hong Kong (technically the New Territories, the largest part of Hong Kong) for 99 years, which was due to expire in 1997. Concerns began to emerge regarding the status of Crown leases. Initially, the British Government wanted to maintain some sovereignty over Hong Kong. Accordingly, it introduced political reform (elections) in order to develop a representative government. Some argued that this would allow the British to maintain a degree of political influence, or to insulate Hong Kong from Communist China.\n\nFor the first time, some forms of election were introduced to the legislature. However, elections were not based on universal and equal suffrage. Members of specific functional constituencies (ie. the education sector, or the medical sector) may elect their own representatives. This was justified on the grounds that they would provide a measure of specialist knowledge to the Legislature. Members of the general public could only indirectly elect representatives to the Urban Councils and District Boards, who would then vote among themselves to be elected as a legislator.\n\nThese constitutional changes (viewed as radical at the time) were perceived by the Chinese as an attempt to influence post 1997 affairs. Motivated by a desire to maintain relations with China, officials engaged reforms rather half-heartedly. Direct elections to elect the legislature was postponed to 1988, and then delayed until 1991. A 1987 proposal to create a Bill of Rights of Hong Kong was shelved. An ombudsman scheme to handle complaints was weakened because the administration was reluctant to give the position too much power. Increasing judicial reviews sought to challenge the government, but the judges were adopted a deferential and restrictive approach.\n\nThe Fourth Stage – The Patten Reforms 1990\n\nAfter the infamous Tiananmen Square Incident (the June Fourth incident), the approach of appeasement by the British government was replaced by that of confrontation. The traditional apathy of those in Hong Kong were challenged when 40,000 Chinese protested under a severe typhoon. The British empire wished the world to see that Hong Kong was not only developed economically but also politically. \n\nThe British governor at the time, Chris Patten, expanded the legislature by adding more democratic elements. At the time, proposals were already in place between HK and China to develop Hong Kong’s Constitution (the Basic Law). The proposals were alleged by the Chinese government to contravene the spirit previous agreement on the structuring of the legislature. As a result, negotiations broke down. The legislature passed the electoral reform, but the Chinese government refused to recognize the 1995 election.\n\nUnder the Patten administration, the Bill of Rights Ordinance began to grant those in Hong Kong entrenched human rights. The courts began to take an increasingly active approach toward judicial review, and the Ombudsman began to receive a steady stream of complaints towards the government. Despite this, many officials of the colonial administration remained uncooperative. The government refused to set up a Human Rights Commission to enforce the Bill of Rights Ordinance.\n\nConclusion\n\nTo address your question directly, those in Hong Kong did not really have many political rights until the late 1980s. Elections were nowhere near democratic, universal, or equal, nor were freedom of speech and expression expressly guaranteed until the 1990s. Arguably, they were only given those rights superficially under international pressure and the desire to distance HK from communism. Tai describes this as “window dressing behind their glorious retreat.” In terms of economic, public health, education, and infrastructure, however, British policies contributed largely to Hong Kong’s success.\n\nSources:\n\nLo, Stefan H. C. and Chui, Wing Hong Hong Kong Legal System Hong Kong, McGraw-Hill 2012 \n\nTai, Benny Yiu-ting ‘The Development of Constitutionalism in Hong Kong’ in Wacks, Raymond (ed) The New Legal Order in Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press 1999, Ch 2, p.39-65\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dggjo1h" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Idk about falling backwards. But bending over when laughing, I believe, is because laughing makes your abdominal muscles contract." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd9ez27", "cd9hpmr", "cd9jw14" ], "score": [ 22, 3, 5 ], "text": [ "If it were an unknown Earth species, we would eventually be able to determine its most closely-related currently living species or groups of species. Usually when this is done, there is already a pretty good idea of relatedness, so here, considerably more effort would be required. Then we can say \"it probably looks a lot like these guys and has features x,y, and z that they all share.\"\n\nOur knowledge of what specific genes do is very limited. This unknown species may be found to have the gene that codes for a known blue pigment for example, but whether the creature is ever blue is much more complicated. If you'd never seen humans but had a sample of their genome and looked at closely related extant Earth species, you might expect us to have tails. \n\n\nThis is because of the actual processes of which genes are functional, when they're functional, how they interact, and the incredibly complex process of building the organism are not obvious from the genome. The genome doesn't say \"make an arm,\" it says \"when this molecule changes to this shape, transcribe this section of DNA to make this molecule.\"\n\nAs for an alien species, we'll probably never know until we find some aliens. It could be most of our knowledge of Earth applies, because the ways in which genetics function on Earth are pretty much the only way to make things work. Perhaps more likely is that big differences in how DNA and the most integral DNA-related molecules and organelles evolved mean that we'd have to learn a new set of molecular biology. For example, DNA could be written in the same base pairs, but in a different \"language\" of exons, introns, promoters, etc. Assuming they *have* DNA.\n\nBesides all that, due to the building-on-what-worked-before nature of evolution, even if their biochemistry was similar, they'd probably be incredibly weird and not fit into our traditional types of organisms. ", "pretty much yes, given that is some unknown related species in earth. We don't have the samples for alien, so we can not make inferences there. but with earth species, we can pretty much tell. I just used 23andme sequencing a while ago and I was pinpointed to my origin both my maternal side and paternal side. I got some suggestions on who can be my 4th-5th cousins, i don't know whether they are cousins but they were from my region. So, we can even find the relatedness within species. So, with DNA sequencing, we can find the closest relative species. and based on that any features they have.", "We have a particular area of molecular biology called *bioinformatics* that does just this! It is a very emergent young science, and it involves, in essence, searching through databases for 'hits'.\r\rLet me explain:\r\rEvery time a geneticist, for example, categorises a new gene and finds out its sequence, they post this into a database- one such data base is NCBI's BLAST database. This means that the databases are now full of all known genes, stored with their sequence, what species they come from, what the gene codes for, and more complex data that I won't go into here.\r\rYour bioinformatician will take the DNA from your alien that you found, and then will sequence it and check through that sequence for large regions that don't have stop codons in them (these are small sequences that would tell the machine that turns DNA into RNA to stop, and so if there aren't any in a region, it is likely that this region is meant to be turned into RNA, and is therefore probably a gene). We call these regions Open Reading Frames or ORFs.\r\rYour bioinformatician will take the ORFs they find in the alien DNA, and run them through the database. The database will then tell them what genes in the database have a high sequence similarity (we call this *homology*) with the ORF from your alien.\rIf there are several hits that look to be the same gene from different species, or one gene that shows very high homology with your alien ORF, it probably does the thing that the database gene does, or something similar.\r\r\rUsing all the ORFs in this fashion can build up a pretty good picture of what the Alien is.\r\rOf course, aliens might not have similar gene structure to us at all, and in that case, it would not be possible to guess from our own DNA what theirs looks like." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbxml65" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "This is a really fun one! Your spinal cord has its own reflexive system, almost acting like a second brain. When something of 'grave' danger occurs to you, such as putting your hand on a hot stove, cells are dying extremely quickly and your brain is a slow shit compared to your reflexes.\n\nSo, the signal of \"shit's going down\" just hits your spinal cord instead of your brain, which extremely quickly responds with a \"get the hell out of there\" motor command, rather than waiting for you to make the conscious decision to pull out.\n\nThe spinal cord, however, doesn't process pain, your brain does. So the pain signal reaches your brain a little later.\n\nSome people have severe psychological issues that stop all of this. They can't feel pain, and they don't have those reflexes, so they can get horribly injured and not even know about it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9p0dbj" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Not one of his ideas per say - but he was one of the only contemorary suppporters of the [Wave of Light Theory](_URL_0_) - Basically that colors were made up of diffrent wave lenghts of like (like you would see broken down by a prism or rainbow) " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_theory_of_light#Wave_theory" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr5knq1" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "Plutarch's Life of Julius Caesar notes:\n\n\"Arriving at Alexandria just after Pompey's death, he turned away in horror from Theodotus as he presented the head of Pompey, but he accepted Pompey's seal-ring, and shed tears over it.\"\n\nRemember that Caesar was big on granting clemency to his defeated adversaries as a propaganda move to show both his power (this failed rival of mine could never pose a threat to me again) as well as his own magnanimity. Pardoning the washed-up, geriatric, and totally beaten Pompey the Great into a quiet retirement might defang the threat posed by those still loyal to Pompey (like Pompey's sons, who would bedevil the Caesarians for another 20 years)." ] }

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[ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Pr1V6_N3c" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ciii50m", "ciijtvy", "ciikd1i" ], "score": [ 5, 99, 5 ], "text": [ "Kind of a broad question, seems difficult to answer in an reasonable length of space, even for this subreddit. Maybe focus your question on the changes between two wars that were close chronologically, like the American Civil War and the Crimean War.", "Oh my god you have no clue who enormous of a topic this is. God where do I even begin.\n\nOkay, the Napoleonic Wars! The Napoleonic Wars greatest innovation, something which would paint warfare forever after, is the concept of a citizen army -- to replace the highly trained, specialized mercenary armies employed by crowns around Europe. These mercenary armies would generally be foreign and highly paid, which makes them very efficient at quelling local revolutionary tendencies. With the French Revolution, the combination of the ideas of the Enlightenment and Democracy came the idea that if this is a nation of the people then the army must also be of the people. When basically all of Europe went to war with Revolutionary France to subdue them and restore the monarchy, hundreds of thousands of men would willingly sign up and fight the invaders as a united force. They were not nearly as trained and in fact had egregious casualty ratios but their sheer numbers and force would wreck the balance of power. These Prussian and Austrian and etc. Generals pleaded with their monarch's for armies of equal size to compete lest they be conquered entirely.\n\nHow these battles would actually be fought is too diverse to cover and would be its own major post on its own, so I'll focus on Napoleon. Napoleon's strategy and tactics were that of complete annihilation whether on the attack or defense -- his goal was to obliterate the enemy forces under any circumstance. Absolute victory or bust. So let's talk about an average Napoleonic battle. Napoleon's army would be in [this marching formation](_URL_0_) which allowed for ridiculous flexibility. The cavalry screen allowed much early warning and the dual army allowed him to further spread his power rather than putting his 'eggs in one basket.' So he detects an enemy, his cavalry returns to the communications staff and the army would begin forming.\n\nLight infantry would approach the enemy first and begin harassing the enemy lines. They would operate in teams of two covering each other and operate with 100 in a roughly 100-200 meter region. They tended to have more camouflaged uniform (but not much). They were also the highly intelligent and generally more trained members of the group, many times even hunters and rangers before their military tenure. The Voltigeur also were designated by something that many people would not immediately think, height. Height was actually critical in designation of Napoleon's armies -- you were likely pushed into skirmisher roles if you were 4'11 to 5'1. Small and maneuverable and exceedingly accurate makes a deadly combination.\n\nTheir job was, like I said, harassment -- generally of the enemies weakest links to try and further weaken them. They also had to contest with enemy skirmishers which lead to warfare that could look pretty similar to a modern soldier -- small 'squads' with rifles operating with cover against each other. They were especially useful in urban environments to climb into and through buildings and small places to become a nuisance to the enemy. \n\nAfter that the light artillery near the front would open up as the light infantry began to withdrawal. They would also target weak points in the enemy line as the first wave of infantry began to form...not into lines as you may imagine, but columns! The Napoleonic Wars, especially in the early days, was as I said a citizen army and these men never held a gun in their life and had no dream of joining the military years prior. They were not military men and it would be too time consuming and even irresponsible to try and train them in complex military tactics and maneuvers. Why bother with finesse when you have brute force?\n\nThese infantry would be organized in tight columns with ridiculous depth that rivaled Greek phalanxes centuries prior -- dozens of men deep was not uncommon. A center line would unleash an initial volley and then the two sides, in their column formation, would charge with all their force into the enemy line with bayonets. Many times the threat of hundreds of men charging you with that kind of depth would be enough to cause a break in the enemy lines and a total rout which your cavalry would promptly clean up. However if it wouldn't, you would crash into their weak point and your men would pour out and that much shock and force and men pushed into one small area immediately following artillery and a barrage of muskets would cause a route. This would have so much ridiculous success and would contribute to France winning wars against, again, basically the entirety of Europe at once consistently. \n\nAs the different Coalition Wars (ie: Napoleonic Wars) drew on, Napoleon would get more experienced troops and would fight a more finesse based style. He would utilize Grenadiers -- tall men with huge bearskin caps for intimidation and as elite shock troops. He would love using his inexperienced line infantry and light infantry to hold the enemy in place while his elite troops swung around and crashed into the enemy's flank and \"rolled them up\". \n\nI can't talk about the American Civil War since it's out of my wheelhouse and to my understanding a weird aberration, but I can talk about the Franco-Prussian War. The Franco-Prussian War taught a story to Europe that many would not want to hear, but would harken in an age of new warfare. As opposed to the ACW just five years prior which used muzzle loaded percussion muskets, the French and German forces would both be using breech loaded bolt action rifles using cartridges. The French had the *Chassepot* and the Germans had their infamous \"Needle Gun\" -- both with an effective range over a thousand meters. I'll quote from Michael Howard:^[1]\n\n > *The German infantry did not, indeed, acquit themselves particularly well. The company columns in which they advanced into action disintegrated under fire into a ragged skirmishing line which quickly went to [the] ground, and which officers and N.C.O.s urged forward in vain. In the woods and close country which lay before the French positions the temptation to 'get lost' was sometimes overwhelming. Only close order could give the infantry confidence, and close order in the face of breech-loading rifles was suicidal. The answer to the problem, as the Germans discovered during hte course of the campaign, was for the infantry, so long as its armament was inferior to that of the enemy, to hold back and leave matters to the guns; and the German field artillery proved quite capable of settling matter sitself. Its range and rate of fire gave it, at the beginning of both battles, such an ascendancy that the French gunners -- including the dreaded *mitrailleuses*--were silenced in a matter of minutes.* \n\nThe Franco-Prussian War was a \"half and half\" war even more than the ACW. The Germans would have rapid mobilization -- over 250,000 men -- and would have staggering casualty rates. They would simply not be capable of assaulting positions without unacceptable casualties because of the deadliness of French riflemen and them not having the tactical flexibility to deal with it. \n\nThe Generals had no idea what to do other than to just sit back and try and flatten the target area with their artillery and send in their infantry to mop up -- something we'll see tried again in a few years with much less success. However it worked then and, unfortunately, both sides didn't get a real picture of the futility of their tactics because of how much of a fluke the war was. The French would be duped by the genius Von Moltke the Elder into being completely surrounded at Sedan and surrendering along with their monarch Napoleon III. Paris would declare herself the Third Republic but would still surrender just a few months later after a prolonged siege. There was a significant amount of casualties (the Prussians suffered 68% casualties at Mars-la-Tour for instance) as holes began to form in 'Napoleonic Tactics' but the war did not drag on long enough and there were not enough battles for any of serious influence to notice. Most of those who did notice were lying somewhere face down in a field somewhere, and they didn't have much of an influence on military doctrine unfortunately.\n", "While broad I can attempt to focus on several aspects that can be spoken to.\n\n1.) The role of ordinance.\n_URL_1_\n\nNapoleon began his military career as an artillery officer in the French military. When napoleon gained the reigns of political power in post-revolutionary France he brought the mind of an artillery officer to the post of commander-in-chief. The primacy of ordinance in the French military became paramount with mobile artillery becoming more common on the battlefield. Napoleon moved artillery, rather than cavalry, to the forefront of his battlefield doctrine often placing his most promising officers in control of entire artillery regiments. \n\nNapoleon's focus on artillery warfare would set the pace for warfare for a century with aggressive use of artillery often dominating the general doctrine. We see in the American Civil War that rifling had created newly more effective artillery that could shell cities and armies from miles away. The accuracy of this artillery, coupled with the advancing science of ballistics, made artillery barrages an essential tactic during this war. With infantry firearms still relatively inaccurate artillery was relied upon for long distance warfare, and remained an essential feature of civil-war battle doctrine.\n\nDuring the WW1 we see an expansion of this theory to a degree never before seen. Artillery pieces become enormous and the range of the artillery is miles. We see weapons like [Big Bertha](_URL_2_) take the stage and effectively nullify the advantage of static fortifications. Infact the perception of the artillery commander as being the most important and effective officer became a major problem as many WW1 armies lacked competent infantry officers.\n\nIn WW2 ordinance still played a major role, but with the domination of air-based ordinance from strategic bombers made large-scale bombardment less necessary. Instead artillery battalions were usually attached to infantry regiments to support them on the field. The switch from artillery to combined-arms tactics really speaks to the change one would see from a napoleonic to WW2 battlefield.\n\n2.) Squad Level Tactics\n_URL_0_\n\nFrom the napoleonic period through to the civil war and the end of the 19th century infantry blocks were the standard mode of organization for infantry. Effectively derived from the much much earlier tactics of the pike-square it allowed relatively inaccurate barrages of muzzle-loaded firearms to create a \"volume of fire\" that could be effective when fired in unison. Up until the invention of the breach loading rifle this was the standard doctrine in infantry tactics.\n\nOnce breach loading rifles became common these extremely accurate rifles made this kind of \"volume of fire\" unneccessary and led, among other things, to the rise of trench warfare during WW1. Weaponry and artillery were so accurate and deadly that tactics had not been developed to advance without the aid of cover. As a transition stage WW1 also focused still upon batallion level warfare with large charges of troops being the normal strategy of movement along the battlefield. Soldiers still received relatively similar weapons and there was little specialization of roles among soldiers.\n\nWith the creation of the Tank and armored cavalry WW2 revolutionized infantry tactics. Now a combined arms approach was used on the battlefield where individual units were trained to work in support of one another where regimental command could easily dictate orders on the fly using portable radios. With the ease of communication tactics became more centered around \"mobile infantry\" units that would work as self-contained fighting units that could be supported by cavalry, artillery and even air based assets. \n\nThe rise of the Mobile Infantry Unit would be the most glaring difference between the Napoleonic and WW2 battlefields. Instead of large scale movements of thousands of troops together the WW2 battlefield would have seemed much more chaotic. Individual fighting units would be tasked with particular objectives that would support the overall goal of the campaign. The army became more specialized and each type of soldier understood their role on the battlefield. Soldiers were even provided individualized training to specialize them in the combined-arms doctrine. Heavy Gunners, Snipers, Radio Operators, Support Gunners, Sappers, Commandos, Marines. Each were trained in a specific aspect of warfare rather than the more generalized training provided to troopers in previous wars.\n\nIn summary. The greatest difference one would see is the diffusion of the battlefield. What in Napoleonic times could have taken up a field 20kmx20km would be diffused along a front hundreds of miles long. Large-scale troop movements were avoided as much as possible, and subterfuge was an essential tactic of war. \n\nAlso very few silly hats. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.napolun.com/mirror/web2.airmail.net/napoleon/care.gif" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_tactics#Mobile_infantry_tactics", "http://www.wtj.com/articles/napart/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d07oewt" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I don't know the answer but if I have to make an educated guess I would have to say that it has to do with Thymic education. If there is genetic chimerism we can assume that the genetically different cells are dispersed throughout the body and that it can be encountered in the Thymic cortex and medulla where positive and negative selection occurs. In the end mature naive T cells that do not interact with either self-antigen MHC residues would be produced which would make them harmless against your own cells. I don't know if this makes sense to you but If you'd like to learn more about the subject I would suggest reading an immunology textbook or read up on T cell development and maturation. It can be a bit daunting at first but it's a very interesting subject." ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ddqxvg3", "ddqybtz", "ddqztok" ], "score": [ 10, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "He's an incredible restauranteur, which is a bit different. He understands the entire business.\n\nCreating top quality food is not actually super difficult. He doesn't do any wacky trendy stuff; just honest high-quality ingredients, fresh food, and good execution. He's particularly good are running a restaurant business, choosing good staff, and setting standards.", "Regarding the second half of the question, skill probably does vary just like it does between top level swimmers and runners (think Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps). Nevertheless, skill is skill. I've eaten at a 5 star restaurant twice in my life (spending $400 on a meal is not to be done more frequently than every 10 years imho). Yes the food looks like weird art on the plate that would make most people smirk or roll their eyes. But the taste is on a whole other plane of existence! That is some serious skill top chefs have! They're so talented that not only does it taste heavenly, they can make it look like abstract art at the same time. \n\nEdit:\n_URL_0_", "Additionally, any incredible chef at that level will have sampled a huge variety of different foods prepared with different techniques in different combinations, so they will have developed their palette and understanding on how and why certain ingredients are better together than others.\n\nThe inverse of this is often seen on shows like Kitchen Nightmares, where someone who's only been exposed to their mom's cooking and food within a 15 mile radius will sincerely tell a family member \"your cooking is so amazing, you should open a restaurant!\" when the food is otherwise bland, poorly prepared, and/or would give someone who isn't used to eating it food poisoning." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.bayona.com/food.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3lapzi", "c3lb1qd", "c3lb2sf", "c3lc2s4", "c3ld700", "c3lt8ln" ], "score": [ 9, 20, 2, 2, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "When you're sitting on the floor, the thing you feel isn't Earth's gravity pulling on you. You feel the floor pushing you back up against Earth's gravity so that you don't accelerate.\n\nThe 'weightlessness' you experience in orbit or free-fall is because there's nothing 'pushing' you. If you were to jump out of a plane with no parachute (and no air resistance) you'd feel weightless too.", "Imagine firing a bullet fast enough that it falls toward Earth at the rate the Earth curves beneath it. Its always accelerating towards the center of the Earth but never gets any closer. This is precisely what the ISS and other satellites are doing.", "The ISS *is* accelerating towards the Earth. But because it's moving sideways, it actually falls *around* the Earth. \n\nSay you have a ball on a string that you are swinging around your head. It's moving in a circle, but which way is the ball *accelerating*? The answer is that it's always accelerating toward the center because that's where your hand is pulling on it, and there aren't any other forces acting on it (ignoring gravity). You'll find that any object traveling in a circle is experiencing acceleration perpendicular to its motion, which changes the direction but not the speed. [Here's a gif](_URL_0_)\n\nSo your question could be asked of the ball. How can it be accelerating towards your hand if it stays the same distance away? The acceleration changes the direction of the velocity but not its magnitude. (acceleration can't make the velocity bigger or smaller if it's acting perpendicular to it)\n\nWhat makes you feel heavy? You might say gravity, but that's not quite true. It's the ground pushing you up that makes you feel heavy. Want proof? Remove the ground and you will fall but you won't feel your weight because your legs don't have to push on anything. It's the same thing in orbit: gravity is still significant but everything is falling at the same rate so you don't feel any weight.", "Imagine you had a normal cannon, the projectile travels 1000ft and falls to the ground. \n\nNow imagine you had an awesome cannon, the awesome projectile travels so far so fast that as it falls toward the earth, the curve of the earth curves away from it. The projectile IS falling, every second, but it will never hit the earth (given enough speed and no friction).\n\nThis is how something orbits a planet. The satellite is ALWAYS falling toward the earth, but due to the objects tangential motion, the satellite is ALWAYS 'missing' the planet, just like the cannonball (given enough speed and no resistance) would always 'miss' the planet because the rate at which it falls equals the rate at which the planet curves. \n\nIn this sense, the satellite is in free fall, and with no normal force (force resisting gravitational pull e.g. the ground) satellite astronauts feel weightless", "Have you even been in an elevator that descended so rapidly that you felt nearly weightless? Did that mean there was no gravity? No, it meant that you and the elevator were falling at the same rate, creating a temporary state of weightlessness.\n\nAn orbiting spacecraft is sort of like an elevator car, except that it is moving horizontally around the earth instead of straight down. The spacecraft moves horizontally in a ballistic arc, but it is moving so fast that the earth continually moves out of its way.\n\nThe result is that the spacecraft and the astronauts are in perpetual free-fall, just as though they were falling vertically in a place with no surface to collide with. But this doesn't mean there's no gravity, it just means the spacecraft's occupants aren't feeling any forces from the gravitation as they would at the surface.\n\nIf there really were no gravity 150 miles above the earth, spacecraft would move away from earth in a straight line. The evidence for gravity in orbit is the fact that the spacecraft makes a circular path around the earth.\n", "How about this analogy: You dig out a circular (or maybe ovoid) pit in the ground. The surface is virtually frictionless. You then roll a virtually frictionless ball into the evenly-curved pit at a tangent to the center. The ball doesn't have enough velocity to climb back out of the pit, so it starts to circle at a certain distance from the center (depending on how fast it was rolling when it entered the pit). If it was truly frictionless, the ball would keep going around forever, never hitting the bottom.\n\nNow just switch the pit in the ground for the curvature of space (which gravity is often represented as), the bottom of the pit as the Earth, and the ball as the ISS. Once it reaches a stable orbit, then it's no longer accelerating or decelerating, so there's no feeling on the ISS of being pulled in any direction; it has enough tangential velocity to keep it orbiting instead of being pulled straight down; so that it is indeed constantly 'falling but missing.'" ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth#Altitude" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Orbital_motion.gif" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9chby9", "c9chpsi", "c9chpzh", "c9chui8", "c9chy9g", "c9ci9co", "c9cidrd", "c9cirql", "c9cixzm", "c9cjnk4", "c9cjrpa", "c9cjv07", "c9ckp6k", "c9cl6dv", "c9cl8bf", "c9clku2", "c9clon7", "c9cm85y", "c9cmzjk", "c9cnafi", "c9cnixc", "c9coh4y", "c9cpb5d", "c9cqqma", "c9cr6dx", "c9cr9an", "c9cra61", "c9crbov", "c9creo3", "c9csbow", "c9ctufs", "c9ctvay", "c9cv1qu", "c9cvro9", "c9cwa6d", "c9cwwtf", "c9cxkjd", "c9cz94v", "c9d1mez" ], "score": [ 249, 31, 328, 648, 637, 2, 4, 26, 16, 32, 47, 5, 182, 3, 6, 2, 28, 143, 10, 22, 698, 2, 3, 11, 16, 21, 4, 3, 18, 2, 59, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 18, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The [Peppered moth](_URL_0_) adapted to pollution during the Industrial Revolution.", "Yes many.\n\nMost popular are the adaptions of mimicry to changing environments due to industrial pollution.\n\nA few species who have been hunted for hown or tusk trophies show a selective pressure in favour of smaller horns and tusks down a few generations.\n\nAny animal that has gone extinct by human influence surely changes evolution of all relative species of the same ecosystem.\n\nVarious animals adapted to urban environments, mostly smaller birds and mammals. There are measurable changes in social structures because they grow larger populations in smaller areas selecting for anything that keeps clean, fat and healthy. Some mesurable physical changes are shortened wing length for maneuverability over speed or anything that works better in noisyer environments.\n\nThen theres bacteria that evolved the ability to deal with or digest with chemicals that did not exist (as much) before humans made them. Theres a Nylon eating bacteria and there are many studies about the changes of wildlife in highly radioactive environments. They evolved towards a higher resistance to radioactivity by having more enzymes that repair DNA damage.", "Head lice and pubic lice used to be one species, but when hominids lost the majority of their body hair, that species diverged into the two we have today. Using genetic techniques to estimate their time of divergence, we can estimate when humans became mostly hairless.", "There are many examples of this happening, including [Shorter-winged swallows evolve around highways](_URL_0_)", "Bacteria have evolved to consume nylon, a product that did not exist 100 years ago: \n_URL_0_\n\nBrids that live along major highways have developed shorter wingspans:\n_URL_4_\n\nRaccoons that inhabit in urban/suburban areas live shorter lifespans due to cars and the high fat and calorie food eaten from out garbage cans, as a result, they have larger littlers. (cant find the link for this one but it is mentionedunder lifespans on the wikipedia page: _URL_1_\n\nPeople have far more profound effects on animal evolution than they could ever imagine. If you want some direct human evidence of influence on animal evolution. Compare pictures of champion dogs from the Westmister dog show, sometimes you won't even recognize the original breed.\n\nExample: A wire fox terrier that won in 1916\n_URL_2_\nCompared to a wire fox terrier that won in 1992, lots of changes.\n_URL_3_", "A little off topic... not sure if they've evolved to adapt to a modern human environment but squirrels seem very well suited to it. I remember reading how the squirrels in central park have a nicotine addiction from chewing on cigarette butts.", "[Here's an article about it](_URL_0_).\n\nFor example, elephants are being born without tusks", "One example I can think of is crows using traffic to break open nuts. They drop them in the road, wait for them to get run over, then harvest the fruit.", "A species of fish in the Hudson river has become [immune to PCBs](_URL_0_). From what I recall when the news first came out, it's the first vertebrate that's been shown to evolve an immunity to toxic human waste.\n\nCrows and pigeons in particular have also adapted very well to human cities, and their populations there are much larger than in the surrounding countryside. ", "Dogs have learned to understand [pointing gestures](_URL_0_) from humans, something not even seen in other primates.", "From a certain point of view, any animal we've domesticated has evolved to adapt to us. The very word \"domesticate\" may just be a form homocentrism. You could just as easily say that anemones \"domesticated\" clown fish.", "I think the evolution of dogs from feral wolf like animals to domestic partners was a pretty profound co-evolution, though I don't know if that's what you mean by \"modern\" humans. There is a documentary available on netflix that talks about it, I think it was called \"Dogs Decoded\" or something similar.", "In Cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about a kind of crab that lives off the coast of Japan whose shell resembles the face of an angry samurai. Supposedly, fisherman always cast these crabs back if they had these particular shells because they were superstitious about eating a Samurai crab. This could increase the survivability of these samurai crabs compared to their cousins who had plain shells.\n\nSagan explains it more convincingly, of course.", "Dogs evolved the ability to digest starches and other carbohydrates as human trash was a large part of their subsistence. Analysis of genes encoding for the enzyme amylase reveals that dogs have far more copies of that gene than wolves.\n\nSource:\n\n_URL_0_", "Does the Boll Weevil's adaptation to pesticides count?\n_URL_0_\n\nUnfortunately I can't find the paper I was looking for on this topic but suffice it to say, they adapt extremely quickly to any given pesticide. \n\nThe situation is so bad in fact, that cotton growers are required to grow a control crop (non-weevil resistant) to retard their rate of adaptation.\n", "Well, depending on how Platonic you want to be with your definition of evolution, every domesticated animal was selected based on their fitness to the environment of human culture. \n\n(This sounds \"backwards\", which is true, but it also (correctly, I think) views evolution from a non-human-centric position.)", "Dogs adaptation to digest carbohydrates.\n\n_URL_0_\n“This is a profound adaptation that dogs have,” says UCLA evolutionary biologist Robert Wayne. But he doesn’t think it was the first step in domestication. Archaeological evidence suggests that domesticated dogs have been around at least since 33,000 years ago, a time when humans were still hunter-gatherers. The changes that allow dogs to thrive on carbohydrates while wolves eat all meat probably started with the establishment of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, and represent late steps in the domestication process, Wayne says.\n", "**Use sources. Avoid anecdotes. Avoid personal opinion.**\n\nUnsourced answers are, as usual, subject to deletion.", "Cats self domesticated so that they could live beside humans\n_URL_0_", "Cats meow to communicate with us, not with other cats...", "Dogs Decoded is a really good documentary that talks about evolution of dogs. And dogs have adapted to the modern human. One interesting example that i don't see anyone talking about is that dogs read human faces like humans read other humans' faces. They look at the left eye and then to the right and at the nose/mouth area. They do this every time and this is exactly how humans read faces. This is why dogs always seem to know what you are thinking or feeling. They can read your emotions. AND they only do this with humans. They don't do this with other dogs at all. Wolves don't do this to other wolves or to humans either.\n\nDogs Decoded, watch it.", "The dog, before we even started selective breeding them. There is a Nova documentary on dogs (the science of dogs) and how they came to be. \n \nThis is going off memory, so please excuse minor inaccuracies if they are present. Packs of wolves would follow early nomadic humans due to hunting: wolves and humans hunted at similar times. Eventually the less aggressive wolves would survive and the more aggressive would be killed off by humans. Eventually, when they became friendly enough, we developed a bond with them. The even developed the ability to read out emotions. Have you ever noticed dogs will look us in the eyes? Other animals don't do that unless just noticing your eye contact. Dogs now are about 98-99% genetically similar to wild wolves in Russia.", "I've heard that dogs actually have a part of the brain that is extremely active during interactions with people. This is just something I read in passing and would love it if anyone could tell me whether or not this is true. Is there any validity to this?\n\nPlease don't delete me, mods! I'd rather just ask here instead of making another thread.", "Humans have evolved to adapt to our own technology, I think that should count. One example is our jawbones shrunk once we learnt how to cook our meat. ", "A scientific study showed that, because of a sound within a cat's purr that hits the brain like the cry of a human baby, [it's impossible for people to ignore.](_URL_0_)\n\nOf course we can't know if that sound evolved because of contact with humans, but it seems like it would be an effective way of being fed.", "A new species: London Underground mosquito \n\n_URL_0_", "Crabs.\n\nThey are unique to humans.\n\n*not the kind you eat with butter.", "Not necessarily evolution, but domesticated cats have changed their habits for the modern human. Pretty much the only reason cats meow anymore is to get things from people. ", "Crows, cockroaches, ants, dogs, cats, rats... Most of the animals we consider vermin or pests are well-suited to a modern human environment and will only evolve to become even better suited. Also, crows are really fucking smart. _URL_0_", "[The London underground](_URL_0_) has given rise to a mosquito speciation that's been observed.", "Ctrl + f for Armadillo... Nothing! Excellent! \n\nArmadillos have had a problem in recent years in which they've undergone a forced evolution in regards to their behavior patterns when frightened. It used to be that the majority would jump into the air in an attempt to startle predators, but with the advent of high speed vehicles and highways absolutely everywhere, that leads to a lot of squished armadillos. The armadillos that hit the deck rather than jumping have much better odds of surviving an oncoming vehicle, which means that the frightened jump armadillos are facing an evolutionary extinction. Pretty nifty, and also a little sad. ", "Many, many parasites\n", "Dogs. Wolves are basically the same thing as dogs except with their instincts still with them. Dogs have simply adapted to live alongside humans over the years.", "There's one called the Hake crab that humans have helped \"select\" a specific genetic mutation that has lived on through many ages. Here's a story about how it came about.\n_URL_0_", "Botany of Desire is a good documentary on this topic, actually selection but with an interesting twist. it looks at the interactions between people and 4 plants; apples, potatoes, marijuana, and tulips. _URL_0_.\n\nAlso antibiotic resistant bacteria. (I feel as if no source is needed for this one).", "Crows memorize garbage truck routes and recognize human faces. Source:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "The best example that comes to my mind is the bacteria *Pseudomonas aeruginosa*. While there is a wild type that is much the same as it has been for many many years (and still causes havoc), there is also a sub-strain that is VERY specific to MODERN humans. But, it requires a bit of background info.\n\nThere is a rather terrible genetic disease that affects people called Cystic Fibrosis (CF). It is a mutation in an cellular ion pump that among other things makes your mucous really really thick. This makes it really hard to clear out bacteria in your lungs and Cystic Fibrosis patients eventually end up getting chronic bacterial lung infections. While the species of bacteria varies quite a bit at first, the older the patients get, the more likely they are to get *Pseudomonas*. \n\nThe interesting and important bits come into play now. The first bit is that CF patients don't get chronic *Pseudomonas* infections until give or take 20 years of age--at which point 80% are positive. The second bit is that until 1960 the life expectancy for CF patients was only about 6 months. Improvements in treatment mean that now CF patients have about 40 years, but even in the 80's, survival had increased to about 20 years. Finally, the *Pseudomonas* cultured from CF patients can't survive in the wild, or in healthy lungs; it is specifically adapted to survive long term in CF lung. The mutations required to adapt this way are specific, yet these specialized bugs are present in CF patients the world over (Swedish isolates show the same mutations as US isolates).\n\nSo essentially, when giving CF patients a chunk of time, we also gave the bacteria time to specify and evolve with very specific host. And because the advances in CF treatment came during the jet age, it was able to evolve this specific phenotype globally. There is a really awesome nature paper [here] (_URL_0_) that talks about this. Specifically, we have isolates from the 1970's and have tracked genetic changes in isolates since then--about 10,000 generations. To give some perspective, 10,000 generations is about the evolutionary distance from men and apes to their last common relative.", "_URL_0_\ncrows have been filmed dropping nuts and retreiving the pre-shelled remains at intersections controlled by traffic lights, seems they understand the stop and go rhythm that the lights produce.", "A similar question I've been curious about: Are city raccoon any different than raccoon found in rural settings? Biologically? Intelligence?" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution" ], [], [], [ "http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349028/description/Shorter-winged_swallows_evolve_around_highways" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Matfordvic.JPG", "http://www.bestinshowdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Terrier_Lacey_1_tb.jpg", "http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/03/evolution-via-roadkill.html" ], [], [ "http://www.cracked.com/article_19213_7-animals-that-are-evolving-right-before-our-eyes.html" ], [], [ "http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110217-hudson-river-pcb-fish-evolution-water/" ], [ "http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1921614,00.html" ], [], [], [], [ "http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/01/dog-domestication-tied-to-starch.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil" ], [], [ "http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347706/description/Starchy_diet_may_have_transformed_wolves_to_dogs" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/13/cats-purr-food-research" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito" ], [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXQAgzfwuNQ" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito" ], [], [], [], [ "http://youtu.be/xokbvgdKZww?t=4m45s" ], [ "http://video.pbs.org/video/1283872815" ], [ "http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/introduction/5838/" ], [ "http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v10/n12/full/nrmicro2907.html" ], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4qzzqo" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "You may be interested in [my earlier answer on a similar topic](_URL_0_): \n\n - ​[In the second part](_URL_0_dwj7dmf/) I look at Tlaxcala's \"special status\", so you can also go straight to this - this focuses more on colonial times and Tlaxcala's rewards for siding with the Spanish\n\n - [This answer to a follow up](_URL_0_dwowehk/) also directly deals with Tlaxcala in more detail (esp. on the 2nd question) - here I look more at Tlaxcala's reasons for forming the alliance in the first place\n\nHope that's helpful! In case of questions let me know." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/88a0qu/why_did_the_spanish_conquest_of_mexico_end_up/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/88a0qu/why_did_the_spanish_conquest_of_mexico_end_up/dwj7dmf/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/88a0qu/why_did_the_spanish_conquest_of_mexico_end_up/dwowehk/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e1i5gxc", "e1i5nfl" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "So, they aren't overturning a previous decision, they are simply taking a different stance with regards to a new case that touches on the same subject but which has slightly different implications to it.\n\nFor instance, say in 1990 the Supreme Court ruled to ban all candy. Stores stop selling all sweets, including chocolate. And then in 2000, there was a court case against a supermarket that tried to claim that chocolate doesn't meet the legal definition of candy. The Supreme Court could then rule that yes, chocolate *is not* candy, which would mean that there is a legal precedent for stores to sell chocolate again. ", "Pretty much. They aren’t bound by precedent, even previous Supreme Court rulings. They are only bound by the constitution. But generally it’s not healthy for the rule of law and the justice system if SCOTUS arbitrarily changed their mind, so they will probably need to justify it by pointing to some change in the societal or legal context. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dah85rf", "dah86nu" ], "score": [ 11, 3 ], "text": [ "Yes, because something that hot will be heating your arm hot enough to burn you. It doesn't matter if you can get the signal from your finger or not if the rest of your arm and body is on fire.", "You wouldn't feel the pain on the part you vaporized, just whatever is left of is. Anywhere with intact nerves would probably feel a lot of pain " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dl36qly" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Scoliosis is a genetic condition. Sitting in a chair that's crooked can give you back aches and spasms, but it cannot give you scoliosis." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4q9jrt", "d4qb8b0" ], "score": [ 2, 5 ], "text": [ "Sorry, we don't allow [\"trivia seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of disjointed, partial responses, and not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about an historical event, period, or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history /r/askhistory, or /r/tellmeafact. For further explanation of the rule, feel free to consult [this META thread](_URL_1_).", "The [Sybilline Books](_URL_0_) were a series of oracular predictions written in Greek hexameters that were supposedly sold to Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last King of Rome by a sibyl. \n\nBasically, the legend goes that the Hellespontine Sibyl (an Oracle of Apollo) wrote them in the lifetime of Cyrus the Great, and they passed down to the Erythraean Sibyl another Apollonian Oracle in Ionia. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus wanted to purchase them but thought that the price she quoted was too high, so she burned 3 and offered to sell the rest for the same price, he still refused, so she burned another 3, and he relented and bought the last 3 for the price all 9 would have been. Tarquinius then had them carefully preserved in a vault below the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter. \n\nSupposedly they predicted the time and nature of several calamities (plagues, hail, earthquakes etc.) and the necessary rites of expiation to avert total disaster (like burying 2 Gauls and 2 Greeks alive after the legions were defeated by Hannibal at Cannae). They remained housed in the Temple of Jupiter (until 87 BC, when the Temple burned down, and the books were replaced with various similar writings collected from Illium, Erythrae, Samos, Sicily, and Africa together with the writings of Roman oracles)\n\nHaving been collected in Anatolia and being connected to Greek cult practice they were instrumental in integrating Greek deities and belief systems (more than the Etruscan influence already had) and the Keepers of the Sybilline Books had superintendence over the worship of Apollo, Cybele, and Ceres. \n \n\nThey were kept under tight control by the Roman Senate, first entrusted to 2 patricians, changed to 5 patricians and 5 plebeians in 367 BC, and finally to 15 caretakers (around Sulla's time). They held this office for life and were exempted from all other duties due to the importance of that office. Of course, being in Greek hexameter there were always 2 Greek translators to assist in interpretation. They were consulted whenever the Roman Republic, and later Empire, faced a crisis although it was warned that the interpretation of the necessary form of expiation (but not the oracles themselves oddly enough) could potentially be abused by those appointed to read them.\n\n\nThe Sibylline Books were an important part of Roman legendary tradition, and helped to shape Roman policies and religious practices, being consulted in times of uncertainty to help guide political, religious and sometimes military action and were the reason for the construction of eight temples within the city of Rome, the institution of the Lectisternium ceremony, Megalesia Ludi and the Ludi Florales (a springtime fertility festival associated with flowers and growth), among more political actions like extending friendship to King Ptolemy XII of Egypt but refusing military aid (although he eventually did receive aid from Aulus Gabinius). \nHowever at times the oracles were ignored due to practical necessities, and finally were burned on the orders of Roman general Stilcho as they were being used to attack his government.\n\n\nStill, several exerpts from the Syballine Books and their translations have survived, although I do not have any links where you can find them.\n\n\nSources:\n\n\n[Livy's History of Rome (5, 7, 10, 13, 27, 28, 31, 47)](_URL_1_)\n\n[Tacitus' *Annals* (Book 6, VI.12)](_URL_4_)\n\n[Lactantius' Institutiones Divinae (I: 6)](_URL_3_)\n\nAmmianus Marcellinus' *History of Rome, XXIII* (1, 7)\n\n[Hermann Diels' *Sibyllinische Blätter*](_URL_5_)\n\n[Eric M. Orlin's *Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman Republic* (chapter 3)] (_URL_2_)\n\nEdit: Didn't realise this question was against sub rules. :-/ Hopefully this still helped." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22trivia_seeking.22_questions", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nub87/rules_change_throughout_history_rule_is_replaced/" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline_Books", "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19725/19725-h/19725-h.htm", "https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Temples_Religion_and_Politics_in_the_Rom.html?id=QbvYv8UfuwMC", "http://www.britannica.com/topic/Divinae-institutiones", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Annals/6A*.html", "https://books.google.com.co/books/about/Sibyllinische_Bl%C3%A4tter.html?id=DRuiu49uutMC&amp;redir_esc=y" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4lgjev", "c4llvbf", "c4lmdls" ], "score": [ 2, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "It's a blog post with not much to back it up. ", "Since no one has given what appears to be an adequate respond to your question, let me answer your question from my perspective as a public health researcher/biostatistician.\n\nYes, birth control pills are associated with increased risks of blood clots. Any links between birth control pills and other conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and many of the other conditions listed in that article are controversial and unproven. It appears that hormonal birth control can interact with known risk factors such as smoking to further increase risk of certain conditions.\n\nThe article is clearly written with an anti-hormonal birth control agenda. They describe PremPro as \"arguably... one of the greatest embarrassments in medical history\" which simply isn't true. While prempro has been associated with the conditions the article mentioned (in some studies, while others have not reproduced those findings), it is not a birth control pill. It is used for the treatment of menopause.\n\n > HRT is now widely accepted as poison\n\nNote how the article does not actually state who \"widely accepts\" HRT as poison. It simply isn't by doctors or public health researchers. HRT has been shown to have benefits while the risks of HRT remain controversial. Some studies have found that HRT had a protective effect for the same diseases that other studies say HRT increases risk for. This usually indicates a few possible scenarios:\n\n1. There is some unknown confounder or effect modifier of the association between HRT and these chronic diseases (almost certainly the case)\n2. Some of the observed associations occurred due to random chance\n\n > BCP’s have poisoned three generations of women around the world.\n\nThis article is littered with hyperbolic statements like this with no evidence or proof. In fact the two cited sources in the article are from ABC News and some place called \"_URL_0_\" which appears to be a pro-life Christian group's website. Some of these statements are even so ridiculous as to be humorous:\n\n > The fewer chemicals you put in your body, the healthier you are.\n > Health is reflective of the number of medications you take. The less medications, the healthier you are.\n\nThis article is not credible. It's not scientifically rigorous or well-researched. It uses fear tactics and strong words to scare the readers. Furthermore, chiropractors, to my knowledge, are not experts on sexual health or endocrinology.", "There's a lot of scare-mongering going on in that article not backed up by any credible sources. So, let's try investigating their list of possible diseases with some actual evidence. Does oral contraception increase risk of:\n\n* **Heart Attacks, Heart Disease, Stroke (i.e. cardiovascular effects)**\n\n > [Existing observational data with earlier first- and second-generation, higher-dosage OC formulations consistently demonstrate small but significantly elevated risks of MI and VTE among current users, particularly smokers, while discontinuation or use of a third-generation formulation is associated with a reduction/no elevation in risk. The highest risk of thrombosis appears to occur within the first year of use, appears to be linked with higher estrogen doses, and impacts a select group of women. Newer-generation formulations currently in use indicate no increased MI risk for current users, but a persistent increased risk of VTE that is similarly time related.](_URL_13_)\n\nSo there are possible risks, but they are tempered by the specifics of what kind of formulation is used and at what dose; there is no one single \"The Pill.\" Particularly with newer-line OCP the odd-ratios for MI tend to have confidence intervals that indicate that pill either has no effect, or an effect so small as to be meaningless.\n\nSimilarly, with stroke, the risks can vary by formulation, dose, and a raft of other risk factors. It can also vary depending on how the study is set up, so type of study might find clear indication of [increased risk](_URL_17_), while another finds [no link](_URL_5_) at all.\n\n* **Cancer**\n\nOC use actually tends to show a [preventative effect](_URL_10_) on several forms of cancer, particularly [uterine and ovarian](_URL_2_). Use may [slightly increase](_URL_16_) breast cancer though. This, like the cardiovacular risks above, needs to be contextualized, as the risk seems to only be during current use and is again [significantly affected by the type of formulation used](_URL_3_).\n\n* **Depression, Anxiety, etc.**\n\nAgain, depending on what type of OC used, risk can be [increased or decreased](_URL_4_). The change in either direction seems more related to [underlying mental health](_URL_15_) than any other factor.\n\n* **PMS/PMDD**\n\nActually, OC use seems to [improve](_URL_11_) [the symptoms](_URL_0_) of both.\n\n* **Infertility/Hysterectomy**\n\nLet's just skip right past the obvious joke that temporary infertility is kind of the point of contraceptives. \\We've already established that OC use decreases risk of ovarian and uterine cancers, as well as [endometriosis](_URL_7_), so it's hard to even know where to start with this claim.\n\n* **Migraine**\n\nAlmost forgot about this one. So maybe OC [increases the severity](_URL_6_) of migraines, or [maybe it doesn't](_URL_8_) and some formulations [actually help](_URL_12_).\n \n\n* **In conclusion**\n\nThat Article is bunk. It mixes together HRT with OC, throws in a bunch of scaremongering about 10 year olds with breasts, and fails to cite any actual study to back up its hysterical (get it?) claims. In this way it is like most sources for alternative medicine, and like them it seems to believe that the entire medical world is engaged in some sort of vast conspiracy to cover-up the evils of modern medicine. It does have some good advice at the bottom though, eating right, exercising, and quitting smoking will all tremendously good effects on your health. So good, in fact, that they enormously outweigh any of the debatable increased risks of OC I noted above.\n\nTo wrap up, every single long-term cohort study on OC use I looked into found that it was [safe](_URL_1_) and possibly even [slightly](_URL_9_) [beneficial](_URL_14_). Particularly when compared against the major side effect of not using contraception, preganancy, the health effects of OC use are minor." ] }

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[ "http://www.maximizedliving.com/Home/MaximizedLivingBlog/tabid/772/Article/585/12-going-on-21-estrogen-disease.aspx?utm_source=patientnewsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=news021412#.T6h4y_fvrjE.facebook" ]

[ [], [ "morningafterpill.org" ], [ "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006586.pub4/abstract", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8154642", "http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&amp;cpsidt=19988772", "http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/19/10/2496.short", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032712002261", "http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/40/4/1050.short", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2010.01775.x/abstract?userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=", "http://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/159.short", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010782409004168", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2837145/", "http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7621/651.abstract", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010782410006037", "http://www.springerlink.com/content/f335168068654p4t/", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109708034888", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010782410001435", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010782408004010", "http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/169/4/473.short", "http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/122/18/1854.short" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ebja1cq" ], "score": [ 122 ], "text": [ "[This](_URL_0_) previous answer by /u/mydearestangelica might answer your question." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9alr1m/what_did_king_george_iii_do_with_the_declaration/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cic4goo", "cic7w5k" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "I'm going to go ahead and say that I think it's not possible. \n\nThe Chicxulub impactor (the one that we think killed the dinosaurs) was 10 km across, and going 20 km/s. A little Googling tells me people have done lots of simulations of [what this might look like,](_URL_0_) and seem to believe that 10,000 K sounds like a reasonable upperbound for the peak temperature. \n\nThis is also way way way smaller than temperatuers where thermonuclear fusion takes place. Think millions or even billions of Kelvin for that. ", "To get nuclear reactions with ordinary material you need to focus the energy *a lot*. There are current experiments trying to do it with very powerful laser bursts being focused to very small points. Even though there's a lot of total energy in the impact, it won't be concentrated enough to get any atoms to fuse." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.psi.edu/sites/default/files/imported/about/staff/betty/figures/CTH45.gif" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e1x896j", "e1x8ajb", "e1xe52f", "e1xq5yl" ], "score": [ 4, 20, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "What are you asking? Washing machines have motors in them, the motor spins and it turns the tub. Motors and gears allow things to spin quickly, a computer's fan can be spinning at over 2000 rpm. ", " > ELI5: How is it possible that a washing machine can spin so quickly (1200 rpm)? That's 20 spins in a second..?\n\nThat's not even fast! A blender can spin at 18,000 RPM\n\nAll you need is a properly built motor that's strong enough and good bearings. The motor just needs to be able to overcome the drag at that speed and should be built to spin at that speed either by design or with gears to get it there. If you've got good bearings then you don't lose much energy at all each revolution so the motor can keep adding more and more energy and spin it up further so the motor doesn't require too much energy to hit ludicrous speeds.", "If you have a spinning hard drive in your pc, it's probably doing 5400rpm or 7200rpm.\n\nThe cdrom drive can go up to about 10000rpm.\n\nThe fastest spinning thing I have at home is a \"handheld\" wood router, that spins at 25000rpm. It's also the scariest object I own!\n\nThere are dremel tools that go up to 35000 rpm.\n\nBut indeed the washing machine is quite impressive, because it spins a much larger object, and with completely random balance (clothes are not perfectly distributed). A sligh unbalance in my router rotor or bit would be catastrophic.\n\nI just googled, and there are dentist's drills that spin at up to 400000rpm (right, 400 thousand rpm). That is insane. I suppose if the drill bit breaks in you mouth, it could shoot through your brain!!\n\nBut for home use, are there any other home devices that will spin faster than the dremel 35000 rpm? ", "I got RC nitro motors that go 50,000 rpm and brushless motors that do about the same, all for little toy cars that go freeway speeds. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ewq5jmb", "ewq6amq", "ewq7uko" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "A zero day is just an exploit that isn't public or out there on the market yet. Basically its a known exploit, its not patched, and its gonna work as you expect. It's a \"new\" exploit. \"Zero\" as in zero days out in the public for it to be seen and fixed.\n\nThese are rare because first of all, finding any exploit is difficult, a second because exploits often make their way out pretty quickly so they end up getting patched fast. A zero day just means an exploit that is currently unknown by the public or thing its exploiting, and its working.\n\nHaving a zero day exploit is a massive prize to nefarious users, as they know its going to work. It may not work for long, but it will work now.", "Zero day exploits are just ways of compromising a computer by making it do something outside the scope of what the programmer had in mind that haven't been used yet but have been identified.\n\nSilly example, suppose you make a website _URL_0_ where a computer program gives people anything they ask for under 1 dollar. You intended this to be nice, most people just ask for a flower or whatever. I am not a nice person, I work out I could ask the computer for something the like ability to run a program of my choosing on it. That's an exploit I've found since running a computer program slips through your one dollar limit. Currently I haven't used it so you don't know about that yet.\n\nSometimes people horde an exploit and sell it. Sure I could use my exploit and prank you but maybe I sell it to someone that hates you and they download something illegal or whatever and frame you. Maybe I can make a lot of money offering that.\n\nWe don't really know how many zero days are out there for popular software (because they haven't been used) so making calls about their rarity is hard however its hard to find them because most software that's everywhere is really old and has had an army of nerds trying to break it and trying to fix it for a long time and when someone does find an exploit they usually either use it immediately and it gets patched after whatever small mayhem they cause or the person is nice, as most of us are, and they tell the people who manage the software about it and once they've fixed it publish an academic paper about it for mad street cred about how smart and nice they are.\n\nDoes that answer your questions?", "A \"Zero day\" exploit is an exploitable bug first discovered because it's being exploited already. It hasn't even been 1 day yet and already it's being abused.\n\nThe name is kinda like the medical term \"patient zero\" - doctors learn of a disease because this person already has it.\n\nExploiting a zero day requires finding it, keeping it quiet from others, and developing a useful (that is, useful for the bad guys) virus or other payload to make use of it. There's time and effort to be spent even for the bad guys and if the bug is leaked or just discovered by coincidence by another party it could be patched before the virus can be released.\n\nI'd like to point out that keep it quiet is REALLY important. Tech and IT is full of smart people and even a vague hint leaked about a bug can make people go looking in the right place to find it. It's happened many times before." ] }

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[ [], [ "ihelppeople.com" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cci2hnz" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "Short answer, there is no possible way we could get an accurate date or species for this type of question with the information we have at hand. It is very unlikely we will be able to answer this question in the future, given that 1. Fossils are very rare and limited 2. Artifacts and fossils which indicate sexual behaviour are limited. 3. DNA degradation is a pretty serious issue when we talk about fossils that are this old. \n\nA caveat here is that we are working under the assumption that a working species definition in this case is the ability to produce viable offspring. There are many issues with this definition of a species, and of course species classification is a topic unto itself. \n\nThe long answer is that [anatomically modern humans](_URL_0_) arose about 200,000 years ago so it is **very likely** that anyone from our time would be able to mate with them and produce a viable offspring. Bone specimens from this time are for all intents and purposes exactly like today's humans. However, it is possible that they were not behaviourally similar to us. So just because modern humans and ancient humans were *sexually* compatible doesn't mean we were *behaviourally* or cognitively compatible. [Behavioural modernity](_URL_1_) might have arisen only 50,000 years ago. \"It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate an ability to use complex symbolic thought and express cultural creativity. These developments are often thought to be associated with the origin of language...One theory holds that behavioral modernity occurred as a sudden event some 50 kya (50,000 years ago) in prehistory, possibly as a result of a major genetic mutation or as a result of a biological reorganization of the brain that led to the emergence of modern human natural languages. The second theory holds that there was never any single technological or cognitive revolution. Proponents of this view argue that modern human behavior is the result of the gradual accumulation of knowledge, skills and culture occurring over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution\". Therefore, let us work under the assumption that you could probably produce viable offspring with another human living about 200,000 years ago - however that offspring may or may not have had the ability to acquire all of our modern cognitive abilities. \n\nWe also know that humans mated with [Neanderthals](_URL_4_) in Europe where populations overlapped about 50,000 - 30,000 years ago. Recall that humans evolved about 200,000 years ago and Neanderthals about 600,000 years ago...so that for the majority of our evolutionary lives Neanderthals and Humans did not interact. About 1-5% of non-african human population's DNA is of Neanderthal origin. However, this does not mean that these hybrids were common, ubiquitous throughout the ranges, or always viable. Indeed, we have no evidence of Neanderthals having Human DNA so for now the evidence suggests the flow of DNA was one way. \"While modern humans share some nuclear DNA with the extinct Neanderthals, the two species do not share any mitochondrial DNA, which in primates is always maternally transmitted. This observation has prompted the hypothesis that whereas female humans interbreeding with male Neanderthals were able to generate fertile offspring, **the progeny of female Neanderthals who mated with male humans were either rare, absent or sterile.**\" We also don't know the context in which these mating events occurred (was it mutual consent? was it rape?). These are important considerations when we discuss where we want to draw the species line between humans and neanderthals. Just because interbreeding is possible does not necessarily mean we should be classified as the same species or subspecies. Again, this classification debate is pretty much a topic unto itself. Regardless of how you want to classify humans and neanderthals, we mated and produced offspring. **From the information we have it is likely a human female could mate with a neanderthal male, and less likely a modern human male could mate with a neanderthal female**. We see this is nature too...some hybrids are more viable depending on the species-sex of their parents. e.g. the [tiglon](_URL_5_) and [liger](_URL_3_) hybrids have different success rates in terms of hybrid fertility and vigour.\n\nSo we know that we could mate with at least one other species of [*Homo*](_URL_6_) living at that time, but what about the others like *H. erectus* or *H. heidelbergensis*? Before I go on, it is worth mentioning that the classification of *Homo* specimens is highly debated. Some think that all members of the *Homo* genus are in fact one species slowly changing through time. If this were the case then we could mate and produce viable offspring with *H. erectus* or any other *Homo* species. Strong arguments can be made on either side, after all, all we have are fossils we can't talk to these ancient hominins. Regardless of how you want to classify these specimens, the question remains could a modern human mate with them and produce viable offspring? One part of the problem is that its unlcear how much geographical and temporal overlap early human populations had with other *Homo* species besides Neanderthals. So that with our current fossils we just don't have enough evidence to conclusively say that we did mate with *H. erectus*. But lets work under your hypothetical situation where a human from today could encounter any *Homo* species from our past, regardless of whether or not ancient humans at that time did encounter them. \n\nSo could we (modern humans) have mated with other members of the *Homo* genus besides Neanderthals? The answer is perhaps. Some will argue for it, some will argue agains't it. However, the farther you go back in our [hominin](_URL_2_) lineage the less likely it becomes. If bidirectional flow of DNA was already difficult with our closest living relatives of that time, the Neanderthals, it probably would have only been more difficult with distantly related populations of *H. erectus* etc.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_humans", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Interbreeding_hypotheses", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigon_(hybrid)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnqlgtf", "cnqlidk", "cnqliua", "cnqliy8", "cnqlkjz", "cnqlmp6" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "If you're talking about self-awareness, then around the age of two assuming you follow the mirror test as a valid test of self-awareness. Basically, you show the child a mirror. If they think it's another child, it's not self-aware. If it recognizes the image in the mirror as themself, they are self-aware. ", " > A baby that kicks the womb is conscious\n\nReally? May I see a citation for that, please? I ask only because I don't remember much from before the age of three, so I think other people may have different experiences than I do.", "We don't know. Sorry, but we're not even completely sure what self-awareness and consciousness actually are, or why we alone seem to have it of all the creatures on earth. So to ask when we first have it, is a question we cannot yet answer.\n\nBut, perhaps someday, we might. Perhaps you might be inspired to try to find out, and maybe you will, or at least what you research and learn might help someone else later on uncover these mysteries.\n\nThat's the awesome thing about science - we don't know everything, but we are always trying to learn more anyway. Keep looking, my friend, and maybe some of these mysteries will be opened up to you someday.", "Depends on how you denote consciousness, and how you measure it, but certainly not until months after birth, and possibly more than 2 years after birth. [Source](_URL_0_).", "It's definitely after birth. Hence why babies are so interested in their own body, they notice their hands are their hands and become aware that they are an entity.", "We unfortunately don't know when consciousness begins, or even what consciousness actually is. I personally think that when the baby is in the womb it's more like being asleep, and when they're born it's like waking up for the first time. That makes the most sense to me, but there's really not much evidence to support any position on fetus and infant consciousness. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/Rochat5levels.pdf" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkeh233", "dkehkf9", "dkfrq3m", "dkg2dfp" ], "score": [ 29, 70, 3, 5 ], "text": [ "There's a group of people currently living on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean. They have no contact with outside people and are hostile to any outsider approaching. They are known as the Sentinelese: _URL_0_\n\nIt is thought that they don't know how to create fire, but they do preserve fire from naturally fires on the island.\n\nThere was a large brush fire recorded on their island a few years ago. _URL_1_", "This Smithsonian Article says no : [Why Fire Makes Us Human](_URL_1_)\n\nThe only people who were popularly accepted not to have an artificial means of making fire were the Tasmanians, but the claim was probably false. The Tasmanians carried fire sticks that slowly burned and would get fire from other natives when their fire went out. It was sort of like the \"Olympic Flame\" method, where the fire was never allowed to go out. However, there are other contemporary historical accounts that Tasmanians did know how to make fire. Taking fire from place to place was like having a pilot light on your stove. It was convenient, but if they totally ran out of fire they would bang flint together or use stick friction to make new fire. Here's a link to a scholarly article on Tasmanian fire tech: \n\n[The polemics of making fire in Tasmania:\nthe historical evidence revisited](_URL_0_)", "I'm going to partly answer my own question. Other comments [1](_URL_3_) [2](_URL_4_) suggest that the answer to my original question is \"no\", but raise another interesting question: did any cultures lack the ability to make fire from scratch (as opposed to simply preserving a fire that already existed).\n\nThe answer appears to be \"yes\". For example, the indigenous cultures of the Andaman archipelago have been studied and found not to make their own fire. Here's a [2009 paper](_URL_6_) that cites several original sources and reviews to which I don't have access, claiming\n > There is also no evidence of fire-making. Prior to the introduction of matches in the 19th century, the Andamanese had no means of making fire. They kept hearth fires burning, carried resin torches through the forest, and buried smoldering logs for future use.\n\nOne tribe in the Andamans, the Sentinelese, has violently rejected most attempts by outsiders to contact them*. As a result, detailed study of the tribe has not been possible despite popular interest. The Sentinelese are widely believed not to make their own fire, and it's easy to find claims of this on the internet from responsible outlets [1](_URL_5_) [2](_URL_1_) [3](_URL_2_), though I'm having trouble finding a scientific source I'd be willing to cite. The Wikipedia page cites a source for this claim, but I don't have access to it. Anyway, it would make sense for the Sentinelese to be similar to the other Andamanese groups in not making fire.\n\nIndigenous Tasmanians were also widely believed not to make fire for some time, but their ability to do so is [documented as early as 1887](_URL_0_), and the fact that they did so is now widely accepted.\n\nUnfortunately, this appears to be a somewhat charged question. We should remember that it's a real pain to make fire with stone-age methods, which is why hardly anyone ever does it these days. It's easy to understand why a culture would put little or no effort into learning how to make their own fire if they have the option to preserve a pre-existing fire. This could be especially true if you're on a small wet island, where fire wouldn't have to be transported far and starting it fresh would be hard.\n\n*Which, given the post-contact devastation of the contacted Andamananese peoples, is probably a smart move by the Sentinelese.", "Seems like most of the controversy here is about peoples who may or may not make their own fire rather than carrying around.\n\nBut even in the case where people don't _make_ fire, they are absolutely still _using_ fire. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese", "https://www.skytruth.org/2014/03/mh370-n-sentinel-island/" ], [ "http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p74381/pdf/ch0155.pdf", "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-fire-makes-us-human-72989884/" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tasmanians", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/12/theobserver.worldnews12", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#cite_note-Burman1990-3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6o3g18/are_any_cultures_known_that_did_not_use_fire_at/dkehkf9/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6o3g18/are_any_cultures_known_that_did_not_use_fire_at/dkeh233/", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/1540-9295-10.7.396/pdf", "http://julietteblevins.ws.gc.cuny.edu/files/2016/10/Blevins2009_AndamanesePreHistory.pdf" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c74c78h", "c74enre", "c74eog7" ], "score": [ 157, 274, 147 ], "text": [ "There is nothing exactly like a magnetic field, but there are analogies between the two. For example, a rotating massive object causes an effect called frame dragging, where spacetime is in effect dragged around the rotating object. In the extreme example, near rotating black holes, there is a region where it is impossible for an object not to rotate, because doing so would require going faster than light relative to the dragged frame.\n\nGravitational radiation from accelerating masses is analogous to electromagnetic radiation from accelerating charges.", "Yep, it's just really weak.\n\n_URL_0_", "Within the context of relativity, electric and magnetic fields are simply Lorentz-transformed versions of each other. The difference between the two is only apparent in some defined rest frame.\n\nE (electric) and B (magnetic) fields can be written in terms of the (4-dimensional) vector potential, which relates the electric and magnetic fields under Lorentz transformations. This quantity is what is used to construct the Lorentz-invariant E & M field strength tensor F. Likewise, gravity has a field strength tensor known as the \"metric tensor\", so there are analogues between electromagnetism and gravity.\n\nThere is no a priori \"electric/magnetic field\" division for gravity (at least Einstein's version of gravity) since it was originally constructed in a Lorentz invariant way. However lorgfeflkd is correct in saying that a varying gravitational fields can produce gravitational radiation, which is in some ways a bit like electromagnetic radiation (where the oscillating E and B fields induce each other and propagate).\n\nEdit: Lots of other people have pointed out \"gravitomagnetism\". While this effect is real, shows up only as an approximation to Einstein's gravity. The cool thing that I'm trying to get across is that the difference between classical electric and magnetic fields is just your velocity relative to charged particles (ie the \"creation\" of B-fields is an effect of relativity, like time dilation or length contraction!) - in point of fact E and B fields are actually the same thing just measured differently depending on your frame of reference. Likewise in Einstein's gravity although there is this \"magnetic\" effect, it is still just an artifact of your chosen reference frame and not a real difference between two types of fields.\n\nSource: I hold a Ph.D. in theoretical physics.\n\nHere's the wikipedia reference on the vector potential: _URL_0_\n\nWikipedia reference on E & M field strength tensor: _URL_1_\n\nWikipedia reference on Einstein's equations: _URL_2_\n\nThe key thing to grab from the page about Einstein's equations is that R_uv and R are both written in terms of the metric tensor g_uv and its derivatives, much like how F_uv in E & M are written in terms of vector potential A_u and its derivatives.\n\nEdit: Thanks so much for the reddit gold anonymous donor!! Also added a word or two for clarity." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitomagnetism" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_potential", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_tensor", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e22qen7" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The term for what you're describing is a stateless nation; the term coming from Jacques Lereuz's book about Scotland. Though it was originally about the Scottish, the term was quickly adopted by people with far less of a state. \n\nGroups frequently identified with the term, such as your own, include the Kurds, Catalans (sometimes), Sindhs, and Tauregs, to name a few of the most prominent. \n\nSo in other words, yes. By that definition, there are many nations--shared cultural and ancestral bodies of people--that lack states; in fact, you could argue very few nations possess independent states. \n\nBut I think you're asking about a state, in addition to a nation. The term for that is the convenient Nation-State; these are the corporate legal entities that are the primary actors on the globe today. And as it stands, according to the general consensus of political science, a state requires territory. This need not be independent--autonomous ethnic enclaves are found around the world, and these are generally considered states. \n\nToday, international law as recognized by the UN considers territory a requirement for statehood. \n\nBut you asked about history: Historically, the answer is a little smudgy, and it cuts into multiple fields. It even gets a little philosophical: When can we speak about 'nations?' Because depending on how you define some of these nebulous terms, the answers can vary widely. \n\nFor example, not every culture has placed a value, historically, on land ownership, in the legal sense. They might claim hunting rights or have a vague sphere of influence they defend, but for example, Comancheria, the Comanche territories prior to the 1860s or so, had no formal boundaries; it was a largely informal zone that marked where the Comache tribes generally were. \n\nOf course, I'm ignoring the most obvious answer, which are the Jewish people, post diaspora. Despite not possessing a state for most of the last two thousand years, they maintained strong cultural cohesion across dozens of kingdoms and operated networks of mutual aid and commerce that spanned the length of the old world, the most famous being the Radhanites who operated much of the Silk Road during the early middle ages. \n\nWhat is a nation, to you? Google's definition is quite vague, as the term is more personal than people generally admit. Could the Circassian people organize some kind of transnational society? Of course! I'd expect there is one. Could that society have some kind of political clout? Possibly, though I'd suspect only in places where they could flex the power of their members: Again, think of the Zionist movement in the 20th century. Could they form an administrative unit, though? Without land, I'm not sure how that would work. " ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Circassian_War", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians#History" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dkqdzu3" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Short answer: Yes. Wind direction plays an important role in shifting water temperatures. \n\nCalm winds or winds blowing towards shore will generally keep water temperatures warmer as surface water is heated by the air and sun and pushed towards the beach. \n\nWinds blowing off shore (out to sea) will actually cause upwelling near the beach and cause water temperatures to drop. Upwelling occurs because as surface water gets pushed out to sea, colder and more nutrient rich water replaces it from below. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dejaoik" ], "score": [ 44 ], "text": [ "Side questions: What kind of ink did they use during this period, or before? Also, was there any known medical risks (infections, etc.) associated with getting tattoos during this period?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "efxgg1c", "efxgoj9", "efxgrx0" ], "score": [ 16, 7, 8 ], "text": [ "The ISS is travelling at just the right speed and is falling towards the earth but the earth , as the ISS travels forward, curves away under the ISS , this curvature matches exactly the free fall distance that the ISS falls during any period and therefore ISS maintains the same distance from the earth and as there is virtually no atmosphere at that height to slow ISS it continues to constantly fall to earth but never reaching it and therefore is in orbit .", "Here's the thing about orbits - if you ignore the satellite's effect on the planet, the mass of the satellite doesn't matter. All that matters is the height of the satellite, and its speed.\n\nThis is because force of gravity decreases with the inertia of the object, which is the amount of force needed to make it change direction, pull it into an orbit, because they are both a function of Mass. This is the same reason that light and heavy objects fall at the same speed.\n\nSo the main difference between the ISS and the Moon is that the ISS is close to the earth, so has to orbit at 8km/sec, orbiting the earth once every 90 minutes. This is because it is close to earth, earth pulls on it hard, so it needs to move fast in a tight circle to not fall down. The moon orbits at 1km/s over 27-odd days, because way out there, the Earth's gravity is much weaker, so it can drift around in a wide, lazy circle.", "You know how an arrow fired at an angle follows an upside down U shape? If the allow is faster, it flies further before landing. The U shape path becomes flatter.\n\nThe ISS and other satellites are moving so fast, their U shape path loops around the world, becoming a circle. Since there is no atmosphere, they will never slow down and continue looping forever.\n\nThere is a range of “perfect speeds” that forms this circle, depending on the height you want to orbit. Too fast, and you fly away from the earth. Too slow, and you don’t form a circle and hit the ground.\n\nScientists and Engineers calculated the perfect speed and height to put the ISS and other satellites at, so that they will orbit forever, always falling towards the earth but never actually hitting." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "di1lqrt" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "There's a thread from a few months back that may be of interest: [I am a resident of central London during the Blitz. Am I most likely to own my own home or rent? What happens to me when my home is destroyed by a bomb? Where do I go? Who helps me find a new place to live?] (_URL_0_)\n\nReposting my first answer from it:\n\nHomelessness was a massive problem during the Blitz; something like one person in six in the London region (1,400,000 people) was homeless at some point over 1940-41. Outright destruction of houses was comparatively rare, though, in the first six weeks of attacks around 16,000 houses were destroyed, 60,000 seriously damaged but repairable, and 130,000 slightly damaged. Unexploded bombs also forced many houses to be evacuated, with over 3,000 UXBs by the end of November 1940 awaiting disposal. \n\nLocal authorities were not prepared for the scale of the problem, in part due to pre-war estimates of casualties from bombing raids being far higher than actually transpired. Rest centres had been established for bombing victims, typically in schools, but these were envisaged as a very short term measure, for a matter of hours rather than days, before people made their own arrangements for accommodation. In most cases this was possible; wealthier people could rent a flat in London or a cottage in the home counties, others arranged to stay with family or friends. Some took to 'Trekking', leaving the city entirely at night for camps outside in places such as Epping Forest, or were evacuated to other parts of the country. For some (around one in seven) the rest centres became longer term accommodation; up to 25,000 people were staying in them during the first months. Conditions were extremely poor at first, most rest centres having minimal sanitation facilities and insufficient bedding, but were rapidly improved by both government action and individual volunteers (*Problems of Social Policy* by Richard M. Titmuss includes the account of a \"Mrs B\", a beetroot seller who took charge of an Islington rest centre to organise the feeding of babies, washing, sweeping, breakfast etc.) Responsibility for assisting the victims of bombing was disjointed, with 96 different authorities concerned with billeting and housing in the London region. Some exhibited posters after attacks with information about the rest centres and other services, but the approach was piecemeal until late 1940, air raid victims could spend much time going from office to office trying to get assistance.\n\nOn September 26th 1940 Henry Willink was appointed Special Regional Commissioner for the Homeless. Repair of damaged houses was a priority, as people strongly desired to return to their own homes, or at least neighbourhoods, if at all possible, and by January 1941 80% of the 500,000 damaged houses in London had been repaired, linoleum, cardboard, plasterboard and tarpaulin used for at least temporary repairs if necessary. Local authorities requisitioned empty houses (25,000 by late October 1940), though these still required furniture, bedding and utilities before people could be moved in, and Willink also appointed a permanent staff of social workers for as a Ministry of Health circular put it: \"Experience has shown that the rehousing of homeless people involves more than securing simply that there is accommodation in billets or in requisitioned homes for the number of persons involved. \"Case-work,\" taking into account the needs of the individual persons or families affected is also necessary and becomes more important the greater the distance between the original home and the new accommodation\". By the middle of 1941, then, the situation was greatly improved. More government administrative centres and information centres had been established, along with assistance from voluntary bodies such as the Women's Voluntary Service. Over the course of the London Blitz around 107,000 people were rehoused, 366,000 were billeted, and 181,000 mothers and children were officially evacuated.\n\nSources:\n\n*Problems of Social Policy*, Richard M. Titmuss \n*The People's War: Britain, 1939-1945*, Angus Calder \n*The Bombing War: Europe 1939‑1945*, Richard Overy\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5sc1lc/i_am_a_resident_of_central_london_during_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d292awm" ], "score": [ 93 ], "text": [ "As you know, Malta was ruled by the Knights of St. John for a very long time, specifically and fully up until 1798, and had been so since the 16th Century. As a religious and military order, the government system of feudalism followed all the way up until they were liberated by Napoleon. While I do not know the specifics, I can attest to the state of Malta by the time Napoleon came, who, by the way, faced no resistance since there was a French schism within the order. \n\nIn the six days that he was there, he expelled all but fourteen of the knights, replaced the island's medieval administration with a governing council, dissolved the monasteries, introduced street lighting and paving, freed all political prisoners, installed fountains and reformed the hospitals, postal service, and university (which up until this point did not teach science and humanities). He also abolished slavery and ordered the allowance of the Jews to build a synagogue and increased the salaries for librarians and lecturers.\n\nAfter this change, the island was given back to the Knights in 1803, and then back to the British after Napoleon's defeat. In any case, in light of these reformations conducted by Napoleon, there is some indication that while the rest of the world was in a state of Enlightenment, there was still some kind of social cling to the Feudal and Medieval periods. \n\nAndrew Roberts, *Napoleon: A Life* (2014)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cubu7vm", "cubuje9", "cubupye", "cubw54z", "cubwc7w", "cubwsu8", "cubx853", "cubyi3t", "cubyrux", "cubzi7l" ], "score": [ 3, 26, 164, 2, 19, 111, 7, 2, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "There was a great demo of the technology on [TED talks](_URL_0_)", "It does t eliminate the need for anything already being used so it only provides a minimal benifit.\n\nAll the coatings I've seen would also likely wear off quickly and leave you with just a regular windshield again.\n\nSo it doesn't add enough value to justify the expense.", "RainX is awesome and in every auto parts store.\n\nThey also make a washer fluid that adds the coating and melts ice. ", "The windshield coatings I know of will all wear off over time. There are aftermarket products available, but you'll need to re-apply them every few months.", "And why don't cars have a horn in the back? So you can honk at tailgaters and assholes.", "Glass IS a hydrophobic material. It is nonporous so water molecules do not have a surface to cling to. Car windshields are subject to abrasive action every day while you are driving. Sand, dirt, rocks, debri smash into the glass at the velocity in which you are traveling creating micro divets and cracks that then give water a surface to gain purchase and stay present (its a surface tension thing) instead of just rolling off. Products like RainX work by filling those small imperfections with a thin wax eliminating pores that cause water droplets to cling to the surface. Any other hydrophobic material would lose its ability to shed water in much the same way as glass does over time due to the abrasive nature of flying debris particles during transit.", "Durability basically. Any hydrophobic coating that doesn't cost as much as the car itself is going to wear off quickly on the severe environments a car sees.\n\nCars can easily hit 140f in the direct sunlight, -30 in northern winters, impacted by 70 mph road grime and sandsand, etc.", "Look for Einszett (1z) car products. They have specific products for glass. Also 3M and Megiars but i prefer 1z for high quality/price.", "I don't know why all cars don't come with a coating like CQuartz or something similar. Paint protection technology has come a long way.", "Automotive Engineer here. Hydrophobic glass is more common in Europe and nearly nonexistent in the US. I am guessing this is driven by the climate difference. I am not aware of any glass suppliers who have hydrophobic coating facilities in the US. When we reviewed consumer surveys the demand for hydrophobic glass is near the bottom of the list. When we looked at adding this to our glass it doubled the price. So we opted out.\n\nFrom what the suppliers told me (take with grain of salt), the coating lasts the life of the glass. \n\nedit: spelling" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_shaw_one_very_dry_demo?language=en" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqkdgdp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Yes, they did gain monetary benefit from their invention. The most obvious source is the Wright Company, founded on the 22 November 1909 by the Wright Brothers and with several prominent industrialists from New York and Detroit. Initially Wilbur and Orville received $100,000 and a third of the shares of stock. (Alongside this money they would have received gain from sales from this company, and royalties from others copying their patent.)\n\nIt's also interesting to note that in an interview in 1939, Orville said \"If we had been interested in invention with the idea of profit, we most assuredly would have tried something in which the chances for success were brighter. You see, we did not expect in the beginning to go beyond gliding.\" (Harpers Magazine, “How the Wright Brothers Began,” Fred C. Kelly, October 1939.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7b20df", "c7b2dku" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Whimsy is not the property of children.", "There is actually no naming system for galaxies. [Only fifteen of them have names](_URL_1_), and those were derived from their visual appearance, their discoverer or [popularizer](_URL_0_), or the constellation in which they're found. The names date back to the 18th century, before anyone considered the possibility that anyone might be offended by the practice.\n\nThere are probably several hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, only 10,000 of which are given designations in the [Messier and New General Catalogues](_URL_2_). The rest are identified largely by their celestial coordinates.\n\nI don't think you'll have to worry about \"a universe of\" stupid names, *YeahBruvInit*." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_galaxies#List_of_named_galaxies", "http://spider.seds.org/ngc/ngc.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgdsrkd", "cgdt0x1", "cgdve0k", "cge27mj" ], "score": [ 13, 8, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "No we can't. \n\nTracing one's family tree, genealogy, needs records to track relations between individual ( X's father, Y's husband, Z's brother,...Etc ). These records are various, the most common and necessary being birth, marriage, death records but others can be available such as wills, military records,...Etc\n\nTHe thing is, records for many countries began to be kept in the late 1500s ( at that date in many countries such as France, priests were asked to keep records about who they baptized, buried,...Etc. The point was to be able to keep en eye on the population so to tax them better ).\n\nSo most people can hope to trace back their genealogy to the late 1500s if they are lucky ( that the country search has such early records, that they survived the centuries,...Etc ) and good enough. Some people can be more lucky to find even older records such as wills or land property records but these are now rare and hard to find and even harder to connect to your actual ancestors with certainty. \n\nSo no, most people can only hope to be able to trace ancestors back to the 1500s ( which takes years ).\n\nNow indeed as you said, aristocratic families had their family trees made and kept in order ( among other things ) to control who is who as well as succession and heritage matters for example. So we have early \" trees \" available, some more reliable than others of course. That said, even for some of the greatest families historians are not always sure on who is who or who is the father/mother of X for people having lived around the 1000 A.D. For example, who really are the first members of the great Salian dynasty ? Well it is not sure so if we had to go back to the time of the Romans it would be nothing but presomptions, full of uncertainties and mistakes ( imagine if you make a mistake early in your genealogy, such as your great grand father for example, then everything is wrong ). \n\nThere is no families existing at the time of the Roman Republic/Empire that we can assume still exists today. \n\nOne thing about genealogy that is funny though :\n\nIf you were able to go back at your generation 30, you have 537 millions ancestors and at the 35th, it's around 17 billions ancestors. \nYou double the number of ancestors at each generation so we all at some point should descend or be related at a famous Roman or a famous tribesmen, we know it with mathematics and statistics but genealogy can't prove it for us. \n\n Anecdote : Mathematicians say that ( you can search the exercise online ) you have 99,999996% chances of having Genghis Khan has an ancestor and only 1 chance on 24 millions of not having Genghis Khan has an ancestor \n\nHope this helps", "Yes, but only because if you go far enough back, everyone's a relative. See /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov's post on the subject [here](_URL_0_).", "You may be interested in this previous thread: \"[Are there any European families that still exist today that can trace their origins to the aristocracy/patrician families of the Roman Empire?](_URL_0_)\"", "No, but it is clear that many Roman families of the early successor states of Rome intermarried with Germanic aristocrats. An important problem for this kind of research is that Roman families, by the 7th century (at least in the north of Gaul, an area that is better documented in term of prosopography) had adopted Germanic names (so, to use my favourite example, a chronicler describe someone called Chramnelen as coming from the “race of the Romans”). There is, however, a series of contenders for the descent from aristocratic families; most importantly, a variety of hypotheses try to connect Charlemagne with important families of Roman Gaul, among which the Syagrii and the Ferreoli; the most likely connection is *via* Arnulf of Metz, Charlemagne's great-great-great-grandfather in agnatic line.\n\nHowever, no-one has managed to establish safely the names of Arnulf's parents. In fact, most hypotheses would link him with the Roman world anyway: if he is the son of Ansbert the Senator, then he is obviously from Roman stock; if he is the son of Bodogisel, his mention in Gregory of Tours' work strongly supports the idea of a Roman descent. If you are interested in more detail, you can look up Christian Settipani's writings (though if I recall correctly, he does not consider Bodogisel to be a “Roman” aristocrat)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20pubn/how_reliable_is_ancestrycom_is_it_based_on/cg5u0wo" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14t6fr/are_there_any_european_families_that_still_exist/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdbgy7j", "cdbhf2v", "cdbhilw", "cdbimzx" ], "score": [ 8, 4, 8, 7 ], "text": [ "Intelligent Design was created to try and get around the US Supreme Court ban on the teaching of Creationism as science in publicly funded schools. ", "There is no such thing as \"darwinism\". The fact that the scientific method produces valid theories such as evolution is not a religion, nor does it require belief.", "Intelligent design is the assertion that science leads us to conclude that the universe was designed by some intelligent agent. One of their chief tools is *irreducible complexity*, the notion that certain biological systems are too complete to come about naturally, and must have been designed. On the surface, it is fairly innocuous...completely unsupported by scientific evidence, but innocuous.\n\nIn reality, it is sort of a bizarro-world \"scientific\" alternative to evolution, a form of disguised creationism created to be religion neutral so it could be taught in schools. In *Dover v. Kitzmiller*, determined it was just repackaged religious ideas, and blocked it.", "The irony of this is that \"like I'm five,\" is virtually the only way it can be explained. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbv00f0", "cbv1az3", "cbv31ll", "cbv3mul", "cbv6wcm", "cbvbgp8" ], "score": [ 22, 17, 2, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "This isn't exactly true. What you have to look at is what the \"negative\" and \"positive\" mean. However, there is a distinction between that and prescription glasses versus non-prescription. \n\nThe negative and positive reflect what your eyes need--negative is for people who are near-sighted (can see close, but not far), and positive is for far-sighted (can see far, but not close). The $3 glasses you see over the counter are reading glasses, which basically help people see those things close to them, such as reading material. They are all very weak and generic, not specifically made for a particular person. You can not do this for people who are nearsighted. If you wanted to, you could say that a nearsighted person could buy binoculars over the counter, but they don't actually help that much. \n\nAny person with a more severe sight impairment would need glasses specially tailored to their needs to see properly, and those cost much more money.", "The + prescription glasses that you can buy off-the-shelf are intended for people who need reading glasses due to presbyopia (\"old sight\"). This happens when the lens in the front of your eye gets firmer as it ages, and you lose the ability to fatten it up enough to focus on close objects. This eventually happens to everyone, so the need for these glasses is quite common. I'm not entirely sure of the legalities but I guess that this isn't classified as a medical disorder due to its common-ness. \n\nMyopia and hyperopia (short- and long-sightedness) occur in people of any age, and happen because your eyes are slightly the wrong shape. Hyperopia can be corrected using + lenses, and myopia with - lenses. I guess both of these conditions are classified as medical issues, so you need to have glasses prescribed by a specialist. There's a lot more complexity to the prescription, e.g. different prescription for each eye, 'cyl' and 'axis' as well as 'sph' numbers, distance between pupils...ask if you want more info. \n\nTL;DR off-the-shelf glasses are for old people who need them for reading, and are always + prescriptions. Custom glasses are for people with funny-shaped eyes, can be + or -, and need to be prescribed by an optician. \n\nSource: used to work in optical retail/manufacture. ", "Watch [this](_URL_0_) which will answer at least part of the question.", "This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I have found it extremely helpful in purchasing prescription eyewear. \n[**Zenni Optical**](_URL_0_) offers massive, and I mean **massive** discounts on prescription glasses. I recently purchased a pair of perfect, designer glasses for about $25 US, that's *total,* including frames, lenses, and anti-reflective coating. The same glasses would have been over $200 if I had bought them the old fashioned way.", "Cheap reading glasses (positive lenses) only need to bring your focus closer. It doesn't really matter how much closer because they're only supposed to be for reading (you just hold the book at the distance it looks in focus), and generally mess up your distance viewing.\n\nNegative prescription glasses for short sight are specially adjusted exactly for your eyes so that when your eyes are at rest the horizon is in focus. If they were slightly off then either your distance viewing would still be blurry or your eyes would have to strain more to focus.\n\nLikewise if someone with long sight who needs positive lenses to see clearly they shouldn't just use cheap reading glasses and instead should get specially adjusted lenses so their eyes will focus perfectly on the horizon when at rest.", "Supply and demand. The no-prescription cheap reading glasses come in common denominations which is suitable for reading for lots of people. But when it comes to individuals needing glasses fulltime, they want to get a lens that exactly matches their eye. \n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxPLGPO2q3E" ], [ "http://www.zennioptical.com/?mobile=no" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2pc9sa", "d2pd24e" ], "score": [ 3, 7 ], "text": [ "The answer varies depending on the location, because there can be many factors at play such as soil profile, amount of traffic received - for example the area surrounding a popular water hole in a place like Zimbabwe or Tanzania might be so heavily trafficked by large animals that even grass struggles to grow - amount of rainfall available and even types of species nearby. An American maple tree (for example) may be able to grow in a place like Asia, where local trees cannot, but getting there would be a challenge. \n\nThe main driver of forest advancement or retreat (if we ignore the effect human settlement has) on shaping the great plains you can find in Africa is fire. Fire happens frequently at the equator especially where you have rainy seasons and dry seasons. During the dry seasons things can catch fire quite easily, and due to the lack of moisture for large areas it will spread easily too. Grass has the ability to quickly recolonise substrate, much quicker than most woody plants do. In the case of Africa, south of the Congo at least, the Acacia tree is really the only tree that can compete with grasses for space in these fire-prone areas. Elephants (and only elephants I am not aware of any other animal doing it) play some small role too, in that they will regularly knock down whole trees to get at leaves at the top - particularly during dry seasons where food is scarce. So this puts additional stress on any woody species because there's a reasonable chance that they will be destroyed by a hungry elephant if they manage to survive the regular fires. \n\nIn places like Europe you can expect a lot of the grass you see to have once been forest, but has since been lost. Forests, and this is especially true for rainforests, change the way that nutrients are cycled in the soil. Things like decaying leaf litter prevent large amounts of nutrients filtering through the soil at once and enable a steady stream down into the water table, whereby trees which typically have deep roots can reclaim them and bring them to the surface. When it rains, these nutrients will filter through the soil faster (the speed varies depending on the type of soil present and the amount of regular rainfall). When you remove many of the trees, shrubs and other organisms by clearcutting or burning away the forest, you begin to degrade the soil that contained them. Eventually you may get to a point where it can no longer support a forest anymore. Grass will happily grow, as grasses tend to be very hardy individuals, but the microbial systems that supported a large forest are absent. This is more an issue with rainforests, and is partly why when a rainforest is lost - and promises are made to do things like replant them, you should be extremely skeptical because often it's an impossible task. \n\nAdditionally, as the climate changes, the moisture levels available will too. Even if rainfall slows, trees can still survive if they have roots that manage to reach the water tables. This is why you sometimes see trees living in places like the Sahel, they can reach the water necessary under the ground. However, if they are removed, they cannot be replaced by anything with roots that are unable to reach that water source - it will simply dehydrate.\n\nThere are many reasons why an area may be dominated by grass, and these are some of them. It often has to do with the grass simply being able to take advantage of the environment better than trees can. ", "A mixture of grazing animals and moisture availability, and fire.\n\nIn North America, the western part of the Great Plains simply doesn't get enough reliable precipitation to support a forest, having a functionally semi-arid climate. This is the short-grass prarie of Oklahoma, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. [This maps shows mostly what I'm talking about.\n](_URL_1_)\n\nIn the Eastern Part of the Great Plains, the tall-grass prairie was historically maintained by a mix of windthrow, grazing, and natural fires. Since the late 18th century, most of the tall-grass prairie has been converted to agricultural use, and the supression of natural fires and extirpation of large grazing animals has allowed the most of the rest to undergo ecological succession into forests (mostly beech-maple, some maple-pine). Today less than 5% of the original tallgrass prairie remains in it's natural condition.\n\nI'm trying to find the original 2003 paper that explained the dynamics of the tallgrass prairie ecosystems, but I can't find a version that isn't behind a paywall. Instead, here's an university press release the summarizes it rather well: _URL_0_ " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-08/uoia-wes081803.php", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Great_Plains_Map.svg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cddkp2z" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "In fact that's pretty much the only story of his death that Diogenes Laertius *doesn't* report -- that story actually comes from Plutarch. [Diogenes Laertius reports three alternate death stories as follows (6.76-7):](_URL_0_)\n\n > Diogenes is said to have been nearly ninety years old when he died. Regarding his death there are several different accounts. One is that he was seized with colic after eating an octopus raw and so met his end. Another is that he died voluntarily by holding his breath. This account was followed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (or of Crete), who in his meliambics writes thus:\n\n > Not so he who aforetime was a citizen of Sinope, \nThat famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak, and lived in the open air. \nBut he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against his teeth \nAnd holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly named \nDiogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.\n\n > Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused his death. His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum, the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit. They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that he was dead. This they supposed to have been his deliberate act in order to escape thenceforward from life.\n\nWhen there are this many variants of his death story, there's no way of pinning anything down. Though Plutarch is a tad more discriminating than Diogenes Laertius in his source criticism..." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_VI#Diogenes" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d24m57t", "d24n8o0" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "The Romans killed 10% in order to completely break the group/unit. You don't need to kill everyone to break the will of group, that would be pretty silly if they were useful to you. Basically, the idea is that by killing 10% of the group you break 100% of the group to your will, which is total.", "Decimate technically means to reduce something by 10 (i.e. 10%)\n\nThe problem is it's such a powerful sounding word, that it has come to mean to destroy something entirely, or if not totally to the point of incapacitation -- the point where whatever you have destroyed is effectively broken.\n\nWords can mean different things, sometimes even the opposite!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cz7eu1z", "cz7eyev" ], "score": [ 7, 6 ], "text": [ "Before chemistry was really a thing, everyone thought that graphite was a type of lead, probably because it's so soft.", "There's an important kind of lead ore called galena that looks a lot like graphite, and miners knew all about the lead ore- which often yields silver, too, which is why they cared about it- long before anyone paid any attention to graphite. So graphite is to galena roughly what fool's gold is to real gold, and it had a similar sort of name, black lead, until someone renamed it in the late 1700s." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cddqmo3", "cddqqae" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Pretty sure it's called a wet down. It's used to reflect light to make the scene more visible. ", "It's called a wetdown, and they do it on purpose.\n\nWet roads are reflective and look more appealing, especially during night scenes. They also become darker, and can influence the mood of the scene." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckysy8e", "ckz10n4" ], "score": [ 57, 3 ], "text": [ "These guys are really cool! They are part of the class Hydrozoa which is part of the phylum Cnidaria which includes jellyfish and corals etc. All of these types of animals have some sort of life cycle that cycles between two forms. The medusae which are what your traditional jellyfish is and a polyp which is a sessile non mobile form. Then there are inbetween forms. Note that some such as coral only have polyp forms. \n\nNow to the Man o war! The Man o War starts out in a larva stage called a planula. A planula is a small oval shaped organism that will eventually develop into a polyp form. This polyp will eventually reproduce asexually meaning all of the offspring will be genetic clones of that one polyp. But what's interesting in colonial Hydrozoa like the Man o War is that these offspring will only have certain genes turned on making them specialized. Each offspring of that original planula is now specialized to a certain task to help the colony. \n\nThese specialized individuals are called zooids. There are really a few main types of zooids. You have the gastrozooids which are specialized for feeding. Gonozooids which are specialized for reproduction and all future offspring will come solely from these individuals. Finally some colonial Hydrozoa such as the Man o War also have dactylozooids which are special individuals which have cnidae cells with nematocysts. These guys are cells that can sting which is what is characteristic of the Cnidaria phylum. \n\nSo to summarize: the basic larva form, the planula, does its normal thing and grows into many polyp like forms which differentiate and specialize to certain tasks. We call these specialized individuals zooids. So they don't really \"come together\" like you might think but rather arise from one organism. You might ask but how do they get that bell-like structure? How is that one organism? And that bell is just one super specialized zooid. \n\nThe Portuguese Man o War is part of what we call Siphonophora which also includes other colonial organisms like Praya which is the longest predator in the world. It is even longer than a blue whale! Fell free to ask more questions and I'll do my best to answer them! ", "Sounds a lot like most critters: start off with a totipotent stem cell (fertilized ovum) as the critter gestates cells start to specialize, that is certain genes are turned off. We have blood cells, nerve cells, muscle cells...are we not a colonial organism?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c48q4up" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Gatorade. The electrolytes are good for you and the acidity of soda is not good for your teeth or the rest of your digestive system for that matter. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dhutl17", "dhv1488" ], "score": [ 45, 15 ], "text": [ "Don't think of drinking water as solving problems, think of not drinking enough being a very big problem. Water is essential for almost every bodily function and without it the entire body is worse off", "This is only a partial answer, but I hope it gets at the \"so much\" in your question. Imagine that your body is a big processing plant full of a wide variety of different kinds of stations. Call these stations cells. There are many different kinds of station that work with a variety of different materials, and carry out a variety of different tasks. Even though these processing stations do different things with different materials, pretty much all of them will have to break certain materials up into pieces from time to time in order to continue what they are doing. \n\nThe thing is, once a worker in a station has broken a larger piece up into two smaller pieces, he/she can't keep working until he puts a cap on each of the edges where he just cut the larger piece. Oddly enough, even there are lots of different kinds of stations working with different materials, the caps that this plant uses are pretty much once-size-fits-all. So carpenters, metal-workers, pipe-fitters, etc can all use the same kinds of cap when they need to cut their materials into smaller pieces. These caps are like water molecules. When there is a shortage of caps in the plant, everyone has to stop what they're doing every time they need to separate two pieces from each other, and productivity slows down all over the place.\n\nAgain, there's a lot more to it than that, but the basic biochemistry that goes on all over your body accounts for why staying hydrated helps prevent so many different problems." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvqiu6n", "cvqt111" ], "score": [ 8, 2 ], "text": [ "Really it should be d^2 / (dx)^2, but the parentheses are dropped. This just comes from\n\n(d/dx) (d/dx) ... (d/dx) = (d/dx)^n = d^n / (dx)^n = d^n / dx^n. \n\nIt's just convention", " > It makes more sense (to me) to say d2f(x)/dx instead.\n\nThis would create problems for people who solve differential equations treating dx as a variable. If you applied the derivative twice you should have two dx's and thus make a dx^2 (that's the idea of the notation)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cytaekk" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The unity player uses a mechanism of integrating with chrome that chrome were no longer willing to support. The 'NPAPI' (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) was how a lot of different browser plugins integrated with both Firefox and Chrome such as Flash (not in Chrome's case which builds flash in), Java, media players like VLC / RealPlayer, etc.\n\nThe NPAPI has been around since the Netscape browsers, it's very old, and I think the Chrome/Chromium team didn't want to continue to maintain and support it when the Chrome extension system and HTML 5 cover the vast majority of use cases between them.\n\nPlus getting rid of NPAPI plugins improves security, no more Java for a start - you aren't exposing all the different plugins to the websites you visit that might poentially try to exploit them anymore." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cud3rz2", "cud4aph" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Most of the carcinogens are just byproducts of burning of the dried tobacco leaf. Inhaling smoke is unhealthy, no matter the source.\n\nSome of the carcinogens come from chemicals added to enhance flavor, control the burning and so forth. But removing them would surely help only a little, yet make the smoking process more arduous.", "I think this is part of the idea behind vaping. As others have said, most of the carcinogens come from the fact that you're burning leaves and inhaling the smoke. Vaping removes burning from the equation, so one would hope it would be better on your lungs.\n\nHowever, the research on this is still coming in." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ef5kytz" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The body has something called a circadian rhythm which is correlated to the cycle of night and daylight. This circadian rhythm affects which hormones are released in our body; this is called hormonal homeostasis. Certain hormones are released at different times and the concentrations of such hormones are varied at different times. Sleeping in the morning during daylight and waking up at night in the dark will initially throw this circadian hormonal homeostasis off balance, which could be unhealthy. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccfyk2t", "ccg32f3" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I can't give any direct information on this topic, however I do want to point out that the stipulations for making the Hajj state that it should be carried out by Muslims who are able-bodied enough to make the journey and wealthy enough to be able to afford it.\n\nBasically, if you *can* afford the journey and are physically able enough to make it, you should, however it wouldn't be held against you if you were not physically or monetarily able to make the journey.", "It's basically the same kind of scenario today. A lot of Muslim countries are still very rural, poor, or tribal.\n\nSometimes the Empire or city would fund a few people to go.\n\nBut Usually, if one could not afford it, the local mosque would raise money. It was a community effort. If members of a mosque could not afford a trip, the mosque could try to get the community to raise funds. Also, Hajj trips, even to this day, are usually done in a group. So for a year, 20 people in a local community want to go to Hajj, they travel together, and pool their resources. The details of this vary from region to region, and how wealthy a place was, and distance from Mecca. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca9zdrq" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "They don't really have a definite pitch. The sounds they produce are too complex and consist of too many pitches for us to be able to pick out a pitch. That's why they sound okay in any key.\n\nThis applies to things like snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, etc. Things like timpani have definite pitches, and they have to be in key with the rest of the instruments in the ensemble." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1exodr", "c1eynxo" ], "score": [ 3, 4 ], "text": [ "I have scoliosis. I've tried a few things (hanging upside down, just hanging with weights on my feet and ankles, etc), but they didn't work that well for me. What has worked is relieving stress from the muscles in my back and I've done it by finding a way to \"crack\" it in such a way that muscles don't bunch up and I get comfortable being upright. I can't explain the bunched up feeling, but I'm sure you know it. I have asked orthopedists about long term damage and they basically say that it might create some discomfort with age, but having a bad posture will have worse implications. If it helps, what I do is keep my feet apart, bracing them, and then swinging my arms until I feel a crack or relief. If I can find a round edged surface with a comfortable height, I run my back through it up and down to find any \"kinks\". If you are near a bench that has back support, sit down straight and push with your arms to drive your back into the support, stretching it. Basically, massage your back any which way you find comfortable. Of course, exercise is great, but you have to be very careful with it, because muscle damage plus scoliosis will mean severe agony, especially if the problem or the damage is located in the lower back. Definitely keep active. I don't really believe in surgery if I can try some other type of therapy, but I can keep my pain under control, maybe yours is a lot worse. Research and ask around, I don't have enough experience on surgery, even though my family has a huge history with scoliosis. Try things like the ones I mentioned slowly and maybe they will work. Slowly and taking great care, please. Anyway, if it helps, my posture now is great and I definitely look my height now, even if my back looks slightly off with my shirt off. I can feel my back trying to sway me to the side, but through these little exercises and keeping active I can definitely live with this mild discomfort. Now, if the pain is too much and the technology is there, surgery might not be a bad choice. I just wanted to share this with you, because I know how much you're suffering. I'm 32 and it has not affected me in a serious way, aside from discomfort in really long lines or walking uphill. I try to get creative and pick up my nephew and use him as a brace for swinging my back in the way I described above, so at least he has fun with it. I wish there was more I could do to help, but sometimes there are just things in life that bother us that we can't get rid of. Anyway, think that you're 23, by the time you're my age, there will be a better understanding and treatment for your pain. Good luck!", "In short: no.\n\nThere are three basic types of scoliosis - idiopathic, neuromuscular, and congenital. I'm assuming you have idiopathic as it's the most common. Bracing is the only non-surgical treatment that has any proved efficacy but is used primarily to stop the worsening of scoliosis while someone is still developing, not once they're reached maturity.\n\nThe biggest question I'd ask at this point is how bad is the curvature? If you're at 30 degrees or less, more than likely things won't get worse since you've stopped growing, so if you can handle things as they are now, surgery isn't necessarily mandatory. If you're above 30 and especially 45 degrees, you're likely to get worse even if you've reached bone maturity. In that case fusion will likely be needed. \n\nAll that being said, strength and stretching exercises won't hurt (as long as you talk to your doctor first to tell him what you'd like to do), but unfortunately can't straighten a scoliotic spine." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwkwgmq", "cwky2ls" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Your right to do what? To leave? No, you can't leave, a cop can briefly detain you for committing an infraction or upon reasonable suspicion of a crime. If that reasonable suspicion elevates to probable cause, a cop can order you out of the car and conduct a brief search. If a cop has a reasonable suspicion that you are armed and dangerous, they can also frisk you for weapons. ", "* you don't have to answer questions\n* you have the right to an attorney\n* you don't have to consent to searches\n\nThe important thing to remember is **you don't know why you were pulled over**. You might think you did nothing wrong, you might even be right. What you don't know is a car that looked just like yours was involved in a hit and run 10 minutes ago, and the officer has a perfectly valid reason for pulling you over.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmxifn9", "cmxkhur" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Well, the drug itself might not. Most chemicals are eliminated from your body through several steps. Alcohol, for example, gets metabolized into a close relative of cyanide (ED: relative of formaldehyde, my mistake), which is one of the reasons it's so awful for you. It's possible a drug test detects the by-products, not the drug itself.\n\nBut even if it doesn't, it takes a fairly large amount of a drug to create a noticeable effect to you as a person. Imagine, for example, taking just a dip of coffee. It's not enough caffeine to have any significant effect, but there's still caffeine in your body that can be detected fairly easily.", "Drugs are often described as having a \"half-life\" of so many days or hours. So if you take 100mg of Drugex and it has a half-life of 8 hours you can expect to have 50mg in you after 8 hours, 25 mg, in you after 16 hours, 25 mg at 24 hours, 12.5mg at 30 hours, and you get the picture. Now lets say that the Minimum Effective Dose for Drugex is 25mg. We can expect that you're no longer perceiving an effect from Drugex at about 24 hours. The drug is still there, and it's still having at least some effect on you, but you probably can't feel it or easily measure that effect. Now lets say we have a drug test for Drugex. That test might have a sensitivity completely unrelated to how the drug works in your body. It might detect Drugex in quantities as low as 0.01mg which means it could be detected for roughly 100 hours after your dose.\n\nThe systems that destroy or remove drugs tend to be your liver or your kidneys. Both work by filtering your blood as it passes through them. Well not all of your blood goes through those organs on every pass due to the looping, branching design of your circulatory system. Some of that drug may also work its way out of your blood and into areas that aren't refreshed as often such as your cerebrospinal fluid or the vitreous humour in your eyes. If it gets in your hair, for example, it will never make its way back to your bloodstream. That's why hair tests can be used for some drug tests that go pretty far back." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c35b7k2", "c35b7k2" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "While the theory presented in this video is not necessarily the most widely-accepted, it is certainly the most compelling case for human ancestry I have encountered. It touches on things like bipedalism, hair, and speech capabilities - all from the standpoint we evolved dwelling on / in rivers.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: For those who do not want to watch the video, the part on hair basically says that because humans were water dwelling species, we \"shed\" our hair over evolutionary time to become more streamline. The only mammals that are as hairless as us are either aquatic-dwelling, came from aquatic-dwelling mammals, or is the naked mole rate which spends almost all its time underground. We also have blubber-like reservoirs around internal organs for fat storage instead of a more homogeneous distribution, characteristic of mammals spending most of their time in the water or snowy climates.", "While the theory presented in this video is not necessarily the most widely-accepted, it is certainly the most compelling case for human ancestry I have encountered. It touches on things like bipedalism, hair, and speech capabilities - all from the standpoint we evolved dwelling on / in rivers.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: For those who do not want to watch the video, the part on hair basically says that because humans were water dwelling species, we \"shed\" our hair over evolutionary time to become more streamline. The only mammals that are as hairless as us are either aquatic-dwelling, came from aquatic-dwelling mammals, or is the naked mole rate which spends almost all its time underground. We also have blubber-like reservoirs around internal organs for fat storage instead of a more homogeneous distribution, characteristic of mammals spending most of their time in the water or snowy climates." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html" ], [ "http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fj6p3s3", "fj6tyzo", "fj6wqzi" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Nope, reflex is your brain responding. \nfast twitch muscles is what your brain uses to move to respond.", "Short answer: no, there isn’t.\n\nLong answer: they have nothing to do with each other. Reflexes are by definition responses to a stimulus performed without conscious thought. Typically they shortcut the brain. Think of your nerves as a two way street with the only place for a car to make a u turn being in the spine or brain. A stimulus would be a car, traveling from say your knee up towards your spine and brain. It will turn around in the spine and be sent back down as an order to stretch out your leg.\n\nFast twitch muscle fibers are the type of muscle fibers used in short but powerful movements. Sprinting vs running a marathon. They exert more easily so your body will usually favor using slow twitch fibers until they become tired and then switches to the fast twitch.", "IT depends on what you mean by \"reflex\", but...if you mean it as a precise term, then \"no\" - that's a reference to response time of our neurological systems.\n\nNo...if you mean a more common conversation like someone who takes two steps and grabs a ball before it hits the ground, your fast twitch muscles will help you accelerate to perform that action that your reflexes may have kick-started by reacting to the object falling. Or...if you're watching someone play basketball and they make great move that seems to be lighting speed you might say \"wow..that gal has fast reflexes!\", but really be talking about skill, balance, fast muscles and so on\". We often use the technical term to talk about a much more complex system than \"reflexes\"." ] }

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