Datasets:

vblagoje

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{ "a_id": [ "dazgiog" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Some parts of your question were covered in [this earlier answer,](_URL_1_) which points out that the earliest certain written record of Stonehenge only dates from the late Norman period (c.1130). And even after that, it wasn't until the first stirrings of antiquarianism in the mid-17th century that we get any sort of significant flow of information about the site and how it was regarded. \n\nAll that said, we do have some clues. Let's review the ways things stood from period to period.\n\n**Saxon era**\nThe word \"Stonehenge\" is a corruption of the Saxon *Stanenges*, \"hanging stones\". It's usually supposed the name was given to the site because the trilithons at its centre reminded people of gallows. Some support for that supposition comes from the discovery of the victim of a Saxon-era execution (an articulated skeleton known to archaeologists as \"burial 4.10.4\"), whose remains were found in 1922, inhumed in the north-east ditch that surrounds the monument. These remains were long thought lost, but when rediscovered in 1999 they were carbon-dated to c.600-690. The victim, a male of 5 feet 4 inches (1.65m), who may have been either Saxon or a Briton, and was aged 28-32, had been decapitated with a single well-aimed blow from an axe or sword. Pitts et al observe that several known Saxon execution sites are associated with Neolithic monuments such as long barrows. Hence we have some evidence that for the early Saxons, Stonehenge may have been an execution and funerary site. Also worth noting, Pitts says, is that this burial is \"the oldest indication we have that Stonehenge had a significance in recent centuries.\"\n\n**Norman period**\nThe chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote about Stonehenge in the context of his listing of the four great wonders of England. For his (much less reliable) contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, who claimed to base his work on a probably non-existent old Welsh book, Stonehenge was a memorial to British soldiers killed by Saxon invaders led by Hengist in the fifth century AD, and later the burial site of two great British kings, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther.\n\n**From 1130-1530**\nStonehenge again goes largely unrecorded in this period. The historian and Tudor propagandist Polydore Vergil mentions it, but only to repeat Monmouth's account.\n\n**Mid to late Tudor period**\nThe first known image of Stonehenge was executed probably by Joris Hoefnagel in 1568 or 1569. The original is lost, but [several versions of it exist,](_URL_0_) including a print by \"R.F.\" and a watercolour by Lucas de Heere. It's notable for its inaccuracy, showing the stones as \"curvaceous as a Modigliani nude\" (Burl) and focussing, as do so many later descriptions, on the sarsens rather than the less well preserved bluestone circle. \n\nThe topographer William Camden mentions the site in his *Britannia* (1588), though without devoting the sort of attention we might expect from our more modern perspective. He focused on the monuments; physicality, calling it \"a huge and monstrous piece of work,\" made of \"certain mighty and unwrought stones.\" He added that some thought the stones themselves were artificial, not things that had been quarried and carved, being stuck together with \"some glewie and unctuous matter\".\n\n**Stuart period**\nThe first systematic investigations of Stonehenge date to this period. James I and other members of a party paying a visit to the Earl of Pembroke, who lived nearby, excavated some ox bones from the site in 1620 (which they speculated were the products of sacrifices once made there), and the king asked his architect Inigo Jones to investigate the monument's history. Jones pitched a tent at the henge and took measurements, also excavating to find out how deeply embedded the stones were in the local chalk. His notes were published in 1655 as *The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stoneheng, on Salisbury Plain.* He thought it was a Roman construction and likened it to temples he knew of in Tuscany. At about the same that infamous royal favourite George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, also visited the site and excavated a large pit in the centre of the monument in order to topple one of the sarsen stones (55), also significantly undermining its companion (56), whic hby 1660 was leaning over at an angle of 75 degrees . Buckingham was interested enough in pursuing these inquiries to offer to purchase the site from its owner, a local gentleman, but he was rebuffed.\n\nIn 1663, Walter Charleton wrote a book on the monument, *Chorea Gigantum* (\"giant's dance\") which speculated that Stonehenge was a royal court or palace constructed by the Danes around the time of King Alfred.\n\nCharles II also visited the site (on his way into exile, 1651) and was entranced by it, pausing in his flight to \"reckon and re-reckon the stones.\" After his restoration in 1660 he ordered the renowned Stuart diarist John Aubrey to conduct fresh investigations at the henge.\n\nAubrey already knew the site well, though he considered it be be inferior in its plan and construction to the Avebury Circle. He was the first to attempt to compare Stonehenge to other ancient stone circles and also the first to associate it with the druids, speculating that it was an ancient religious temple (still a popular supposition even today, of course). It's also to Aubrey that we owe the discovery of the \"Aubrey holes\" inside the bank encircling the henge. Modern archaeologists believe these had been used to anchor wooden poles that had once surrounded the henge.\n\n**The Hanoverians**\nGeorg Keysler, a German traveller who visited Britain in the 1720s, saw Stonehenge and thought it had been constructed by Saxons. Organised excavations at the henge date to 1723, when Lord Pembroke (a descendant of the earl of the 1620s) had trenches dug around the altar stone at the centre of the monument and discovered numerous flints.\n\nFinally we come to William Stukeley, another antiquarian, whose once-battered reputation has been undergoing quite a revival in recent years, It was Stukeley who first correctly suggested that the stones were of far greater antiquity than earlier thought, putting its construction at about 480 BC (still out by around 2,000 years, but by far the best and most thought-out guess made to that time – and that can be said to have ushererd in the modern period of Stonehenge studies.) He also identified the stones that make up the henge as coming from at least three different sources, and made the first serious efforts to place Stonehenge within the wider context of its surroundings.\n\nOf course, while all this antiquarianism was going on, the local people of Salisbury Plain were also interacting with the monument - generally to despoil and quarry it for homes and road surfacing, but also to chip away at the stones to carve out bits of rock that were considered lucky charms. Examination of successive images of Stonehenge show the loss of some stones and the toppling and fracturing of others, as a result of this small scale but ongoing work. Other forces were also at work in this period, however; the loss of one 60-ton sarsen was caused by a band of \"gypsies\" who sheltered at Stonehenge in the early 1790s while waiting for a local fair to begin. They dug a shelter for themselves against the stone and this was enough to weaken the foundations and bring it down a couple of years later.\n\n*Sources*\n\nBurl, Aubrey. *Stonehenge: A Complete History*, 2006\n\nNorth, John. *Stonehenge*, 1996\n\nPitts, M. and Bayliss, A. and McKinley, J. and Bylston, A. and Budd, P. and Evans, J. and Chenery, C. and Reynolds, A. and Semple, S. J. (2002) ’An Anglo-Saxon decapitation and burial at Stonehenge.’, *Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine*, 95 . pp. 131-146.\n\nRichardson, R.C. \"William Camden and the re-discovery of England.\" *Trans. Leics. Arch. and Hist. Soc.* 78 (2004) pp.108-123." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/collections/art-stonehenge/stonehenge-9", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fmrqd/what_did_the_romans_think_of_stonehenge/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvxrc7c", "cvxrny7" ], "score": [ 5, 4 ], "text": [ "It's a system to describe how many resources are being devoted to a fire. More alarms means more trucks and firefighters are responding.\n\n_URL_0_", "Each \"alarm\" is essentially a call for multiple additional units to a fire. These are done in fairly standard packages; rather than say \"Send two engines and a truck\", a firefighter will say \"Send an additional alarm\", and a largely pre-planned response will be sent. The package details depend on the department and the area. The FDNY will send 3 engines, 2 trucks, and a chief for a first alarm; if the fire needs a bit more there's another smallish assignment containing mostly specialty units, and then a second alarm adds a bunch more units (including higher-ranking chiefs, communications units, etc.) At the high end (past 5 alarms), each new alarm is 4 engines and 2 trucks and 1 chief. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-alarm_fire" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5m9st5" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Immunology is one of those topics that can get extremely tedious and complicated. So, since I don't know how much detail you're looking for exactly, I'll just start with the basics and you can ask questions from there if you like!\n\n* Antigen (\"against life\") = anything that is harmful to you and triggers an immune reaction.\n\n* Antibody (*probably condensed from some longer phrase such as \"anti-toxic body\")* = Any of a bunch of proteins of the immune system that seek out and destroy antigens. They also have other functions including helping to trigger other antibodies to help them attack an antigen." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "em26kds" ], "score": [ 570 ], "text": [ "The answers are further back in time than you're asking about here, but while you're waiting this thread might interest you:\n\n[*Do the speeches we often see before a battle in most literature and visual performances have any historical basis. Did the kings and generals leading an army ever give a speech to rally the troops. Or is this just a modern romanticism?*](_URL_0_) featuring /u/Thrasyboulus, /u/Celebreth, and /u/Quietuus" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1i9zdn/do_the_speeches_we_often_see_before_a_battle_in/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqtgaxr", "cqtgnju" ], "score": [ 2, 5 ], "text": [ "The British in general and some other folk in the Commonwealth. My more elderly but still Canadian by birth family certainly has the same tea fixation even if they don't call anything in particular 'tea time' or 'afternoon tea'.\n\nTea is a common drink and there is a sort of 'tea time' some observe as a meal event and it's generally considered polite to offer tea to guests. A lot of people will have it at some point through the day.\n\nUnless otherwise specified it'll be a black tea usually. ", "In Ireland, \"tea time\" or \"having your tea\" is actually a colloquial term for the evening meal, as well as the actual drink. And to make it even more confusing, many refer to lunch as \"dinner\", and the dinner as \"tea\".\n\nBut pasically, praesartus is correct. People routinely drink tea throughout the day in both the UK and Ireland. As in at work or college, the occasional \"tea break\" where someone makes a pot of tea and everyone has a cup is pretty much as common as a smoke break for those who smoke.\n\nIf someone comes in to your house, even just to drop back a DVD they'd borrowed, it's pretty common to have a cup of tea with them. Tea would generally be included in the \"time to stay for a drink?\" question if someone's just dropping by, which in the US seems to be confined to having a beer. Over here, \"staying for a drink\" can mean anything from a cup of tea to a glass of whiskey. :p" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dk06p7a", "dk06qe2" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Sunlight comes from above, and it can only go through so much moisture before it's all blocked. Therefore the gray areas are just the thickest areas of cloud coverage. The clouds themselves are actually white throughout, just varying levels of sunlight.", "Large amounts of cloud.\n\nClouds appear white because they scatter incoming light in all directions. So regardless of which direction the sun comes from, some bounces off and reaches your eyes. \n\nBut when you have enough cloud or a dense cloud, their effect on light is so much it can't pass through. If the light is coming at an angle that it would need to pass through the cloud before hitting your eyes, it won't make it. And it will appear dark, or black. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c65n4af", "c65na7p", "c65nif4", "c65nrbi", "c65ns7g", "c65nsnn", "c65o8td", "c65oava", "c65oc8h", "c65odku", "c65ogpb", "c65okga", "c65or4p", "c65ovbj", "c65p17d", "c65p4it", "c65p93e", "c65pbmb", "c65peee", "c65pegd", "c65pp6o", "c65pxae", "c65q7ef", "c65qcq8", "c65qk5n", "c65qymg", "c65r1x6", "c65rc50", "c65rwyj", "c65s1vj", "c65stmr", "c65sxxx", "c65szts", "c65tl06", "c65u0r0", "c65u6zs", "c65urxw", "c65v8aw", "c65wpi2", "c65wq7m", "c65ww1j", "c65x613", "c65xj6j", "c65xono", "c65yky2", "c65z19z", "c65z8y9", "c660ao2", "c660dsk", "c661dhi", "c662jyf", "c662tix", "c663o1i", "c66641u", "c669miw", "c66afzy", "c6cey4k" ], "score": [ 129, 123, 404, 428, 56, 52, 17, 34, 23, 12, 149, 11, 109, 444, 103, 46, 14, 15, 3, 187, 103, 66, 14, 5, 27, 27, 10, 16, 146, 46, 21, 26, 62, 26, 16, 21, 2, 7, 4, 8, 3, 7, 12, 9, 3, 6, 6, 3, 2, 5, 10, 2, 2, 8, 10, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "'Pirates' helped finance the first Episcopal church in Rhode Island, Trinity church. The church denies this (and are technically correct), as none of the men were ever convicted of piracy, or they were under a Letter of Marque at the time (making them privateers).\n\nThis little factoid allows me to begin the long and fascinating story of Henry Avery, Thomas Tew, Thomas Paine, William Mays, William Kidd, the ingenius (read: pirate brokering) Rhode Island governors, and the Golden Age of Piracy... all in one wonderful teaser fact.", "Not a historian, but I have trained as a history teacher in Australia, and I love Australian colonial history, and telling people our most famous icon / outlaw Ned Kelly, and the convict Alexander Pearce...\n\nKelly is very well known, but some of what he did is complete genius... In their famous bank robbery, they locked the police in their own cells, dressed in their uniforms and posed as reinforcements form Sydney, robbed the bank, burnt the mortgage deeds (so everyone in the area owned their property), and then went to the pub, and shouted the bar for two days...\n\nPearce was a convict in Tasmania in the 1820s who escaped with six others along the inhospitable west coast of Tasmania, there is nothing there (even today) and they turned to cannibalism to survive, and although apparently he didn't start it, Pearce was the last to survive... When he was caught, and brought back to Hobart, no one believed him when he said what happened, and so he was simply locked up again... Pearce then escaped again with another inmate, and was caught later, having eaten him, he was carrying his bones on him, and wearing his clothes, even though he still had normal food left... After this, he was put to death...", "On child labor during the Industrial Revolution.\n\nIt's often taught in the U.S. that children were used to work certain machines, in part, because the children's small hands were needed to fit in the small spaces. This isn't the entire truth. The machines could have been designed for adults, but were specifically designed for children. Child labor was preferable to the factory owners as they were cheaper, and far less able to quit.", "I used to teach middle school kids about the Civil War and they all seemed to enjoy hearing about [Wilmer McLean](_URL_0_). When the war started he owned a farm in Virginia, Manassas to be exact. As most of you know, the first major battle, The First Battle of Bull Run, took place there. There was fighting on his farm even. The Confederate general Beauregard used McLean's home as his headquarters till a cannonball ripped through the kitchen. \n\nMcLean was too old to fight and wanted to protect his family more than anything so he packed up what possessions he had and left Manassas behind. He thought he'd move farther south, away from D.C. where there was sure to be more battles, to relative safety of southern Virginia. The *safe, peaceful* town he picked was Appomattox. \n\nIn April 1865, with the war about over, General Lee uses McLean's new home as a meeting place to surrender to General Grant. After the terms of surrender were signed in McLean's parlor, officers realized that this was obviously a historical site now and proceeded to remove all his furniture. I believe they used his home for weeks after as well. \n\nWilmer McLean, the man who the Civil War started and ended on his property. ", "One of the more important parts of the American declaraion of independence was taken almost literally from the Dutch declaration of independence.", "I'll point out that the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence was taken as much from France's [Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen](_URL_0_) as it was from its American predecessor. As Vietnam was a former French colony, Ho Chi Minh studied in Paris and was certainly familiar with the document. David Armitage has a good book on the propagation of a declaration as a genre in his prosaically-titled [The Declaration of Independence: A Global History](_URL_1_).\n\nAs long as I'm talking about France and the DRM & C, a fun fact I like sharing is that while the document was written and propagated in French and has become synonymous with the French nation, Henri Grégoire estimated that at the time of the Revolution, [only about an eighth of France's population claimed French as its native language](_URL_2_). Most spoke a local dialect (_patois_) such as Occitan, Gascon, or Breton.", "I... Um... All of it? Pretty hard to nail down one part. I suppose telling people about how factories were converted to war production during WWII leading to all kinds of innovations in technology, work and labour relations. I particularly enjoy pointing out that the Ford factory in Geelong was used to manufacture a whole heap of things: jeeps, machine guns, submersible vehicles and even sea mines!", "Learned last year in history lessons doing the wild west. One particular event we had to cover was the Johnson County War (I believe it was called) where a bunch of cattle barons hired some armed gunmen to go and kill off a bunch of supposed 'cattle rustlers' (who were actually just homesteaders who's land the barons wanted). The hired guns (around 50 in total) had a list of people to kill, quite a few of which were in the nearby town. There was also a farm nearby in which they had been asked to kill other 'rustlers'. While it should have been an easy job at the farm, they were actually held off there for an entire day, by a lone man called Nat who's friend they had just killed. One man against 50. They eventually burned him out, but by that time word had got to the town and a force of 150 was rallied together, who chased the thugs back to another farm and held them captive there till the army came.\n\nSorry if things are inaccurate, we did this a while back and I'm terrible at names. It a good story though to attract people to what was actually happening in the west, since a lot of people's knowledge is just stereotypes. For example cowboys are often painted as gunslinging, drinking and whoring bad guys who spent most of their time in the town. While this sometimes did happen, it was only for a few days, and for the rest of the time cowboys led a hard life either moving cattle or patrolling ranches. ", "It's pretty much the showpiece of my area of study, but I love talking about the August coup. I'm also very surprised at how few Westerns know the basic details of the coup, if they have heard of it at all. \n\nLess historical and more speculative, but I love batting around the \"Lost Cosmonaut\" theory. I think it nicely illustrates how secretive the USSR was, and also how primitive the space program was in its early years. ", "I live in rural central Florida and i often like to recommend a book aptly named \"A Land Remembered\" by Parick Snith about the pioneer's who colonized this land when only the indians, who've been established since 12,000 bc. How the land and the expansion of the united states destroyed an ancient land that you can still see and be apart of. ", "Pope Sylvester II, who was educated in the Arabic tradition of Spain, was so well educated in comparison to Europeans of the day that many people thought he was a sorcerer who practiced witch craft. \n\nEdit: Changed Sorceror to Sorcerer. Misspelled it the first time. ", "Part of my work includes Thomas Paine, well-known because of his impact in the United States, France, and England. However many people (usually people not studying history) question whether or not Paine and his ideas are relevant in today's world. I like to point out that President Obama quoted Paine in his inauguration speech. Although Obama was referring to the words spoken by Washington, it was Washington quoting Paine's work, \"The American Crisis.\"\n\nIf you are interested in the quotation, it is near the end of his speech: _URL_0_", "I enjoy telling people about the Battle of Kursk, many people haven't heard of it and its staggering number of participants and overall impact on WWII.", "Going through Victorian newspapers, I've come across a lot of strange and transient cultural phenomena that never made it into the history books. For example: monkey parachuting.\n\nNo, seriously. The case I came across was in 1851. A hot-air balloon went up from a park in London, and a monkey was tossed out with a parachute attached, falling into the back garden of a Mr Lovelock. The monkey was fine, but Lovelock was beaten up when a gang barged in his front door to get their monkey back.\n\nThe best thing is that the papers refer to this kind of bizarre balloon stunt as a fairly common nuisance. Apparently, as well as all the other problems in Dickensian London, you had to keep an eye out for animals descending from on high.", "I live in Arizona, and always enjoy telling people complaining about Mexican immigrants that where we live was once Mexico, until the US beat Mexico in a war and took (purchased for a pittance in their surrender treaty) almost half of Mexico's land. In my experience the Mexican-American war is entirely skipped over in primary and secondary curriculum.", "I love telling people, kids especially, that John Keats was 5\"1' (meter and a half) tall. That I'm 5' makes this quite fun, indeed. Also that he was well known in school for being quite a scrapper and once beat up a kid who he found torturing a cat.", "During the WWII there was a lot of intelligence activity which made a big difference on the outcome of the war.For example before the d day they threw aluminum airplanes above the pas de calais which on radars appeared like air fleet.Germans were convinced that attack is going to be launched on calais which was heavily defended.Also British airforce didnt protect the south east of the country so german recon thought they got away unseen,spotting what they thought it was tank _URL_0_ the same time all the british force was located in south west and of course guarded by airforce.German planes seen inflatable tanks which were \"hidden\" there just waiting to be seen.A lot more of interesting things like this can be found almost for any operation in the war!", "_URL_0_\n\nI know it's a wikipedia article, but I think it's hilarious.", "William Walker. Grey Eyed Man of Destiny. President of Nicaragua. Free Booter. Nemesis of Vanderbilt.", "Pretty much any chance I get to talk about my area of study, I'm happy. The Roman views on oral sex are the thing that I tend to bring up the most, because they're so different from Modern American views, and it always kind of blows (heh!) people's minds. (Romans thought of cunnilingus as one of the most scandalous sex acts that one could perform because it made the man passive to the woman. This is why, in the first episode of Spartacus, when the Roman legatus goes down on his wife who has inexplicably turned up at the battlefield in Thrace, I had a hard time not just turning the show off then and there. I can maybe buy that a well-born Roman man might have just gone ahead and done it anyway, but in a tent in his army camp where someone might have walked in and seen him letting a woman use his mouth? Uh, no.)", "Frank Lloyd Wright abandoned his family, was married several times, and his home (Taliesin) was the site of a mass murder by a disgruntled servant while Wright was in Chicago (8 dead). Also, Falling Water, one of his most iconic buildings, has been plagued with mold problems and deflection of the cantilevers, which caused some significant cracking. Since it's an iconic image of American architecture, a significant amount of money has been poured into restoring it (I wish I could find an exact figure, but my google skills are failing me)\n\nThe patron that commissioned Falling Water, Edgar Kaufmann, also commissioned another vacation home in Palm Springs, California from modernist architect Richard Neutra. [Immortalized in this photograph by Julius Shulman](_URL_1_), I think it has a far more interesting relationship with the landscape than Falling Water.\n\nAnother interesting fact from my field that I find really fascinating is that Leslie Robertson, the engineer for the World Trade Center in the 70s, ran simulations on what might happen if a commercial airliner hit the buildings. Unfortunately he only considered the impact, and not the resulting heat from the fire. NOVA did a great documentary called [Why the Towers Fell](_URL_0_) if you don't mind watching this poor older gentleman feel partially responsible. His design was credited with keeping the building standing far longer than expected, allowing many more people to get out, but watching him cry during his interview is heartbreaking.\n\nedit- the documentary, while informative, is occasionally disturbing.", "Honey bees are not native to North America. They were often one of the first signs to indigenous groups that white settlers were entering their territory. \n\nThe uniform of a park ranger is linked to the very first guards at Yellowstone National Park. Those guard were U.S. Army cavalry. \n\nThey're really just interesting facts, but can be tied into a discussion about larger issues sometimes. ", "I have a 20th century political history degree and after my conversations involving the middle east evolve to a certain point, I bring up [ Mosaddegh]( _URL_0_). all of the fundies and horror stories you hear about Iran can be traced to the united states displacing him. We put the shah of Iran into our pocket and that set the stage for the 79 Iranian uprising whose party is still in power today. \n\nWe made the middle east a shit hole.", "I'm from Cirencester, UK (a.k.a. Corinium Dobunnorum) - the second largest town in the Roman Province of Britannia. It was initially a fort, but nearby in what is now Bagendon was a pre-Roman oppidum (tribal centre) with a mint.", "Either of the following, both of which I've posted before in this subreddit, proving that I do, in fact, enjoy telling people about them, hah!:\n\n1. [Mystery surrounding the colour of USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941](_URL_0_), the battleship whose destruction at Pearl Harbor so enraged the American populace and into WWII;\n\n2. The [role of a few dreadnoughts](_URL_1_) in bringing the Ottoman Empire into WWI.", "The fact that slavery was thriving in southern industry (U.S. History). This dispels the notion that capitalism and slavery were incompatible. Slavery as a system was quite adaptable, and it was becoming a central ingredient to the infant southern industry of the nineteenth century. Southern industrialists believed that they could not compete with northern and foreign industry without the low labor cost of slavery.\n\nThere are at least two major implications. One is that capitalism and freedom/liberty do not automatically go hand-in-hand. The philosophic debate on slavery versus free-labor ideology was ultimately decided through violence rather than a natural connection between capitalism and liberty. The other is that slavery was not going to go away on its own without the U.S. Civil War. Slavery was becoming more strongly entrenched in the decades prior to the war.", "it's very likely that there was no [\"last stand\"](_URL_0_) by custer at the battle of little bighorn, due to archaeological evidence collected at the site. it's been a while since i read richard fox's book about the subject but i believe the evidence showed that it was probably a massive single assault with crazy horse leading a bold charge and \"splitting\" the last big group of the 7th. the actual \"last stand\" most likely occurred in a deep ravine that the remaining survivors fled down but were picked off easily by the natives on each side of the ravine. i also think that more evidence showed that custer's group was killed before miles keough's battalion.", "I love debunking the myth that Washington murdered a bunch of drunk and sleeping Hessians at the Battle of Trenton. This lets me get into how Washington was actually a pretty good tactical general and that he wasn't **only** good at running away. \n\nI also love talking about trench warfare in the US Civil War and how much certain aspects of that war were signs of what would happen in WWI. ", "Al-Jahiz, an Arabic poet and philosopher, wrote about natural selection and biological evolution (see the Book of Animals), a thousand years before Charles Darwin, and with 0% of the bullshit that Darwin and modern science have had to endure underneath religious fundamentalists.", "A fun piece of historical math. The Roman Empire was in decline longer than the US has been a country. The reign of Commodus, who lived until 180 AD is generally regarded as the beginning of the end for Rome. But Rome in the west would last until 476, in the reign of Romulus Augustus. thats about 300 years. If the Eastern Empire is included in our calculations, it lasts yet another 1100 years making the total 1300 years. The US has been a sovereign state for only 250 approximate years. ", "When Alaric (who sacked Rome in 410CE) died, his successors had the Busento River diverted so they could bury him, and his wealth, in the riverbed. The river was then sent back on its original course and the slaves and captives who did the labor were killed so no one would know where he was buried.", "That great master painters most often just did detail work of their paintings (faces, hands and so on) and that everything else was done by their workshop. For example Rembrandt is know to have bought works of art and resold it under his name. The reason for this was that by singing them he have them a sort of seal of approval. - > as good as by myself. ", "I love telling people that during medieval and renaissance times, and basically any era in which witches were prevalent, that a witch \"flying on her broom stick\" was actually a woman using a broom stick as a makeshift penis/dildo, which was lubricated with a substance (usually a mixture of toad skin, which can contain DMT, and a hemp seed oil) that gave euphoric hallucinations along with the stimulation of the makeshift penis/dildo. The mixture itself was given the term \"flying ointment\", which was applied to the shaft of the broomstick before being inserted into the woman's vagina.\n\nWhat's even funnier and more intriguing is that when you look up old depictions of witches flying on their brooms, they appear to be sitting on them the opposite way that you would imagine a witch to be sitting. The broom bristles usually appear [in front](_URL_0_) of the witch, rather than behind. Though, many times you'll see pictures in which they aren't even riding brooms, but rather a pitchfork, or a pike, or some soft of pole-like object. And just like the broom though, they're usually depicted riding it the other way around, not always, but many times.\n\n[Source](_URL_1_)\n\n*edited for the inclusion of a source*", "As a Midwesterner I love telling people about the real Johnny Appleseed:\n\nJohnny Appleseed is a heavily mythologized figure so a lot of people don't even think he is real. He would run around the Ohio River valley planting apple tree nurseries in desirable locations just ahead of settlers moving into the area and then sell them to buy more land.\n\nChapman's father fought as a Minuteman in Concord, MA and continued to fight in the Continental Army under George Washington. And Chapman himself was born right around the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill.\n\nBasically he would purchase land, make a nursery, fence it off to protect it from animals, and leave it in the care of a local person who would sell the trees. He would periodically come back and tend the land. He did this all over PA, OH, IN, and IL. He lived an itinerant subsistence lifestyle even though he owned thousands of acres of land by the time he died.\n\nThe really fun fact is that apple trees grown from seed almost never produce tasty, large apples (You have to graft branches that produce, say, a Red Delicious onto a new tree in order to get new Red Delicious apple trees. This means that all Red Delicious apples are clones of the original Red Delicious apple tree).\n\nThe trees and apples they made were used primarily for making hard cider and apple jack (a concentrated cider that had more booze in it).\n\n", "Henry VIII of England has a reputation for being quite the womanizer and going through wives like a Hollywood actor, but many people don't know he was married to Catherine of Aragon for almost 24 years. From the evidence, he was truly in love with her in the beginning of their marriage - he known her since he was a boy, and married her as soon as his father (who had been postponing the marriage) died. Henry had some affairs with other women even starting fairly early in the marriage, but this was pretty common for kings. He didn't think of ending his marriage to Catherine until he'd been married 16 years, Catherine had passed childbearing age, and he met Anne Boleyn.\n\nHis later marriages were indeed pretty short (6 months and 3 days for Anne of Cleaves), but he wasn't always as capricious and quick to turn around as he gets made out to be.", "I always find it interesting to talk about the argument over whether or not \"God\" would appear in the Israeli declaration of independence, and what this said about the founders of Israel. A secular Labor Zionist refused absolutely to have \"God\" appear in the text (referring to the last paragraph, \"Placing our trust in the [God] of Israel\"), while the religious insisted on mentioning God somewhere in the declaration. Ben-Gurion eventually proposed a compromise, where they would say \"placing our trust in the Rock of Israel,\" where \"Rock of Israel\" could be seen either as a metaphor for the God of Israel or for the Land of Israel. Ben-Gurion's compromise was accepted without a vote, to prevent splitting the room with the hostility such a vote might create.", "Well it's really not a historical fact (and I obviously state that when i tell it), but it befits the common self-ironic historical narrative I have, so here goes nothing:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nsry for wikiarticle", "There are World War One training trenches in Houston's Memorial Park.", "I love talking about the nature of religious debate in the early centuries of Christianity, mainly how Latin Christianity related to Byzantine Christianity: their differences, their fights, and how they gradually split. ", "Don't ever let me start talking about the Eastern Roman Empire... I will talk to you for hours on end about how awesome they were, and how much it sucks that they're always overlooked. I actually did this to a girl once... I kinda feel bad now looking back, but what happened was a friend asked me about the Roman Maniple formation (I had been applying it to great success in Empire: Total War, and he was asking me about it) to which I happily obliged. Before I knew it I was going on about how much I disliked Romulus Agustulus (only because I don't think he's worthy of being called the last emperor, I actually feel bad for the kid) was, and why Constantine XI is the real last Emperor, all with a ton of Roman history in between. I went on for probably over an hour. Poor girl probably didn't even know who Romulus was to begin with.", "My friends from Russia believe they won the war, as we here in the US also believe. As a historian it's important to remember that without the involvement of the US Germany would not have had to fight a two front war and might have won. Although we all know winning a war in Russia in winter is near impossible against the Russians. Also the fact that Hitler broke his treaty with Stalin and attacked was a huge mistake. The war is just what we thought it was a concerted effort by many nations, not just one. This gets lost because sometimes American pride blinds us to other countries contributions. ", "Most people have not even heard of Aksum; usually the only time I get to talk about my pet subject is with people on the internet, most of whom are unable to grasp the idea of a strong polity in Africa, central the trade between Rome and India. Yes people, not every important classical civilization was located in Eurasia.", "Around the turn of the 20th century, some enterprising farmers in southern California decided to try and irrigate \"The Valley of Death\" (different from Death Valley, also now called Imperial Valley) with water from the colorado river. The valley receives around 2.4\" of rain annually, but has excellent, loamy soil from the river. They cut irrigation channels, but they kept silting over. As a temporary measure, they built a small gate to regulate the water flow, to hopefully ease the rate of infil in their newly cut channels. Unfortunately, 1905 was an especially good year for the Colorado, precipitation wise, and the resulting spring flood, washed out the gate, overflowed a dike, and allowed the river to flow uninhibited through the very soft, loamy soil, which it quickly cut a deep trench into. As a result, There was an approximately **80ft tall waterfall moving backwards up the river, at about the pace of a walking man**. The railroad eventually stopped it, but some estimates say that if left unchecked, it could have grown to almost 300ft high as it moved farther up the river. This is how the Salton sea was formed", "The fork became popular in the West due to a Byzantine woman eating with one in Venice", "The Battle of Midway hung on the action of one dive bomber pilot.\n\n(for those who know what I'm talking about, yes, I know I'm over-simplifying)", "The reason we have our current days of the week set up and named as they are (in the English Language anyway) is because of our Germanic ancestors and Rome. Typically, when one thinks about the cultural influences in the ancient world that contribute to the modern Western world they think Rome and Greece. But a lot of times it's the cultural influences of the Germanic tribes during their migrations and subsequent societies that contribute directly to our day to day modern lives. I like to think about why things are the way they are. \n\nBut the Germanic tribes got the system of a 7 day week with days named after gods in the pantheon from their Roman neighbors, they just adopted their own gods (except for Saturn, he kept a day because he's badass...or eats babies, I can't remember). This is important because it suggests a level of cultural trade that is contrary to the stereotypical view most people have of Rome on one side of a wall and the barbarians on the other, with nothing but hate and warfare between them. ", "I'm not a historian, but I love this bit of local history. I lived in Brooklyn for many years, before it got too expensive, and people there are still upset about the Dodgers leaving back in 1957, and still curse the name Walter O'Malley, the team's owner who pulled up stakes for Los Angeles.\n\nBut it's harder to fault O'Malley when you know the whole story. Ebbett's Field, the Dodgers' stadium, was cramped and in poor condition - there were reportedly rats living under the outfield bleachers. As he had to compete with the Yankees and the Giants, who hadn't yet departed for San Franscisco, O'Malley was having trouble filling the stadium, even with a championship team.\n\nSo, he wanted a new stadium. Unlike today's sports owners, he didn't blackmail the city into paying for one. He was going to build it himself, with his own money, he just needed a place to put it. Then as now, there wasn't a lot of empty land up for grabs in Brooklyn.\n\nBut there was one mostly empty spot, at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. It's an ideal spot, at the edge of Downtown Brooklyn, above several subway lines, and across the street from where the Long Island Railroad terminates. So, centrally located and very easy to get to on public transportation. The northwest corner of the intersection was mostly empty lots, and O'Malley lobbied the city to use the power of eminent domain - which New York had recently granted itself - to force the owners to sell, so the stadium could be built.\n\nThe city refused. The city council didn't think a baseball stadium was as important as, say, an opera house (Lincoln Center was one of the first major uses of eminent domain by the city). For years, O'Malley tried to sway the council, all the while, fielding offers for millions of dollars to move out West. Finally, he gave up banging his head against the wall in Brooklyn, and took the money to move to L.A. He instantly became the most hated man in Brooklyn, never mind it was the politicians who basically drove him to it.\n\nThe great irony is, when I moved to New York in '96, that northwest corner of Atlantic and Flatbush was still mostly vacant lots. No one ever used that land. Right at the end of the 90s, someone finally built a shopping center there. It has a curved facade facing the intersection, and looks for all the world like a baseball stadium.\n\nThe second irony? Professional sports left Brooklyn in 1957, and would not return until next month, when the Brooklyn Nets debut in their new arena... at the northEAST corner of Atlantic and Flatbush.", "I study left-wing European terrorism; primarily in the 1970s. People will often glibly say someone \"would have to be insane to be terrorists,\" or something to that effect.\n\nThere was a group of students with various mental illnesses that were patients of a Dr. Wolfgang Huber, attached to the University of Heidelberg in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s. Huber was a proponent of the notion that mental illness was the result of capitalist society, and the path to mental health was essentially revolution. He and his patients formed a group called the Socialists Patients Collective; the German version of the acronym was the SPK.\n\nDuring this time frame a nascent terrorist group was scaring the crap out of Germans and killing American GI's, blowing up buildings, and maiming Germans: the so-called \"Baader-Meinhof Group. After the primary leadership of the group was captured in the summer of 1972, a second-generation of terrorists joined up to help secure the release of the first generation from prison. The group that formed the basis for this second generation? The SPK.\n\nIn 1975 the former SPK members were responsible for taking over the German embassy in Stockholm, eventually killing Germans and blowing up the embassy (how the bomb went off is still a mystery).\n\nThe bottom line to this anecdote is that when folks mention to me \"boy, you'd have to be crazy to be a terrorist,\" I say \"that's more true than you realize... let me tell you about the SPK...\"", "That's where my Great Grandpa died. (He was Russian) He was buried on the spot in a brother grave together with his buddies. I found out later in soviet archives the exact place.", "I always enjoy telling my friends about my granddad , who during the north sea flood of holland in 1953 saved his boss and his family who lived across the canal by rowboat at the age of 19.\n\nHe and an older coworker who joined him after he volunteered also enlisted a police officer who rather didn't come along.\n\nThey went by row boat, my grandpa and his colleague rowing and the police officer was emptying the boat with a bucket.\n\nAfter rowing over the canal which was pretty rough water they arrived at the farmer's house with the family sitting on the roof.\nMy gramps needed some rope, so he dove in the ice cold waters of the barn and swam\nBetween drowned cows and horses to get to a rope.\n\nThey then helped the family climb down the roof with the rope. \n\nAnd then they had to row back again.\n\nI can tell it way better in Dutch but that's my main language anyways so that'd explain pretty wel ha.\n\nI always like this little bit of history in a big historic event in my country.\nI think because I can relate to it..\nAh well thanks for reading if you did !", "As someone who studies Byzantium, I like telling people how the Roman Empire never actually fell but lasted another 1100 years.", "The Vatican is faced using marble from the Colosseum. When other people also started stealing marble from ancient ruins to decorate with, the Vatican would no longer have a monopoly on that pretty marble, so they declared the Colosseum\ta site of martyrdom to protect it from revrent looters, even though no Christians were every executed there. Also, after the fall of Rome, only about 50,000 people lived there in a city built for millions, until the Vatican moved back there and fixed it up. Picture only a few thousands people living in an abandoned New York City for reference and scale. \n\n(note: I'm not a bona fide historian, I just studied a lot of Renaissance and ancient Roman art history.)\n\nEdit: bonus: even though Christians weren't killed in the Colosseum, tons of slaves and criminals were. If someone was sentenced to die, they could instead opt to act out one of the Roman myths in the stadium. Sometimes these involved castrating themselves, fighting wild animals, or any number of other gruesome but potentially non lethal acts. ", "The [cadaver synod](_URL_0_) is kind of interesting because it's really weird and fascinating. Pope Formosus's body was exhumed, put into trial, hastily buried, exhumed again, tossed into a river, retrieved and buried, then ten years later again exhumed, put intor trial, tossed in a river, retrieved and buried for the third time. I think they all lost thier marbles somewhere.", "In the 8th century, Charlemagne (the original Holy Roman Emperor) and Harun al-Rashid (greatest of the Abbassid Caliphs) exchanged a series of letters. They were obviously sympathetic to each other, and insofar as it was possible, corresponded regularly. In one letter, Harun al-Rashid mentioned elephants, an animal with which Charlemagne was unfamiliar.\n\nWhen Harun al-Rashid learned this, he sent an elephant named Abul-Abbas to Charlemagne's court in Aachen, where he lived for eight years. \n\nFor me, it's fascinating on so many levels. The ease with which Roman Catholic and Muslim rulers could converse, the 8th century Bromance element, the idea that diplomacy used to be about gift-giving. Most of all, the elephant was delivered by land. So I imagine peasants in the Balkans, quietely cutting wood in a clearing, only to see a military guard march past with an elephant. \n\nOh, and to toss in a Vietnam reference - when The Communist Manifesto was first published in Vietnamese in 1923, they had to come up with a new word as Vietnamese lacked a translation for \"society\"", "Early in his *Histories* (A.D. 100) Tacitus, Roman senator and historian, mentions that at the time of his writing, \"...the Balkans were in turmoil.\" \n\nThis may seem underwhelming but ask yourself: when in any of our lifetimes, or our ancestors' lifetimes, have the Balkans *not* been in turmoil?", "Moldavia(very small country) Year 1475 battle of vaslui where stefan cel mare (stephen the great) with an army of 40.000 men(mostly peasants) defeted a ottoman army of 150.000.\n\nHe knew that didn't stand a chance in direct battle , so he burned all the crops , posioned all the wells except on the way to vaslui , then he had a bit of luck with a very foggy day when the ottoman army was crossing a river and send 500 men on the other side of the swamp to sound the trumpets so to fool the ottomans where the moldavian army was , they took the bait and sent the bulk of the army through the swamp , clogged not able to see anything with the moldavians attacking from all sides they routed but they were slaughtered .\n\nnext year sultan sends another army this time 200.000 men , the moldavians with a 20.000 army again mostly peasants this time looses the main battle(razboieni) but by poisoning the wells burning all the fields forces the enemy army to split up or starve , and then through guerilla tactics forces them to leave by winter time.\n\nStefan had the tartars to the east , polish to the north and hungarians to the west , and ofcourse ottomans to the south , he rulled from 1457-1504 won 48 major battles against all 4 nations , lost only 1 (razboieni) but as i mentioned above it wasn't a total loss.", "I don't enjoy telling people this, but I have to remind people constantly Marie-Antoinette neither said 'let them eat cake' nor drove France into debt." ] }

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[ "http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html" ]

[ [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_McLean" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen", "http://books.google.com/books?id=X2QCAa27Zy4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=declaration+of+independence+armitage&source=bl&ots=ZosQUYK3gt&sig=JejvvMVUURm5bfD5i3eDJD8YcC4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YZ5MULihKY3c8ASDoYHoDw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=jKX1TenIOH0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Sur+la+necessit%C3%A9+gregoire&source=bl&ots=3hG3zAtBfF&sig=7aqGkOkwSlxt3wRG-3mp4TMDbSg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1p5MUOGZLoWa9gS_sYHoCQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Sur%20la%20necessit%C3%A9%20gregoire&f=false" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html?pagewanted=all" ], [], [], [], [], [ "divisions.In" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War" ], [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPqxJpykW00", "http://www.dorothygoldeen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/julius-shulman-kaufman-house.jpg" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh" ], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yombh/which_minor_historical_mystery_to_which_you_would/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yuit6/if_you_could_teach_any_historical_periodevents/" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn#Last_break-out_attempt_by_28_troopers" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Goya_-_Caprichos_%2868%29.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ointment" ], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kar%C3%A1nsebes" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbcywst" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Not yet.\n\nWhen ice forms, it forms tiny crystals. These tiny crystals tend to pierce the cell walls of animal cells. As you can imagine, having all of your cell walls shredded is fatal.\n\nThere are a few exceptions. Some species of frog, by modulating the solute concentrations (amount of dissolved stuff, like sugar) in their bodies, can survive a freeze without seeming to undergo too much trauma. The way they're able to do this is that they prevent actual freezing in most of the vital tissues, because freezing points are lower where solute concentrations are higher." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e193zqs", "e19qtut" ], "score": [ 10, 3 ], "text": [ "Our detection methods don't work well for systems that look like our solar system. We don't know yet. What we know for sure: There are many systems that look completely different. Planets much closer to the star, much more distant, inner gas planets and outer rocky planets, planets in double star systems, planets as hot as some stars, ...\n\n* Transits and related methods are more likely for planets near the star. We found many systems with planets very close to the star - often closer than Mercury.\n* Radial velocity measurements work better for heavy planets close to the star. We found many systems with that. Imagine Jupiter, but closer to the Sun than Mercury.\n* Direct imaging works best for very large planets with a very large separation to the parent star, much larger than the planets in our system.\n* Microlensing and other approaches don't find enough for good statistical analyses.", "Stars with rings:\n\nThe Sun does have a number of \"rings\", such as the asteroid belt, but of course this belt is *extremely* empty - you are unlikely to see any large object whilst passing through. It is necessary for any ring in orbit around a body to be low density, since any ring which had a high density of matter will slowly coalesce into a planet given time. Ring systems can be found around young stars that are still forming their planets, or *possibly* in systems that recently experienced some sort of major event, such as a collision between two planets. Not a star but with regards to rings: the rings of Saturn are something of a curiosity- they shouldn't be stable over long periods. One theory suggested that Saturn's rings were formed relatively recently due to the breakup of a moon.\n\nStars as planets:\n\nThis sounds like a [binary star,](_URL_1_) a system with two stars orbiting each other. Whenever you have multiple bodies in space, they will orbit around their mutual centre of mass. If one object is significantly larger than the other, the centre of mass of the two will be very close to the larger one, so the larger object will barely move, and the smaller object will circle it. Amazingly, about half of all star systems contain two *or more* stars- there is no real upper limit to how many stars can form together.\n\nSome of our most famous stars are actually systems: [Sirius](_URL_4_), our brightest star, is one example of a binary system with a large star (Sirius A) being circled by a much smaller one (Sirius B). [Alpha Centurai,](_URL_7_) our closest neighbour is a three-star system. There are huge systems like [Castor,](_URL_5_) -6 stars- which [is arranged](_URL_0_) so that there is a pair of stars, orbiting another pair, the four of which are being orbited by a third pair. The possible joint record holders are believed to be [AR Cassiopeiae](_URL_3_) and [Nu Scorpii](_URL_6_) with seven.\n\nSpecial orbits:\n\nWhat we have -elliptical orbits, with low eccentricity so that the orbits appear circular- is a very stable configuration. It's possible to contrive strange orbits like [this figure 8 orbit](_URL_2_), but these are unlikely to exist naturally: they require very precise starting conditions to form, and minor perturbations are prone to causing the orbits to fall apart. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=10884", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihlh4q9qss0", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR_Cassiopeiae", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_(star\\)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_Scorpii", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5dthui", "c5dtqc9", "c5dv25q" ], "score": [ 4, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Well, you have this thing called watersheds. Watersheds are basically an area of land in which we can safely predict that a healthy amount of the water available in this land will flow into a specific body of water, like lakes or rivers. So although you don't see rainfall specifically landing in the river, it will make its way there eventually as long as it lands within the watershed. Mind you, watersheds tend to be huuuuuuge, hundreds of square miles. The Mississippi's watershed, for example, runs from Idaho to Pennsylvania and from Canada to New Orleans.\n\nAlso, we can't forget about groundwater, which is about 20% of the world's freshwater. So there's fully 1/5th of our freshwater that's never visible to us - thus, the idea that it's all spring water isn't as crazy as it sounds.\n\nAnother large source of water is ice, snow, and glaciers. Remember, glaciers are so huge that they literally flattened the northern half of North America. Glaciers are so incomprehensibly big that it may be hard to imagine just how much of our water supply comes from their slow melting. ", " > it can't rain that much for the continual flow...\n\nYes, it can. And it does.\n\nThink back to a forecast that predicts rain. Maybe for a particularly rainy day you'll hear that they predict an inch of rain.\n\nFor *every single square mile* that gets an inch of rain, that's 17.38 **million** gallons of water falling from the sky.", "Well, Kiadawg, think about all the area of all the oceans in the world slowly evaporating in to the air as they are warmed by the sun and whipped up by the wind. There is always a fair amount of the water in the world held in the air as moisture, or you might have heard it called humidity. There is normally enough moisture in all the air on the planet that if it suddenly all condensed out, it would cover the planet in a layer 1 or two inches deep, although it's not really evenly spread out like that of course. The amount of water the air can carry depends on the temperature of the air, warmer air can hold more.\n\nNow as the air moves away from the seas over the land, it first gets warmed more so the moist air rises, and also keeps picking up more water from all the trees and plants that are continually sucking water up from the ground and then breathing it out from their leaves, (have a look at some images from the rain forests, lots of moisture formed there) then once the moist air reaches a height where it's cooler it starts to form clouds as the water starts to condense out as tiny vapour particles. \n\nEventually the layer of moist air is blown past areas of high land, mountains etc and at this point, because more of the moist air is pushed up higher into colder parts of the atmosphere, the air just can't hold as much water and it condenses out as rain. Of course the temperature and pressure of the air varies a lot all over the land, so you get water condensing out all over the place sometimes too.\n\nAs the water falls all over the land it tends to filter down slowly over several weeks towards the lowest points, back towards the sea. Areas of hundreds or thousands of square miles have lots of little streams forming, which gradually all add together and make bigger flows of water, the rivers. \n\nOver time, this cycle of evaporation, condensation and then flow of water forms channels cut in to the land at the points where most of the water ends up flowing because of the shape of the land. So you can see that there must be enough water in rain to fill the rivers, because that's what formed them. Don't forget, some of the water that falls as rain takes a long time to filter through the ground to the rivers, and at different times of the year some gets stored as Ice in colder parts of the world or up mountains, which then slowly thaws over the summer adding to the flow. There are areas of the world where the rivers only flow in certain seasons, for instance, drying up for part of the year, and starting again in huge floods every year.\n\nIn my country, Britain, it has pretty much RAINED NON STOP FOR THE LAST THREE DAMN MONTHS!, I'm sorry Kiadawg, I'm calm again now, come back, no shouting, no bad words.... the rivers can't really cope with the flow of water back to the sea any more, when that happens the rivers burst their banks and large areas flood, and everyone sits indoors bored and cheesed off waiting for a chance to have a barbeque or go to the beach, wringing their socks out and slowly growing mildew and staring at the calendar, wondering whether to start building an ark. \n\nSo yes, there is easily enough water to keep the rivers flowing." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci0afr9", "ci0ajxp" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "This is one of those stupid things I think about every time I drive past one of those signs, and never think to research when I'm home. Next stop, Google. ", "There are lines painted on the side of the road. The planes will see your car cross a line and time how long until you cross the next one. They divide the distance traveled by the time it took and get your average speed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cy255mw", "cy2cx4z", "cy2dq5m", "cy2etxk", "cy2floy" ], "score": [ 28, 3, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The whole subject is a bit too complicated and a bit too deep for a short ELI5, but I'll give a stab at the gist of it.\n\nThe reason why computers work (at least in the vein of your question) is very similar to the reason why we have language -- written, spoken, etc. \n\nWhat you're reading right at this very moment is a complex system (language) simplified to symbols on the screen. The very fact that you can read these words and attain meaning from them means that each sentence, each word, and each letter represent a sort of code that you can understand. \n\nIf we take an apple for example, there are many other ways to say that in different languages. Manzana. Pomme. Apfel. And so on. Codes -- some symbol maps to some concept.\n\nIn the context of computers, well, they can only \"understand\" binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Well, that's okay, because we can map those ones and zeros to codes that we (humans) care about. Like 101010111 could represent \"apple\" if we wanted it to. \n\nSo we build these physical circuits that either have power or don't (on and off) and we can abstract that to 1's (power flowing through that circuit) and 0's (no power flowing through it). This way, we can build physical chips that give us basic building blocks (basic instructions it can do) that we can leverage in order to ultimately make programs, display stuff, play sounds, etc. And the way we communicate that to the computer is via the language it can understand, binary.\n\nIn other words, in a basic sense, we can pass the processor binary, and it should be able to interpret that as a command. The length of the binary, and what it should contain can vary from chip to chip. But lets say our basic chip can do basic math. We might pass it a binary number: 0001001000110100 but it might be able to slice it up as 0001 | 0010 | 0011 | 0100 -- so the first four, 0001, might map to an \"add\" command. The next four, 0010, might map to a memory location that holds a number. The third group of four might be the number to add it to. The last group might be where to put it. Using variables, it might look like: \n\nc = a + b. Where \"c\" is 0100, \"a\" is 0010, \"b\" is 0011, and the \"+\" (addition operator) is 0001.\n\nFrom there, those basic instructions, we can layer abstractions. If I tell you to take out the trash, that's a pretty basic statement. If I were to detail all the steps needed to do that, it would get a lot longer -- take the lid off the can, pull the bag up, tie the bag, go to the big garbage can, open the lid, put the trash in. Right? Well, if I tell you to take out the trash, it rolls up all those sub actions needed to do the task into one simple command.\n\nIn programming, it's not all that different. We layer abstractions to a point where we can call immense functionality with relatively little code. Some of that code might control the video signal being sent to the screen. Some of that code might control the logic behind an app or a game. All of the code though, is getting turned into 1's and 0's and processed by your cpu in order to make the computer do what is asked. \n\nIf you want to learn more, I highly recommend [Code by Charles Petzold](_URL_0_) for a much more in depth but still layman friendly explanation of all this.", "One thing to add to all that is said already above: 0s and 1s are not only used to encode *data* (0=No, 1=Yes, and you build up from there) but also to encode *instructions* (0=Turn off, 1=Turn on, and you build up from there).\n\nNothing much different than writing data and instructions in human languages in books, essentially (\"Yes\", \"No\", \"Turn on\", \"turn off\"). But two things changed our approach:\n\n+ industrial revolution: now we could have machine executing instructions, instead of human reading cooking recipes. Machines are (were?) dumb, so we needed to find a simpler language to interact with them, free of context, sarcasm, double meaning, etc.\n+ Shannon's information theory: we discovered that anything could be represented by the simplest act that tells you a story, the coin flip, aka the yes vs no, aka the 0 vs 1. If you wanted to tell a longer story (image, song, game) you just need more 0s and 1s. This was a huge thing! Before, no one would think that sound and image both contained information that could be expressed the same way!\n\nHope that helps!", "It's math. There are different ways of counting and we call these bases. What method is used depends a lot on who's doing the counting. \n\nFor instance human beings tend to work in base 10, which one has to wonder if it's a coincidence that we have 10 fingers and count in multiples of 10? Base 10 is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0\n\nBinary computers count in base 2 which is 0 1 \n\nYou also have base 8 or Octal which corresponds to the 8 bits in a byte and counts like 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Very useful for TCP4 networking. \n\nAnd the other main one is base 16 aka HEX. Hex is 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F. Hex is useful for storing things like ASCII text like the text you're reading in my post. \n\nYou can freely convert from one base to another and the binary numbers computers used do this most efficiently using octa and hex conversions since it's arranged logically into 8 bits to a byte, 16 bits to a word, etc. \n\nIn binary this is what they look like\nocta 11111111\nhex 11111111 11111111\n\nAnd decimal numbers (base 10) are usually not used directly, but are instead encoded in octets or hex. So counting to 10 in octet binary would look like \n\n00000000 0\n\n00000001 1\n\n00000010 2\n\n00000011 3\n\n00000100 4\n\n00000101 5 \n\n00000110 6 \n\n00000111 7\n\n00001000 8\n\n00001001 9\n\n00001010 10\n\nThe way binary works is by doubling the value of each digit, with a 1 enabling that number, and a 0 disabling it. \n\nSo an 8 bit binary number has 8 digits that are either 1's or 0's and they correspond to the following numbers\n\n128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 \n\n\nso if you want to write the number 128 it would be 10000000. The number 64 would be 01000000. The number 3 would be 00000011 because 2 + 1 = 3. The number 255 would be 11111111 because 128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1 equals 255. \n\nLearning about TCP4 networking introduces you to these conversions because although IP addresses look like normal numbers, 192.168.1.1 they are actually just 1' and 0's and because of the way computers and networks are encoded in an IP address, some network numbers are possible and others are impossible. For instance you can have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 but you can't have a subnet mask of 255.255.63.0 because of the way the base 10 numbers are converted into binary. So learning IP networking and subnet masks teaches you to count in base 10, base 2, and base 8. And if you learn TCP6 you also need to learn to count in base 16. \n\nFor example these are all the same number, but represented differently by each system. \n255\n11111111\nFF\n\n\n\n\nIn TCP4 networking, the subnet mask is created by stripping bits off of an octet and because all bits after a certain position are ignored, it limits the exact numbers of systems and networks you can have. For instance a /24 netmask would be 255.255.255.0 or 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 but lets say you wanted to do a /25 netmask. That would be 11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000 which would equal 255.255.255.128. /26 would be 11111111.11111111.11111111.11000000 or 255.255.255.192. You can't skip a digit in subnet masks so you couldn't have something like 10001000 so the netmasks descend in value like 0,128,192,224,240,248,252,254,255 or \n100000000 128\n\n11000000 192\n\n11100000 224\n\n11110000 240\n\n11111000 248\n\n11111100 252\n\n11111110 254\n\n11111111 255\n\n00000000 0", "imagine a grid, now in those boxes make some of them black and leave the others white. simple on/off it's either black or it's white. black out the right boxes and you got an image. it's a basic black and white image though, and has no shades of grey. so let's get more complex, well to do that we need a number...how can we make a number using only ons and offs? well we know that off can be 0 and on can be 1, well this is just a base 2 system.\n\nok, so what is a base 2 system? well you are probably familiar with a base 10 system, so there are digits 0-9 or 10 possible digits, so one spot in a number can represent anything from 0 to 9 and when you go higher to carry the 1 right? so 9+1 is 10 19+1 is 20 (the 9 rolls back to 0 the 1 gets carried and added to the other 1 to make 2) so base 2 is the same principal, you have the numbers 0-1 so 1+1=10 because the 1 goes back to 0 and you carry the 1, 11+1=100 because you carried the 1 which made the next one roll over and carry the one to the next slot.\n\nso since 1+1=10 we can know 10=2 in base 10. 10+1 is 11 which means 3 in base 10. and so on.\n\nso, now we have that, let's give it 255 shades of grey, this is a number with 8 slots each slot being on or off. so you get the number 00000000-11111111 \n\nso let's take that same grid, but now we will use a mixture of paint, black and white paint. for each 1 in the number add a drop of black paint, for each 0 add a drop of white paint. (this isn't exactly accurate since something that was 50% black in this system would be 00001111 but it should be 10000000) so mix those up based on those proportions and add them to the grid. now you have a nice greyscale. if you wanted colour instead, you can 3 of those 8 bit numbers, one for red, one for green, one for blue.\n\nthis is true for anything a computer does, what a number means depends on what it's talking to. so if i send 1110000 to that paint machine maybe it thinks i want 3 drops of black and 4 drops of white, if i send it to a robot maybe it thinks i want to send 112 pulses of voltage to a stepper motor, if i send it to a text editor maybe it thinks i want to print the character q (the 112'th character in the character map) the same number means different things to different systems. it could be a memory address, it could be a number, a letter, an instruction, it all comes down to the machine.", "The same way Morse code can communicate every word ever conceived and then some, despite being just a single light turning on or off. \n\nExcept computers can do it billions of times a second." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450355412&sr=8-1&keywords=code+petzold" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f30nq0x" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Villa's motives for the Columbus raid seem to have been various. He wanted to take revenge on the American arms dealer who had taken money for supplies and neither given him the arms or returned the money. He was increasingly angry at the way the US professed to be neutral in the Revolution, but actually aided Carranza. He also hoped to gain arms and supplies. He achieved none of these. Instead, instead of easily overcoming what he'd been told was a garrison of 50 US soldiers , he encountered one of 600. Instead of opening fire in a surprise attack on the barracks, Villa's troops opened fire on the stables. As a result of a vigorous defense and counter-attack, Villa lost men- especially officers- and was forced to retreat back to Mexico empty handed.\n\nThe Punitive Expedition was ordered by President Wilson after Villa's raid, intended to find Villa and his army. About 5,000 soldiers, it had the initial tacit cooperation of Carranza, who helped supply it by railroad. Despite the advantages of force and supplies, it was however trying to operate in Chihuahua, Villa's home: and so Villa knew the territory. Chihuahua was/is also the biggest state in Mexico, sparsely settled and with rough terrain, so capable of hiding armies. There was a great deal of local resentment to having a US army operating in Mexico, despite Pershing being under strict orders to treat civilians with great respect. Pershing soon discovered that no one would supply his army with information about Villa's whereabouts, and rightly suspected that the locals were also constantly supplying Villa with information about Pershing's. Villa also discovered that Carranza's troops were also often more sympathetic to his army than to the Americans, and would sometimes look the other way when his men were in an area. When Villa was wounded in the knee, he essentially dispersed his units and hid in a cave for two months. This also briefly created the impression that he was possibly dead, and the Expedition therefore successful.\n\nPershing had had some experience in fighting guerrillas in the Philippines and pretty quickly assessed the situation, saying that a much longer time would be needed, and more resources, if Villa was to be found. But as the Expedition continued, Carranza became himself more hostile to the US, more hostile to having the US Army on Mexican territory and less cooperative, and his troops began to show some real armed resistance to the US, for example blocking them at Parral. Things might have escalated further, but neither Wilson or Carranza wanted to enter into a war: Mexico was too divided and weak, and the US was anticipating being pulled into WWI in Europe for which it would need an entire army. After about a year of futility, Pershing was put back into a more defensive position along the border, and eventually all US forces left Mexican soil." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c981o1a" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I'm not going to answer your question directly, and I apologize since this will be a top level post, but I don't know that you will get any replies again. You're asking the people here to do your homework for you in a way. But I'll give you my thoughts as someone interested in the period.\n\n[*The New York City Draft Riots*](_URL_0_) by Iver Bernstein has been on my reading list for a while. [Here is a review of it](_URL_1_) on JSTOR if you have access. It covers the riots portrayed in *Gangs of New York* (at least the movie, I haven't read the book) and also discusses the religions and politics working in New York at the time. This would be where I would start off, partly because that's the most interesting part of the American Civil War to me, and partly because those riots were a pivotal part of the plot (again, of the movie), and something that is confirmed historical. It also covers the fundamental issues surrounding the riots.\n\nNow, keeping in mind, I haven't read either book. I read reviews of the Bernstein book but I haven't quite gotten to it on my list yet. But I looked for it and picked it up partly because of the movie, which I know is different than the book, so take that as you will. So that's where I would start." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/New-York-City-Draft-Riots/dp/0803234538", "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20092635?uid=3739728&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101844907093" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d55b1ec", "d55cvim", "d55hoje", "d55jaw1", "d55qyhc" ], "score": [ 4, 9, 7, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "If anyone can answer this, what's the case with the other major romance languages e.g. Spanish, Italian, etc? ", "Might be worth a cross post to /r/linguistics ?", "Hi! I hope this answer will help you out. The thing about medieval French is that it was more a language that was created from the way it sounded, rather than the French of today that is highly regulated and very planned out. So, medieval French when spoken aloud, even by a non-speaker, sounds exactly the way it should (like Spanish and German, which are phonetically spelled out when written down). If you're familiar with modern French, you'll know that it's almost impossible to speak the language just by reading the words, because of all the hidden pronunciations.\n\n\nI have included a portion of the Lai de Lanval by Marie de France, originally written in Anglo-Norman ca. 1170-1215. Anglo-Norman is one of the \"easier\" medieval French dialects to understand from a modern perspective, but I think that this passage, and its translation into modern French, is enough to illustrate how the two are close and comprehensible to one another, yet still very different.\n\n\n-ANGLO-NORMAN-\n\nEle jut sur un lit mut bel\n\nLi drap valeient un chastel\n\nEn sa chemise senglement.\n\nMut ot le cors bien fait e gent;\n\nUn cher mantel de blanc hermine,\n\nCovert de purpre alexandrine,\n\nOt pur le chaut sur li geté;\n\nTut ot descovert le costé,\n\nLe vis, le col e la peitrine;\n\nPlus ert blanche que flur d'espine.\n\n-MODERN FRENCH-\n\nElle étoit couchée sur un lit magnifique dont le plus beau château n'auroit pas seulement payé le prix des draperies. Sa robe qui étoit serrée, laissoit apercevoir l'élégance d'une taille faite au tour. Un superbe manteau doublé d'hermine et teint en pourpre d'Alexandrie , couvroit ses épaules. La chaleur l'avoit forcée de l'écarter un peu, et à travers cette ouverture qui lui mettoit le côté à découvert, l'œil apercevoit une peau plus blanche que la fleur d'épine.", "Just one thing to keep in mind: there were drastic changes to English throughout the Medieval period, partially under the influence of the Vikings and Normans. So, while English from the 11th century and before is effectively impossible to read without studying it as if it were a foreign language, Middle English, which existed in the later Middle Ages, can be read without too much more annotation than Shakespeare, and is certainly not \"incomprehensible.\" If you read Chaucer's writings (14th century), you'd find that they would, in general, be readable.", "As an aside, not all medieval English is as incomprehensible as you think. We read Chaucer and various other works in ~14th century Middle English in college, without any special training in the language. As long as you have a glossary or footnotes for the most arcane words, you can generally figure the rest out; it's not that much harder than reading Shakespeare or any other early modern English writer." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbzfryz" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Each of the nine Pirate Lords agreed to hold a piece of eight to be presented during a meeting of the Brethren Court, though the term came to apply to a variety of items and trinkets as the pirates found themselves short on money, simply keeping the original term as it sounded more 'piratey'. Each piece of eight reflected something about the lord who possessed the piece, and altogether, the nine pieces were used to bind the sea goddess Calypso to a human form, after Davy Jones informed the Brethren on how to capture her.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Piece_of_eight_(item)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4xheql", "c4xlodo", "c4xoyd7", "c4xpy8i" ], "score": [ 11, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "As I recall, the theory was to use balloons of some sort to keep one aloft amongst the clouds. The big problem was corrosion, something that I have yet to read a solution for. I'm actually curious about what one would do for food, colonial expansion, the initial costs to doing this, and harvesting resources from Venus so as not to rely on sending supplies from Earth.\n\nI would put the colonization of Venus as possible, but not probable.", "What are the exploitable resources on Venus that would make colonization worth the cost?", "I remember back in undergrad astronomy, we had a mechanical engineer in one of our upper div. classes. She was a professional engineer who had worked for 20+ years at NASA. She was a very nice lady, but was singularly obsessed with colonization of Mars/Venus. Any time a new concept was introduced, she'd want to know the possible ramifications for colonization. \n\nFinally, one of our professors - one of the leading researchers on Mars (specifically Martian volcanology/geomorphology) - asked her what her fixation was about. She admitted that she was a very concerned environmentalist, and that she considered starting anew on Mars/Venus to be humanity's only real option for survival. \n\nIt quickly developed that she thought that the whole study of astronomy was in effect the study of applied interplanetary colonization. She was shocked when the professor, and later the rest of the faculty, affirmed that astronomy was no such thing. And that, in fact, virtually no astronomers consider Mars/Venus colonization to be practical in even the long-term.\n\nThe simple truth of the matter is that with the technology and money it would take to terraform and travel to and otherwise colonize Mars or Venus, it would be much much simpler to apply that technology on Earth. Or, in the mists of some distant science-fiction future, on some distant extrasolar planet.", "Hmm... Moderately-silly yet honest related question, how viable are Jetsons-style towers?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5st2ae" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Atmospheric fluctuations are not truly random, they're just extremely chaotic and unpredictable.\n\nRadioactivity is different. As far as we can tell, it really is random when a radioactive particle will decay." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f9bm0vv", "f9brfwy", "f9bu4z6", "f9c6vgq", "f9cqcc8", "f9dv1h7" ], "score": [ 8, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "When an article gets submitted they have a lot of people look at it and similar data in order to publish it. It generally takes months. And a lot of research is funded either at a government or private level.", "The articles are submitted to journals or conferences for publication. They are then 'peer reviewed'.\n\nThe peer review process is largely a check on relevance and basic sanity. The reviewers want to ensure the work is meaningful and not simply a rehash of previous work (although the standards for this these days are incredibly low). They also want to ensure the author is using plausible methods within the field.\n\nIn terms of data faking, we don't know. We simply trust that the researcher was honest. Unless the work is very significant or has real-world consequences, no one is likely to replicate it. However, almost any work with far-reaching consequences *will* be replicated and they'll discover that the conclusions are inaccurate.\n\nWhen you look at people who have been caught in academic fraud, it's almost always because they've established a pattern over years of publishing too-good-to-be-true work that someone finally figures out *isn't* true.\n\nIn terms of getting revenue from their research work, researchers normally don't. Your published works are a way of building your CV. Your CV is what gets you hired in academia and certain industry jobs. If you don't publish anything, you're unlikely to be considered for these jobs.\n\nResearchers do earn money from patents, but you don't need to publish to secure a patent - and, in many cases, it would be prudent to not publish your results if you're planning to monetize them in this fashion.", "There’s a board, the IRB, that you have to submit your hypothesis and plan to before you even start. You have to get approval from the board on your tactics for gaining data, make sure it’s ethical, fair, and unbiased. And you have to have a *ton of supporting information. If you don’t get approval you can’t submit your research. You can’t just bring a document to them and ask for it to be published. Depending on the type of research, sometimes you can get government funding. Some companies have their own research labs and will pay people to carry out experiments. For example I know hospitals always do “Evidence-based practice”. Where research teams look at certain practices and research the efficacy of it, instead of just saying “well we’ve always done it like this”. \n\nMost people in Research don’t have any motivation to fake or sway results, they’re after the truth. That being said, I’m sure if you really wanted to you could. There are some ways to prevent that, in Blind, Double Blind, and unbiased research (where the researcher isn’t tied to the company or another entity in any way).", "Let's start with the last question.\n\nGenerally some Master's (in some countries) and all PhD students in scientific fields get paid either with a grant they got or a grant they were offered from a prof. Where does the grant come from? Either the students or the prof or the group submit a project proposal to some authority or government body or some funding agency, they explain the problem in the field, how they intend to fix it, and how this would impact the world. If the agency is convinced, they give them the money: it's usually from tax payers money, by can also be from pharma companies or charities or whatever (conflict of interest might arise). The money then covers everything from consumables to instruments to wages of people you hire for the project and salary or stipend of the main student. Post doctoral fellows are similar, but they get paid typically from their own grant (they bring their own project when they join the lab, and they already have an approved funding, they just need a lab to work), but post docs can also join a lab that already has a grant (usually super rich labs in top universities). Professors get money from the university itself and they also typically have side jobs as some consultant or the CEO of a spin off/start up bio tech company and so on.\n\nSo publishing per se doesn't pay you (in fact you often end up paying for it). But publishing good science shows your employers that you're good and productive, which makes them hire you and pay you (also for grant agencies to give you money).\n\nLet's get to the first questions. How's quality controlled? Well.. It goes like this: you write up a paper, with figures and tables showing the data. You don't show everything, that would be way too long, you skip out on the controls and validation experiments and pick out representative stuff and so on. Now when the paper is received it depends on the journal, but usually it goes through a preliminary assessment where they decide is this at all fit to be in the journal in terms of field? Is the quality standard at least in the ball park of our journal? Are the authors sketchy or from some weird place you never even heard of? Etc.\n\nOnce this step is done. Then there is I think the editor choosing whether he recommends this for publishing in the journal. This is just based on quality, significance, reputation, vision, etc. If yes, then a group of experts who are usually professors are chosen from around the world who are good at the field of that paper and pretty up to date. Sometimes the profs are the go to profs for the journal, sometimes they're new and so on. Then these professors read the manuscript and criticize the living shit out of it. They look at the quality of the data, the validity of the data, the credibility of the methods, the sensibility of the whole approach, the interpretation of the results, does this fall in line with previous literature? Is it completely conflicting with everything we know? If so, is there a possible reason or just straight out bs? Are the controls properly done? And so on. They really scrutinize the paper and dig it to the bone.\n\nThen it's a dynamic process. After the first review round, the profs sent their recommendation and opinion to the editor. The editor, based on the. Comments, decides hmm.. Okay this is worth it. So he sends the author that they have preliminary acceptance if they respond to the comments. The comments can be questions for clarification, asking for the controls that aren't shown, asking for more experiments to make sure the observed effect is real and reproducible, ask for the actual raw untouched data (this is usually done to studies showing revolutionary data, they want to make sure it's not made up, and trust me some papers before have been found to be fake this way, they can even analyze the noise in the system to see if it's random or there's a pattern). They can also ask for changes to text, writing style, etc... Etc. Then it's a cycle.. Back and forth between the authors and the reviewers, until the reviewers are satisfied and say okay. We're good. Then it gets published in the next available issue.\n\nOf course.. This is high end journal stuff. Like nature, science, cell, etc and also stuff like PNAS, endocrinology, etc. But crappy journals from some random country with an impact factor of 0.2 are usually extremely careless and don't give two shits if your data is true.\n\nOnce a paper gets published in a good journal, that doesn't mean it's fact. Some fake data still makes its way through. And if it's bad enough it usually gets retracted later. Like that Wakefield crap. But sometimes the model used in the paper or the protocol followed or something is actually suboptimal and renders inaccurate data or something specific to their set up but cannot be reproduced. This is usually found by later papers. I mean all science builds on itself. Most of what you do in a paper depends on protocols by other papers. And you use the protocol of another paper and it doesn't give you their result because you have a different model, and then others find themselves in the same shoes, well eventually that paper loses its value and gets cited very little. Science is all about reproducibility. Even if you succeed in scamming a journal, it's impossible to scam the scientific community and they find out in a few years (very easy to scam the public though.. Too damn easy).", "**How do scientific research articles get published?** \n\nA given journal has a panel of scientists that perform a peer review on submitted papers. An established scientist in a relevant field reads of the paper looking for flaws and trying to establish whether it is interesting enough to be published.\n\n**How do we know their results aren't faked?** \n\nIf a paper presents interesting and novel results, two things will happen. First, the paper will be scrutinized for errors and anomalies, faking data in a way that will pass deep statistical analysis is actually quite difficult. Next, if there are no obvious flaws, other scientists will try to replicate the experiment to get the same results. That will quickly expose any shenanigans, many a career has been ruined by simply overstating results, much less faking them.\n\n**What exactly are scientific journals?**\n\nA journal will typically be associated with a scientific organization, like a university or a professional group, although some are independent. They invite scientists in their field to submit papers, provide peer reviewers to ensure quality, and publish results they consider interesting. The more prestigious the journal, the higher the quality of the submissions, the more accomplished the peer reviewers, and the higher the cost. Some run thousands of dollars per year.\n\n**How do researchers get revenue from publishing their research work?** \n\nThey don't, not directly. Publishing does three things for the researcher, it ensures they get credit for the discovery, it improves their reputation (and job prospects) within the field, and it justifies their existence to their employers, particularly those in academia.", "Generally they're published in journals with a peer-review process. Typically when you submit an article to a journal they'll give it a look over to make sure it fits the scope of the journal and if it does they'll send it out to some other academic in the field to check the methodology, literature review, analysis, writing etc.. The reviewers don't get paid, it's part of the 'service' obligation that's part of most academic jobs. There's always the risk a reviewer will do a half-arsed job, but there will be at least one other reviewer, so if you do that there's a good chance you'll get found out and do damage to your reputation.\n\nThe reviewers usually don't check that the data is real because they don't have access to the necessary information. It's up to universities/research institutions to ensure academic integrity in relation to the falsification of data. At that level there *are* people who can check up and usually there's more than one person involved in the research project. Anyone caught falsifying data's reputation will be ruined, they'll certainly be fired and probably be unable to find work in the field again. Sometimes it happens, but generally there is very little motivation to falsify data and doing so involves taking a career-ending risk." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1vy0cr" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "\"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea\"\n\n20,000 Leagues = 111,120 km\n\nDiameter of the Earth = 12,769 km" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dckk194", "dclpu0q" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Hi, long-time lurker. But I think I can actually contribute a bit to this!\n\n___________________________________________________________________\n\n**Banned Beards**\n\nI actually don't know too much about the Jehovah's Witnesses, so I won't try and touch on their beliefs and practices.\n\nMormons (LDS), however, I do know a bit about. For the LDS Church and its members, **a lack of facial hair is more cultural than spiritual**; there's no commandments or doctrine that insist men be clean-shaven. The early Presidents of the LDS Church, from [Brigham Young](_URL_4_) to [George Albert Smith](_URL_10_) (#2 through #8), had varying degrees of facial hair, and many of the other leaders of the LDS Church ([early Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency](_URL_7_)) sported what look like quite stylish beards for the time.\n\nInstances within the LDS Church where facial hair *is* banned do exist. The two that come to mind are (1) young men serving as full-time missionaries and (2) students at Brigham Young University (BYU). From the official *Missionary Handbook*:\n\n > Keep your hair relatively short (not clipped too close) and evenly tapered. Extreme or faddish styles— including spiked, permed, or bleached hair or a shaved head—are not appropriate. Sideburns should reach no lower than the middle of the ear. (See the pictures of a missionary haircut included with your call packet.) **Elders should shave each day.**\n\n > ([Missionary Handbook: Missionary Conduct](https://_URL_5_/manual/missionary-handbook/missionary-conduct?lang=eng), emphasis added)\n\nBYU's Honor Code contains a similar requirement that [\"men are expected to be clean-shaven; beards are not acceptable.\"](_URL_0_) According to the Salt Lake Tribune, BYU President Ernest Wilkinson banned beards in 1969. (Salt Lake Tribune, [The History of BYU's Honor Code,\"](_URL_1_) 29. Oct. 2016.)\n\nBoth bans are addressed by Dallin H. Oaks, who was President of BYU at the time (he now serves as a member of the LDS Church's highest governing body).\n\n > \"Our rules against beards and long hair have the same purpose as the requirements our Church makes of its missionaries. In this university, which is largely supported by the tithes of faithful members and which stands as a beacon of Latter-day Saint values, we wish to avoid an appearance that has become associated with rebellion and rejection of values we hold dear. A recent book by Jerry Rubin, the clown prince of the hippy movement, gives this vivid characterization of the meaning of long hair:\n\n > > \"'Long hair is communication. Young kids identify short hair with authority, discipline , , ,—and long hair with letting go, letting your hair down, being free, being open. Wherever we go, our hair tells people where we stand on Vietnam, Wallace, campus disruption, dope. We’re living TV commercials for the revolution.\n\n > > \"'Long hair is the beginning of our liberation from the sexual oppression that underlies this whole military society.'\" [Jerry Rubin, Do It, pp. 93, 95–96]\n\n > (Dallin H. Oaks, \"Be Honest in All Behavior,\" 30. Jan. 1973, [_URL_12_](_URL_9_).)\n\nSimilarly, in a 1971 issue of the LDS Church's publication for its teenage members, the *New Era*, Oaks was again cited as saying:\n\n > The rule against beards and long hair for men stands on a different footing. [. . .] Unlike modesty, which is an eternal value in the sense of rightness or wrongness in the eyes of God, **our rules against beards and long hair are contemporary and pragmatic. They are responsive to conditions and attitudes in our own society at this particular point in time.** \n\n > There is nothing inherently wrong about long hair or beards, any more than there is anything inherently wrong with possessing an empty liquor bottle. But a person with a beard or an empty liquor bottle is susceptible of being misunderstood. Either of these articles may reduce a person’s effectiveness and promote misunderstanding because of what people may reasonably conclude when they view them in proximity to what these articles stand for in our society today.\n\n > **In the minds of most people at this time, the beard and long hair are associated with protest, revolution, and rebellion against authority. They are also symbols of the hippie and drug culture.** Persons who wear beards or long hair, whether they desire it or not, may identify themselves with or emulate and honor the drug culture or the extreme practices of those who have made slovenly appearance a badge of protest and dissent. In addition, unkemptness—which is often (though not always) associated with beards and long hair—is a mark of indifference toward the best in life. \n\n > (Dallin H. Oaks, \"Standards of Dress and Grooming,\" Dec. 1971 *New Era*, [_URL_5_](https://_URL_5_/new-era/1971/12/standards-of-dress-and-grooming?lang=eng), emphasis added.)\n\nThe prohibitions of the LDS Church on facial hair are a product of its members' desire to be [\"in the world, but not of the world\"](_URL_6_); a push by their leaders to separate themselves from \"worldly things\" but remain [\"the light of the world.\"](_URL_2_) And in the late 1960s and 1970s, when counterculture in America was marked a preponderance of beards and facial hair in general, the leaders of the LDS Church wanted their young adult followers to keep a safe distance from counterculture movements that espoused beliefs or practiced activities that did violate LDS commandments, such as drug use or sexual promiscuity. And even though society has moved beyond that, with facial hair rapidly becoming mainstream over the past several years, the unofficial stance of the LDS Church has not drastically changed. (It is worth noting that several publications maintained by the LDS Church have moved towards a more lenient stance, such as the LDS Employment Services' recommendation for [\"Dressing for Success\"](_URL_3_) suggest that job-seekers \"follow appropriate business culture for facial hair.\")\n\n**TL;DR:** Mormons don't have facial hair because of the association it had in the 1960s/1970s with practices they forbid, such as drug use.", "I can't say anything about Jehovah's Witnesses or LDS and their facial hair. I can say that all Abrahamic religions, which would include Jews, Christians, Muslims, and (more to the point of your question) Rastafari, have inherited a ban on cutting the beard from the Torah. \n\nHere, it's stated in [Leviticus 19:27](_URL_2_), two translations: \n\nESV - *You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.*\n\nDouay-Rheims (older, Catholic) - *Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise: nor shave your beard.*\n\nLeviticus 19 in general spells out other rules of purity and decency, like not creating hybrid animals, not wearing clothing made from blended fabrics, not turning your daughter into a prostitute, so this might be a thing that was seen along those lines - beard-trimming apparently has something in common with dishonesty or following false idols (things also banned in that chapter).\n\nThere are other statements of this prohibition elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (which is the book that makes Abrahamic religions *Abrahamic*), particularly in the context of mourning traditions - the next verse in Leviticus bans cutting the body in memory of the dead (which I *believe* is where the Jehovah's Witness ban on blood transfusions and tattoos comes from - the idea of penetrating the body with metal - but I couldn't quote anything authoritative on that). \n\nLeviticus 25 further bans the priesthood from [trimming beards](_URL_6_) , which in context appears to be a sign of \"profaning\" oneself. \n\nOutside the Torah, the idea of cutting beards comes up a few times, generally as a kind of debasement or misery, and as a \"foreign\" thing... something the neighboring tribes or nations did, that the People of the Covenant weren't supposed to do.\n\nIn [Jeremiah 41:5](_URL_0_) we've got some unhappy foreigners gashing their bodies and trimming their beards after the (Babylonian-appointed) governor of Israel was assassinated... and a couple of chapters later, we've got the Lord saying he's fixing to destroy \"[those who cut the corners of their hair](_URL_4_)\", meaning the people of Kedar and Hazor, \"men of the East\" who were defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King. (This is usually interpreted as the hair on the temples - maybe sideburns. The *peot* ringlets you might see on Chasidim are specific to these \"corners\" - Hebrew for \"corner\" being *peah*.)\n\nIsaiah has more [mourning foreigners](_URL_5_), and Second Samuel has [some Israelite envoys being abused by shaving](_URL_3_). They're told by King David to stay away, in fact, until their beards grow back. How humiliating!\n\n[Ezekiel](_URL_1_) and [Isaiah](_URL_7_) also have references to beard-shaving as an almost apocalyptic thing - something that happens when God's judgement is rendered on Israel. An embarrassment and a calamity, in other words. \n\nFrom the way it's written about in the Tanakh, I'd assume there are traces of other Ancient Near Eastern traditions about beards and shaving, but it'll have to be up to /u/yodatsracist or /u/captainhaddock or some other, wiser, head to fill in those spaces. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://policy.byu.edu/view/index.php?p=26", "http://www.sltrib.com/news/3854493-155/the-history-of-byus-honor-code", "https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A14-16&version=KJV", "https://www.ldsjobs.org/ers/ct/articles/dressing-for-success?lang=eng", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Brigham_Young_by_Charles_William_Carter.jpg", "www.lds.org", "https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15%3A19&version=KJV", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/First_Presidency_and_Twelve_Apostles_1898.jpg/1137px-First_Presidency_and_Twelve_Apostles_1898.jpg", "https://www.lds.org/manual/missionary-handbook/missionary-conduct?lang=eng", "https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dallin-h-oaks_honest-behavior/", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/George_Albert_Smith.jpg", "https://www.lds.org/new-era/1971/12/standards-of-dress-and-grooming?lang=eng", "speeches.byu.edu" ], [ "http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/41-5.htm", "http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/5-1.htm", "http://biblehub.com/leviticus/19-27.htm", "http://biblehub.com/2_samuel/10-4.htm", "http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/49-32.htm", "http://biblehub.com/isaiah/15-2.htm", "http://biblehub.com/leviticus/21-5.htm", "http://biblehub.com/isaiah/7-20.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjpv35r" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Also, was/is there any movement to have the UK switch to driving on the right side of the road? I know that some countries have made a switch, so the UK possibly could too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d3tm2df" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It was illegal to leave the GDR without a special permit, which also stated how and when you had to return. If you failed to do so, you risked criminal prosecution according to § 213 StGB-DDR, up to 5 years in prison (extended to 8 years in 1977). This includes attempts to flee, thus she could face anything from a fine to 8 years in prison for being accomplice in an attempt to flee.\n\nIf the authorities assumed that she organized (or helped to organize) her husbands escape, she could also be persecuted according to § 105 StGB-DDR, in which case she could face between 2 and 15 years in prison (later extended to lifelong prison).\n\nSources:\n § 105. Staatsfeindlicher Menschenhandel\n § 213. Ungesetzlicher Grenzübertritt\n Strafgesetzbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (StGB) vom 12. Januar 1968 in der Fassung vom 7. April 1977.\n\nThese are only the direct criminal persecutions though. If she had known about the attempt, even if she were only likely fined, she would have risked to be deprived of her (future) children's custody or be forced to give their children up for adoption.\n\nSource:\n Marie-Luise Warnecke: Zwangsadoptionen in der DDR, Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2009\n\nFurthermore, she and potential children (or other close relatives) risked occupational bans. In that case, she would only be allowed to work in specifically permitted jobs, which carried the risk of being prosecuted according to § 249 StGB-DDR, which could be punished with up to 5 years in prison.\n\nAccess to higher education for her and her close family could also be limited or completely denied. \n\nSource:\n Danuta Kneipp: Berufsverbote in der DDR? Zur Praxis politisch motivierter beruflicher Ausgrenzung in Ost-Berlin in den 70er und 80er Jahren. in: Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien Nr. 36-37/2006, Seite 32 ff\n § 249. Gefährdung der öffentlichen Ordnung durch asoziales Verhalten.\n Strafgesetzbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (StGB) vom 12. Januar 1968 in der Fassung vom 7. April 1977." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnuzom7" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or 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 or /r/askhistory." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "evs3ekr", "evs5dbl", "evseok6" ], "score": [ 55, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "There's a thought experiment, called a [Dyson Sphere](_URL_0_) (after physicist Freeman Dyson who popularized the thought experiment), that does this.\n\nThe engineering required to achieve this is far beyond our current capabilities, making it a highly theoretical concept.", "Well not close it off completely, but we could possibly in the future have solar panels that orbit the sun like satellites do on earth, but just bigger ofc.\n\nSaw it on some YouTube video who did the math, you would just have to need way more material than we could ever dream of getting, to surround the whole sun. I'm talking planet crushing machines, and you would probably need multiple planets.", "That is what is called a Dyson sphere. You would need to dismantle a whole bunch of planets to get enough material for one. It will have to be massive or anything inside it would fry. \n\nThat being said, if you are asking as a way to maximize solar power generation, then you don’t need to surround the sun at all, all you need is to put your solar panel outside the atmosphere where they would get a whole lot more energy. The problem is that it is difficult to move the energy back" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dqksl70" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "One possible thread to investigate is the relationship between Washington and contemporaries like John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young. There are some interesting primary sources that speak to the time the two men were in the same place at the same time and how those interactions lead to changes across the system." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxbcsuz", "cxbk9h6" ], "score": [ 7, 6 ], "text": [ "Based on values obtained from the Wikipedia for Moonlight and Sunlight, the light of the sun can vary between 120,000 lux and 400-200 lux depending on atmospheric conditions. The average lux value of moonlight is around 0.1. With that in mind while it may be theoretically possible to utilise moonlight to produce vitamin D it's unlikely to reach anywhere the 'therapeutic' dose that the body requires. ", "No. Vitamin D production requires UVB radiation, not simply \"light\". In addition to moonlight being much less intense than sunlight, the moon doesn't reflect UV radiation as well as it does visible light. [Source](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Moon....9..295C" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr3iq8h" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "An acidic environment will denature proteins - like heat does. That's the reason you begin to see white in chicken like if it's cooked. It's the principle behind [ceviche](_URL_0_)." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cpr9mt8", "cpr9plh", "cpr9yhb", "cprb3au" ], "score": [ 6, 2, 18, 9 ], "text": [ " > Aid workers that have been killed. \n\nProbably because they're dead, I suppose. ", "per the former gitmo commander, those 5 were scheduled to be released at the end of 2014 anyway due to no prosecutable evidence.", "The government has a responsibility to recover American soldiers. The government does not have an equivalent responsibility to secure the release of people who voluntarily entered a combat zone.", "The American government needs soldiers to fight. Having policies to ensure that the we will recover those soldiers if they are captured encourages others to sign up. In this case they had a particular desire to have him back because he was a desertion case and prosecuting him sets an example for other soldiers who might desert. But even without his circumstances the government goes to great lengths to recover captured American soldiers because its the best policy to ensure we get future soldiers.\n\nThe American government doesn't employ aid workers, or at least the ones you are discussing. They have no obligation to them beyond that of a normal citizen. The government has no incentive to recruit more. In fact in almost all cases the government dissuades American citizens from going into the areas where they could be captured exactly so they don't have to deal with problems like this. Putting American citizens in a situation where they could be captured is bad policy. It encourages that capture and can be used as a weapon against America. The government doesn't want to encourage that and one of the ways to do so is to say it will not make attempts to recover them. Its the same with paying ransoms, paying ransoms just encourages the kidnappers to kidnap more. \n\nIn the case of the soldiers (or other government employees) they don't have a choice about being there and since the government sent them into harms way it has an obligation to recover them. In the case of private citizens who chose to go into harms way despite being told not to go it has a much lesser obligation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgep0uv" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The asteroid loses kinetic energy and gains potential energy. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8ymx0h", "c8yob2x", "c8z5rly" ], "score": [ 5, 11, 4 ], "text": [ "It's an open and shut case, really. The only angles of interest were (a) the rapists were high profile sports players, indicating they had some community support behind them, and (b) the large degree of social networking used by the rapists and the other students. ", "This ~~[Blog](_URL_1_)~~ gives a pretty good run down of all the controversy. \n\n*Edit for summary:\nAlthough two students were convicted, evidence was uncovered that there were many more people involved in the rape and subsequent cover up. From other students who tweeted jokes about the girl while she was being dragged from party to party; to coaches, teachers, and law enforcement turning a blind eye or even encouraging the victim to keep quiet. Apparently this isn't an isolated incident for Stubenville, in light of all the news coverage other victims have come forward.\nThere's also coaches giving drugs to students, student party apartments, and underground gambling on high school sports. \n\nAlso, here is the link to the original [Local Leaks](_URL_0_) site, it has a bit more videos, info, and references.", "What nobody else touched on yet was the controversy with CNN\n\nWhen CNN ran the story, they focused entirely on how the future of these \"young, promising football players was tragically ruined by this event\". Many people were angry at CNN because they reported it as more of a tragedy for the rapists and barely mentioned the girl who got raped.\n\n \"It was incredibly emotional—incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart.\" - Poppy Harlow, CNN reporter. Many felt she was sympathizing with them, rather than, you know, berating them for raping and filming a sixteen year old girl." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://localleaks.me/localleaks/steubenvillefiles/index.html", "http://www.myblogdammit.net/?p=8683" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eokcjar" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There are going to be three main reasons for this. First, the half-life of the drug is the time for half the material to break down, meaning there is rare chances for some of the material to last longer than usual. It's an estimate, not a guarantee.\n\nSecond, and more important, is the fact that drugs like Alprazolam break down into secondary products, 4-hydroxyalprazolam and α-hydroxyalprazolam, which themselves can be broken down into other metabolites, before being excreted in the urine.\n\nLike most drugs, the compounds can be deposited into fats or other tissue, leading to a lingering timeline of release, especially when taken over a long period of time.\n\nFor example, if you take 1 dose a day, and 1/4 remains in your body after 1 day, then on Day 2 you would have 1.25 dose-equivalents in your body. On Day 3, it would be 1.31, to a limit of 1.333 dose-equivalents in the blood, plus whatever is stored in your tissues.\n\nThe third main reason is going to be drug-interaction. Using a CYP3A4 inhibitor, like Tagamet (cimetidine) can delay the intake of Alprazolam into the liver, which would delay the breakdown of the drug, which would allow it to stay in the body longer." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "catwb5h", "catwbhj", "catwbmp", "catwh6z" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "If car A's turn signal is blinking every 1.3 seconds, and car B's signal is going every 1.4, they won't match up. However, since one car's signal is faster than the other's, it will eventually 'catch up'. While they won't be perfectly in sync, they'll appear to blink together for a second or two before the gap between increases a sufficient amount.", "Imagine I'm walking around a track, and it takes me 5 min to make one loop around. You're also walking the track, and you do a loop in 5:30. We are walking at different speeds, and will complete the loops in time periods that are obviously different. But when I pass you, there will be a brief period of time when it looks like we're walking together. ", "Let's say that blinker 1 blinks every three seconds, and blinker 2 blinks every five seconds. \n\nBlinker 1: 3, 6, 9, 12, *15*, 18, 21, 24, 27, *30*\n\nBlinker 2: 5, 10, *15*, 20, 25, *30*, 35, 40, 45\n\nAt 15 and 30 seconds, they will coincide. In a real life scenario, the blink intervals are much shorter, but the idea is the same.", "I'm going to represent three people's lights. O means on, X means off, the number is the time:\n\n 00 OOO -----\n 01 XXX\n 02 OXX\n 03 XOX\n 04 OXX\n 05 XXO\n 06 OOX\n 07 XXX\n 08 OXX\n 09 XOX\n 10 OXO\n 11 XXX\n 12 OOX\n 13 XXX\n 14 OXX\n 15 XOO\n 16 OXX\n 17 XXX\n 18 OOX\n 19 XXX\n 20 OXO\n 21 XOX\n 23 OXX\n 23 XXX\n 24 OOX\n 25 XXO\n 26 OXX\n 27 XOX\n 28 OXX\n 29 XXX\n 30 OOO ---\n\nSo what the hell does this all mean?\n\nSo the first light goes off every other second. The second light goes off every third second, and the third one goes off every fifth second.\n\nSo that means they'll all have to light up.... every 30 seconds - Because 30 is the **lowest common denominator** of 2, 3, and 5.\n\nWhile this is a good math way of looking at it. The simpler way is that they don't really go off at the same time, just close enough that it looks that way to you, and that's weird, so you remember it, or you take notice of it. Most of the time it's not close so that's not interesting, so you forget it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chsh75z" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "A lot of music, especially, is licensed from someone else for the game. So if they're showing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, they have permission to show the video game. If they want to play the music (\"When Worlds Collide\" - Powerman 5000), then they have to get permission from Powerman 5000 or their agent/record label to play that music." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ei8a2a9", "ei8bvma", "ei9jstb" ], "score": [ 330, 53, 257 ], "text": [ "Sort of a tongue-in-cheek follow-up question. Could you be fit early 20s Jewish man and serve in the military and is there any difference in the service required? I'm thinking analogous to African Americans serving in WWII. ", "Related question: How was Wehrkraftzersetzung implemented? Was it applied very strictly? ", "It was possible and there were several reasons why someone in the demographic you described would still be in Germany.\n\nThe first and most obvious was – like in so many draft systems – the question of the job one held, had been trained for or were in training for. Nazi Germany had the term \"unabkömmlich\" – indispensable – for people whose jobs and positions had been deemed indispensable for the functioning of the German political, administrative and economic system and who accordingly would not be called up to military service. The \"unabkömmlich\" designation encompassed a rather large number of jobs and positions: From skilled workers in factories producing munitions and/or weapons to huge swaths of the German civilian administrative apparatus, both in Germany as well as in the occupied countries to people in the internal hierarchy in the Nazi party, such as your local Nazi Party leader – for how could Germany fight a war without the party officials there to indoctrinate the populace.\n\nHowever, who was unabkömmlich and which jobs were in principle designated as such changed over the course of the war. Germany during WWI suffered a massive man power problem. Already in the late 1930s, the German economy began experiencing a severe man power shortage. This was among the prime reasons why the Nazi regime implemented a major escalation of policies and measures of persecution that also affected German laborers during that period. The persecution of so-called asocials, the cooperation between well-fare agencies, labor agencies and Gestapo, the expansion of the Concentration Camps system with camps such as Buchenwald and Mauthausen build around that time are all best understood in the context of the Nazi state trying very hard to mobilize labor reserves through massive imprisonment. Similarly, around the same time the labor agencies were granted a massive choke hold on German workers. Form 1938 on you couldn't just change your job anymore but rather had to get permission from the labor agency, who had also the possibility of sending laborer that in the eyes of their employers didn't conform off to so-called \"labor education camps\", a Gestapo camp where people were imprisoned for 40 to 60 days.\n\nThe reason this is important is because during the course of the war, the regime's strategy was to replace more and more German workers with foreign forced laborers in order to free up the former to serve in the Wehrmacht. This invariably changed which jobs and professions were deemed unabkömmlich during the war. For example, following the German occupation of Poland several hundred thousand German soldiers from agrarian families were released from the Wehrmacht as reservists in order to help their families with the harvest. Many of them remained out of the Wehrmacht and away from active service until the invasion of the USSR in 1941. Once that occurred however, this policy of releasing hundreds of thousands of agrarian laborers from the Wehrmacht stopped because over the course of the war with the Soviets, unskilled agrarian laborers in Germany were simply replaced with Polish or Soviet forced laborers. Over the course of the war, 15 million people came to Germany as forced laborers with 1944 seeing the peak of this massive system when the German economy employed 7 million forced laborers in the month of August. That was almost a quarter of the entire labor force in Germany.\n\nSo, a person could be deemed \"unabkömmlich\" when they couldn't be replaced either by someone of similar qualification working twice as hard or by a foreign forced laborer. This included skilled factory workers like machinists and certain tool makers but also – important for the demographic you are asking about – university students. Although the number of university students had due to political and demographic developments been shrinking during the 1930s – with the lowest number being 28.696 university students in all of Germany in 1939/40 when many volunteered for the Wehrmacht – it still was a significant population that for the most part could earn a significant deferment. While some students such as medical students or those working on research significant for the war effort by way of armament projects were for the most part excused from serving until very late in the war, for many other students their status meant that they were called up to serve only for a short time. Take f. ex. Hans Scholl of White Rose fame: He served on the Ostfront for 15 weeks in 1942 after already having received his military training in the 1930s and having enrolled as a student during the war. Entire student units existed wherein university students were commanded to serve at the front during the semester breaks.\n\nAnd while these were all \"run of the mill\" reasons for why someone from the demographic you described might not serve in Nazi Germany, there was another significant population that wasn't called up: Jews and those imprisoned in concentration camps. For some of those imprisoned in concentration camps, service in the Wehrmacht could indeed be a way out of the camp or a way to free family from the camp. This is a phenomenon that can be observed, interestingly enough, with several members of the Romani community from Austria's Burgenland with regard to the Lackenbach concentration camp. There several men who volunteered for the Wehrmacht were able to free themselves and their families and ultimately save themselves from deportation to Auschwitz. Why this request was granted by the Nazi administrators and who made the decision about which prisoners could volunteer and which couldn't is unfortunately not documented but in a very limited number of cases it was possible.\n\nAlso, I've written about this before [here](_URL_0_) but the Nazis' policy on homosexuals was not as comprehensive as it is sometimes imagined and not all persons arrested or even sentenced for homosexual activities went to Concentration Camps. In fact, many of them also served in the Wehrmacht either in lieu of their prison sentence or after their sentence had been served.\n\nThe only victim group of German nationality consistently not called up were those the Nazi regime regarded as Jews. Although, so-called Mischlinge, meaning people the regime regarded as \"mixed race\" were also drafted. While at several points in time the regime discussed getting rid of those soldiers, in the end that didn't happen, most likely because of practical considerations." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vbnxo/how_did_the_nazi_german_legal_system_decide_which/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3xe8ki", "c3xfb14" ], "score": [ 2, 10 ], "text": [ "Interesting crystal structure... don't think it's a meteor, they don't tend to have any sharp features. Is it magnetic?\n\nAt a guess i'd say maybe some sort of igneous rock or maybe a leaf fossil. Couldn't say for sure though.", "Notice the piece is flat and unrounded. I believe it is a vein, broken free from it's gangue. The mineral is probably an iron carbonate (siderite?), possibly psudomorphic after limonite - crushed powder is probably ruddy brown and it would fizz in 10% HCl. These guys often form in hydrothermal settings around intrusions or in extensional settings; given how undeformed it is (except a bit of brittle fracturing visible in cross-section), I'd suggest the latter.\n\nre, siderite pseudomorph after limonite: _URL_0_\n\nDefinitely non-meteoritic." ] }

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[ "http://imgur.com/a/gcw4q" ]

[ [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/SideriteLimonite.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckug94a" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Gamma Ray Bursts have a usual duration of some seconds to some minutes; the avarage of \"normal\" gamma rays is a bit more than half a minute. Some of them however had a lifespan of some minutes to hours, with a record of some weeks. Those are very rare, however. \n\nAsking for a planet killer, there is no difference to other Gamma Ray Bursts in duration, but in distance. Close by GRBs can irradiate the atmosphere much stronger and that's all. So all GRBs are potential planet killers, however most of them are simply too far away to be an actual threat for us. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cchhqh1", "cchjiha", "cchkks0" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 6 ], "text": [ "To keep the car from spinning out, as you know the objective of drifting is to slide the car through a corner without making it spin, turning it opposite of the turn counters the cars drifting therefore stabilizing and balancing the drift.", "As the drift angle becomes larger, the car is traveling more sideways than straight ahead. Just as you do when you drive your car, the drifter points the front wheels where they want to go. In this case, it's straight out the side that's 'forwards' in the direction they're traveling.", "The front wheels are not pointing in the \"opposite\" direction from where they need to go. They are pointing **exactly in the direction they need to go**. If you examine a video closely, you'll find that the front wheels don't slip - they're following right around the curve.\n\nIt is the back wheels that are swung outwards, thus the car is pointing further into a turn than it is going." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfvthor" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "There's a great [engineer guy video on quartz clocks](_URL_0_) that's worth watching.\n\nBasically there are two sides to the system. First, you create a very small \"tuning fork\" of quartz, which has a very precise resonance frequency (typically 32,768 Hz, for reasons that will be explained). Quartz is piezo-electric, when a voltage is applied it will vibrate and when it vibrates it will generate a voltage. This means that the tiny quartz tuning fork will generate a series of electric pulses at a frequency of 32,768 Hz. Second, a small digital chip is paired with this pulse, it does very little, most of what it does is add. With every pulse from the quartz the chip adds 1 to a count. When it reaches 32,768 it triggers a signal indicating that one second has passed. That signal can then be used in other adders to add up seconds, minutes, hours, etc. In this way a digital clock can keep track of the passage of time.\n\n32,768 is chosen because it is precisely 2^15. Meaning that starting from zero a simple 14 bit adder can count up and once it gets precisely to 32,768 it will trigger overflow/carry over to the 15th bit, which can be used as a signal for keeping track of seconds. Also, the size of a quartz crystal tuned to 32,768 Hz is small enough to be compact, cheap, and use a low amount of power while still being large enough to be produced with incredibly high precision while also producing sound (though very faint) in frequencies that humans can't hear." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pM6uD8nePo" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c377fdc", "c377fdc" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "This happened to me on my motorcycle during an near miss crash with another vehicle. I had the jitters and couldn't immediately lift my bike, it's like my mind was so all over the place I couldn't focus my mind enough to continuously drive my muscles to lift my bike. Strange feeling, the best comparison I can make is it's like trying to lift something heavy while laughing hysterically.", "This happened to me on my motorcycle during an near miss crash with another vehicle. I had the jitters and couldn't immediately lift my bike, it's like my mind was so all over the place I couldn't focus my mind enough to continuously drive my muscles to lift my bike. Strange feeling, the best comparison I can make is it's like trying to lift something heavy while laughing hysterically." ] }

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[ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j4aF76BCtok#t=15s", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_strength" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dlndlsh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Short answer: yes to a very limited extent\n\nLonger answer: not in any realistic, safe, or controllable way.\n\nWeather is super complicated and often pretty hard to predict. Imagine if you had a big bowl of water and you kept sloshing it around, meteorology is guessing/analyzing where individual waves will form.\n\nYou can effect the weather by large releases of heat or particulates, but both have enormous ecological impacts and are expensive. Also if you mess with the weather in one place you tend to fuck over somewhere else (a la butterfly effect).\n\nSo generally its not safe, cheap, or smart, but we could technically do it minorly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cajr523", "cajrbxx", "cajvquf" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The idea of public-key cryptography is that the first computer shares the public key, and keeps the private key to itself. The second computer encrypts data (typically, a randomly generated session key for symmetric cryptography, which is much faster than public-key cryptography) with the first computer's public key and sends it to the first computer. The first computer decrypts the encrypted data with its private key, which no one else can do.\n\nEdit: I should've said \"The basic idea\"; real-world protocols are of course more complicated.", "Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange", "It doesn't. In an asymmetric system like RSA or ElGamal, the private key is never transmitted over the wire - this is why it's called the private key. _URL_0_\n\nIn a symmetric system where both parties use the same key, it's actually generated interactively by the two parties and the algorithm they use is capable of generating a shared secret over an insecure channel. Diffie Hellman is an interactive algorithm that relies on the discrete logarithm problem for its security. \n_URL_1_ " ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#A_postal_analogy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diffie-Hellman_Key_Exchange.svg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cunyblp" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Companies like Nintendo and Sony already have their own game distribution platforms and they're generally very wary of using other distribution channels. \n\nIf they distribute games through Steam, they ultimately would have to give up lots of control over the distribution and pricing of the games. Furthermore, Steam will take a cut of the sales revenue that Sony/Nintendo are probably unwilling to give up. \n\nAlso, Steam already acts as a competitor in some ways since users may opt to buy video games on Steam/PC rather than consoles, so that's just another reason these companies may be unwilling to negotiate deals with PC distribution platforms like Steam." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4rzx5l", "d4slxw0" ], "score": [ 21, 2 ], "text": [ "It's not my field, so I can't say too much so I will just paraphrase a couple points that Terry Tao made in a [Post](_URL_0_) about why it is hard. (If I say anything horridly wrong, please correct me.) He says that there are three general strategies to solving these kinds of nonlinear PDEs.\n\n* Find explicit solution. \n\n* Perturbation\n\n* Controlling a solution based on some global quantity (like Energy)\n\nWe can bet that no one is going to randomly find an explicit solution, it would take a great deal of luck and the arbitrariness of the initial conditions makes this not likely. Perturbation is when you slightly broaden the problem with an artificial parameter. Tao says the main issue with this is that no matter how small the parameter is, the Navier-Stokes equation behaves completely differently between perturbed and non-perturbed versions. When you perturb, the equation behaves a lot like a linear equation, which is not the case in when you don't. The issue with the third method is that no known quantities either do scale very well and this means that we lose control over the finer details of the solution, or they can't control a solution.\n\nThis means that there are three possible routes to figuring this problem out:\n\n* Get really lucky and find an explicit solution\n\n* Create a new kind of global quantity that behaves well that we can use to control a solution\n\n* Invent a new method entirely that doesn't rely on any of the known methods.\n\nAll three are not going to be easy. There's no way that we can rely on the first option. The second condition is hard because the Navier-Stokes breaks down every known quantity that we can try to track, because it's pretty abusive to geometry and chaotic at all scales and there aren't any quantities from physics besides energy that we can rely on and it doesn't help us. But, you never know, as he says that the Poincare Conjecture (the only Millenium Prize Problem to have been solved) was solved by controlling a new kind of variable, though it was geometric in origin and the Navier-Stokes equation does not behave well in that aspect. That leaves the third option. This is hard because instead of controlling solutions through some quantity, it is possible for quantities to blow up and not behave well under scaling. \n\nI guess the moral is that it allows for very chaotic solutions and that really messes shit up.", "There are many issues with finding an analytical solution to this set of equations, one being that turbulence itself can be modeled in many ways depending on viscosity and other parameters.\n\nAlso solving it would not necessarily be useful. CFD solutions can be fast using implicit equations, generally with reduced order modelling and a good starting point for iterative solutions." ] }

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[ [ "https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/03/18/why-global-regularity-for-navier-stokes-is-hard/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6wozhl", "c6wpfc5" ], "score": [ 2, 4 ], "text": [ "Gamma radiation is distinct from the other three. Alpha (helium nucleus), beta (fast moving electrons), and neutron radiation are classed as particle radiation, while gamma radiation is a high-energy electromagnetic wave.\n\nNeutron radiation isn't mentioned along the other three because it can't directly ionize atoms the same way alpha, beta, and gamma radiation can. Neutron radiation only ionizes by interacting with hydrogen.", "The \"α, β, γ\" classification of radiation was made by Rutherford and Villard back around the turn-of-the-century. It was basically empirical (on the basis of how far they penetrated through matter), and they didn't really know what these things were. I.e. they didn't know that gamma rays were actually the same thing as Röntgen's \"X-rays\", that \"beta rays\" were actually the same thing as \"cathode rays\" which JJ Thomson had (at the time) postulated to be electrons. Neutrons and neutron radiation weren't discovered until much later, around 1930. So neutron radiation got a better, more descriptive name than the other three. \n\nBut neutron radiation _is_ usually considered ionizing radiation. It can cause ionization in a number of ways. First, by being absorbed by a nucleus (or just deflected by it) which can impart enough energy to cause ionization. Second, free neutrons decay into energetic protons and electrons (and a neutrino), both of which are directly ionizing. Third, it can cause it indirectly by transmuting stable nuclei to radioisotopes after being absorbed. \n\nI suspect it's mentioned less often, perhaps in part just because of the history here, but also because neutron emission is much less common form of decay compared to the other three. Alpha/beta/gamma is a concern whenever you deal with radioisotopes, but not so much neutron radiation unless you're dealing with a nuclear reactor or bomb.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjpo1t3", "cjpomjh", "cjpow6y" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "you programmed in binary by flipping toggle switches. after that came punch cards. ", "Machine language is a code that CPU can run directly. Many years ago some brave young men and women wrote a series of machine language programs that converted assembly language into machine code. After this point, programmers simply needed to write programs in assembly language and pass it through the machine language translator. Eventually more machine language programs were invented that allowed people write in high level programs then compile them into a large number of different machine languages so a single program can run on a number of different computers.\n_URL_0_", "All programming is basically simple logic (addition, subtraction, comparing values, etc.) and control statements (jump, branch, etc.). At the lowest level of all, you've got electrical circuits, not code.\n\nThis is how adding two numbers works: [image](_URL_0_). This performs basic binary math, and outputs the addition of two 1's or 0's (with an extra \"carry\" digit if you're doing 1+1, which is 10). Here is an example of a 4-bit full adder: [image](_URL_1_). However, in your device, it's probably a tiny chip only a few microns thick.\n\nA person who wants to build a computer from raw metal and silicon would want to make these electrical circuits, then stick them together in the right way to make a processor. The wizards at intel and whatnot have to do this basically by hand, and so did the first people who made computers.\n\nThe processor takes in binary inputs (for instance, the number 00011101101110), and then depending on what number it is, does a different operation. When you add A + B in code, A + B are being stored in this binary input, as well as the word \"add\", and where you want the number to be stored. The processor looks at the binary number, send the electrical signals to the circuits that will add them together, and goes on to the next line.\n\nAt this point, they can reasonably easily invent programming languages using these microprocessors. You make a computer with circuits that turns text like this:\n\n add a, b, c\n\ninto \n\n 100101000010001000010\n\nwhich when fed to the compiler will store b+c in the address of a.\n\nThat \"add a,b,c\" is assembly, the base for programming languages. The coding language \"C\" uses a \"compiler\", which turns if \"I.amhungry() { dothis(); }\" into assembly, which is then assembled into the machine code binary, which is executed by the processor." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_language" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_(electronics)#mediaviewer/File:Full-adder_logic_diagram.svg", "http://www.waitingforfriday.com/images/thumb/e/e4/Full_Adder_circuit_wiki.jpg/400px-Full_Adder_circuit_wiki.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnhxr16" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "No.\n\nYour sex organs are not the only \"source\" for your sex drive. It affect it in some ways, although there is no consensus about how much.\n\nIn losing them, you'd fail to act upon these desires, but your capacity to feel them would not disappear completely." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c31nmgv", "c31nmgv" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I think there already is at least one strain of ebola that is airborne, but is harmless to humans. Ebola Reston or something. Thank you Hotzone.", "I think there already is at least one strain of ebola that is airborne, but is harmless to humans. Ebola Reston or something. Thank you Hotzone." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6br1b4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It's mostly just dissolving solid mateirals into the hot water. Then, they diffuse.\n\nSo, chemically, it's pretty much the same as mixing sugar, salt, whatever into water.\n\nThe compounds become solvated and form hydrogen bonds, then can diffuse through the water." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c57vugb" ], "score": [ 53 ], "text": [ "Astronomers like Julian dates because they make math simpler for events that don't have anything to do with the Earth year. If a variable star has a period of 270 days, it is a lot easier to add subtract 270 than it is to count through all the months to figure the exact date.\n\nWhy 4713 BC? It is pretty arbitrary, but it is useful because it predates any historical events, so you don't have the BC/AD problem. \n\nThe reason for that particular date is pretty obscure. When they came up with it in the 1500's, there was a 15 year cycle, a 19 year cycle, and a 28 year cycle astronomers cared about. 4713 BC was the last time all three cycles started at the same time." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e9a23vf", "e9a2l0r" ], "score": [ 5, 6 ], "text": [ "From what i understand, its the power of over believeing, then realizing it has to make up the difference when it realizes some part didnt happen", "Basically if you believe hard enough, your body will try and make it true. Obviously it can’t do as much as a drug for testing can do, but the placebo effect is quite a powerful thing. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7nqs1q", "c7ns8z3" ], "score": [ 38, 13 ], "text": [ "If you look at the etymology, 'tele' is Ancient Greek for 'far away'. So a 'telescope' is something used to look at things 'far away'. \n\n\nIf it was a 'macroscope', it'd be used to look at big things. ", "It's not the opposite of a microscope. Both tools magnify images. The opposite of a microscope would be a fisheye lens." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd80cmc" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Because Java is everywhere! The more popular something is the more it will be exploited. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c567n6o", "c567vek", "c567yg8", "c568c6s", "c569335", "c5698uz", "c569n5y" ], "score": [ 26, 21, 10, 167, 8, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "[Carl Sagan did a pretty good ELI5 on this topic.](_URL_0_)", "\"Imagine a 3D cube. Now add one dimension\" -- mathematicians", "Like a 3D cube casts a [2D shadow](_URL_0_), a 4D cube casts a 3D shadow, so [that shape you often see representing a hypercube](_URL_1_) is actually the 3D shadow of a 4D cube.\n\nAnother fun fact is if you drew on a 4D piece of paper you would actually be able to draw in 3 dimensions.", "Let's first get a grasp of what a \"dimension\" is in geometry. \"Dimension\" sounds like a big word and is sometimes used to mean something like \"world\" or \"universe\" when people talk about \"alternate dimensions\" and so on, but it's actually a fairly simple concept in geometry and mathematics in general.\n\n\nLet's have a look at some examples to figure it out:\n\n\nIs there such a thing as a 0-dimensional object? Yes! A point. \nHere we are talking about the geometrically perfect point. So perfect that we cannot even draw it with our imperfect tools. If you try to measure how wide a geometrically perfect point is, you can't. It's just a single pixel. It is so tiny that it has no width/height/breadth, you can assign no number to it. It has no dimensions.\n\n\nNow, how can you make a 1D object from this? The answer: You add another point and connect both with a lot of really close points to form a line (it's actually an infinite amount of points).\nUnlike the point, you can measure a line with a ruler, but this only works in one \"way\", along the line's width. A geometrically perfect line has no height and no breadth. It is a 1-dimensional object, you can only measure it in one way, in one dimension. Why is the dimension we measure the line's width? Well, that's just convention, a name we decided to give it. It really does not matter if you call that measurement width, breadth or height. That's just the way people decided they would call it.\n\n\nLet's progress to 2D now. To make a 2D object you take the line from before and make a copy of it a little further away. Then you connect both lines with additional lines. The object you created is an area. An area is a 2-dimensional object, so you can measure it in two ways. You can measure its width and its breadth.\n\n\nFurther to 3D: Take the area from before, add a copy of it and connect both areas with additional areas. Suddenly, you have a volume, which is a 3D object. You can measure width, breadth and height of this object, because it has three dimensions.\n\n\nNotice how for every transition to a higher dimension, we used several copies of the object in the lower dimension to create the object in the higher dimension. To make a line we used a bunch of points. To make an area we used a bunch of lines. To make a volume we used a bunch of areas... so mathematicians figured out: To make a 4D object, we need to use a bunch of 3D objects!\nThis is how a hypercube is drawn. You take a 3D cube, and place another 3D cube near it. Then you connect both cubes using other 3D objects.\n\n\nThis was all probably a bit difficult to visualize in your head, so [here's a nifty animation](_URL_1_) showing you what I just described in this post. Also, [here's an additional non-animated picture](_URL_0_).\n\n\nUsing the same principle you can go beyond 4D and do this for 5D, 6D, etc. The results get increasingly difficult to visualize both because our brains are not able to handle the images and because we can only use 2D images (flat screen of your computer or a sheet of paper) or possibly 3D toy models to represent the multi-dimensional objects. You can certainly imagine it's a difficult task to do.\n\n\nBut what is this all good for? Why would anyone need a 4D, 5D, 6D or whatever-D object? This seems like a mathematical curiosity at best. However, there are many practical uses and I will explain them in the following with a simple example.\n\n\nBefore, I kept mentioning how each dimension adds a measurable quantity to our objects. We commonly say that our world is 3D, because it has the measurable quantities of breadth, width and height. \nHowever, if you stop to think about it, there are a lot of other things you can measure: There's time, which is often called the \"fourth dimension\", but you can also measure more simple things like the amount of money you have, how many green apples you bought and how many red apples you bought.\nEach of these things you can assign a number to, can be thought of as a dimension in mathematics. Keep in mind that this concept of dimension is a bit different from the purely geometrical one, where each dimension corresponds to an object's size.\n\n\nThis different take on dimensions is mathematically really useful if you're trying to track changes in several distinct things, or variables.\nFor example, a farmer might be interested in how much food and water his cows consume, how much milk they produce, how much they have to poop, how much space they take up, how often they get ill and so on... in total, the farmer has to keep track of six variables (food, water, milk, poop, space, illness), he's dealing with six dimensions. Thanks to those crazy mathematicians that invented formulas for 6D objects, the farmer can apply the same formulas to the variables influencing his cows. This way he can find out how to best feed them so they do not get ill and produce the maximum amount of milk, while keeping the amount of poop as low as possible.", "This is probably the best video I have seen if you want to try and visualise 4D:\n\n_URL_0_", "Adventure Time actually ELI5 in the episode \"[The Real You](_URL_0_)\":\n\n\"This 2-dimensional bubble casts a 1-dimensional shadow. A 3-dimensional bubble casts a 2-dimensional shadow. A 4-dimensional bubble casts a 3-dimensional shadow!\"", "Dimensions are simply directions.\n\nNow, imagine two dimensions. You could draw two lines following each dimension, and you'd have a square.\n\nWith one dimension, the equivalant would be a line. With 0 dimensions, the equivalent would be a point.\n\nWith three dimensions, the equivalent is a cube.\n\nThink of it like this.\n\nAt 0 dimensions, you have a point. When you move this point through one dimension, it makes a line. When you move that line through a dimension at a right angle to it, it makes a square. If you move that square at a right angle to both dimensions, you make a cube.\n\nSo when you move a cube through a dimension at a right angle to all three dimensions, you get a hypercube." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0" ], [], [ "http://blog.kenperlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cube-shadow.jpg", "http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/hypercube.svg.png" ], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Dimension_levels.svg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/72/Hypercube.gif" ], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzL091mZQ-E&feature=related" ], [ "http://adventuretime.wikia.com/wiki/Bubble_creator" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc9l2wd", "cc9l3nz", "cc9l740", "cc9posg", "cc9wock", "cc9y4d4" ], "score": [ 23, 5, 4, 6, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The propane needs oxygen to be able to burn (burning is just chemically combining with an oxidizer), and there's no oxygen in the hose. As long as the pressure is such that the propane is constantly pushed out, then oxygen can't get in, and the propane in the hose can't burn.", "Two reasons: The outward flow of the gas pushes the hot area away from the opening, and propane needs oxygen to burn. ", "there is no special mechanism there is just no oxygen in the tank for the fire to breath. fire needs fuel (like wood or in this case propane) oxygen (to breath) and an ignition source (which would be a lighter on the gas stove) without oxygen it has fuel and an ignition but can go where there isnt oxygen so stays where there is.\n", "Based on answers in this thread:\nDoes this mean that there is likewise no risk of igniting a can of deodorant, when blowing fire igniting the outburst of gas?\n\nAs a kid, my mom always told me that this was the reason you should not do that, and would like to know if there is no need for taking cover every time I see some dude burning bugs :). \n\nSorry for my english", "Propane tanks have a few things that keep this from happening. First is the safety valve that is build in to a lot of propane tanks.\n\nSecond is that the lack of oxidizer\n\nThird is that the outward force of propane is sufficient to repel air.\n\nLastly and I know this is true with bunson burners and other lab equipment. The gas in the line has a very low pressure making it hard to to get a high enough concentration to combust. The spout that the flame comes out of is the only part that needs to be pressurized to prevent damage.", "21 comments on a topic involving Propane. None of them mention Hank Hill." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4y8xkq", "c4yiyle" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Sorry you're incorrect, pearly penile papules are not a \"condition\" they are 100% normal, and are considered a simple anatomical variation. Please do not mistake these as any kind of STD or a vestigial form of a penis spines as they are histologically very different (keratinized epithelial vs vascularized connective tissue) \n\n_URL_0_", "Sadly, almost any and all explanations we give at this point is speculation. Figuring out the evolutionary \"reason\" is very tricky.\n\nThe wikipedia article points out that the bone aids in prolonging intercourse. A popular, reasonably supported hypothesis concerning the purpose of engaging in prolonged, energetically costly intercourse is to pump out the sperm of other males from the vagina. One might speculate that human monogamy could make the bone unnecessary...that is certainly what some guy editing wikipedia seems to think.\n\nPersonally, I highly doubt that this is the full story. Humans are not nearly monogamous enough for the structure to disappear entirely without some selective pressure against having the bone. The promiscuous bonobos have pretty small baculums (as do most apes)...and they don't even engage in mate guarding (jealous behavior).\n\nHonestly, the first thing I thought of when I read this question? If the human penis had a bone running through it, it could be easily injured. Considering our upright posture it would be pretty easy to damage the exposed, brittle structure. A flaccid penis will bend and not break in response to trauma. Having your penis break during sex is *already* a thing that happens...imagine what would happen if you had a thin little bone there? Animals which do not spend much time upright won't really ever have to worry about trauma to that area.\n\nBut...yeah, I realize that's complete speculation. Feel free to down-vote or remove if it violates the guidelines...but I really don't think it's more speculative than any other answer this question can hope to get.\n\nRegarding the spines...well, apparently the mild injury to the vagina triggers ovulation in in some species (like cats). Humans menstrual cycles are pretty constant regardless of mating activity...that may have something to do with it. Don't believe the pop-sci articles which tell you that \"losing the spines causes longer lasting sex, which is beneficial in monogamy\"...because monogamy would make long lasting sex a waste of energy for both parties. It still may be a result of selection for longer lasting sex...but reduced promiscuity likely is *not* a factor in that selection." ] }

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[ [ "http://kingsley.stanford.edu/Figure1" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c63f3ee", "c63fp54", "c63ft41", "c63g1zq", "c63g2rk", "c63g765", "c63g98r", "c63gv3y", "c63haew", "c63hsjh", "c63ivtq", "c63j2yk", "c63j9pn", "c63jips", "c63qobt" ], "score": [ 2, 12, 12, 3, 10, 9, 2, 34, 3, 2, 6, 8, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Would [Yokota Air Base](_URL_2_) count, perhaps? Or [Incirlik AB](_URL_0_)? Military personell often go off-base for shopping and tourism, leading to a lot of multilingual fun in those areas.\n\nA little less recently, I think [South Africa](_URL_1_) counts as a nice coexistance (linguistically, not culturally). [Afrikaans](_URL_3_), of course, is what remains of that linguistic coexistance today - languages will usually combine when they stay together long enough.", "Are French and English too similar for your tastes?\n\nBecause otherwise I'd cast you gaze upon the Canada", "Dutch and french in Belgium?", "Many of North America's Indian nations, like the Iroquois and Creek Confederacies, were multiethnic alliances. \n\nThe Basque language is a unique outlier, and the Basques have a long history of reluctant and strained cooperation with the various nations they've found themselves part of.", "What about Basque? Not only is it completely different from Spanish or French, it's completely unlike any Indo-European language.", "Modern Ireland? Gaeilge and English are very different languages. ", "English and Maori in NZ.", "This is extremely common.\n\nQuechua and Spanish in Peru\n\nGuarani and Spanish in Paraguay\n\nEnglish is a lingua franca through most of south eastern Papua New Guinea, where Oceanic languages are spoken.\n\nHindi/English/local languages in India\n\netc.", "What about Hungary?\n\nHungarian is a very, very different language from the languages of its empire.", "In the Philippines, Tagalog and English are both the main languages. Tagalog, coming from the Austronesian Family (SE Asia) and we have English, which is obviously Anglo-Saxon/West German in origin. Surprisingly, it is easy for Tagalog and English speakers to learn the other language as the sounds are 'somewhat' similar. However, grammatically speaking, they're (half a world) apart, and there are hardly any similarities in sentence structure.\n\nHaving a large band of Filipinos learn English is an interesting phenomenon, as they have 'Tagalogized' many English expressions and grammar rules. Who knows what English will look like among them, say in two hundred or four hundred years from now?\n\nAnyway, probably more than you'd care to know :)", "Arabic and French in Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.", "The official languages of Hong Kong are English and Cantonese, both written and spoken. \n\nThe official languages of Macau are Cantonese and Portuguese.", "Perhaps Welsh and English in Wales?\nWelsh is a development of old the British celtic language, wheras English is West Germanic.\n\nIt enjoys equal status within Wales as English, and it is compulsory that all schoolchildren learn it until age 16.\n\nWelsh was pretty much the only language spoken by the masses in Wales until the vast influx of English workers during the Industrial Revolution.\n\n", "Let me save this thread the hassle:\n\n_URL_0_", "India. The languages of northern and southern India are from completely different language families." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incirlik_Air_Base", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokota_Air_Base", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diglossic_regions" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnavd1n" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Your pupils are larger at night as there's less ambient light. Bright headlights in that situation let in more light than you can handle." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvo7wlx" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Magnets is exactly right. The magnet holds the trolley to the escalator, and the grooves just help to keep the trolley centered so it can be pushed off at the end." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpj4q0n", "cpj4qlr", "cpj4z8c" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The producer for the series hires people with a similar sensibility and gives guidance so that they maintain a consistent tone.", "This is common in most tv shows. The demands on the writer and especially the directors mean a single writer/director can't keep pace with a 12 or 21 episode in 4/8 month schedule.\n\nThere's a show creator or show runner who probably came up with the idea and provides continuity. The scripts would have to be vetted by them. And probably all the directors, actors etc. get to review drafts as well and have input to some extent. So its not like one writer can completely write a character out (hit by a train for example) unless all stakeholders with creative input agree.", "On the writing staff, there is someone who serves as what they call the Showrunner. This is the person with ultimate authority over the script. They're in charge of the writing room when coming up with story ideas, they're in charge of handing out writing assignments for each episode. And they often re-write the other writers' scripts once submitted. So it's that person's job to make sure the script fits the tone of the series, that each character's voice is maintained, etc.\n\nIn TV, the direction and cinematography and editing and production design is basically set by the first episode. Those people will determine the look and feel of the series. Everyone who comes later works to keep things consistent. They still have important work to do, but they have a limited set of choices to make, because they have to stay within the framework set by the first episode. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cckkx8d", "ccks3d8", "ccl4s1b" ], "score": [ 16, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "This is really complex. If I were you, I'd check out the book \"Hallucinations\" by Oliver Sacks, as he talks about this extensively. In short, people who become blind can have hallucinations after - this disease is called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It generally believed that when the brain is deprived of visual stimuli and thus deprived of activity in visual areas, it makes its own activity, causing people who have developed blindness to sometimes experience visual hallucination. This is all I can really say about it without cracking out the book to get you specific details.", "[Here is an AMA on the subject](_URL_0_). Not trying to be a dick but I have seen this request or something similar on Reddit at least a dozen times in the last month.", "Here is a description of possible routes of hallucinogenesis, from the neurophysiological perspective. I apologize for its length, but this is /r/askscience, so I want to be thorough.\n\nBy-and-large, perception is not a passive nerve process. Inputs expect outputs, outputs expect inputs, etc. Any process that manages to interfere with this can throw the perceptual system off-kilter, the result depending on the affected sensory modalities. Not only that, but neural rhythms organize perceptual processing, so perturbations in these rhythms can also throw-off the perceptual system. As long as a sensorily-deprived person's brain is subject to these rules -- pretty much every non-comatose person is -- then they have the capacity to experience hallucinations. So, blind people can hallucinate, sometimes in the visual modality.\n\nBlind people sometimes report visual hallucinations, but it depends on the circumstances underlying the blindness. It depends upon whether or not one is blind from birth, or becomes blind after being sighted. If the nervous system develops around a lack of visual input, it never comes to expect it. However, it's a different story for someone whose eye is gouged-out. The resulting nerve damage, and the sudden disruption in the visual system, can lead to \"phantom visions,\" usually blobs or simple patterns. Higher areas of the brain, like the LGN or V1, were expecting this input from the retina. Normally, the V1 can partially \"simulate\" the expected retinal input if necessary. But if the input is suddenly removed and is not quickly restored, the accuracy of the simulation ability drastically declines. The resulting \"phantom sight\" -- blobs or shifting diffuse shapes -- represent the cortical \"check\" on incoming retinal activation. When the \"check\" of retinal input is removed, the V1 runs wild, dominating the formation of the resulting perception.\n\nSensory deprivation apparatii take advantage of the \"check\" ability of higher brain areas: remove the data that most closely resembles the stimulus, and the simulation ability of the cortex starts to take over. However, how good is a simulation without continual feedback to ground it to its subsumed stimuli? Without input parameters, the simulation once again runs wild. However, beyond this very general knowledge, I know little about how sensory deprivation apparratii can affect perception. I suspect that it reduces the stimulation of primary sensory neurons to the point where it serves as a simulation for sudden, catastrophic input loss, allowing primary sensory cortices to dominate the resulting perceptual formations.\n\nApart from input/output checks, the brain relies on self-generated timing mechanisms to perceive the environment. Hallucinogens by-and-large disrupt facets of the brain's timing: the input/output checks are retained (thus, the path of information flow is retained), but the patterns of neuronal communication change. For instance, sensory inputs might arrive at a brain structure at a consistent rate. However, the structure doesn't process this \"real-time\" input. Instead, the structure \"aggregates\" the real-time input over the span of, say, 50 msec, then generates a signal that represents the \"average input level\" that occurred during the 50 msec window. A signal representing this average is exported to the next brain structure in the circuit, which itself is collecting \"average signals\" from a multitude of other brain structures. Over the course of 100 msec, this structure determines the \"input packet\" with the highest value, creates a signal representing this packet and the structure that sent it, and forwards it onwards to the next node in the circuit. \n\nHallucinogens tend to disrupt these timing mechanisms, usually in accord with the dose size, and especially in-accord with the affected neurotransmitter's computational role. The disrupted timing usually only distorts dependent neural \ncomputations, but doesn't outright falsify them. For instance, maybe the aggregation epoch of a structure increases from 50 to 60 msec as a result of serotonergic disturbance: this allows more time to collect real-time input, so the computed average increases, albeit slightly. But, the increase is enough so that the exported information \"wins\" at the next computational node, and thus this information is forwarded more often than usual to the cortex. The cortex attempts to oblige, but its neural timing was also thrown-off by serotonergic disturbance. Thus, the message is transmitted, but like a game of \"telephone,\" its expected fidelity is reduced. This is how most of the popular hallucinogens induce psuedo-hallucinations. Blind people's brains also rely on rhythms to process sensory information, so they're equally capable of hallucinating due to drugs like LSD. \n\nJust as a general rule, the more a neurotransmitter system influences neural rhythms, and the more widespread its influence, the more likely its disturbance will result in legitimate hallucinations. Take a hallucinogen like datura, and its active psychoactive compound targets what is perhaps our most fundamental neurotransmitter system: acetylcholine. The entire brain and nervous system are founded upon this one system, so it's no surprise that a drug affecting this system will induce legitimate hallucinations, and produce a toxic reaction in the body (e.g. scopolamine). This system is responsible for setting \"foundational\" rhythms, upon which most other brain rhythms are organized. Under these circumstances, you see a catastrophic lack of coordination between perceptual structures: errors are introduced into the processed information at each step up the computational \"food chain,\" such that the information is patently \"false\" when it enters the cortex. \n\nTaking scopolamine is like engaging in a game of Telephone with extremely drunk, non-native english speakers. You say, \"Your mom smells bad!\" to the first neuron, he passes it on, and the last neuron in the chain reports the message as, \"Dab perfume in your robot's sky.\"\n\nOn the other hand, LSD's pseudo-hallucinogenic effects rely on its affect on specific serotonergic receptors, which have a more-confined pathway through the midbrain, basal ganglia, and \"lower level\" cortical areas, and the rhythms influenced by serotonin ride \"atop\" multiple other layers of rhythms. Thus, LSD affects neural rhythms on a much more limited scope than scopolamine. The incoming information has retained much of its fidelity upon entering the cortex, but it's still not quite what the cortex expected: the final neuron in this chain replies, \"Your mother smelled an offensive odor.\"" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cppdf/iama_blind_person_from_birth_who_has_used/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e29ww5w", "e29wz6v", "e29x4ym", "e29x63y" ], "score": [ 22, 8, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Well more or less because its basically uterus wallpaper not exactly just blood like you would find in your veins.", "It's not like blood from the rest of your body at all. Menstrual blood is filled with dead cells of the uterine lining, as well as a dead ovum. It's basically blood filled with biological garbage. It would cause ridiculous amounts of infection (sepsis) if it was given to someone in place of regular blood.", "* Ew. \n\n* Lots of red liquid, not as much blood as you think there is in that liquid to make it red. \n\n* No good collection method.\n\n* It doesn't all come out at once.", "In order to donate blood, you have to keep it clean and you have to add anticoagulants to stabilize it for transport otherwise it just coagulates. \n\nAside from the obvious contaminants that could be present in your random vagina, the blood comes out far too slowly to be viable for collection. The amount is also rather negligible when compared to standard donation methods(about 80ml of blood compared to a pint which is 473ml). \n\nI mean, what are you going to do? Stand over a blood bucket for 4 days?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgwhwdr", "cgwhx26", "cgwi6jw", "cgwiwpd", "cgwjrkx", "cgwobdg" ], "score": [ 10, 2, 5, 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Put simplistically, the power from an engine is made from the combustion of fuel and air. A supercharger compresses the incoming air, allowing more to enter the engine. More fuel is added to the engine via the fuel injectors, and the two combined combust to create more power than would have otherwise been made.", "I'm not a car guy, but Wiki just confirmed my guess - a supercharger provides / allows for a greater oxygen intake to the engine. This lets it burn more fuel and do more strokes or revolutions or whatever... and that makes you go vroom. ", "Supercharger sucks more air +more gas =more power", "A supercharger is driven by a belt on the connected to the engine. A car without a supercharger or turbocharger has to suck air in, this is called naturally aspirated. With a super charger the air is being compressed and fed into the engine. This is why turbo and superchargers are called \"Forced Induction\".", "A supercharger uses the spinning of an engine to create pressure, like a fan. A belt is placed on the engine and is connected to the supercharger. As the engine spins it spins the supercharger and pushes air into the engine. Since there is now more air moving into the engine you need to add more fuel to make more power.", "A supercharger pushes air(oxygen) into the intake of the engines increasing the combustion going on in each cylinder. The pressure of the engine is increased as a supercharger works depending on how much 'boost' it is producing.\n\nIt is different from a turbocharger in the sense that it runs off the belt in the engine. So to put it simply, it produces boost at idle where as a turbocharger does not. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csmwivd" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "That's basically it.\n\nThe amount actors are paid is based on the previous season's ratings/advertising. So usually the during the first season of the show, the actors aren't paid very much. \n\nThe exception would be for actors who themselves carry aadvertising value and are assumed to bring more viewers to the show. Like Matthew McConaughey... they assume him just being in the show will bring more viewers, and thus more advertisers." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fjkc2q8", "fjkjqlg", "fjmdrb4" ], "score": [ 7, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "A poison dart frog kept in captivity will no longer be poisonous when kept on a diet of superworms and crickets. They become poisonous from what they eat. \n\nAluminum becomes harder when it oxidizes to the point that we use aluminum oxides as the grit in sand paper. Maybe the dragon somehow processes natural aluminum and moves it to it's scales and then it oxidizes?", "An insect's exoskeleton is made of chitin, which hardens upon contact with the air. It doesn't continuously harden, it gets to a certain toughness then proceeds no farther.\n\nThe problem with something continuously hardening over time is that as it hardens it will become brittle. Most organic materials require a certain amount of flexibility.\n\nA possible solution is to have the dragon's scales continuously grow over time, so that its armor gets thicker (and thus tougher) over time. The problem is that as the armour gets thicker the dragon gets heavier and movement (especially flying) become more difficult.\n\nIf you're looking for a tough organic substance, the claws of a pistol shrimp and a mantis shrimp are incredibly tough. They can survive cavitation and can punch through aquarium glass. Their claws have a high percentage of calcium and are thicker.", "Resin sure as heck does.\n\nIt's about like honey when it comes out of the tree, and when it dries it becomes like hard plastic. \n\nUnder some circumstances it can harden into amber, which is basically a rock. \n\n\\- _URL_2_ \n\n\\- _URL_1_\n\n.\n\nShellac is one produced by an animal -\n\n > Shellac is scraped from the bark of the trees where the female lac bug, \n\n > *Kerria lacca* (order Hemiptera, family Kerriidae, also known as *Laccifer lacca*), \n\n > secretes it to form a tunnel-like tube as it traverses the branches of the tree. \n\nFor example \n\n > Until the advent of vinyl, most gramophone records were pressed from shellac compounds.[14][15] \n\n\\- _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4wk5u6", "c4wkut5" ], "score": [ 53, 2 ], "text": [ "Here is a [description from the Canadian Space Agency](_URL_0_).", "I don't know if you have Netflix, but if you do, watch Part 3 of the Discovery series \"When We Left Earth.\" Go to 28 minutes in and you will see Neil Armstrong (I think, hard to tell) shaving. There's your answer. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/living_hygiene.asp" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csrrr1b" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The phenomenon you are noticing is called \"stratigraphy\", which is the idea that things are built on top of older things, and you can tell which things are older by figuring out the order in which each part was laid down. It's one of the most basic and essential parts of archaeology.\n\nNow, why did people build on top of older ruins? There are several reasons. First, when ancient people had a place they built on, and made a settlement or a city, it was because that place was a really good place to build a city. Take some of the major sites in the southern Levant for example, such as Tel Megiddo, which sits right on one of the only pathways through the Carmel mountain range, and is basically a gatekeeper between anyone coming from the south (such as Egypt) to the north (heading to Lebanon or Syria (aka the Phoenicians or the Arameans)). Or Tel Ashkelon, which was a major trading port between Gaza and Jaffa. When people have a good place to build, they want to stay there. It makes no sense to suddenly move a few miles if your water system is still there, and the trade routes are still there. The economy is much less movable than some dirt. So, why build on top instead of tearing everything down?\n\nThe simple answer is it's easier. It is much easier to knock down a broken down building and level it off with dirt than it is to break up the pieces and take them away. This is way before any heavy machinery, there are no backhoes here. And sometimes buildings are built with big, heavy stones, and its so much easier to just cover it over rather than move it. Also, dirt tends to accumulate among settlements, just from people's waste and all the things they bring into their settlement, and the buildings are a wind trap for airborne sediment, so the dirt level is rising already, people just help it along a little bit sometimes. \n\nYou are exactly right about the level of a city rising as time went on, and people built over older things over and over. At Tel Ashkelon, in one of the excavation areas, which was occupied for about 3500 years, you have at least 24 different major rebuilds (not counting minor ones where they just expand a building or add a few walls), all within about 8 meters of vertical accumulation.\n\nThis method of sediment deposition results in a distinctive shape of the hill. Hills which are basically composed of cities built on top of broken cities and on and on have a special name. They are called *tels*. They often have a flattish top and slightly steeper sides, as you can see in [this picture of Tel Megiddo](_URL_0_) and [this picture of Kedesh, a site in Israel](_URL_1_).\n\nSo basically it's really common in the eastern Mediterranean and most ancient societies, because once a settlement is founded, there are lots of good reasons to live there, and so people keep living there, and it's just easier to knock stuff down and build over it than it is to remove it all.\n\nDoes this answer your question?" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101130/images/news468614a-i1.0.jpg", "http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kelseymuseum.digdiary/files/kedesh_tel.gif" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fci4fwe", "fci75ne" ], "score": [ 10, 3 ], "text": [ "Fires are a threat that aircrews are trained to deal with and lie within their response capabilities.\n\nAnti-terrorism forces worry about things that could take down an airplane (fuselage penetrating explosives) or allow a plane to be highjacked and used for terrorism. Fires are neither.", "They have fire extinguishers and can monitor people to prevent it from happening.\n\nWhat they're more concerned with is unknown fires starting in the cargo hold which is why you have to put batteries in your carry on." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc0ex86", "cc1o7ea" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "This happens because [stress concentration](_URL_0_) occurs around the crack. Even though the average stress throughout the material sample is only slightly higher, the localized stresses at the end(s) of the crack are much higher.\n\nThe maximum stress around a crack is proportional to (a/b)^(1/2), where *a* is the length of the crack and *b* is the width. So, if the crack is very long and narrow (as many are), you can see that the stress concentration at the end of the crack will be very high, which will cause the material to fail and the crack to propagate further. This process repeats as long as the crack is still around.\n\nThis formula for stress concentration can also be used to explain why \"drilling cracks\" is a common temporary solution--it increases the radius of the end of the crack, which has the effect of reducing the stress concentration.", "[Here is an FEA program](_URL_0_) targeted at cracks. If you look through the user manual, it shows several FEA meshes around cracks. A pretty good one is on page 55. Notice where the high stresses are." ] }

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[ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Stress_Strain_Ductile_Material.png/450px-Stress_Strain_Ductile_Material.png", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1N2xdUlKlA", "http://i.imgur.com/zlIASIA.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics#Transition_flaw_size", "http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist2/projects/antlers.htm", "http://www.mechanicsupport.com/metal_fatigue_crack.html" ]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_concentration" ], [ "http://www.questintegrity.com/products/feacrack-3D-crack-mesh-software/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dghhnvz" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "* _URL_0_\n\nYou can also use the sub search function:\n\n* _URL_1_" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5zhau9/conceptually_speaking_what_does_it_mean_when_you/dey5wyz/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=irrational+exponent&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cviw1ar", "cviyqgj" ], "score": [ 7, 4 ], "text": [ "There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the section [Travel and contact across the Atlantic before Columbus](_URL_0_) in our FAQ will answer your inquiry.", "There's [some genetic evidence](_URL_0_) that Native American women (if not men too) reached Iceland, possibly hitching a ride along with the Norse, whether they wanted to or not. This is indicated by the presence of Haplogroup C1 in the Icelandic population. A haplogroup is a genetic marker that can be used to identify particularly lineages (either male or female; female in this case). Haplogroup C1 can be further divided into sub-lineages. C1a is found in indigenous peoples of easternmost Siberia. C1b, C1c, and C1d are found throughout the Americas. Iceland has C1e, which might be descended from C1b-d, because it seems to be relatively recent (only hundreds of years old rather than thousands), but there's a slight chance that it was brought westward into Scandinavia from Siberia, too." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican#wiki_travel_and_contact_across_the_atlantic_before_columbus" ], [ "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21419/full" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvh3114" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It depends on who the book is targeted at. Harry Potter for example, wide pages, big letters, lots of spacing, easy for a child to read. Then Game of Thrones, short pages, smaller font, closely spaced. Made to be read by adults. Also, the length of the book. HP books are wide but not a lot of pages. GoT has a lot of pages, so it's better to make small pages. (Wish I could word this better)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "exe08vz" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "The reason I'm asking is because I was looking at the back of random cereal boxes at the store, and thought it was weird how much of a huge spectrum of vitamins and minerals there are. They have very different choices in different cereals, even by the same makers! \n\nIt even just varies greatly with kid cereals from the same company. Do they choose by flavor or the texture of the cereal or something? Also, why is this common anyway? I'm guessing for marketing to look like some of the kids cereals aren't junk food or something. Thanks!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fkzsf05" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "The \"Southern Question\" is indeed one of the longstanding dilemmas of Italian Economic History. Research into this topic is not as florid as you might initially think: for much of Italy's unitary history the \"Southern Question\" was perceived as a principally political topic, and it's only in last ten or so years that the \"Question\" has received steady attention from a growing cadre of economic historians, especially from those who are themselves located in the universities of the Italian South. Paolo Malanima at the University of Catanzaro, Emanuele Felice at the University of Chieti, and Claudia Sunna at the University of the Salento, are just some of the economic historians whose recent books and papers have been well received by their academic peers both in Italy and abroad, igniting new interest in Italy's lopsided economic development.\n\nThe present academic consensus is that at the time of unification, the North of Italy was slightly more economically developed than the South of Italy. However, the social and institutional apparatus in the north was better positioned to take advantage of imminent industrialization process that would take place after unity, quickly creating a perceptible gap in development between the two halves of the country. By the turn of the 20th century, a political discourse had already emerged around a \"Southern Question\" which has not existed at the time of unification (the terminology of \"Question\" itself seems to have been coined by the influential politician Giustino Fortunato, who served as member of parliament for Melfi between 1880 and 1900).\n\nOf course there is a lot of nuance tied to the study of historic inequality, especially in a late industrializer like Italy. Unfortunately, there are many difficulties tied to creating precisely assessments economic development in Italy immediately before and after unification. While scholars (notably Vera Negri-Zamagni at the University of Bologna) have attempted to quantify economic development by looking over what little data is available with a careful and critical eye, there are still many possible pitfalls: one of many examples is the fact that as late as 1881, southern women who practiced sewing and weaving at home were classified by local censors as “Textile Workers.” When census norms changed and no longer considered work done in the home as \"Employment,\" this caused a precipitous increase in unemployed women to appear in data coming from the South, even though real economic activity hadn't changed much at all.\n\nOne stand-in for institutional and social development that researchers have found good to work with is literacy and primary education. In this measure, the pre-unitary Southern Italian Kingdom suffers from a lack of public education policy, entirely reliant as it was on the clergy and their parochial schools. As a result, at the moment of unification in 1861 90% of southern Italians were illiterate, and only 20% of children were able or willing to enroll in primary education. This stands in stark contrast with Piedmont and Liguria, the most significant territories of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (the polity which would go on to unify Italy) where in 1861 literacy stood at 53%, and, 93% children were enrolled in primary education thanks to universal education policies. The estimates (postulated by the aforementioned Negri-Zamagni in \"*La situazione economica e sociale nel meridione negli anni dell’unificazione: Una rivisitazione*” published in 2013) certainly can have some issues, as in both north and south measures of literacy were inconsistent. However, it this disparity is corroborated by other indicators: in 1862 (immediately after unity) 6.1 letters per inhabitant were mailed in the northern region of Piedmont, while only 1.6 letters per inhabitant were mailed in the former territories of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.\n\nThe mailing of letters is also reflected in the disparity between professionalized industries in north and south, like banking and insurance, who would be making most use of postal correspondence. Between 1827 and 1848 (thus in the pre-unity period) of the 53 banks chartered all over Italy not one was founded in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. The south would have to wait till 1850 for its only two commercial banks to be founded (the Bank of Naples and the Bank of Sicily). While we have no fair pre-unity estimates for insurance companies, in the post unity period (in 1865) of the 88 insurance companies registered in Italy only 21 were based in the South, against the 67 in the North. And beyond banking and insurance, in 1865 of the 208 joint-stock industrial corporations in existence in Italy, only 17 were registered in the South; a serious marker of lack of development in a country that was just then joining the industrial revolution (my source is, as above, Negri-Zamagni).\n\nSo what stopped the South from developing the hallmarks of an industrial economy, like banks, insurers, and most critically industrial corporations?\n\nThe consensus is attributable to the lack of legal or institutional framework favoring capital accumulation in the Kingdom of two Sicilies. Indeed, it would seem that the southern monarchy was itself disinterested in favoring industrial growth, preferring to award of letters patent to foreign investors for what few industrial endeavors might take place. Even things like military and naval procurement was outsourced. The railroad, hallmark of the industrial revolution, was only built to connect the King's summer palace to the King's winter palace. Cause and consequence of this lack of initiative was the southern moneyed classes' preference for investing in extensive agriculture, rather than industry.\n\nThe attitude in the north, however, was much different. The Kingdom of Piedmont lived a precarious existence sandwiched between the Austrian and French Empires. A finely honed instinct for survival among its political class, in addition to an influx of political dissidents from the Austrian-held parts of Italy (as well as a few thinkers expelled from the South) fomenting political thought, led the Kingdom to do its best to imitate the great powers of Europe in industrial development. Policies weren't always successful or well thought out, but they were successful enough to turn the maritime city of Genoa into a center of naval construction, connecting Genoa to the capital of Turin via a railroad, and even develop plans for a future connection between Turin and Switzerland.\n\nIn Austrian-held Italy too, a political and entrepreneurial class based in and around the city of Milan worked to imitate their peers in Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, in order to foster economic development: milanese entrepreneurs financed railroads, canalization of waterways, and founded a series of technical and vocational schools (a far cry from the southern system, which as mentioned above relied on parochial schools).\n\nIt is worth keeping in mind, though, that Italy at the time of unification was still a fundamentally agricultural economy. France, Great Britain, and parts of Austria were much more developed. The gap between Northern Italy and the industrialized regions of Europe would not close until the 1980s.\n\nBut why did the gap close in the North and not in the South?\n\nThe question is one of the many that Emanuele Felice tries to answer in his concise but ambitious, \"*Ascesa e Declino*.\" The north was certainly helped by the presence of a great river, the Po, whose tributaries could be turned into canals to water farms and power mills, and which could be navigated by barges, creating a large unified marketplace even before the construction of the railroad. The south had no such hydrographic advantage. The north's cities were also geographically closer to the industrialized regions of Europe, and thus exchanging goods, materials, and ideas was much easier than in the South. The north would also benefit, in the long run, from the two world wars: Haphazard and hurried wartime planning meant that production of wartime materials was focused where there already was productive capacity, thus turning the north's marginal advantage into a much more substantial advantage.\n\nBut Felice also identifies policy decisions taken in the post-war era as important factors. In fact, the gap between north and south seemed to be closing in the wake of the second world war, but would begin increasing again following the Italian response to the global economic slowdown of the 1970s: deliberate decisions were made to direct state-sponsored conglomerates as well as government procurement to favor the country's least developed regions. This created a paternalistic and clientelistic relationship between southern entrepreneurship and the government, with entrepreneurs quickly preferring to follow lucrative subcontracts offered by the state and state-sponsored entities, divesting from existing industries that had driven the south's budding economic growth up to that point.\n\nI'm very bad with conclusions, but that's the summary of the leading academic consensus. Feel free to offer any follow ups or additional questions you may have." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnixqho", "dnjdplh" ], "score": [ 8, 4 ], "text": [ "Our main problem in space exploration is the cost of launching into orbit. It's in the order of several thousand US$ per kg.\n\nSo, first of all, consider how much fuel you need to achieve orbit. [Here's a picture of a Space Shuttle on the launch pad](_URL_0_). Note how the huge fuel tank is larger than the spaceplane itself. Putting some numbers, it was a total mass of 2000 tons on the launch pad out of which only 80 tons made it to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). It didn't have enough fuel to reach another planet, the Moon or even just geosynchronous orbit - if you want to do that you'll have to increase the mass at liftoff by a significant factor.\n\nThen, when landing, the spaceplane was only able to land itself, at most it could be loaded with an extra 20 tons in its cargo bay. No way it could land a comparable fuel tank to take off again from a foreign planet. Consider also the difficulties of flying in a different atmosphere, or landing without a man-made runway.\n\nSecond, in order to make them lighter and cheaper, spacecraft are usually designed specifically for their mission goals and for the environment they will have to operate in. The Space Shuttle was not able to support human life in missions longer than a few weeks (no significant recycling of life support resources like water or oxygen), was not able to protect astronauts from radiation in the long term, and would not have been able to work correctly in a harsher thermal environment.\n\nIf you do design a spacecraft for a variety of environments or for goals other than the ones intended, in aerospace jargon this is called \"overdesigned\". Basically it means you're using more mass than you actually need. Making things unnecessarily heavy means making them unnecessarily expensive, i.e. wasting the space agency's money. If a company does this then it is unlikely to be chosen for further contracts with the same space agency in the future (but they are actually unlikely to do it because the design is reviewed and negotiated with the agency at all times).\n\nBoth aspects would change if we ever develop a propulsion technology that makes access to space significantly cheaper, using only a small mass of fuel that can fit inside the spaceplane. But today this is not part of the foreseeable future.\n", "All right. Spaceplanes *might* be efficient as reusable launch vehicles. Jet engines are much more efficient than rockets because they can use outside air for most of the reaction mass. They're heavier for the same thrust, but a spaceplane flying horizontally needs much less thrust, because it can use the energy for list instead. If a spaceplane can accelerate up to mach 5 or so using airbreathing engines, it may be viable for it to reach orbit in a single stage. Yes, mach 5 is only a small fraction of the delta-V required to reach orbit, but the rocket equation is exponential, and most of a launcher's mass is fuel: gaining a massive efficiency boost on the first 15% of your delta-V has a big impact. If you can reduce your vehicle's fuel fraction from, say, 95% to 90%, you DOUBLE the mass of the non-fuel stuff.\n\nThe problem is that jet engines and wings are heavy, especially when they have to be heat-shielded for both reentry and hypersonic airbreathing flight. And to make matters worse, conventional turbojets can only get up to mach 3 or so, and ramjets to mach 6. So you'd normally need to carry three separate sets of engines on one vehicle, which is prohibitively heavy. The most promising solutions to this are combined-cycle engines, like the Reaction Engines \"SABRE\" in development, which can fulfill multiple roles. For example, the SABRE is supposed to operate anywhere from zero to mach 5 as a jet engine, which is achieved by a combination of partially bypassing the compressors and turbines at high speed, combining features of a turbojet and ramjet (this is similar to the engines on the SR71 Blackbird), and cooling the intake air by exchanging the heat with the fuel (liquid hydrogen). But then it can also run on liquid hydrogen and onboard liquid oxygen as a rocket. Will it actually work well enough to make a SSTO orbital spaceplane possible? Who knows.\n\nBut even if a spaceplane is viable for going to and from low earth orbit, it's useless for *interplanetary* travel. Why? Because you need even more delta-V to get out of Earth's gravity well and onto an interplanetary trajectory, and because the rocket engine is, as mentioned, exponential, unless you're refueling your vehicle in LEO you're going to need an extra stage. In principle you could probably refuel a Skylon in orbit and it would have enough delta-V to reach other planets, but that would require dozens of launches carrying the fuel, and it wouldn't have the hardware required to support *itself* for months in orbit (liquid hydrogen tends to boil off after a few days in space), let alone a crew. In practice, *manned* interplanetary flight would require a vehicle more like the ISS than a launch vehicle: a massive spacecraft, assembled in orbit, with landers carried on the sides of the habitat modules.\n\nUnfortunately, the most efficient propulsion systems we can make (and you NEED that efficiency if you want to go to another planet and return) have too little thrust to be useful when launching into orbit. If you start in orbit you can burn for hours, days, or MONTHS to get on the trajectory you want: try that when trying to get into orbit and you'll fall back into the atmosphere and burn up. The one exception is the Orion Drive, but nobody's going to ever use that to get into orbit because it works by *detonating nuclear bombs behind the spacecraft.*\n\nWhat that means is that even those fancy combined-cycle engines are dead weight for your interplanetary flight. In fact, they'll be dead weight at your destination too, and so will your wings. There are only TWO bodies in the solar system where a spaceplane designed for an orbital reentry on Earth could safely perform an atmospheric entry and descent using their wings: Titan and Venus. Mars's atmosphere is too thin, anything designed for Earth reentry would glide like a brick. The giant planets have too strong gravity - entry speeds are so high that half your entry vehicle has to be heat shield, and forget getting back out of the atmosphere. Everywhere else has either no atmosphere or such a thin one (e.g. Triton, Pluto) that you have to land completely propulsively. And then, how do you get back? There have been proposals to build floating habitats in Venus's upper atmosphere, but how are you landing a spaceplane on them? Even if you build one big enough to have a runway, you're basically trying to make a carrier landing in an airliner-sized vehicle that glides like a brick (spaceplanes glide well only by comparison to a capsule). And how are you going to take off again? Airbreathing engines are completely useless on Venus. On Titan, you *might* be able to design an engine to burn liquid oxygen with atmospheric methane, but there's a lot less methane in Titan's atmosphere than there is oxygen in Earth's, and in the upper atmosphere, which is where you want to do your serious acceleration, there's less methane than at the surface. Even if you can burn it, making a jet engine that works in both environments will be a materials science *nightmare.*\n\nNow, concievably if we had a permanent colony on Titan we *could* use a spaceplane to launch crew from Earth, then transfer them to the big interplanetary ship that makes repeated trips between Earth and Saturn, and then in Titan orbit get picked up by a shuttle that ferries people between Titan's surface and Titanian orbit." ] }

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[ [ "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s39mNwFuQDQ/maxresdefault.jpg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ekhfkvr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It is interesting how many sites quote these particular lines, but provide no context, or even bother to cite the origin. Most of them do so with the obvious intent of saying that the US is a religious country, and has to be a religious country because John Adams said it had to be religious country. It's useful to look at it in context.\n\nIt's from his [address to the Massachusetts Militia in October of 1798:](_URL_2_)\n\n > While our Country remains untainted with the Principles and manners, which are now producing desolation in so many Parts of the World: while the \\[ USA \\] continues Sincere and incapable of insidious and impious Policy: We shall have the Strongest Reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned Us by Providence. But should the People of America, once become capable of that deep .... simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition ,Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other\n\nIt is comparatively easy these days to split off \"moral\" from \"religious\". But in this period ( and well into the 20th c.) to say someone was spiritually-guided carried an assumption they were morally-guided as well. Religion was thought to be the main impetus to virtue. Some philosophers like David Hume could argue against that, and show by example that the two did not have to be linked, but the notion of a moral atheist was pretty rare: most people would believe that the only thing that kept humans from doing terrible things was their fear and love of God. Here Adams is using the terms together to make an argument for the Constitution very common to the 1790's: that its success depended upon the active participation in the government by law-abiding honest people. But it also shows one concern that Adams had in particular. Many of the founders, like Madison and Jefferson, thought of Americans as being relatively equal, and content to be equal. Unlike them, Adams ( after the Revolution) thought that humans tended to strive for superiority, and that, even without a hereditary aristocracy in the US, there would arise an aristocratic elite and an unruly mob wishing to loot and supplant it. He was pretty comfortable with the idea of that elite class being a good force ( maybe here, more \"armed with Power\" ) perhaps even thought the US could have the equivalent of a House of Lords. He thought that the balancing of powers in the Constitution also provided some defense against the conflict, but he was always very uneasy about the danger of mob rule. In 1798, he would be quite aware of the French Revolution \"producing desolation\": that certainly would have put him in mind of the possibilities of a populace no longer moral and religious.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nJohn Adams : A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books/about/A\\_Defence\\_of\\_the\\_Constitutions\\_of\\_Govern.html?id=aH0NAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp\\_read\\_button#v=onepage&q&f=false", "https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Defence_of_the_Constitutions_of_Govern.html?id=aH0NAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false", "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctbhxed" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Absolutely, in many major (and minor) American cities, there were wings of what we would call the \"Black Mafia.\" Typically unrelated but very powerful crime syndicates in the African-American parts of town. Phildelphia, Chicago, New York and Detroit each had their own families, syndicates, brothels, and gangs. I'll outline one of the more prominent groups that existed with The Harlem Mafia. \n\n***The Harlem Mob***\n\nOne of the most famous figures that dominated the Harlem scene was Stephanie \"Madame\" St. Clair. A Creole Black Harlemite who ran several rackets and gangs across Harlem, owned the Black police force, and was known as \"The Tiger of Marseille.\" When notorious gangster Dutch Schultz tried to edge in on the numbers games in Harlem, St. Clair reportedly said: “Ze God-damned Dutchman can keees my ass,” she hissed. “He zinks I’m some stupid nigga? I show him he zinks wrong!” St. Clair would use her enemy in Schultz to leverage favor with the Italian mobster Lucky Luciano, having him act as protection for the Harlem mob while only paying the Italians a pittance, insuring Black Mafia control of Harlem. \n\nFollowing (and working with) St. Clair comes probably the most famous black mobster in Ellsworth \"Bumpy\" Johnson, the Black Kingpin of Harlem. He was a Numbers Game operator, enforcer, drug dealer and Mob Boss who operated in Harlem from the 1930's to the 1960's. He became such a prestigious figure that he appeared in Jet Magazine [once](_URL_0_) after he left the hospital for being shot and [again](_URL_1_) when being arrested for selling heroin. It was under the control of St. Clair and Johnson that famous nightclubs like the Cotton Club were able to flourish in Harlem.\n\n\n**Sources**\n\n*Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth \"Bumpy\" Johnson* Mayme Johnson\n\n*The Cotton Club* James Haskins\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=QUMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=Ellsworth+Raymond+Johnson+%22bumpy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAGoVChMIyKKNgaPtxgIV4yVyCh0AmwAC#v=onepage&q&f=false", "https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=378DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49&dq=Ellsworth+Johnson+%22bumpy%22&hl=en&ei=4UKPTYfRC4HJgQfsuOC_DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ellsworth%20Johnson%20%22bumpy%22&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ell1wos" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Oh, this is such a good question, I can't believe I let it languish for 25 days! Sorry for not procrastinating on my other work earlier so I could answer this; I mean that sincerely, I love this question :).\n\nFrom the first, I think it's important to mention that Egypt at the very least was aware that Israel had nuclear development, and that it also appeared to have overflown Israel's Dimona nuclear site multiple times even in the 1960s. For a fascinating read on how this might've played into the 1967 tensions before the Six Day War, [Avner Cohen, one of the experts on Israel's nuclear program](_URL_1_), wrote well about it. Another interesting read on that can be found [here, by Ariel Levité and Emily Landau](_URL_0_).\n\nAt any rate, what was known by 1973 was, obviously, different from what was known in 1967. What the Arab states knew, we can only speculate on based on what's been publicly revealed. Secret information has remained secret, for obvious reasons, in both Israeli and Arab archives. However, the nuclear issue is such an open secret by now that we can definitely glean information of use.\n\nFollowing the end of the 1967 war, the Arab states now accepted Israel's conventional military edge. That may explain, to some extent, why they felt powerless to address what they knew was an existing nuclear program, and what many states knew was being developed. Egypt had, in the past, sought to use conventional war as a deterrent and threat to Israel, a sort of last resort in case Israel began to cross the nuclear threshold. They'd also wanted to use their own potential nuclear programs as a deterrent, but that was also out of the question; the war had not only destroyed Egypt militarily, but it was also now suffering an economic issue, and couldn't easily afford a nuclear program. There were no more threats of preventive war that really held water.\n\nThe Arab states thus looked the other way on Israeli development, because they knew Israel's opacity would benefit them. They could do nothing about it, so better to ignore it than afford to look even weaker in the face of that development. That also allowed Israel to adopt its opacity position, using ambiguity in such a way as to ensure that the signals both sides sent to one another didn't lead to escalation neither wanted, but that the Egyptians in particularly really couldn't afford. The primary issue on Israel's nuclear program ceased to be Arab threats, and began to be American pressure instead.\n\nThat is a story of its own, so I'll leave that one out. The important bit is this: by 1970, the nuclear program was largely known. The *New York Times* reported as much in July 1970, revealing that the US government now assumed that Israel either had a nuclear weapon, or could assemble one quickly and easily if needed. The Arab states *knew* in 1973 that Israel possessed nuclear weapons, and they chose to attack anyways. However, that's not to say it had no impact on their decisions. Instead, it appeared to have led to them adopting constrained, limited methods and objectives, as raised by Cohen in *Israel and the Bomb*. At the same time, Egypt miscalculated what Israel would react with to its attack in 1973.\n\nYet Yair Evron in *Israel's Nuclear Dilemma* argues the exact opposite; that Egypt effectively ignored the nuclear issue in 1973, and was limited in its objectives because of its conventional limitations, and that it didn't take nuclear issues into account because it believed their use would not occur. There's also an argument that their actions were consistent with any non-nuclear adversary fighting a war with a nuclear power, and he references the way that China and the Soviet Union acted in relation to the United States before they got their nuclear weapons.\n\nAt any rate, I've seen very few people argue that the Egyptians were unaware of the Israeli capability. Abraham Rabinovich, in *The Yom Kippur War*, mentions quite clearly that Egypt was \"aware of Israel's nuclear potential, but [Egypt's] limited operational goals in Sinai did not threaten Israel's borders and therefore were not seen as risking a doomsday response\".\n\nIt's also important to know that while Egypt and Syria may have seen the public reports, we have no idea what Syria did or did not know beyond that, and whether they had information shared with them by Egypt, at least as far as I've seen. Nevertheless, it's commonly believed that they knew Israel had a nuclear weapon. And it also seems unrealistic that the coordination prior to the war would've left out that Syria would be facing a nuclear power, while Egypt was aware, even if the public reports weren't enough. However, their view of the way to interact knowing that is less understood. How they viewed their war aims was probably shaped by Israel's nuclear policy, but I've seen little knowledge about what that effect was.\n\nHere's the funny thing, and where I'll just go a bit beyond your question: the limited aims, and the way Egypt (and probably Syria) perceived those aims as being a good way to avoid nuclear war, still gave rise to the infamous alleged arming of Israel's nuclear arsenal, as recounted popularly by Seymour Hersh and subsequently investigated/discussed many times over. However, Rabinovich points to many sources saying that the decision to deploy the weapons was greatly overblown. Yuval Ne'eman, a nuclear physicist and former intelligence officer, is quoted saying it would be normal to advance preparedness any time a war occurred, but that there was no deployment for possible use, as was reported. Apparently it was considered during a discussion by generals, but it was also debated quite fiercely, with no resolution. However, it apparently was never debated by the Israeli Cabinet, according to what Rabinovich (a fairly well-respected journalist) called \"reliable Israeli sources\".\n\nAvner Cohen has a different take, citing a source at the war cabinet's meeting on October 9 who apparently claimed that Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had discussed a nuclear demonstration when the war seemed at its worst. The Israeli atomic head was there and ready to discuss, but other ministers chimed in and it ended there. There are plenty of other rumors, and claims, but this seems like a potential one. Cohen also claims that nuclear alerts were declared, twice in the first week of the war and once on October 17, when Soviet SCUD missiles were put on alert in Egypt. The belief is that the missiles were fueled and mobilized, something that requires only the Prime Minister and Defense Minister to agree (the cabinet doesn't have to make a decision, according to Cohen, just those two), but that the Prime Minister never went further than that.\n\nContinued in a response to my own comment." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.jstor.org/stable/30245473", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/4328925" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dod9wcm" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The innovations pioneered around that period were arguably more broadly and popularly *impactful* than other periods, but that doesn't mean they were more numerous. The changes in that era were profound - a way of life that had continued fairly unchanged for many centuries was fundamentally altered in developed nations. Previously, one would travel by horse or foot, burn candles for light, communicate verbally or by writing, and poop in a hole. Suddenly, people had cars and trains, electric light and power, radio, and indoor plumbing. (Some of these were older inventions made popular and affordable by industrialization; this too is part of the innovations.) While innovation has continued, and arguably increased, the \"low hanging fruit\" of changing human lifestyles has pretty much been picked. Cell phones and Internet are wonderful, but they are as much *improvements* of the concept of radio as they are inherently revolutionary. A smart car is vastly more complicated than a Model T, but is still a car. Microwaves are neat, but radiating my hot dogs instead of boiling them is hardly earth-shaking. Moon travel and nuclear weapons don't really effect everyday life the way a light bulb does. I'd argue you may have a bias based on the commonplace impact of earlier industrial innovations, the nature of which arguably made them seem more numerous. Material science or computer coding aren't as apparent or basic of changes as previously." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cx6nhlo", "cx6os6u", "cx6xo6o", "cx6zpu8" ], "score": [ 2, 16, 7, 10 ], "text": [ "This is a question that I've pondered for a while too. And seeing that these products practically need to be aged, does that mean you're looking at running at a loss for the first few years before the first batch? Or is it more that these things started out as family affairs as a side project to their barley fields, and eventually became a business?\n\nHow would they know what it might even end up tasting like? Is it a crapshoot? Do they have models to predict how adding things to it and what wood they sit it in will affect the end product upon bottling? \n\nThank you for asking. Upboats for someone to answer please.\n\nedit: Google is our friend. _URL_0_\n\nJack Daniels, being a blended whiskey, probably got their stuff from other distilleries and bottled them and sold them. Sounds like. I'm not an expert.", "Whiskey sells on such a large scale, and the market changes so little. A large chunk of big name liquors get sold directly to bars, whose annual usage has very distinct trends. This cuts a huge chunk of unknown out of their sales figures. And while more and more people are turning 21, people in their early 20s are not the primary consumers of whiskey. So the buying habits of Jack Daniels customers shouldn't be difficult to predict four years in advance. The market overall doesn't change much.", "Um, wouldn't plain old common sense tell us that since whiskey does not *expire*, at least in any practical time period, one would be safe in making extra, then simply rotating in back stock in years where you have a shortage? It's not like they have to peg 3,981 kegs ahead of time and hit that target exactly.\n", "While others have offered insight as to how they make predictions, they also have the power to increase or decrease the price based on demand. If whiskey gets really popular in the future, the price will shoot up so they don't run out. If it falls out of fashion, the price will likely decrease (or they will keep it barrelled to make an even older stock)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.slate.com/articles/life/luxury_explainer/2012/12/starting_a_new_whiskey_company_how_long_do_you_have_to_wait_for_your_spirits.html" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c65dmcd" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I don't see anything besides wind speeds and the altitude of the cloud coming into play. Best bet would probably be to look up the most windy hurricane and find out how far away from the edge of its clouds people felt the rain." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c34nthm", "c34nts0", "c34nthm", "c34nts0" ], "score": [ 2, 4, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "As far as we've been able to test it, the Cosomological principle holds. The universe looks generally the same no matter where you are.\n\nWhen you are is a slightly different story. The universe only because transparent when it was 380 000 years old, so you see a wall at that distance, in all directions. (It looks black to us now because it's so cold.)", "The universe is believed to be infinite and isotropic. Thus there is no \"leading edge\" of the big bang. The big bang occurred simultaneously at every point in the universe, and was an expansion *of* space, not an explosion *in* space. \n\nGiven all that, someone at the farthest galaxy that we can see would see the same type of things that we ourselves see, including our galaxy at it appeared billions of years ago, as well as galaxies that are too far away for their light to have reached us. ", "As far as we've been able to test it, the Cosomological principle holds. The universe looks generally the same no matter where you are.\n\nWhen you are is a slightly different story. The universe only because transparent when it was 380 000 years old, so you see a wall at that distance, in all directions. (It looks black to us now because it's so cold.)", "The universe is believed to be infinite and isotropic. Thus there is no \"leading edge\" of the big bang. The big bang occurred simultaneously at every point in the universe, and was an expansion *of* space, not an explosion *in* space. \n\nGiven all that, someone at the farthest galaxy that we can see would see the same type of things that we ourselves see, including our galaxy at it appeared billions of years ago, as well as galaxies that are too far away for their light to have reached us. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpg0rdy", "cpgc1dt", "cpgdnw8" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 19 ], "text": [ "Mercury vapor gives off uv light which is the right wavelength to excite the phosphor coating on the inside of fluorescent tubes. None of the noble gasses emit a white light which is comfortable to the eye. ", "Because the other gases fluoresce different colors better suited to other purposes. For instance, neon produces a red glow. This would not work so well for streetlights. But then again street lamps are being phased out for LEDs or metal halides for the most part. ", "**Short answer:** mercury just happens to have atomic characteristics that make it useful for producing visible light at high efficiency, and it is superior to other elements to the point that we use it despite the possible dangers. \n\n**More details:** in a [gas discharge lamp](_URL_2_), you pass electrical current through an ionized gas (plasma). This excites electrons in the plasma atoms to a higher energy state, and when they fall back down to a lower energy state they give off photons of light. \n\nDifferent atoms have different energy states for their electrons, and as such produce photons of various energies characteristic to the type of atom. Mercury happens to produce intense ultraviolet light (along with some visible light), and the UV light can be converted into other colors of light by applying a fluorescent coating. The combination produces visible light with good efficiency at reasonable power levels. \n\nAs an example of other technology, [xenon arc lamps](_URL_4_) are also used, and (at high power levels) can produce very bright light that is actually a closer approximation of natural sunlight than fluorescent lamps. However, they are less efficient. [Metal halide lamps](_URL_1_) use mercury vapor plus metal halide vapor to add in other spectral lines. They are effectively a combination mercury-vapor and sodium-vapor bulb, as the most common metal halide is sodium iodide. Note that these two are both \"high-intensity discharge\" lamps, with an electrical arc running between electrodes inside the lamp. They tend to operate at higher power levels, making them less useful for residential lighting. The metal halide lamps also have to (literally) warm up to their full light output, as the metal halide takes some time to heat up and vaporize - not good for residential lighting where they might be turned off and on regularly. Some of them actually cannot be re-lit after being turned off (intentionally or due to interruption of power) without being allowed to cool down for several minutes first. Metal halide lamps have similar efficiency to fluorescent lamps, and are growing more common in large-scale lighting applications where their drawbacks are less relevant and their high power, high [color rendering index](_URL_0_), and high efficiency are useful. [Low-pressure sodium vapor lamps](_URL_3_) are some of the most efficient light sources in existence and use no mercury, but the nearly monochromatic yellow light they produce almost completely destroys the ability to recognize colors, resulting in them being considered unacceptable for most indoor lighting applications. \n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-halide_lamp", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-discharge_lamp", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_arc_lamp" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e62qhem" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "At about 2pm ET the President was in the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor of the White House with friend and aide Harry Hopkins when Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called and first told him if the reports from Pearl. He was called again a few minutes later by Admiral Stark the Chief of Naval Operations to confirm and expand the reports. Final confirmation came then when Hawaii Governor John Poindexter was put through to the President and the second wave of the attack descended during the conversation.\n\nFDR used the room as a personal study and private space mostly. He kept naval prints and model ships there along with his stamp collection, but would also work out of it. Earlier in the day he had sent regrets to Mrs Roosevelt that he could not attend a reception downstairs, though he would later try to use the attack as his reason for missing out vs just wanting some free time.\n\nThrough the rest of the day he would stay there while his senior military leader's assembled, then in the evening address leader's from Congress, and his full Cabinet. All the while his secretaries had set themselves up in the adjoining rooms with phones and typewriters to deliver copies of the latest news from the Pacific.\n\nIt was also here late in the evening that he would draft the speech he would give to Congress and also spoke to Prime Minister Churchill briefly to confirm that both nation's had been attacked by Japan and reaffirm their support for each other." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dsf7ve8", "dsf8ckz", "dsfepb6" ], "score": [ 209, 92, 2 ], "text": [ "You *are* getting hit by gamma rays all the time.", "One? Nothing.\n\nNot only are you getting hit by gamma rays all the time, you're probably producing a few. The radioactive decay of the potassium in your body will occasionally produce a positron, which will annihilate with a nearby electron and spit out a gamma ray. Other radioactive events in your body can produce gamma rays as well.", "As already mentioned gamma rays are hitting us all the time. In principle a gamma ray can damage cellular structures or DNA in cells by breaking molecular bonds, but it takes a fair amount of radiation to do this. For context typical gamma rays usually have energies around an MeV on the higher end. In Joules, this is 1.6 x 10^-13 Joules -- an extremely tiny energy. Even TeV scale gamma rays like those observed in exotic astronomical events have energies of 10^-7 Joules. So it would take quite a large number of gamma rays to even do sizeable damage; this is the danger of being near to radiating materials, since those materials will give off many particles in a short amount of time." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyenchd" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "There was a fairly flourishing US publishing industry by the 1850s. For example, Melville published with Harper and Brothers (which is is extant as HarperCollins), Poe with Putnam (also still extant as an imprint of Penguin), Hawthorne and Thoreau with Ticknor and Fields, Emerson with Philips, Samson.\n\nSource: William Charvat, *Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850*. U of Massachusetts, 1993" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c86xz4z" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Yes even bacteria can exhibit [circadian rhythms](_URL_0_) \n \n[Here](_URL_1_) is an example that is especially intriguing. The Viking Mars lander of 1976 tested labeled elements on Mars soils samples. They found the soil \"consumed\" the elements and detection of exactly the same (labeled) elements in the exhaust gas was proof of some sort of consumption/exhalation like an organism. However, because organic compounds were not detected in the samples, it is assumed by most researchers that the reaction was purely chemical and not biological. \n \nMiller and others have found evidence of circadian rhythms in the Viking data. If there is strong statistical support that the rhythm is temperature independent, then this is considered evidence toward some form of bacteria-like life." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_circadian_rhythms", "http://mars.spherix.com/spie2/Miller-Straat-Levin_FINAL.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dw9k5yf" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "[dust corrosion](_URL_0_) \n\nDust contains all kinds of different elements, including some salts. The accumulation of these minerals over time paired with humidity, creates a salty solution, which then does what a salty solution does and eats into the material. \n\nI knew about this immediately because I work with structural fasteners, the kind that hold bridges and ships and buildings together. In storage they’re required to be covered to protect them from dust for this very reason. The dust can diminish any plating on the fasteners through the same process. \n\nEdit: added context\nEdit 2: added a related story " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.researchgate.net/publication/4102200_Dust_corrosion/amp" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cj6y3hl" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not to put off any further answers or follow-up questions, but [this healthy discussion](_URL_0_) may be of help to you." ] }

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

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24em97/when_did_early_christians_stop_considering/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0hno3o", "d0hnopd", "d0ho0hl", "d0hosg7" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Because you are more used to seeing an Asian guy wearing a suit then a white guy wearing a kimono.", "Western suit? I don't really know, but I think it's safe to assume that suits in general is a general worldwide thing. Its just business attire. Where as, a Kimono has to do with culture. ", "Most people from japan don't consider it unacceptable. My mother is white and of german & British heritage yet my fathers Japanese business associates have brought her a kiminono before. \n\nKiminos aren't held in the same regard they were in the 1800's when america \"opened\" japan. \n\n", "I'm speculating a bit here. But I think it's because japan post WW2 adopted a lot of american culture and integrated it in to its own. Including corporate structure and business practices. The western world, being the winner of WW2 and further ahead both in weapons and capitalistic progress had no reason to import culture from Japan." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccl0wx4", "ccl1jdp", "ccl2hwa", "ccl2ukn", "ccl3e2p", "ccl3vn4" ], "score": [ 23, 92, 2, 3, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The main, overarching reason was that the Netherlands were just too small. They tried quite hard, and for a while, quite successfully, to be a great naval and colonial power, but England and France and Spain had just too many men and resources for them to compete with. Eventually, They were forced from N. America.", "It's no really a case of decline but more a case of being surpassed in economic growth. This had a number of reasons: \n \n- Mercantilism/Colbertisme (other country's protecting their own trade) Example: Act of Navigation (1651) Banned foreign ships from trading in English ports. \n\n- high wages/ low productivity \n\n- Costly wars and disastrous wars.\n In 1672 an alliance of France, England, Sweden, Munster and Cologne Invaded the Netherlands and almost conquered it. This year is dubbed rampjaar (\"disaster year\") in Dutch. \n\n- Political Corruptness/Laziness\n\n the Netherlands where a republic and governed by a group of people called 'regenten' they where members of rich and influenced families, the most important regent was the *raadpensionaris van het gewest Holland* of *Landsadvocaat* the most important military role was *de Stadhouder* *de facto* was this a hereditary position hold by a member of the House of Orange. \n\n There was always a power struggle between the *Staatsgezinden* ( people who supported the Landsadvocaat ) and the *Prinsgezinden* ( people who supported the Stadhouders ) in times of peace and prosperity the *landsadvocaat* held the most power, between 1650 and 1672 there was no *stadhouders*. when in 1672 the french invaded the people blamed the regents for the state of the army and demanded a *stadhouder*. William III was made *stadhouder* and defended the republic. William had ambitions to become king! and in 1689 he became king of England, this meant safety for the Nederlands but the Bill of Rights prevented that William revoked bills like The Acts of Navigation. But it also meant that The Netherlands needed support England in some large wars, with peace deals that clearly favored British interests. (I'am looking a you Peace of Utrecht (1713)) \n\n In the same period ( early to late 18th centenary) the ruling class became corrupted and lazy they where more busy protecting their interests than protection the Dutch interest, they where becoming also more of a aristocracy/Plutocracy. They where appointing important jobs to each other, it was increasingly harder to join their class.\n\n- Political stability in the rest of Europe\n\n One of the most important factors in the decline of the republic is the growth of other countries. The Netherlands is a small country ( DUH ) and can't produce the same amount of goods than the economic power house France, the same is with manpower and military strength. The Dutch Republic most successful years where in the period that England, France and The Holy Roman Empire where weak. \n \n England had to deal with their civil wars (1639-1651) and the political aftermath. From 1688 there was a fast economic growth. \n\n France became a powerhouse under the rule of Louis XIV (1643-1715) he gave France the largest army in the world, this forced the Dutch to invest in their army what raided the tax burden in the Netherlands.\n\n between 1618-1648 their was the 30 year war in the HRE which devastated much of what is now Germany. The Netherlands where involved in this war, but the war didn't affect the Netherlands that much. After the war the HRE could rebuild them self.\n\n**TL;DR: The rest of Europe gets their shit together and simply out growth the Dutch. While the Dutch lost their edge they didn't had an answer**", "As a side question, is \"golden age\" a valid term anymore? It seems really vague.", "As several have pointed out - being small and having your larger neighbors get their houses in order is a big part of it.\n\nBut another part of it would be the fact that the Netherlands were rich but not powerful enough to defend it against their rivals (England and France, primarily). The Anglo-Dutch wars drained the Dutch economy and stripped away valuable colonies and trading rights, followed by a right thumping from France.\n\nPart of having a golden age means you are doing something better than everyone else - and after the late 1600's, the source of Dutch dominance (trade) was usurped by the English. They were still rich and influential...just simply less so.", "There is an interesting school of thought that claims that the tolerance shown by the Dutch was key to their rise (ex: accepting Jewish merchants was a significant contributor to the rise of modern finance).\n\nBy the same token, as their political and economic fortunes ebbed and flowed there was a movement to return to a more 'pure' time when it was believed things were better. This created slow but steady flight to other more friendly locales (primarily England) which not only welcomed them with open arms but had the size and global scale to magnify their impacts.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhy the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future by Ian Morris has a discussion of this as well.\n\nI think its more complex but its an interesting perspective and analysis. Ian Morris puts real #'s to it and maps it to specific political and cultural milestones. The Digital Commons article talks about tolerance and the gradual change in the 18th century.\n\nThis is my first top level post to askhistorians. Sorry if I internet wrong.", "I believe the spice trade became less lucrative as well. The Dutch East India company made their money from the spice trade." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1491&context=macintl" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dmrecdy", "dmrei3f", "dmrei8e" ], "score": [ 6, 6, 4 ], "text": [ "If you have thousands of trucks, avoiding the time spent waiting to make left turns across traffic can add up, especially if your planning routes with dozens of stupid. In your personal life, where you only have two or three destinations, your never notice the difference or even travel further.", "A computer determines the optimum route. It tries to avoid lefts because of safety and time savings. It does not mean they never turn left. If a left is the best choice, it will be mapped. ", "In the USA, left hand turns means crossing the line of incomong traffic, UPS trucks are not known for their quick acceleration so left hamd turns often means waiting, and idleing the engine.\n\nengines at idle burn more gas then when they are actually movimg the vehicle (in most cases). it isnt a lot of fuel savings individually, but across their fleet of trucks it adds up.\n\nadds up to the tune of 200 or 300 million dollars\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d868ohr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There are notable cases of people surviving a bullet that actually enters the skull and penetrates the brain. Malala Yousafzai, Gabrielle Giffords, and although it's not a bullet, you have to remember Phineas Gage, who survive a steel bar through the head. So yes, it's survivable, although the degree of deficits you have is often a matter of where it penetrates, and how young you are. \n\nMore often though, a headshot is survivable because the bullet doesn't penetrate the skull and track through the brain. *Most* of the time that you get a bullet in your brain, you're not going to live, or live well. Most of the times that a bullet hits an unarmored head, it's going to kill you. \n\nVariables to consider in all of this are: Caliber of the bullet, velocity of the bullet when it hits (was it a long rifle at a 100 yards, or a 9mm pistol at 100 yards?), and the angle of the impact. That last only really matters if the bullet is relatively light, slow, and/or in the terminal portion of its flight. \n\nThe thing is, the head is a small target, and it moves a lot relatively to the body; it's quite hard to hit on a human target without training, and a good rifle... or close range. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6qxiho", "d6r3wn0" ], "score": [ 9, 6 ], "text": [ "So the most spectacular example of this going terribly comes in June of 1916.\n\nField Marshall the Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, who was serving as Secretary State for War was traveling to Russia in order to participate in negotiations and planning in person with the distressed Czar's government. He planned to take a RN cruiser up around Scandinavia to Arkhangelsk. He arrived in Scapa Flow in the Orkney's, which was the home base of the Grand Fleet.\n\nAfter meeting with Admiral Jellicoe aboard the Iron Duke he transferred to the cruiser HMS Hampshire. Owing to a terrible gale her 2 escort destroyers were sent back, the idea being ti was unsafe for them and U-Boats were unlikely to be a threat.\n\nUnfortunately about a week before, in the run up to Jutland, U-75 had put down a minefield and she struck one of these. Nearly all of her 700 passengers and crew were lost in the incident. ", "There are a few similar questions in the archives that might be of interest, I'll draw on some of my previous comments to particularly focus on Churchill's journey to Moscow in 1942:\n\n* [How did Churchill get to El Alamein in 1942?] (_URL_2_) \n* [How did world leaders travel to conferences during WWII?] (_URL_7_) \n* [How did the major world leaders travel to the conferences such as the Yalta conference safely?] (_URL_0_) \n\nFor the 1942 journey to Moscow, stopping off in North Africa for a week or so, the aircraft Churchill flew in was a modified B-24 Liberator [named \"Commando\"] (_URL_5_), subject of [an article on the Smithsonian website] (_URL_6_). The long range of the B-24 was important, as the usual route for Allied aircraft to the North African theatre (and the original route proposed for Churchill) started from Takoradi in Ghana (the Gold Coast, as was) and took five or six days travelling across central Africa before heading north to Cairo (as illustrated on [this map] (_URL_3_)). The B-24 could fly directly from Gibraltar to Cairo.\n\nThe first leg of the journey was Lyneham to Gibraltar, arriving the morning August 3rd, which Churchill describes as uneventful in *The Hinge of Fate*. That evening they took off at 6pm, cutting across Spanish and Vichy territory with an escort of four Beaufighters, flying across North Africa largely in darkness, seeing \"in the pale, glimmering dawn the endless winding silver ribbon of the Nile\" (ibid) on the morning of August 4th. Churchill visited the Alamein positions on the 5th, and appointed General Gott to command the Eighth Army. On August 10th Churchill departed Cairo for Tehran, then on to Moscow, arriving on the 12th. The conference lasted until the 17th, the return journey followed the same route in reverse, again including some time on the desert front.\n\nIn general there was little risk of coincidental interception for aircraft avoiding combat zones, especially at night; integrated air defences, radar and night fighters were concentrated in the UK and Germany, and to a lesser extent other active theatres. Air travel always carried an element of risk, though; on August 7th the newly appointed Gott was flying in to Cairo, on a similar route to the one taken by Churchill on the 5th, when his aircraft was shot down and strafed on the ground, killing most of the passengers (somewhat ironic, given Gott's nickname of \"Strafer\"); this resulted in Montgomery being appointed to command the Eighth Army. Knowledge of exact routes was limited as far as possible to the aircrew themselves, as intelligence leaks were a risk (e.g. Yamamoto's aircraft was shot down in 1943 by USAAF P-38s acting on \"Magic\" intelligence). Also in 1943 a BOAC DC-3 airliner was shot down as it flew from Lisbon to Britain, one of the passengers was the actor Leslie Howard; there are [numerous theories] (_URL_4_) that the aircraft may have been deliberated targeted in the belief that Churchill was on board, or that Howard himself was the target due to his work with British Intelligence, or that it was merely a mistake. Air accidents were probably the main danger, numerous high ranking officers were lost in air crashes (e.g. Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Lieutenant General Frank Andrews, Major-General Orde Wingate etc.)\n\nChurchill continued to use \"Commando\" until 1943, when it was replaced by an Avro York (a design derived from the Lancaster) named \"Ascalon\" with a few more creature comforts including a heated lavatory seat (though apparently it was disconnected as it was too hot), then in 1944 he switched to a C-54B Skymaster received via lend-lease; an article [in Flight magazine from November 1945] (_URL_1_) outlines how it was fitted out with rather luxurious passenger compartments, a conference room (with cocktail cabinet) and a well-furnished galley.\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gnoet/how_did_the_major_world_leaders_travel_to_the/", "https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1945/1945%20-%202348.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mogn8/how_did_churchill_get_to_el_alamein_in_1942/", "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/I/maps/AAF-I-10.jpg", "http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-shoot-down-of-leslie-howard/", "http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205189669", "http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/travels-with-churchill-136166507/?all", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2syu1b/how_did_world_leaders_travel_to_conferences/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4bp6ys", "e4bpkih" ], "score": [ 7, 3 ], "text": [ " > I have a single socket in my room, and I use a series of extension chords to run a few ~~high~~low-power appliances such as a laptop, monitor, PS3, lampshades, speakers, LEDs etc.\n\nFixed that for you\n\nEverything you listed consumes 200W or less. The laptop is probably around 30W while the monitors may be closer to 50W\n\nA standard US outlet/breaker can support up to 1800 W of power(15A). If you load it up to that level or beyond you run the risk of the breaker tripping and turning off all your connected devices. Based on your loads, you're probably drawing less than 500W on a regular basis(i doubt you have everything at max power at the same time)\n\nDon't add a toaster or hairdryer to the mix and you'll be good", "I'm assuming you are in North America, where we use 120v power.\n\nThe key is to look at the wattage of each device you want to plug in. \n\nYour circuit breaker is either 15 amps or 20 amps, probably 20. Check the panel to make sure. \n\nNext find out how many outlets are hooked to that circuit breaker, turn it off and then find out how many outlets don't have power. Several rooms may be running off that one circuit breaker. \n\nNext, find out the total wattage of all the devices plugged into all those outlets. There will be a sticker on every device which lists either the amps or watts it uses. 20 amps = 2400 watts, and 15 amps = 1800 watts. So you could plug in 24 hundred watt lightbulbs before it would trip the circuit breaker.\n\nIf the device has the listing on the sticker in amps, then multiply that by the wall voltage (120v) to get watts. So a 120 watt light bulb running off of 120 volts, uses one amp. A 10 amp space heater would be using 1200 watts (10 amps x 120v).\n\nSo you have probably 2400 watts to use, and as long as you don't exceed that, you won't have any problems. Just remember that the power strips might also have a circuit breaker, so they could be limited to ten or 15 amps (1200 or 1800 watts).\n\nA good way to check is just to touch the power strip/power plug/power cord in several places. If it gets warm, thats okay. If it get so hot it's about to burn your hand when you grab it, that is NOT okay and you are overloading things. Same thing if you smell burnt plastic smell. You are overloading something and it's beginning to melt. \n\nYou can also buy a device at any hardware store called a WattMinder or WattMeter or something like that. I forget the exact name. You plug it into the wall outlet and plug the power strip into that and it gives you a digital readout of exactly how many watts you are using. Very handy thing to have around." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e01ednd", "e01muxp" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "When the car is in cruise control it is monitoring and attempting, as you said, to maintain the speed it was set to. When you go up hill the car faces more resistance as it has to work against gravity more, so when in cruise control this causes the car to slow down, the car notices this and then attempts to accelerate, like if you pushed down on the gas, to maintain the speed. You are likely hearing the engine rev up which we usually associate with 'going fast,' but the car is just maintaining.", "In my car (Pontiac Vibe), it's because the stupid cruise control is actually speeding you up. It'll accelerate up to 5 mph above what you set it, for reasons I can't divine. It likes to do this around bends too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvi8v0r", "cvip8b8" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Water is important because it is a potent solvent and is liquid in a temperature range that is conducive to organic chemical reactions.\n\nCarbon is important because it is fairly inert once in molecules so you can form many long complex molecules off the same more or less inert back bone. this has to do with the electron structure of carbon, so a chemist can expand on the specialness of carbon.\n\nAs for silicon based life, the short answer is no. the waste produce for most life is CO2 via cellular respiration this is a gas that can be easily dissolved into water. for silicon the waste product would be SO2 or sand/quartz and is very inert and highly stable. So the SO2 lockes down resources (like oxygene) much more than CO2 and as a solid is much more difficult to move around.\n\n\nthe long answer for silicon is maybe, but it would be at very high temperatures and be a bio chemistry very different, even on an mechanical basis (resembling more inorganic chemistry), than what we have on earth.", "We KNOW for sure that life like ours exists and therefore CAN exist. There are zillions of other theoretical possibilities, but they're all just pure speculation. For now, it makes sense to stick with what we know is possible." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cef75x2" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "According to Eric Arnesen in *The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation* and Richard Valelly in *The Two Reconstructions: the Struggle for Black Enfranchisement*, slaves so despised their masters that one of the first things they did as freemen was change given names. Instead, they adopted names taken from places, trades, and even African relatives. Keeping the master's name was considered a last resort as a means to escape the rampant violence visited on newly freed blacks." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "df4am8l", "df4apus" ], "score": [ 25, 7 ], "text": [ "They are actually charged every time you drive. This happens with a machine called an alternator. \n\nWhen your car engine is running, it also turns a little electrical generator that helps keep the car battery charged. ", "Car batteries are kept charged by the alternator, which is turned by the engine. 12-volts DC is the nominal voltage of a car battery. If it falls about 10% below this, your car won't work. So the battery isn't completely dead when it doesn't work, it just isn't near 12-volts DC. \n\nThis is true of even household batteries that you use in electronics. When they no longer work, they aren't completely void of any power, they're just not near their nominal rating for the device to work properly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ff9xyjp", "ff9y09j", "ff9zw0g" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 9 ], "text": [ "I got allergy shots for six years. Granted most of mine were seasonal or at least flared up in spring/fall. Now I’m very glad to get those because I rarely have to even take meds for it.", "Yes when i was younger i was very allergic to dust, well actually allergic to dustmite shit, and i've gotten something called \"Hyposensibilisierung\" (thats the german word no idea whats the english one) where you get a shot of the thing you're allergic against at a small does kinda like a vaccine but you get it multiple times with bigger gaps between the longer you do it until you wait like 6 months for your last shot. And it actually helped me its not gone but it's greatly reduced", "Immunotherapy is the process of getting micro doses of what causes allergies in the form of shots. Slowly over time your body builds up antibodies and you no longer have reactions to the allergens. At the clinic near me the process takes about 3 years." ] }

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