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vblagoje

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lfqa

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{ "a_id": [ "e4g9mhb" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "So unlike boiling water where you have to heat the water to make it vaporize, humidifiers work differently. \n\nWhat happens is there is an item inside the humidifier called a wick. The wick is almost like a sponge the just soaks up water. When you turn the humidifier on it sucks in air and blows it through the wick. Small warm particles of water are grabbed by the moving error and are sent through the air. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg3ol2a" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "what you're seeing is probably an [adaptation aftereffect] (_URL_0_) to bluish sky light reflected by all the white reflecting surfaces that are covering everything (the snow). over time, the retina (and the brain) acts to normalize stimulus distributions, so that if some stimulus is regularly over-represented it is relatively suppressed, and if some stimulus is regularly under-represented it is relatively enhanced.\n\nthe distribution of light wavelengths in the white light from a blue sky is strongly tilted towards short wavelengths (which is why the sky looks blue) - if you spend a lot of time looking at this light, your neural mechanisms which process short-wavelength light will decrease their sensitivity, while neural mechanisms processing longer wavelengths will have their sensitivity increased.\n\nso, being adapted to white light with a 'cold' [color temperature] (_URL_2_) (i.e. stronger towards short wavelengths), when you get into an environment with a warmer color temperature (like white light from a lamp), you'll get an exaggerated response to the longer wavelengths and a suppressed response to the short wavelengths.\n\nsince what you normally perceive in response to longer wavelengths are redder colors, this means that everything you see will appear reddened - until you re-adapt to the local color temperature, which happens very quickly.\n\nmore generally, what you're talking about is a phenomenon called [color constancy] (_URL_1_), where the visual system is constantly trying to 'divide out' the wavelength distribution of the local illuminant. i could give some references if you want to go deeper into that..." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_body_visible_spectrum.gif" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c372wl7", "c372x9r", "c372y0d", "c373fyg", "c373gnr", "c373in3", "c373o3o", "c373rid", "c3740tx", "c374sqc", "c375bmi", "c375w3j", "c376on4", "c37950d", "c372wl7", "c372x9r", "c372y0d", "c373fyg", "c373gnr", "c373in3", "c373o3o", "c373rid", "c3740tx", "c374sqc", "c375bmi", "c375w3j", "c376on4", "c37950d" ], "score": [ 37, 537, 56, 21, 5, 10, 2, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 8, 3, 37, 537, 56, 21, 5, 10, 2, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 8, 3 ], "text": [ "None (or at least, no more than you would get standing in front of the microwave with the door shut for the same period of time). All microwave ovens are equipped with [an interlock](_URL_0_) that disables the magnetron when the door is open.", "It's hard to tell- Must likely the Magnetron will cut off quickly as you open the door.\nBut you certainly don't get any radiation of the kind people usually think about when referring to radiation. I.e. there is a huge difference between microwaves and the radiation, such as gamma rays, which is associated with nuclear processes. Microwaves are less energetic than visible light, whereas gamma rays are much more energetic. Thus, microwaves cannot ionize molecules, such as your DNA, and will therefore not cause cancer. The radiation in a Microwave oven is ~~tuned to the rotational frequency of water~~, so all it does is make the water molecules wiggle around, which creates heat.\n\n/Zaim\nPh.d. student in quantum optics and nanophotonics.\n\nEdit: The microwave frequency is not tuned to the rotational resonance of the water molecule as I implied above. If it was, all the radiation would be absorbed on the surface of the food. Instead it is tuned away from the resonance, so that it can penetrate into the middle of the item. ", "None if you mean radiation in the \"x-ray, nuclear power\" type of way. Microwaves use a different type of radiation (microwave radiation, of course). This differs in the wave length of the radiation, which changes the way it can interact with nature. Microwaves have much less energy than ionising radiation, so they cannot brake apart molecules (which is the way x-rays and other high-energy waves can e.g. cause cancer). They only have enough to get molecules to vibrate more, which heats them up (hence: Microwave oven. The water molecules in your food are heated up).\n\nAlso, microwave ovens have an automatic switch that shuts of the wave emitter when you open the microwave. And since the waves litteraly move at the speed of light, they dissipate faster than you could open the oven.", "When people say \"radiation,\" they typically mean ionizing, ultra-violet radiation of the type that can cause cancer. There is in fact a broad [spectrum of radiation](_URL_0_), it is emitted basically whenever electrically charged things (including electrons) do a lot of moving around together. Infrared- meaning \"inferior to red\" or \"less energy than red\" is what's used in a microwave, and it only works to heat water because the microwave is flipping the radiation field back and forth rapidly, in such a way as to cause water molecules specifically to move. This is how your food gets heated. You're mostly made of water, so you (like any meat) would in fact get quite heated in a microwave. But when you open the microwave it turns off- stops flipping the field back and forth. So you don't get subjected to the field more than once, so you don't get heated. And again, at no point are you subjected to ultraviolet, or \"above violet,\" or \"more energy than violet\" radiation.", "Followup question, if I may. I've noticed certain older microwave models make me dizzy, something I've assumed is due to degraded shielding. Also, in my grandmother's home when I was a child, there was a microwave that would keep operating with the door open (or least appear that way, from the microwave continuing to make the same noise after the door opened as during operation). It also made me dizzy.\n\nHow worrying is this? Is it even due to microwave radiation, or could it be some other field effect you'll see in crappy old microwaves?\n\nNote: I'm not EM hypersensitive, and I don't believe that's even a real thing.", "Since opening the door turns off the microwave, you'd have to open it faster than the speed of light to get hit by any of the radiation.\n\nIf you were somehow able to open it that fast, microwaves are non-ionizing. They could burn you, but you'd have to concentrate the radiation in a metal box for awhile to do any real damage. You know, like a microwave.", "Is the door perfectly effective at reflecting all the waves? And if not, does it matter how far back you stand? For instance, is there any danger in putting your head against the glass while the microwave is on for an extended period of time?", "Essentially none. There are microswitches in the microwave which the little \"hooks\" on the door push on. As soon as you start opening the door, the switches are open and the magnetron is turned off. And similar to a flashlight, as soon as the mag is shut off, the microwaves are gone.\n\nTry this; run the microwave with something inside of it, and instead of pushing the open button quickly, push it slowly. The microwave should shut off before the door even starts opening.", "Somewhat related askscience question: When you turn the microwave on with nothing in it: Where does the energy go? Is there some kind of feedback that causes it to produce less microwaves, or does it just go into cooking the microwave oven itself?", "Probably very little. The magnetron powers on and off very quickly (fractions of a second.) Is this microwave radiation damaging to you? It likely won't mutate your DNA because it's in the frequency range that best excites the O-H bond in water. Nucleic acids have different bond lengths (resonant frequencies.) Even then, the water in your cells will absorb most of the radiation.", "20 years of service with a company of 50 tech, we have never found a unit \"leaking\". People call for this more than you might think. If you would like try this _URL_0_ Not the best tool but it works.", "**None**\n\nThe door interlocks turn off power to the magnetron tube before the latch allows the door to open. It's a UL requirement. In fact if you ever manage to get the door open and the tube is still firing, a safety interlock will blow a non-resetable internal fuse and brick the oven.\n\nThere is always a tiny bit of leakage around the door while it's running, but as long as you don't leave your face against the door edge while cooking, it's less than you get from your WiFi card.", "The only danger from microwave radiation is heat. [If you can't feel any heat, you are in no danger](_URL_0_). Just don't get hit by a narrow beam in a vulnerable spot, like the eyes or the inner ear).", "If you are using a UL listed/certified microwave, the door has a safety interlock which shuts off the magnetron if the door is opened while cooking. Even if the door is open for a 1 second, the screen on the door is still protecting you and the dose you will receive is very insignificant. \n\nI have a microwave sensor and have used it to test various microwaves and they tend to leak around the edges. Microwave radiation follows the inverse square law so the farther you are away from the microwave while it is in operation, the less radiation you will absorb.\n\nHere is a cool website on Microwave leakage:\n_URL_0_\n\nLastly, microwaves use the same frequency as your wireless router 2.6Ghz, just at a much higher power output. Think about that next time you stick your head by an access point :)", "None (or at least, no more than you would get standing in front of the microwave with the door shut for the same period of time). All microwave ovens are equipped with [an interlock](_URL_0_) that disables the magnetron when the door is open.", "It's hard to tell- Must likely the Magnetron will cut off quickly as you open the door.\nBut you certainly don't get any radiation of the kind people usually think about when referring to radiation. I.e. there is a huge difference between microwaves and the radiation, such as gamma rays, which is associated with nuclear processes. Microwaves are less energetic than visible light, whereas gamma rays are much more energetic. Thus, microwaves cannot ionize molecules, such as your DNA, and will therefore not cause cancer. The radiation in a Microwave oven is ~~tuned to the rotational frequency of water~~, so all it does is make the water molecules wiggle around, which creates heat.\n\n/Zaim\nPh.d. student in quantum optics and nanophotonics.\n\nEdit: The microwave frequency is not tuned to the rotational resonance of the water molecule as I implied above. If it was, all the radiation would be absorbed on the surface of the food. Instead it is tuned away from the resonance, so that it can penetrate into the middle of the item. ", "None if you mean radiation in the \"x-ray, nuclear power\" type of way. Microwaves use a different type of radiation (microwave radiation, of course). This differs in the wave length of the radiation, which changes the way it can interact with nature. Microwaves have much less energy than ionising radiation, so they cannot brake apart molecules (which is the way x-rays and other high-energy waves can e.g. cause cancer). They only have enough to get molecules to vibrate more, which heats them up (hence: Microwave oven. The water molecules in your food are heated up).\n\nAlso, microwave ovens have an automatic switch that shuts of the wave emitter when you open the microwave. And since the waves litteraly move at the speed of light, they dissipate faster than you could open the oven.", "When people say \"radiation,\" they typically mean ionizing, ultra-violet radiation of the type that can cause cancer. There is in fact a broad [spectrum of radiation](_URL_0_), it is emitted basically whenever electrically charged things (including electrons) do a lot of moving around together. Infrared- meaning \"inferior to red\" or \"less energy than red\" is what's used in a microwave, and it only works to heat water because the microwave is flipping the radiation field back and forth rapidly, in such a way as to cause water molecules specifically to move. This is how your food gets heated. You're mostly made of water, so you (like any meat) would in fact get quite heated in a microwave. But when you open the microwave it turns off- stops flipping the field back and forth. So you don't get subjected to the field more than once, so you don't get heated. And again, at no point are you subjected to ultraviolet, or \"above violet,\" or \"more energy than violet\" radiation.", "Followup question, if I may. I've noticed certain older microwave models make me dizzy, something I've assumed is due to degraded shielding. Also, in my grandmother's home when I was a child, there was a microwave that would keep operating with the door open (or least appear that way, from the microwave continuing to make the same noise after the door opened as during operation). It also made me dizzy.\n\nHow worrying is this? Is it even due to microwave radiation, or could it be some other field effect you'll see in crappy old microwaves?\n\nNote: I'm not EM hypersensitive, and I don't believe that's even a real thing.", "Since opening the door turns off the microwave, you'd have to open it faster than the speed of light to get hit by any of the radiation.\n\nIf you were somehow able to open it that fast, microwaves are non-ionizing. They could burn you, but you'd have to concentrate the radiation in a metal box for awhile to do any real damage. You know, like a microwave.", "Is the door perfectly effective at reflecting all the waves? And if not, does it matter how far back you stand? For instance, is there any danger in putting your head against the glass while the microwave is on for an extended period of time?", "Essentially none. There are microswitches in the microwave which the little \"hooks\" on the door push on. As soon as you start opening the door, the switches are open and the magnetron is turned off. And similar to a flashlight, as soon as the mag is shut off, the microwaves are gone.\n\nTry this; run the microwave with something inside of it, and instead of pushing the open button quickly, push it slowly. The microwave should shut off before the door even starts opening.", "Somewhat related askscience question: When you turn the microwave on with nothing in it: Where does the energy go? Is there some kind of feedback that causes it to produce less microwaves, or does it just go into cooking the microwave oven itself?", "Probably very little. The magnetron powers on and off very quickly (fractions of a second.) Is this microwave radiation damaging to you? It likely won't mutate your DNA because it's in the frequency range that best excites the O-H bond in water. Nucleic acids have different bond lengths (resonant frequencies.) Even then, the water in your cells will absorb most of the radiation.", "20 years of service with a company of 50 tech, we have never found a unit \"leaking\". People call for this more than you might think. If you would like try this _URL_0_ Not the best tool but it works.", "**None**\n\nThe door interlocks turn off power to the magnetron tube before the latch allows the door to open. It's a UL requirement. In fact if you ever manage to get the door open and the tube is still firing, a safety interlock will blow a non-resetable internal fuse and brick the oven.\n\nThere is always a tiny bit of leakage around the door while it's running, but as long as you don't leave your face against the door edge while cooking, it's less than you get from your WiFi card.", "The only danger from microwave radiation is heat. [If you can't feel any heat, you are in no danger](_URL_0_). Just don't get hit by a narrow beam in a vulnerable spot, like the eyes or the inner ear).", "If you are using a UL listed/certified microwave, the door has a safety interlock which shuts off the magnetron if the door is opened while cooking. Even if the door is open for a 1 second, the screen on the door is still protecting you and the dose you will receive is very insignificant. \n\nI have a microwave sensor and have used it to test various microwaves and they tend to leak around the edges. Microwave radiation follows the inverse square law so the farther you are away from the microwave while it is in operation, the less radiation you will absorb.\n\nHere is a cool website on Microwave leakage:\n_URL_0_\n\nLastly, microwaves use the same frequency as your wireless router 2.6Ghz, just at a much higher power output. Think about that next time you stick your head by an access point :)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/switch.html" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.inspectoroutlet.com/internachi-led-microwave-oven-testers-leak-detectors.aspx" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Health_effects" ], [ "http://www.wikihow.com/Check-a-Microwave-for-Leaks" ], [ "http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/switch.html" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.inspectoroutlet.com/internachi-led-microwave-oven-testers-leak-detectors.aspx" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Health_effects" ], [ "http://www.wikihow.com/Check-a-Microwave-for-Leaks" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "erzk9l8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Apologies, but we have had to remove your submission. We ask that questions in this subreddit be limited to those asking about history, or for historical answers. This is not a judgement of your question, but to receive the answer you are looking for, it would be better suited to /r/AskScience.\n\nIf you are interested in an historical answer, however, you are welcome to rework your question to fit the theme of this subreddit and resubmit it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4en3a4" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "This question is invalid as stated - the moment you \"pretend\" instantaneous communication is possible, you throw relativity out the window, and thus can;t say anything about how perception of time differs between the two reference frames.\n\nYou cant have your cake and eat it too - the same theory that tells us how to relate time between the two reference frames tells us FTL communication is impossible." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvzdjau", "cvzdl55", "cvze8to", "cvze8wq", "cvzeczz", "cvzenzz", "cvzf00r", "cvzf5vu", "cvzff45", "cvzfgp3", "cvzg0ie", "cvzga49", "cvzh1tc", "cvzhq14", "cvzhrt1", "cvzjdy5", "cvzjksr", "cvzku9g", "cvzl77p", "cvzmthg", "cvzmv5l", "cvzn0eb", "cvznl25", "cvznxcx", "cvzo0xe", "cvzoa3g", "cvzos5p", "cvzov7i", "cvzq9ta", "cvzqc8g", "cvzqm2a", "cvzr4qc", "cvzr57j", "cvzsdt4", "cvzso3d", "cvzsqll", "cvzsuhz", "cvzthkz", "cvzu2pl", "cvzu9n4", "cvzv1dp", "cvzv5cs", "cvzw489", "cvzz01w", "cw0023y", "cw005pl", "cw010ed", "cw012c5", "cw0221x", "cw02cea", "cw02h9h", "cw03855", "cw03us7", "cw049tx", "cw04jvj", "cw04nzp", "cw056bi", "cw0bwxt", "cw0ctdm", "cw0d2u1", "cw0dhvj", "cw0g4x9", "cw0viak", "cw0zw9n", "cw148xu", "cw172c0", "cw1xg4g" ], "score": [ 460, 150, 39, 187, 321, 60, 233, 69, 335, 228, 59, 48, 81, 63, 167, 528, 40, 167, 28, 20, 58, 15, 55, 61, 140, 25, 20, 38, 55, 7, 34, 20, 14, 18, 98, 16, 8, 14, 9, 14, 17, 47, 8, 26, 12, 18, 7, 28, 15, 4, 4, 5, 40, 7, 5, 7, 10, 10, 6, 12, 6, 5, 4, 8, 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "That textiles before mass production were all rough and chunky.\n\nHeck no! Our modern textiles are what medieval and early modern folks would call \"coarse.\" \n\nThere's this chemise/smock/camicia documented in Patterns of Fashion 4. In the nice zoomed in photo, you can see that there are 8 threads running horizontally in the 1/8\" binding strip. In modern \"handkerchief weight\" linen (3.5oz, the finest you can usually find, though I now have a source for 2.5oz that has a proper thread count rather than being like cheesecloth), you typically have 8-10 strands in 1/4\". The 16th century stuff has threads twice as fine as the modern. (Ok, really, there are several of this article of clothing in that book where the fineness of the fabric is obvious. This is not a one-off.)\n\nWhat the Industrial Revolution did was it made thread and fabric faster, not better.\n\nFor a different textile example, knitting. In this case, machine knitting can nearly rival 16th century knitting (though it was a long hard road to get to that point). Modern hand knitting, though? It's common to knit socks today at 8-10 stitches per inch. The \"coarse knit\" socks found on the Gunnister man were in that range. To knit at a gauge similar to silk reliquary pouches or Eleonora di Toledo's stockings, you'd want to use two strands of 60/2 silk (about the thickness of sewing thread) held together--hardly the modern knitter's idea of yarn at all.", "That Columbus uniquely knew the earth was round, and everybody else from his time thought it was flat. \n\nThis has been discussed many times, such as [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_), which discusses the origins of this myth. Quoting /u/Enrico_dandolo \n\n > Nobody in Europe thought the earth was flat. That was an anti-Catholic myth from much later. The Greeks knew it was a sphere based on the shadow cast on the Moon and later people continued to understand this. The globular Earth is referenced in the first book of Ovid (widely read in the Middle Ages). Adelard of Bath's (1080-1152) Questions on Nature even questions the nature of gravity (although he didn't know of the force itself, but rather the nature of the power holding us to this earth) by questioning what would happen if the spherical earth had holes in it like cheese?\n\nAll that plays into an even bigger and maybe even more common misconception that the Middle Ages was an especially Dark set of Ages, when humanity appears to regress back to pre-civilization levels of comprehension. And that is another topic in and by itself. ", "That Rasputin was \"evil\" or crazy.\n\nHe was just a gifted con-man sort of guy, think of modern televangelists, who got a raw deal historically-wise just because he appeared so \"creepy\"", "In short, basically everything to do with [this](_URL_0_) and the garbage it tends to inspire. The Finns were all superhuman snowy death snipers. The Finns were literally Gallia from Valkyrie Chronicles. Simo Häyhä was some kind of unbelievable killing machine who scythed down battalions of Soviet troops. \n\nUnfortunately, outside of /r/Askhistorians, the above sorts of snippets and claims comprise most of Reddit's exposure to the Winter War, and represent the extent of its understanding. Pictures like the above, or of [this](_URL_1_) *truly* appalling piece of garbage about Simo Häyhä, are easily consumable and sound exciting, while understanding the realities of the Winter War and contextualizing it actually require a modicum of time and effort. Reddit loves tasty little morsels of information, and as the age old saying first quipped by Charlemagne himself goes, \"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.\" \n\nOf course, the curious distortions of the Winter War, and the appalling perceptions we see of it date back further than false numbers on Wikipedia and made-up tales about Finnish troops. Indeed, the story of the English language historiography of the Winter War is a truly fascinating topic which I take a lot of interest in. From western journalists producing glowing - and often woefully embellished - accounts of the conflict while it was still raging (for consumption in the English speaking world) and their pro-communist contemporaries like London's A.S Hooper, through to exhaustive and professional studies like Allen F Chew's 'The White Death,' the Winter War has undergone a historiographical transformation over time.\n\nTragically, a by-product of this transformation, due in large part to the far-from-exhaustive academic English-language coverage of the conflict, is that there remains an abundance of truly appalling English-language sources. Many of these would ultimately give rise to some of the absurd online distortions we see today.\n\nI'm hoping to work alongside /u/Holokyn-kolokyn to create a /r/badhistory write-up concerning the above-linked article on Simo Häyhä, which is astoundingly wrong, and also extremely heavily upvoted. I've also been sitting on a small write-up on Winter War historiography for a little while, which I might trot out some time!", "\"Native Americans were just nomadic hunter-gatherers.\"\n\nBothers me for a multiple reason. Here are the highlights:\n\n1. It's factually wrong for the majority of Native societies.\n2. It demeans those societies that were nomadic and / or hunter-gatherers as inferior those that aren't.\n3. More often than not it's used to justify imperialism, because John Jocke says so.\n", "That--unlike the way we usually talk about every other subject in school--having a bad history teacher doesn't mean you had a bad teacher, it means history is boring.", "that the American War of Independence was won by a plucky band of guerrillas, and the insidious influence of The Patriot.\nI see the allure of this image but don't understand why Americans wouldn't rather propagate how hard Washington fought to create a competent army and beat the British at their own game", "That MLK Jr. and Malcolm X were the end all, be all of the American Civil Rights Movement. ", "[So many to choose from](_URL_1_), but in the end, probably the argument that slavery wasn't the cause of the American Civil War, or at best, merely an incidental one. Plenty of other stuff I get annoyed about, but this one is particularly common, and indicative of the travesty that is Civil War \"Conventional Wisdom\", being so infected with \"Lost Cause\" historiography. [I once wrote a little thing about it,](_URL_2_), but it can be summed up with this [macro](_URL_0_).", "There are a few that come from my field: \n\n1) Pirates were cool. \n\nNo, no they were not; they were criminals who stole from mostly poor merchants, raped people to death, burned and tortured people for no particular reason, and burned towns and churches. \n\n2) Sailors were drunk all the time, because rum! And water aboard ship wasn't safe to drink. \n\nNot at all; the daily ration of rum in the British navy was a half pint a day, served at a quarter pint twice daily; there was certainly an illicit spirits trade and men could get quite drunk if they wanted to, but it's horrendously dangerous to be drunk and working aloft. The rum ration was mixed 1:3 with water (1 part rum to 3 water) and in the latter part of the Napoleonic period, with lime juice. So if all sailors drank was their spirits ration, they'd be drinking two pints of grog a day, which is not nearly enough for hard, active labor. A scuttlebutt of fresh water was provided for sailors. (Also, rum was initially only served on overseas service in the Americas; in home waters, sailors got beer, and in the Mediterranean wine.) [I wrote about beer, wine and rum here.](_URL_0_)\n\n3) All sailors were sulky men impressed from gaols who only worked out of fear of corporal punishment. \n\nAlthough impressment was a major way of filling the Navy's manning needs during major wars, an efficient ship's company would have a core of professional sailors that had enlisted voluntarily. Also, impressment was technically only meant to apply to sailors (or at least men who had had \"use of the sea\"); it wasn't impossible for a hot press to sweep up anyone found near the shore, but the common image of insane asylums being emptied straight into ships is overblown. [I wrote some stuff about impressment here](_URL_1_).", "The use of the descriptor \"tribe\" or \"tribal\" for any non-western European society lacking some kind of central hierarchy. I commonly hear medieval Ireland described as \"tribal\" (even by non-medievalist academics!) which I find unsatisfactory for several reasons: firstly, the term has an inherently derogatory connotation outside of a specific anthropological context, and more importantly; it's often used in such a vague and meaningless way that when employed, it either provides no actual interpretive insight or worse, it actually conflates distinct social and political groupings like the *tuath* (a small political unit) and *fine* (extended family group). \n\nAs well, describing medieval Ireland as \"tribal\" imposes a set of assumptions that hinders our ability to understand that society in its own terms. For example, I've often seen and heard people describe the rulers of Irish polities in the early medieval period as \"chieftains\" or \"clan leaders\" or something else along those lines. Again, this conflates social and political groupings together as \"tribal\" and has a sort of gross colonialist streak to it. The rulers of Irish polities, big and small, called themselves *rí* - king, and thought of themselves as kings equal to their neighbours in Britain and the continent. By imposing a \"tribal\" framework on medieval Irish society and politics we denigrate that very society by implication, after all, tribes don't have kings do they? This kind of thinking leads us to colonialist logic like this: \"tribes have chieftains and chieftains are a less sophisticated kind of ruler than kings. Therefore Irish society was less sophisticated than contemporary societies in England and the continent.\"", "That you can simply cut through chain mail with a arming sword. If you could cut right through it no one would wear it.", "Learning history is just remembering when certain events happens, and who were those important people that were involved in such events. Or that historians are just trivia spurting machines, ready to bore your mind with random historic tidbits of the day.", "That the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 did not happen and was a \"false flag\". Me and /u/ThinMountainAir [discuss this in this thread.](_URL_0_)\n\nAnother one is the idea that the \"United States won every engagement in the Vietnam War\" and were thus superior in warfare over the Vietnamese (and should have won, had it not been for those backstabbers back home!). This is what I like to call the Lost Cause myth of the Vietnam War. [I discuss these particular claims in length in this post.](_URL_1_)", "Oh God, there are a couple:\n\n\n1.) Clean Wehrmacht\n\nThis one is not as common as it used to be but it does come up. The Wehrmacht leadership was complicit in some of the most heinous crimes of the Nazi state. From the treatment of Soviet POWs to killing scores of civilians during Partisan warfare to the Holocaust. And while a differentiated discussion of the role that ordinary soldiers played in all of this, in general, a lot of the rank and file were complicit in many a sense in these crimes.\n\n\n2.) Civ Tech Tree Progress of modernity.\n\nThe idea of the historical process steaming towards the Western ideal of \"progress\" like a big choo-choo train with the supposed \"Dark Ages\" leaving a whole so big that if it hadn't happened we'd be on the moon right now is just the Internet's version of Whig History.\n\n\n3.) Auschwitz as the iconic symbol for the Holocaust\n\nWhile a lot of people were killed in Auschwitz, the majority of murders during the Holocaust either took place in one of the Reinhard camps and in Soviet Russia with the Einsatzgruppen. Choosing Auschwitz excludes a lot of Eastern European Jewry and also paints the Holocaust as this rational killing machinery which it wasn't. It was messy, horrible, bloody and many things more but not a smooth machine.\n\n\n4.) The Library of Alexandria\n\nAs anybody in BH will tell you, there is far too much importance placed on the Library of Alexandria and it getting burnt down by pretty much everyone but especially by New Atheists^TM\n\n\n5.) Jesus didn't exist\n\nNo serious academic refutes the existence of historical Jesus and most perpetrators of this misconception tend to not understand how Historians work. ", "One of my biggest peeves, which will set me spinning off in a rage even at its mention, is the anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theory. This so-called \"theory\" is that Shakespeare either didn't exist, or was merely a front for some other \"real\" author.\n\nThis load of tripe was conceived in the 19th century by a bunch of classists and intellectual elitists who insisted that works of quality like Shakespeare's couldn't possibly be produced by somebody from the lower classes and of humble background, so therefore they clearly must have been written by a noble or an aristocratic person who was simply too modest to take credit. \n\nIt demonstrates complete ignorance of how theatres, playwrights, and actors operated in the period, makes up absurd tests of validity that would be failed by 99% of all people ever born, and is rooted firmly in the belief that there was somehow a nationwide conspiracy by all levels of society up to and including the royal court to invent, adore, criticize, eulogize, pay, and grant arms to, a fake author that there is not one ounce of evidence to support.", "Vikings are completely misunderstood. They did not have horned helmets and they did not spend the entirety of their period looting and pillaging. Many Vikings were traders and developed great trade routes which spread from Iceland (and potentially North America) to parts of Asia. Their ships, I grant you, were awesome.", "Armour myths are like some ugly, obnoxious children of mine. I can't pick between the unsightly buggers to pick out which snot-nosed false factoid is my favorite.\n\nBut if you're making me pick one, I would go with:\n\nArmour was made by village blacksmiths. No, it wasn't. Armour was made by armourers, and they were specialized. The mail-makers had their own guild, the plate armourers had another. Armourers didn't operate in villages, they operated in cities like Liege and London and Milan and Augsburg and Nurnberg and Koln and Innsbruck. Armourers were extremely skilled and highly valued craftsman - the best of them were on par with the artists of their day, even marrying their daughters to the sons of famous etchers. In several cases armourers bought or were granted titles of nobility! Certainly many armourers were journeymen making ends meet, or masters of small shops, but they were still highly skilled and specialized.\n\nThere was a massive, Europe-spanning trade in arms and armour from the high middle ages onwards. Also, Armourers often didn't make their own steel - sometimes they didn't even flatten it into sheets, instead buying flat sheet steel from a hammer mill. Sometimes when they did it was because they had a massive, vertically integrated operation, like the Missaglias of Milan. Other times they imported foreign steel to make better armour, as when the English Royal armour workshop at Greenwich imported steel from Styria in southern Austria.\n\nRunners up:\n\n-Swords could penetrate armour\n\n-Longbow arrows could easily penetrate plate armour\n\n-armour was impossibly heavy\n\n-armoured knights were obsolete from the 14th century onwards", "My pet peeve is hearing that people were shorter in the past. The height of people at any period and local throughout time is entirely dependent upon 1) genetics and 2) overall nutrition and disease. The more agrarian a society was, the greater the potential for the people to reach their full genetic potentials. So for instance, in the period of the early American Republic, most Caucasian Americans, had a pretty good shot of reaching or approaching their full genetic potential. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were 6'2\"/6.4\" (depending upon the source and their age at the time). And based upon a number of stories about Henry Knox's relationship with George Washington, we suspect he was even taller. At the time of the American Revolution, the average American was about 3 inches taller than their British contemporaries. I think it is because people want to feel superior to our ancestors. ", "That Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines. It's literally nerve wrecking jaw clenching bullshit. ", "Oh, I have a couple. The biggest is, of course, the related ideas that corsets deformed women and pushed their organs into weird places and that satirical or moralistic complaints about women tightlacing reflected reality. Tightlacing is incredibly overestimated in general. Yes, the waist measurements on extant clothing are tiny. So are the bust measurements. Most extant clothing is pretty small. A 21\" waist sounds very small because the average woman today has a waist of around 30\"-35\", and so we imagine lacing down 10+ inches ... when the dresses that have these 21\" waists also have ~25\" busts. Dresses with larger bust, shoulder, arm, etc. measurements also have larger waists.\n\nThe roots can be traced to a few different places - those historical satires that are so popular, doctors trying to figure out why certain ailments were more common in women than men, moral standards that praised women for being beautiful but put them down for trying to be beautiful (not one we've totally gotten away from), and the post-Edwardian culture that looked down on the Victorian era as an unenlightened and quaint time.\n\nThe misconception that there was some huge revolution in women's clothing after or during WWI is something I like to bore people with as well. I don't even know where to start. The hourglass figure stopped being a big deal around 1909-1911. Simpler styles were being worn at that time, and fussier ones were still worn in the early 1920s. Foundation garments were still very often worn for stability and for looks all the way through the 1950s and early 1960s. Were there changes? Yeah, but they came at the same rate as earlier and later ones. Nothing very dramatic happened at the time, and Chanel didn't have much to do with it either. (You don't want to start me off about Chanel.)", "I am irritated that so many believe the Confederate battle flag, at the center of so many controversies lately, was *the* flag of the CSA. Often, the same ones that spout the history and heritage arguments are not even aware of the true \"Stars and Bars\" flag of the Confederacy.", "That the Treaty of Versailles was so terrible and so punitive that it almost singlehandedly caused WW2.", "That Rome fell in 476 and that the Byzantines were a bunch of Greeks pretending to be Romans.", "The Galileo affair:\n\nOther people had already had heliocentric theories, such as Copernicus. And indeed, his theories were used when reforming the calendar in the 1500s. But science hadn't advanced enough to prove it, so it was nothing more than a mathematical convenience. Eventually, we had proof that Venus orbited the Sun, so Brahe suggested a geo-heliocentric model. The other planets orbit the Sun, but the Sun orbits the Earth. The objection to the Earth orbiting the Sun was both religious and because Aristotelian physics didn't allow for such a massive body as the Earth to actually be moving. Then came Galileo who had decent mathematical arguments. But because they weren't the best, he decided to turn to theology as well. He argued that just as we already acknowledged that not everything in the Bible is absolutely literal, that it didn't mean the Earth had to be stationary. It could just be stationary from the reference point of the authors. This latter part is what irritated the Cardinals. Cardinal Bellarmine agreed that Galileo had argued quite well for the heliocentric universe as a mathematical convenience, but merely objected to its teaching as fact, because he didn't agree with Galileo's theological arguments. The Inquisition let him off with a warning, but forbade him from teaching it as fact and to only teach it as a convenience. He didn't, and eventually wound up under house arrest. Books on heliocentrism were banned, but certain ones were still allowed as reference for the models. Eventually, in the mid 1700s, this decision was recanted when science had advanced enough to say \"No, seriously, this is more than a theory\".\n\nFunnily enough, the inquisition actually accused Galileo of not being scientific enough, as his theory was unable to account for stellar parallax.\n\nAs for where? The heroic theory of science and science teachers trying to be history teachers. \n\nalso not a professional yet but im a semester away from my degree.", "Not sure how much this is talked about in the rest of the world but pretty much everything about Scottish history and the Jacobite rebellion particularly irks me. \n\nNasty imperialist English vs freedom loving noble savage Scots. Brave and clever but outgunned and outnumbered. Etc etc etc... (There's some similarity to the narrative around the Confederacy) \n\nAlso lumping everyone into Scottish and English even when it's totally ahistorical. \nA story of a bunch of protestant and Catholic noble families fueding isn't as romantic i guess. \n\nAlso a special fuck you to Braveheart. ", "The stephensons are not the father of the modern railway and didn't invent the locomotive as teachers always insisted in school and even at university. \n\nIn 1803 Trevithick built and showed his pen-y-darren locomotive and it performed excellently in trials against a horse. It truly is the father of the railway. ", "That the Conferderacy in the American Civil War was fighting for \"states rights\" and not for slavery. This myth was created over the course of the decades following the Civil War by the Lost Cause Movement. All you have to do is look at the Southern supported Fugitive Slave Act to see they were all for subverting states rights in favor of slavery and to look at the Declaration of Independence of really any state that joined the CSA (if you'd like to read one I'd recommend Mississippi's because it's the shortest and most blunt about it).\n\nIf anybody would like me to present sources or go into more detail, let me know. I'd be more than happy to explain in more depth.", "The general concept of \"Island Hopping.\"\n\nAt its core, island hopping is a relatively sound tactic-the essence of \"hit 'em where they ain't.\" However, it was a very complicated strategy that required a very precise strategic situation in order for the Allies to be able to execute. Typically, most people tend to brush off the Pacific War ground combat campaigns as just \"island hopping,\" in a sort of congratulatory gesture of sound strategy. However, the main reason that is given for why it was useful-namely, to avoid having to invade the heavier defended islands-is... questionable. If that were the only reason, it would surely be logical to simply invade Japan proper (perhaps through the Kuriles, or Hokkaido), thus bypassing the entire Southern Area Army.\n\nThe entire reason for the island campaign was all about air superiority. Each island could be turned into an airbase, and the Japanese had in fact turned many of their strongest points into a ring of mutually supporting air bases. In order for any potential sustained Allied campaign against Japan to be successful, the Allies must maintain naval and air superiority. The problem was that in order to capture islands that would be within range to support a US campaign against the Home Islands, they would need to neutralize the other Japanese air bases in the area. And the only way they were going to be able to reliably do that was with the presence of a sustained land-based aircraft capacity. Which in turn would require the capture of islands further down the island chain... until one got to the point where Allied air bases already existed.\n\nAfter the hard fighting at Guadalcanal to capture a Japanese airbase, the Allies were wary of having to risk similar losses attacking even more strongly held Japanese positions. Indeed, it would be easier for Allied engineers to construct their own airfield than it would be to capture one of the large Japanese ones. Because of Allied naval superiority, they were able to send in bombardment forces to shell the Japanese airfields at night, in combination with high-altitude, long-range heavy bombers shutting down Japanese air operations. Because of these unique tactical advantages, the US was able to completely nullify the threat of each of these airbases to the nascent unguarded ones being constructed. Once finished, the Allied air campaigns could continue, making any Japanese attempt at logistics extremely difficult. The Japanese certainly tried-the so-called \"Tokyo Express\" supply runs being an example-but it got to the point where supplying these forward bases was proving too taxing to the Japanese Navy (as in the Battle of Vella Gulf). \n\nHad the Japanese fleet not been shattered at Midway and the attritional battles in the Solomon Islands, and had the Japanese maintained their air strength, island hopping would simply be playing into the Japanese strategy, as it would require substantial, sustained commitment of US naval assets to shut down an island air base, during which they would be vulnerable to a Japanese counterattack. This would not have prevented an Allied victory to be sure-American industry was simply that much stronger than the Japanese war machine-but it would have made \"island hopping\" extremely unattractive. ", "Whenever I'm watching a documentary on WWI, if they cover Jutland they'll typically also say that the German High Seas Fleet never set sail afterwards. \n\nThis is false. While they never directly engaged the Royal Navy, they did leave port a few times. It's a piece of trivia that obliterates credibility when I see it wrongly addressed. ", "That soldiers and generals of the linear warfare era were somehow 'idiots' for marching in their dense lines, and bright uniforms, or--more generally--people in the past were 'dumb' because they didn't use a method/idea we have developed with hindsight, and may not have been entirely applicable or useful in the actual historical situation. ", "I don't claim to be a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but ...\n\n* The popular version of WW1. \n British soldiers would live in the same front-line trench 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year until either the war ended or - more likely - the bungling generals sent them \"over the top\" to walk slowly into machine-gun bullets for no good reason. The British occupied literally the same trenches with the same soldiers from 1914 to 1918. The Germans never attacked, just waited for the poor gallant British Tommies to come to them, led by their upper-class twit officers. At the end of the war, every surviving soldier thought the whole thing was pointless and became a pacifist. And anyone who attempts to point out that this isn't really true is a jingoistic right-wing apologist for Butcher Haig and all his cronies, who thinks the trenches were like a holiday camp and the whole thing was a bally good lark.\n\n* Articles like [this one](_URL_0_) which give the idea that historians consider the wrong type of stethoscope or a tank being 6 months out of date for when a film is grounds for dismissing a film as \"inaccurate\".\n\n\n\n", "For one of my main areas: WWII aviation. The myths that ball turret gunners would get squished regularly in damaged bombers.\n\nThere are actually no documented cases of this ever happening. Andy Rooney is the only person known of who ever described this happening, and his account does not correspond to any official records that could confirm it, either directly or indirectly. \n\nIn order for a ball turret gunner to be squished, a lot of things have to go wrong. \n\nFirst off, the electrics must be shot out. The turret runs on electric power. \n\nSecond, the manual controls outside of the turret that external crewmembers could use had to be non-functioning.\n\nThird, the internal cranks that could be operated in lieu of electronic controls had to be destroyed so that the actual gunner could not rotate it in any direction.\n\nFourth, the toothed rail frame the turret spins on must be damaged so that the turret cannot spin left-to-right (or right-to-left). \n\nFifth, the turret must be damaged so that it cannot be rotated vertically (so that it would be pointed up or down). The turret had a hatch on the back of it that the gunner would use to get in and out of.\n\nSixth, The hydraulics had to be destroyed on the plane. While the turret ran on electric power, the landing gear was lowered and raised using hydraulic power.\n\nSeventh, the hand cranks to manually lower the landing gear had to be destroyed. Even without hydraulic power, the crew could still manually lower the landing gear using a crank. The internal components linking the crank to the landing gear assembly would have to be completely destroyed.\n\nSimply put, there was so much that had to go wrong that if it all had gone wrong, the crew would either have bailed out already, or they would have been able to figure out some sort of work around to get him out.\n\nAlso, as an aside, probably 90% of the stories you hear about WWII aviation that are told to you secondhand (a family member relating the story that the actual veteran told them) are woefully false.", "That samurai were honorable gentlemen who only fought classy 1vs1 duels while a battle developed around them", "1. \"People didn't smile in old photos because it took 5/10/20/60 minutes to take a photo\" and other related old photo ones. \n\n *[This guy explained it better than I ever could](_URL_2_).*\n\n2. \"Boys wore pink and girls wore blue 50/100/150 years ago\". \n\n *In the western world children were dressed in mostly white for a very long time. For example for the 1700's [here's Marie Antoinette's youngest daughter Sophie Beatrice](_URL_3_) and youngest son [Louis XVII](_URL_1_). [Here are two girls in white in the early 1800's](_URL_0_). Whatever appropriate colors for each gender any books proclaimed were in no way universal. There is no consensus on the appropriate color for each gender until around and after WWII. In 1948 the then Princess Elizabeth set up the nursery with blue ribbons for the future Prince Charles. Supposedly at this time people began to buy more and more ready-made baby products and manufacturers began to push for gender-specify merchandise to boost sale.*\n\n\n3. On reddit, \"diamond engagement rings were not common until the 20th century\" somehow became \"literally no one wore diamonds because they were literally worthless before the evil DeBeer made it mandatory (often accompanied by some rant about gold diggers)\". \n\n *Then why did Madame DuBarry's diamond necklace became such a big deal?*", "That the pre-WWII Japanese were uniquely obsessed with \"honor,\" and that a single, orientalist concept of \"honor\" (or \"losing face\") can conveniently explain any cultural dynamic we don't intuitively understand (seppuku, kamikaze, suicide weapons, emperor worship, etc.)\n\nIt bothers me how some people tend to use \"honor\" to describe the concept of social standing in Japanese (and other) societies as if it's some bizarre, inscrutable concept. Yes, the concept of social standing was and is very important, but that's also true of other societies (including our own) and saying \"because honor\" doesn't usually tell you anything useful or interesting about the actual cause of the thing you're trying to explain.\n\nWhat it does do is promote a bizarre essentialist view of Japanese society, and gloss over a lot of important nuance. Seppuku wasn't done for just one reason, and it wasn't monolithic through all geography and history. You're much better off studying specific instances of it, or its repeated, standardized forms (like its use as a form of the death penalty), than viewing it as a single exotic phenomenon that can be explained away with a single exotic word.", "The Black Book of Communism, and that the Holodomor was a purposefully engineered famine and a genocide. This is one of the most disturbing cases of historical revisionism and has more to do with anti-communist propaganda than truth. You will have people on the one hand completely ignore every attempt by the Soviet government to alleviate the situation in Ukraine and put an end to the famines which had been endemic since well before the revolution, and on the other those same people will ignore willfully engineered famines in India and Ireland that are the result of deliberate choices to export foods and destroy agricultural traditions for cash crops instead of use them to save the people that grew them.", "My students constantly refer to the Soviet Union (I'm a teaching assistant for a WWII course this semester) as Russia. We've explained the differences. They don't care. ", "Anything dealing with public knowledge of armored warfare, especially WW2 era. Ronsons, 5 Shermans for 1 Tiger, McNair the Traitor, or anything any slapwit let drool out of their mouth about the Eastern Front. People blame Belton Cooper's 2-ply memoir for a lot of the misinformation, but it all goes back to at least the early '80s when guys like George Fourty were just willing to take all veterans on their word in order to increase page counts and drama.\n\nAlso, just for effect, the Garand \"helmet ping\" myth is one that makes me want to stop giving a museum tour and just start braining the smarmy twit who decides to share it. It's damned near weekly at this point.", "The whole short Napoleon bit. It's not a big deal or anything, but I find it more irritating than anything else. The dude was 5' 7\", above average for the time. ", "I am not an expert historian, I'm not even on the same plane of knoweldge as most posters in this sub, but it annoys me greatly when people say that \"only a few hundred Spaniards\" took down the \"Aztec empire\" when there were more then hundreds and the Spanish had a great deal of help from other native groups. ", "That late antiquity has yet to become the 'default' way of thinking about the 'dark ages' amongst the public. I mean, Peter Brown kickstarted this whole late-antique thing in 1971 and parts of it go back much further, yet people still go around citing Edward Gibbon's *Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* from the **eighteenth century** as the authority on this period. Instead of using the heavily loaded term of 'decline' to describe events from the fourth century onwards, we should instead think about how culture was instead transformed. Even the apparently less 'developed' west produced brilliant authors such as Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and the Venerable Bede, the architecturally impressive churches and mausoleum of Theodoric the Great in Italy, the Romanesque monasteries of St Wilfrid in Northumbria, and the illustrated manuscripts from Ireland. By all means take into account economic fragmentation and political instability, but culture obviously still existed, albeit in a different form. So what if it was different to what came before? Instead we should look at them independently and see them as evidence for the vibrancy of a new age, when what being Roman meant transformed into something different. Some might see it also as a time of war and misery, but we should not forget that 'classical civilisation' was equally violent and morally reprehensible from modern perspectives.\n\nI also don't have a high opinion of those who argue that civilisation continued in 'Byzantium'/the Arab world/China, since to do so seems to devalue the lives of those who lived in less centralised and less wealthy regions. I would much prefer to acknowledge their experiences and discard the idea that we have to quantify their utility by measuring their 'achievements'. I know plenty of historians who will disagree with this, but those who interpret this period as a 'catastrophe' miss out on how crises often led to opportunities. In the wake of a collapsing empire, many people found a new place for themselves in an unstable but equally interesting world. Their stories need to be told as well, which contributes to the picture of a diverse and stimulating world of late antiquity, rather than a 'dark age' of intellectual decline.", "Medieval Weapons and Armor being heavy and clumsy, being only used back in the day because \"people were stronger.\"", "Privacy is a inalienable and a common human right. \n\nNo, in fact it is not, and our ideas of privacy are very historically constructed. In a city such as London or Paris in the 1500s or even the 1600s you could see sex on the street or what we'd call nonpenatrative sex in the equivalent of a singles bar, a Cock and Hen tavern. You would have grown up sharing one bed for the entire family and you would have been aware how your parents or your siblings and their spouses made babies.", "Hmm sooo many.\n\nI think the most annoying one is the Khazarian Hypothesis. It's a theory that's gotten a lot of press over the past few years. Ham-fisted journalism often results in presenting it as one of a few competing hypotheses on the origin of Eastern European Jews. In reality, while there are real academics do support it, it is very much a peripheral theory, and not something most academics spend a lot of time thinking about.\n\nTo sum it up, the Khazars were a Turkic group who (may have, to some extent) converted to Judaism. It's been theorized that Eastern European Jews are their descendants. There really isn't any evidence for it, but there are still people who believe it. It's definitely not as widely believed or as solidly backed as normal historical accounts (that Eastern European Jews were once in Central Europe and migrated east).", "Mine: \"Why is X type of music so complicated?\" Or \"Why weren't they writing (specific modern style of music) back in (time period 100+ years ago)?\" \n\nIt's like asking why there weren't helicopters in the Crimean war, or why the Romans were reading off tablets instead of Kindles. There's this misconception that music is somehow divorced completely from the evolution of technology, and that if just some musician in 18th century Vienna would have come up with Blues, we would have hundreds of years of Blues music. \n\nNever mind the centuries of cultural influence, the slow evolution of musical tradition, the total lack of that style of harmony in Western music, Blues should have just sprang up from the ground, because the notes already existed. Yes, they did, but all the materials existed for the Mohawk to make Machine guns, so why didn't they just figure it out?!", "The Tiger tank was the main tank used by Germany during WWII\n\nGerman tanks ran on diesel. \n\nIt took 5 Sherman's to destroy a single German tank.\n\n\nBasically all those stupid WWII tank myths", "That \"Duck and Cover\" was a hoax designed to lull children into thinking nuclear war was survivable as long as you hid under your desk.\n\nObviously, it wouldn't save you if you were close to the blast. But if you were a bit further away, your immediate concern would be the shockwave that could collapse your building. In *that* case, ducking and covering could save your life. \n\nThis one is especially annoying because it comes up in *The Iron Giant*, otherwise one of my favorite movies. ", "EASY, that America was founded in any way to be religious. This is obviously not true, yet so many people believe it.", "There is literally not a shred of evidence to suggest that Mozart ever transcribed the Allegri *Miserere Mei*. There is a letter from Leopold to Anna Maria saying that young John-Chris-Wolfie-Theo *heard* the Allegri and liked it very much and went back to hear it a second time the following day, and then there is a letter from Anna Maria to a brother (whose name escapes me) saying that young JCWT transcribed it. Anna Maria is obviously talking young JCWT up in order to impress someone. Anna Maria's letter is the *only* mention made of such a transcription.\n\nIn any case, the transcription of such a repetitive piece, wherein fully half of the piece is a single line of chant traditionally associated with the text, and the other half is a pair of alternation harmonisations (faux-bourdons) which repeat a grand total of 5 times is not impressive for anyone with a high level of musical training, especially if he had heard it twice. ", "That mustard gas was a leading cause of death in WWI. Yes, the affects of it were horrific, but most of the time it just took soldiers off of the battlefield for treatment. It wasn't even the most widely used gas either. That (dis)honor goes to phosgene (which was much more deadly anyway).", "The common perception of the '53 Iranian coup seems very oversimplified and very Anglocentric (or whatever it is where, as kohmeini likes to tell it, the CIA runs everything). It's not that, after the CIA failed and called in a favor from the pentagon that got some general advising Iranian officers to bribe a ton of them to buy some military support, the troops bought by the pentagon with CIA cash didn't lay siege to Mosaddeggh's house providing a good deal of the pressure that led to Mosaddeggh's surrender.\n\nIt's just that that narrative discounts everything except the american influence. It almost couldn't be more myopic.\n\nI think it's fairly undeniable that Mosaddeggh was a marked man. He had alienated himself from everyone. He took dictatorial power right before he dismissed parliament when he was about to lose control of it (as all true democrats do) after holding iirc 12 months of \"emergency powers\".\n\nIf the Ayatollahs had known he was secular they never would have supported him in the first place, but by '53 they definitely didn't support him, in fact, Ayatollah Kashani, supported by some bloke named ayatollah kohmeini (no relation? /s) were leading the largest protest when mosaddeggh fled, and later turned himself in.\n\nMosaddeggh had finally alienated the marxists, who, again, I guess supported him in an 'the enemy of my enemy' sort of way. Mosaddeggh was a fairweather communist, the way he was a fairweather islamist, and a fairweather supporter of representative democracy. In fact, almost the only achievement the CIA can call it's own, apparently (not too sure about this) is that the cia apparently hired people (maybe through their friends in the bazaar?) to pretend to be marxists and to start protesting, which, apparently successfully got the real marxists to start protesting in earnest.\n\nHe had lost the support of parliament. He had lost support of his own party, and he had even lost support of his heir apparent. The man who was physically at the largest oil refinery in the world when it was nationalized by mosaddeggh when he nationalized the oil industry.\n\nMosaddeggh had taken the military from the weak shah, but the Shah could never rely on the military, and, apparently, neither could Mosaddeggh, as some general was able to buy their services.\n\nMosaddeggh came to power when Iran was under rule by assassination, after the previous PM had negotiated a 50/50 split with aioc, but was assassinated by a follower of the teachings of kohmeini.\n\nIt's simply too arrogant and myopic to simply discount it to \"cia coup\". Mosaddeggh had burnt all of his bridges, lost all his support, lost parliament.\n\nIf Mosaddeggh hadn't put himself on the marxist's death list he'd put him on the ayatollahs. And even if none of them assassinated him he still was in a politically unviable situation. He had no political support to speak of.\n\nIt's a little like in the importance of being earnest, how one character had a fictitious friend called bumbry, who he used to create excuses, like, 'my friend bumbry is sick, and called on me', but in the end, the fictitious bumbry is said to meet his death when, consulting his doctors, finds out that there is nothing keeping him alive, and so, consequent to his doctors making this discovery, he simply perishes.\n\nThe myth of this powerful CIA that steers the history of nations with coups flatters the CIA, and kohmeini has been using it to scapegoat the CIA for almost half a century, but it's just that. A braggart's lie.\n\nMosaddeggh had, what's the expression? Tied his own noose?\n\nYea the CIA played it's own little part, but the reality of it is that the CIA's man in the Iranian military was wanted for murder and had not a single man supporting him. The CIA was more spectator than anything else. Heck, they even needed the ayatollahs to lead their own protests.\n\nSo how can anyone argue that the driving factor behind mosaddeggh's fall from grace was the CIA, and not mosaddeggh himself, or the ayatollahs that led one of the protests against mosaddeggh, the marxists that led the other protest against mosaddeggh (after mosaddeggh had turned both factions against himself), or the fact that mosaddeggh had alienated himself from everyone and lost all support.\n\nSources: Legacy of ashes, stansfield turner's book, and some books that pop up when you search on google.", "Mostly the idea that the Middle Ages were a pile of dung that only halted the \"advancement\" of Europe, and everything that goes with that idea:\n\n-Peasants and even some nobles were constantly filthy with mud and presumably fouler stuff.\n\n-There were no martial arts at all. Combat was about bashing eachother brutally.\n\n-All lords were evil bastards who exerted themselves on exploiting everyone for the sake of it.\n\n-Everyone was dirt poor, there were no cities, no commerce, no nothing but mud.\n\n-The church halted all advancement of knowledge and destroyed every last bit of the legacy of the ancients.\n\n-The very few remnants of civilisation were limited to the Byzantine Empire and Southern Spain, where only the greatness and enlightenment of the \"sarracens\" managed to instill some sophistication and knowledge.\n\n-That nothing ever changed in the Middle Ages in the roughly 1000 years that it lasted.\n\nI think that all in all, the Middle Ages are probably the most misunderstood and misjudged period of European history.", "My father in law repeatedly claims that an ignored and suppressed piece of history is that slaves had labor unions and came to the US voluntarily. I have no F'ing clue what he's talking about, but it is quite irritating. ", "Space Aliens building everything in Ancient Egypt", "**1- That Japanese steel was/is the best in the world.** Japan has pretty limited iron and they were able to make it into passable steel through a complicated process of refinement and selective forging. The strength we attribute to Japanese blades has more to do with their carefully laminated structure and physical shape than the quality of the steel. Here is a [great video](_URL_0_) showing the process of refining iron sand into Japanese steel (tamahagane)\n\n**2- Damascus steel only comes from Damascus.** This is more a semantic argument, but it is still important. What people (and many commercial metal manufacturers and suppliers) commonly refer to as \"Damascus Steel\" is actually a process called \"pattern welding\" and it can be done anywhere. It is only called Damascus steel if it was forged in Damascus (similar to how Champagne is only Champagne if it is grown/bottled in the French region) and as /u/Hergrim pointed out below, true Damascus steel is a special type of wootz crucible steel. \n\n**3- That Indian/Persian steel was quenched in \"saline\" by stabbing hot blades into prisoners or slaves.** Thats not how blade heat treating works. At all.\n\n*Edited for format, clarity, and added a proper source for the tamahagane*", "When someone says \"dark ages\" my skin crawls. I also can't stand how people talk about the Renaissance and the Late Middle Ages as if they were two completely unrelated time periods. You can't just throw all the bad shit in the LMA pile and all the pretty happy things into the Renaissance pile. Much of it happened at the same bloody time and was highly influenced by eachother.", "Spices do not disguise the taste of rotten meat, and they were far too expensive to use for such a purpose in the medieval period. Spices were bought as a status symbol and luxury good, much like caviar is today. I actually had to correct a professor on this point several weeks ago. I think this idea comes from the fact that spices are often lumped together with salt, which does work as a preservative. Furthermore, fresh meat was far cheaper than any spice until well into the modern period. So next time a schoolteacher tries to tell you that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotten meat, slap them. \r\rPaul Freedman's book Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination provides a good overview of the reasons medieval people loved spices, and why they paid so much for them.", "My biggest pet peeve is about how historians are thought of. I have a BA in history but work in IT. I've had multiple people ask me why I went to school for it, implying its not a \"useful\" degree. Forget that it teaches us to think logically and examine issues from multiple angles. Or that it teaches us to express ourselves clearly and concisely. It clearly isn't as \"good\" a degree as business management or some other nonsense that exists solely to move money from the bank accounts of others to yourself. Just as annoying though is when I meet people and they find out I have a history degree and they assume that makes me an expert on whatever historical topic they want to ask questions about. It doesn't give actual historians any credit. I would never call myself a historian, I'm a dabbler. You would never compare a garage band to a symphony why would you compare me to a historian?", "The whole \"We're smarter than the Romans/Ancient Greeks/Egyptians/insert historical peoples of your choice and that's why we don't sacrifice humans/send troops across No Man's Land/insert event in the past where hindsight makes it clear it wasn't a great idea\"\n\nI seriously have had several discussions with people who think humans in Imperial Rome were intellectually on par with children or pets of our current era", "Recently, I had a co-worker that argued that slavery in the American south wasn't as bad as most other places. I didn't even know where to begin to unpack that statement.", "Oh, let's see. \n\n- That the Sex Pistols were a 'boy band' and that the members were brainless mannequins.\n\n- That there was a cohesive Transatlantic punk rock scene between 1975 and 1976 (before the so-called \"Punk Explosion\"), with New York bands directly influencing the early London bands. That was really only true of the Ramones, if we're talking that CBGB's/Max's Kansas City scene. (You also had the MC5 and the Stooges.) It was more the case that New York and London were lumped together by the music press after the two scenes got going independently of one another.\n\n- That 'true punk' was about left wing political activism. Some bands and scene participants were way political, others could give a shit (such as, let's see, the Ramones), or were deliberately apolitical. And then there were the far right elements.\n\n- That British punk grew organically into what it was to become, at the grassroots level, from the ground up. It did when it was a marginal bohemian scene in London that most British youth wouldn't have been exposed to, save for those who read the edgier music periodicals. It became a national phenomenon, and cause for moral panic, after the Grundy Incident, which occurred on national television and caused the British public to froth at the mouth. It was the mass media furor that caused the Punk Explosion of '77 more than anything. In fact, a lot of the original participants who were involved before that point went on to complain bitterly about all the dumb, eager-for-havoc teenagers that flooded and overwhelmed their little scene as a result.\n\nI could go on, but then it'd be getting too obscure for most readers.", "That history is about events, and whether they really happened or not.\n\nThe quest for the \"real\", often popping up in this forum under the question format of \"Did this REALLY...\" is unfortunate because it presumes a scientific-ness to history that is laid bare by the fact that in its wild form (the way people functionally talk about history), it is quite malleable and is more akin to literature than science.\n\nHistory is the art of the allusion to the real, and should not be confused with the real, which is something we will never \"really\" grasp. \n\nThe sooner people understand that, the sooner their horizons for understanding the past, the present, and the future, will broaden. ", "I'd have to put in the \"Canadian history is *soooo* boring and clean\" trope. Canada's history is pocked with brutality - the coast-to-coast railway was built on massive corruption and horribly-treated Chinese labor. The removal of Inuit names and their replacement with disc numbers, the sexual slavery found in residential schools, the slaughter of the Inuit sledding dog, the massive operations behind suppressing the Winnipeg General Strike and the enactment of Section 98 of the Criminal Code (which basically made assembly illegal in Canada until 1936)...there's a *shit-ton* of history here. \n\nAlso, the idea that the indigenous were largely passive and living away from the rest of Canada irks me. 33 (maybe 35 - we don't know) Mohawk welders working on the first Pont du Quebec died when that bridge collapsed. Pitikwahanapiwiyin, Anglicized to Poundmaker, was instrumental at the Battle of Cut Knife. Tecumseh was an essential part of the Southern Ontario theater during the War of 1812. In each of these cases, other people - generic workers, Louis Riel, and \"Canadians\" (a concept which if extant meant nothing like what it does today) are credited with these pivotal moments in Canadian history.\n\nJohn Ralston Saul is right - Canada's is a Metis (here meaning \"both white and indigenous\") history.", "The myths against the Polish Forces in WW2 are pretty heinous. The most specific one I can think of is the famous myth of Polish cavalry charging against German machine guns/tanks with their swords out. \n\nThis seems to stem from the action at Krojanty, where a Polish cavalry, the 18th Uhlars, successfully captured a position, and even got German units to consider a withdrawal from the line. The unit was unfortunately later caught in the open by some form of armored vehicle, and suffered approximately 30% casualties.\n\nAxis journalists only reached the scene much later where they saw recently-arrived tanks next to the bodies of the Uhlan cavalry, and assumed that it had been a cavalry charge against a German armored line. The Germans picked up the story and ran with it. It became another instance of German propaganda becoming a widely-cited source during and after the war.\n\nIn reality, the Poles held out surprisingly well against the German invasion and may have had some more successes were it not for the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland. Poland seemed to stand no real chance of winning the conflict, and the minor assistance England had en-route likely would not have made a difference in outcome. It did however lead to victory later on in The Battle of Britain, as Polish air units scored quite a few kills, and later became an incredibly important part of the RAF. There were also the contributions of causing heavy early losses for the Germans in terms of vehicles, which snowballed in the Battle of France, and ultimately doomed them on the Eastern Front.", "At the risk of asking a 'meta' follow-up question, reading though this thread made me wonder: how many of these historical myths exist (or were popularised) by a movie? Is the dumbing down of history in popular culture responsible for our ills?", "Super late but someone in /r/history just brought up the whole \"they shit in the corridors at Versailles\" thing. Yeah, hygiene wasn't the greatest compared to today, but trust me, no one just dropped trou in the halls of Versailles and took a dump, let alone EVERYONE. And if they did, it was the exception to the rule. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3469g6/when_and_how_we_discovered_that_earth_is_round/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gq8un/how_did_the_flatearthers_of_the_day_react_when/" ], [], [ "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/94/2f/08/942f0884f6c06b3a0b061d1e0aff3009.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/x5cLi3p.jpg" ], [], [], [], [], [ "https://i.imgur.com/yyOyJHO.png", "http://utbblogs.com/home/bradu25/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/grinds-my-gears.png", "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3boun3/the_lost_cause_the_american_civil_war_and_the/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aos9q/how_large_were_the_daily_rations_of_alcohol_in/cixbm5y", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29f3s7/how_does_the_royal_navys_organisation_command/" ], [], [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24nbkc/whats_the_real_story_of_the_gulf_of_tonkin/ch8u8u6", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3b2kja/usa_won_every_single_battle_in_vietnam_i_often/csi8cia" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-many-movie-mistakes-of-enemy-at-the-gates.html" ], [], [], [ "http://www.fashion-era.com/images/Children/ch.jpg", "http://www.linternaute.com/histoire/magazine/dossier/06/louis-xvii/images/yoy.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/30i858/on_19th_century_photography_misconceptions_cost/", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Sophie_Beatrice_of_France.jpg" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://youtu.be/VE_4zHNcieM?t=194" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c2r7twy", "c2r8fxb", "c2r7twy", "c2r8fxb" ], "score": [ 2, 5, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "it has been shown to affect other animals. Most notably a cockatu? I believe. It used to be considered an entirely human trait however.", "Parrots dance! Just type \"parrot dancing\" in youtube and you will have a treasure trove of delightful dancing birds :)\n\nMy favorite:\n_URL_0_", "it has been shown to affect other animals. Most notably a cockatu? I believe. It used to be considered an entirely human trait however.", "Parrots dance! Just type \"parrot dancing\" in youtube and you will have a treasure trove of delightful dancing birds :)\n\nMy favorite:\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWhxCB0ndJE" ], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWhxCB0ndJE" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chs4oev", "chs6ixr" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "On the Reformation: Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Reformation: Europe's house divided, 1490-1700', London 2004. \nEDIT: This is an excellent read, very informative and entertaining\n\nOn the Thirty years war (and naturally with some information on the HRE): R.G. Asch, 'The thirty years war: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-1648', New York 1997.\n\nSadly I don't know any good books which only cover the HRE. ", "A. G. Dickens The Counter Reformation does great job at explaining the difference between counter reformation and catholic reform. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eudobk7", "eudoccl", "eudpcpx", "eudpez4" ], "score": [ 70, 24, 5, 18 ], "text": [ "The pH scale is related to the molar concentration of hydrogen ions. Normal water has a H+ concentration = 10\\^-7, therefor the pH is 7. Technically, pH is the -log10 \\[ hydrogen ion activity\\]. The scale goes beyond 0 - 14, but only uncommon substances are outside this range. Battery acid is pH = 0, meaning the H+ activity is 100%. Pure liquid lye drain cleaner is pH = 14, so the H+ activity is 10\\^-14 (very low), and the OH- activity is very high.\n\nHot saturated solution of sodium hydroxide can reach pH = 16. Very concentrated HCl solutions have pH = -1.1, and some waters from the Richmond Mine in California are reported at pH = -3.6.", "The pH is the molar concentration of hydrogen ions in water. A pH of 7 means there are 10^-7 moles of H^+ ions per liter of water. Since a liter of water has about 50 moles in it, the theoretical minimum and maximum is -2 and 16.", "The initial definition of the [pH scale](_URL_0_) is the negative logarithm (base 10) of the concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution (pH=-log\\[H+\\]), with more modern definitions based on the activity in solution. This is based on water, where at pH 7(neutral) there is 10\\^-7 H+ moles per Litre (mol/L, or M), and pH 0 and pH 14 are the max/min values for pH that can be achieved in water, with most systems you will run into have pH between 2 and 12 (in my experience).\n\nIt is possible to go outside of this scale, but more exotic compounds and solutions are required, and then different scales are used.", "pH is not exclusively 0-14... It's just that most common chemicals fall into that range... pH values can fall below or above that range. It relates to the negative log of free H+ ions in an aqueous (water-based) solution. As far as minimum and maximum values... That's pretty complicated and starts to break down the definition of the scale... At what point does your jar of hydrogen ions stop being a water-based solution?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9f16ei", "c9f1e8t" ], "score": [ 140, 25 ], "text": [ "The coffee provides a buoyant force to the spoon, pushing it up, making it lighter in your hand. The counter to this force is added weight on the scale. ", " > Why doesn't the spoon feel lighter when I do this?\n\n > A high school project estimated the average weight of a conventional teaspoon made of metal to be approximately 25 grams.\n\nThe material that the teaspoon is made of is dense enough that the lift produced is a small fraction compared to gravity, which is also why the spoon sinks instead of floating. The spoon only feels 2/25ths lighter (assuming your spoon weighs 25g) and that's a small enough fraction that it's difficult to feel the difference." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f9dw47h", "f9e3s63" ], "score": [ 9, 6 ], "text": [ "Organs can usually last a few hours at very low temperatures (but not freezing). This is normally sufficient to get from the donor to the recipient.\n\nSame goes with the heart muscle during a myocardium infarction. Serious damage to the heart muscle doesn't happen immediately but is progressive the longer the affected area of the heart is without oxygen.", "When a heart is taken for transplantation, part of the process involves not only chilling it to reduce the rate of metabolic processes but also introducing a cardioplegia solution which stops the heart muscle from contracting. The low temperature plus the prevention of muscle contraction means that the heart tissue has an extremely low metabolic rate and can survive for many hours rather than the few minutes it can survive if starved of oxygen whilst operating at full speed, so to speak. There's still a limit; you can't chill the heart far enough to stop all metabolism without causing irreparable physical damage.\n\nThe same is true for many other organs. The key is to reduce their metabolic rate to a low as possible without causing physical damage to them.\n\nNew techniques for keeping organs viable for longer have been developed recently. E.g. the [Organ Care System](_URL_0_)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1r434g" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "[This is a very frequently asked question](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/sciencefaqs/comments/fui70/why_do_all_the_planets_in_our_solar_system_rotate/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6elqtg", "d6em2vr", "d6erunu", "d6evjb2" ], "score": [ 6, 5, 3, 4 ], "text": [ " A few reasons. \n\n\n\n\nXiaomi's business model is like that of Kuerig, or Xerox, or HP printers. They will practically *give* you the device, because that is not the actual product. What they sell is software, the device is just a means of getting it to you.Printers are cheap, but you have to keep buying toner. Kuerig machine are a marvel of engineering, but the coffee is what keeps you coming back to the trough.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThey sell through online outlets, instead of brick and mortar stores.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nXiaomi is Chinese, they have an enormous indigenous consumer base, favorable tax liabilities to serve that base, and slave labor to produce for it. These reasons are why trade agreements with the Chinese are a joke, and probably immoral, not many other countries can just force people to do shit. All the while dumping incalculable waste, without any first world restrictions. Result: cheap ass phone, with quality components for the consumer. \n\n\n\n\n", "There's not a whole lot of original design going into making Yet Another Android Phone. You buy CPUs from 3rd parties. You buy screens from 3rd parties. You buy batteries from 3rd parties. You buy cameras from 3rd parties. You buy storage & RAM from 3rd parties. All you really need to do is stick them on a circuit board, slap it in a case & tweak Android a little bit so that it runs on the hardware.", "Apple charges you about 3-4x more than it costs them to make an iPhone. That's a pretty good profit margin. If you were happy just charging twice as much as it cost to make a phone, you'd still make a profit.", "Real ELI5:\n\nIt's easy nowadays to make a phone because you just buy the parts and put them together in a nice form.\n\nAll the phones even the iPhone can be made in China very cheaply.\n\nLots of BIG companies spend a lot of money on ads which are really expensive but they're kinda worth it (how many people have heard of OnePlus which is basically as good as the best Samsung?). \n\nIn conclusion, the phone's final price depends a lot on how much you spend \"around it\" - packaging, ADS, stores, and other similar stuff." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d53k17x" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The usual disclaimer is along these lines: These listings just indicate previous articles that may be applicable. This is not to discourage new questions.\n\nA search for\n\n > jim crow asian\n\n(merely as likely terms to have been in an article) includes a reply, [When interracial marriages were illegal in some states in the U.S., what did biracial people do? Could they simply not marry anyone in those states?](_URL_0_). They say they \"assume\" it was true in other states but provides no data, but they correctly note that Loving v. Virginia's Supreme Court decision says \"While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference.\" ([here](_URL_2_), in note 11).\n\nI found a few more general posts, but they don't talk about marriage in particular, so I don't know whether they apply to marriage too.\n\n[How were non-black minorities treated in the Jim Crow South](_URL_1_). /u/Dubstripsquads's reply says that different categories were variously treated as white or as non-white, depending on location or time.\n\nThere was also [What was Jim Crow/segregation era America like for non-black minorities?](_URL_5_) It cites and approves of the book [What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America](_URL_4_).\n\n[What was the status of Jews and Asians in America during racial segregation?](_URL_3_) is older and doesn't cite sources.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3biwdx/when_interracial_marriages_were_illegal_in_some/csngk55", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ix499/how_were_nonblack_minorities_treated_in_the_jim/", "https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b9at4/what_was_the_status_of_jews_and_asians_in_america/", "https://www.amazon.com/What-Comes-Naturally-Miscegenation-America/dp/0199772355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467934342&sr=1-1&keywords=What+Comes+Naturally%3A+Miscegenation+Law+and+the+Making+of+Race+in+America", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ufqv0/what_was_jim_crowsegregation_era_america_like_for/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dvvkv6c", "dvvl22x", "dvvnyba" ], "score": [ 11, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "They don't. It's a difference in your perception of what constitutes \"hot\" and \"cold\", and the way thermal transfer works. \n \nRoom temperature is ~70F; a hot beverage might be ~170F. A 100F difference. A cold beverage isn't going to be any colder than ~32F, about a 40F difference. \n \nSo you need to heat your beverage up a lot for you to think of it as truly hot...much more so than making a beverage cold. \n \nThen there's heat transfer. Heat transfer happens the fastest when the temperature difference is the greatest. So your \"hot\" beverage initially loses heat faster than your \"cold\" beverage gains it. \n \nSo there are two factors working against the hot beverage. It cools faster due to the greater temperature difference, and you don't think of it as \"hot\" when it cools down just a bit. \n \nIf you were to take 2 beverages and cool one 20 degrees below room temperature and heat another 20 degrees above room temperature, you'd find that they both approach room temp at the same rate.\n \nEDIT: Note that to do this correctly, I should have represented all temperatures in Kelvin. The conclusions are still correct, but the numbers are not quite right as I wrote it. \n ", "In general, heat tries to equalize, and the larger the difference between two temperatures, the faster it happens.\n\nThink of it like this, a thermos full of coffee is 70° and the outside world is 15°.\n\nA thermos full of milkshake is about 5° and the outside world is still 15°\n\nSo there's a larger temperature gradient between the coffee and the Earth, than between the milkshake and the Earth. So the coffee cools quicker than the milk warms.", "I could totally be wrong but if it’s vacuum insulated you can’t have any convective heat transfer (since there needs to be a fluid medium like air/water). All of the heat transfer would be through radiation and conduction. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e46o9rk", "e46z759", "e47wprl" ], "score": [ 24, 31, 24 ], "text": [ "Relevant question, why did the air instruments (trumpets, saxophones, etc) didn't pass on to later music genres while the percussion and stringed instruments did?", "Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but do check out these earlier answers\n\n* /u/hillsonghoods on the hugely entertaining [AskHistorians Podcast 067 - 20th Century Popular Music and the Rise of Guitar Groups](_URL_1_); as well as in [How did the default set of instruments for modern bands come to be 2 guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals? Why is it so rare to hear instruments other than these in popular music since the 1950s?](_URL_2_) and [When did the modern concept of the 'band' begin? I.e. The four piece guitar, bass, drums, singer set up. Was it popularized by a single group?](_URL_0_)\n\n* /u/Kai_Daigoji in [Why is the guitar the standard instrument for modern music?](_URL_3_)", "[An extended 12\" remix of a previous answer](_URL_0_):\n\nFirstly, one thing to remember about 'most popular music bands ranging from as far back as the forties' is that popular music generally reflects the times, in various ways, not least because it thrives on what is perceived as novelty, but also because the people buying popular music are young, and have grown up in a society that values particular things over others. And Charlie Gillett makes the argument quite strongly in the book *The Sound Of The City* that rock'n'roll - the dominant music of the second half of the 20th century - is, well, the sound of the city - a place full of mechanisation, loud vehicles, a place hooked up to the electricity grid, a bustling place crammed full of people. The city is a place where you have to fight to be heard, where you have to be loud to stand out. \n\nAnd so, unsurprisingly, one defining feature of the majority of typical rock instrumentation was that the instruments were just *loud*, and that they were relatively new technology.\n\nTake the modern drum kit. Drums have obviously been around since time immemorial, but the idea that one person might sit at a *kit* of drums and play them in combination was relatively new in 1940. The kit was derived originally from the need for sound effects to accompany silent films played in theatres. These early drum kits were modified and eventually crafted into something that looks like a modern drum kit in the 1930s by jazz drummers like Gene Krupa. The British rock'n'roll drummers of the 1960s very commonly had a background in jazz; Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones famously prefers jazz to rock'n'roll - and their drumming techniques and ways of playing are very much based on the styles of drummers like Krupa, who singlehandedly (or, more accurately, doublehandedly and doublefootedly) provided the rhythm that propelled the dance music that was swing jazz. \n\nWhere the drum kit is still loud enough to be put in a room of 200 people dancing and not really need much amplification to be heard, the same can't quite be said for the guitar - acoustic guitars just aren't that loud. The rise of the electric guitar was based upon the desire of guitarists to be heard in larger rooms (George Beauchamp, who played a role in inventing the resonator guitar and the electric guitar, was a guitarist making Hawaiian music who very much wanted his instrument to be louder). While electricity was common *in cities* decades before, amplification technology was still relatively new in 1940; speaker technology - e.g., what's used in a guitar amplifier - effectively dates from 1921, while the first commercially produced electric guitar that was designed to be amplified, the Ro-Pat-In 'Frying Pan' was patented in June 1934.\n\nAdditionally, the 1930s saw a revolution in singing styles, where singers like Bing Crosby no longer had to project their voices like opera singers to be heard in a large room; they now had microphones conveying their voices over amplifiers. This radically increased the kind of singing styles that you could use in a large room, and Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and others exploited this to the max with their 'crooning' style, which was notable for its softness (and which was criticised as unmasculine compared to more operatic styles at the time), and which was possible entirely because of amplification. So in the 1930s, you have a situation where a singer who hasn't been trained in opera (and how to sing with singer's formants) can actually be *heard* over a large, loud live band.\n\nPrevious to the 'Frying Pan' guitar, guitars were often a part of swing jazz bands, but the relatively quiet volume of an acoustic guitar (in a largely unamplified band revolving around a large horn section) meant that the acoustic guitar was largely a rhythm instrument. However, an electrified guitar allowed jazz guitarists like Charlie Christian towards the end of the 1930s to actually play solos on the guitar *which could be heard by the audience*. Electric guitars thus spread through genres like jazz and rhythm & blues in the 1940s and 1950s because of their versatility - you could use them to play rhythm parts or lead parts (or in the case of Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s, both at the same time). This, perhaps paradoxically, also increased the popularity of the acoustic guitar in comparison to other acoustic instruments, as it was a direct comparison, semiotically, with the electricity of the guitar; it thus became the big instrument of the folk music boom of the 1950s and early 1960s.\n\nThe electric bass *guitar* (i.e., the one that looks like a slightly bigger electric guitar, held like a guitar), as opposed to the acoustic upright bass (the one that looks like a big violin that's often taller than the person playing it, held upright), first went into production in 1951 (the Fender precision bass). Bill Black in Elvis Presley's band, for example, switched to electric bass in 1957.\n\nFinally, electrified keyboard instruments gained prominence in the 1950s as well and have been more than a niche part of popular music, I would say, if not having quite the same kind of prominence as the guitar or the drums. The Fender Rhodes electric piano and Wurlitzer electric piano functioned on similar principles to an electric guitar, except with hammers hitting metal tines rather than plectrums hitting metal strings. The Wurlitzer went into production in the mid-1950s, and Leo Fender of Fender Guitars partnered with Harold Rhodes to mass-produce Fender Rhodes keyboards from 1959. Ray Charles prominently used the Wurlitzer electric piano on his 1957 hit 'What'd I Say'. On early Beatles recordings, a Hohner Pianet - a similar instrument made by the German company Hohner - was often played by George Martin to subtly supplement the rest of the band. I [discuss the use of the electric organ in 1960s pop music in much more detail here](_URL_1_) but in general, electric organs are also similar to electric pianos and electric bass guitar in that they came to prominence in the late 1950s.\n\nThis line-up of instruments - guitar, bass, drums, maybe piano or electric keyboards - developed in R & B in the 1940s and 1950s, often in bands attempting to emulate swing line-ups of various sorts. Bill Haley & The Comets had originally been a western swing band, while Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm was an offshoot of a more straight-ahead swing big band; these musicians were attempting to emulate a big band with a smaller line-up using louder instruments. This line-up became codified as the standard in the 1960s, in particular because of the sheer success of groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. All of these line-ups basically used line-ups comprised of these instruments, perhaps supplemented by others (e.g., the Beatles using a symphony orchestra on 'The Day In The Life', the Rolling Stones using a children's choir on 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', and The Beach Boys using bass harmonicas and French horns amongst other things on *Pet Sounds*). \n\nGuitars and electric keyboards are both versatile instruments with a reasonably large range of available pitches, where one musician is capable of both rhythm and lead parts which can both be heard by the audience. In comparison, a single saxophone (also a very common instrument in popular music since the 1950s) only allows for a single melody line rather than chords doing rhythm parts. Swing bands do show the full capability of saxophones and trumpets to do rhythm parts, of course, but this requires a relatively large horn section. \n\nOf course, finally, I'd take issue with your contention that the guitar is currently the de-facto popular music instrument. Because it's not. Synthesisers and drum machines really become a dominant part of popular music in the late 1970s and 1980s, the period when the computer started to become part of everyday life, the way that electrical goods had become part of everyday life earlier in the century. Much modern popular music very often doesn't include electric guitars, electric bass, acoustic drums, or acoustic/electric keyboards *at all*. The current #1 single as you read this is all electronic and computerised, made on digital audio workstation programs on computers (e.g., Ableton, Logic, or ProTools) using digital samples and keyboards that - like the computer keyboards I typed this on - essentially input data to be processed by computer algorithms. \n\nHowever, such music also very often uses the *logic* of the modern band instrumentation, with a rhythm part usually conceptualised in similar ways to a drummer playing a drum kit, a bass part that's a single melody line, instruments playing chords in a rhythmic way, and lead lines (and vocals). But then this logic isn't dramatically different to the logic of the swing band, either - it just requires less people to carry it out thanks to advances in electricity and then in electronic music. So where Duke Ellington's big band used fourteen members, a modern electronic act can just be one person." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jj12c/when_did_the_modern_concept_of_the_band_begin_ie/djet13l/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4v8ggm/askhistorians_podcast_067_20th_century_popular/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ovuj7/how_did_the_default_set_of_instruments_for_modern/dkl5ljt/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g8hbz/why_is_the_guitar_the_standard_instrument_for/ckgtvhu/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ovuj7/how_did_the_default_set_of_instruments_for_modern/dkl5ljt/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/666bbl/what_factors_lead_to_the_general_abandonment_of/dgjxwpr/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3rui1e", "c3rykvu" ], "score": [ 17, 3 ], "text": [ "Potentially yes, assuming you cook with salt. When two dissimilar metals are connected together by an electrolyte, they form a galvanic cell.\n\nSee: _URL_0_\n\nThese were the first types of batteries.\n\nIt can also lead to corrosion of metals, if they are kept in contact for too long. This is a corrosion mechanism in the molten salt reactor.", "It's not the metal you are tasting but the taste results from an electric current caused by the metals. " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d0yb64s", "d0ydsue", "d0yduak", "d0yjdqm", "d0yllgy", "d0yo68g", "d0yp9ve" ], "score": [ 199, 9, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The series of parallel elements are called directors, and they, in effect, focus the signal. \n\nA simple wire, sticking up, will have a sensitivity pattern which is circular with is centre around the wire, but this isn't much use for receiving faint signals and shutting out interfering signals. The [Yagi-Uda antenna](_URL_0_) uses the row of directors to stretch the sensitivity in the direction of the directors - that is, along the line of the \"rail\" of the antenna. This allows it to collect faint signals from (nearly) a single direction.\n\nThe gains can be quite startling, but adding extra elements has increasingly little effect, so you don't often see ridiculously long versions.", "Better signal, they are also cut out to a certain length for the signal. For instance that antenna looks bout the range of 900mhz where as compared to a uhf or vhf antenna the sticks are 1 foot long to 3 foot long. The spot were the wire hooks up is called your lnb and is basically the main reciever of the antenna all the sticks are just for better signal. ", "If you like visualizations, see here: _URL_0_\n\nThis particular picture probably isn't from an antenna like you describe, but the effect is the same. This diagram is a visualization of the power output measured at different points around an antenna, when that antenna is transmitting, and directly relates to its receiving ability as well. You can imagine that for a single-wire antenna, the diagram would basically be a circle. You can also imagine that modifying the antenna geometry will increase the size of some lobes while decreasing others. Adding the right kind of directors to an antenna enables the antenna's longest lobe to reach much farther than a simpler design would, but adds the condition that the user must aim it correctly.", "The antennas that have that propagation pattern are directional. You have a reflector element, driven element and directors. These elements mak up the Yagi antenna.For best reception, point your antenna (small elements forward) toward the TV transmitter.", "Radio travels like a wave in water. Different radio channels travel as different sizes of waves.\n\nTo listen to one of these channels, you get a simple antenna that is just as long as one of those waves.\n\nTo make it better, you can put many of these antennas together and every rail they have will listen to the same length of waves but from a different place and it increases the amount of correctly listened waves.\n\nAntenna is like a fishing net. If you have a net with big holes, too small fishes won't get caught in it and too big fishes just bump off from it. So you will only get the size of fish you wanted. If you have a net that is just one hole, you must be very lucky to get even one fish in it. If you have a net with many holes, more right sized fish may get stuck in it.\n", "Because that's a cheap way to make an antenna that can hear better, but only in one direction. \n\nThe way an antenna is shaped changes how it hears radio waves, and this way you only need a few wires instead of a big dish.", "Literal ELI5: It's like a special net shape to catch the different waves that are out there, like butterflies. You need the right net to catch the best butterfly." ] }

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[ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/UHF_TV_Antenna_001.JPG/330px-UHF_TV_Antenna_001.JPG" ]

[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagi-Uda_antenna" ], [], [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Sidelobes_en.svg/220px-Sidelobes_en.svg.png" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3at2sw", "c3at439", "c3at9wx", "c3aubpc", "c3at2sw", "c3at439", "c3at9wx", "c3aubpc" ], "score": [ 15, 2, 5, 2, 15, 2, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "I have read that some scientists believe that beauty is an indicator of good health, and thus was probably important to mate selection, and yes, would thus consequently have lead to favoring that genetic trait.\n\nHowever, you asked the question in the present tense, and the current reality is probably reversed. The best looking, healthiest, smartest, most well off individuals in our society are today often single or have just one or two children, because they are too busy living their awesome lives to have more. On the other hand, the bored, poor, poorly educated, and ... less than gifted in the beauty sense ... often have many children. Please don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.", "I'm not an expert, but I think that it is very likely that any evidence of a more attractive population would be hard to pin down to one cause(evolution) for instance, those who lead hard lives, who spend most of their time outside and are subject to the extremes of the seasons for all their lives will look more 'weathered'. Since we have the technology to be comfortable all year round and be inside to boot, that would be one alternative for evolutionary causes.", "@3:30\n[Dan Dennett TED talk - youtube](_URL_0_)\n\nThere is nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies", "This question is based on a false premise. Neanderthal man was *not* Homo Sapiens, nor did Neanderthal man evolve in to Homo Sapiens. They were two distinct species who on the Earth at the same time.\n\nThere is evidence that they interbred, but I don't see how that has much bearing on the subject at hand.", "I have read that some scientists believe that beauty is an indicator of good health, and thus was probably important to mate selection, and yes, would thus consequently have lead to favoring that genetic trait.\n\nHowever, you asked the question in the present tense, and the current reality is probably reversed. The best looking, healthiest, smartest, most well off individuals in our society are today often single or have just one or two children, because they are too busy living their awesome lives to have more. On the other hand, the bored, poor, poorly educated, and ... less than gifted in the beauty sense ... often have many children. Please don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.", "I'm not an expert, but I think that it is very likely that any evidence of a more attractive population would be hard to pin down to one cause(evolution) for instance, those who lead hard lives, who spend most of their time outside and are subject to the extremes of the seasons for all their lives will look more 'weathered'. Since we have the technology to be comfortable all year round and be inside to boot, that would be one alternative for evolutionary causes.", "@3:30\n[Dan Dennett TED talk - youtube](_URL_0_)\n\nThere is nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies", "This question is based on a false premise. Neanderthal man was *not* Homo Sapiens, nor did Neanderthal man evolve in to Homo Sapiens. They were two distinct species who on the Earth at the same time.\n\nThere is evidence that they interbred, but I don't see how that has much bearing on the subject at hand." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjg&t=3m30s" ], [], [], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjg&t=3m30s" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch0fdk6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Going to take a rough while I am on the Thunder dome at work\n\nYou body will act like it is connected to the cable and because you body creates thousands of millions of small electromagnetic pulses throughout your nerves and what not, this then creates the \"noise\" signal\n\nLike I said rough guess while I am pooping at work. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdrlco3" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "\"Heavily Invested\" and \"All In\" are not the same thing. If Bill Gates invests 90% of his money in stocks he is still wealthier than you and I by a large margin.\n\nPlus, stocks are pretty liquid assets. Its not hard to sell off some shares if you need some cash." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1f90zv" ], "score": [ 42 ], "text": [ "Most people living in Normandy were not descended from Vikings. Following Rollo's appointment as Duke there was no mass-migration of Scandinavians. It was primarily the elite that were descendants of the original Viking invaders, and they very often intermarried with French nobility to form alliances and entrench their power.\n\nArguably however, these elite retained some aspects of Scandinavian culture, and their ventures abroad can be seen in the wider context of later Viking activity. Sarah Davis-Secord (*Sicily and the Medieval Mediterranean*) refers to a \"lure of profit and adventure\" which drove the Normans to Sicily for instance. Like the Vikings, they were prominent as seafarers and mercenaries. Graham Loud in *The Age of Robert Guiscard* argues that the Normans were present in Italy as mercenaries before the events described in either the Salerno or Gargano traditional accounts of the Norman arrival. From minor military positions in the armies of Salerno, the Normans rose to power, possibly with the help of Papal intervention, and established the Kingdom of Sicily. This mirrors contemporary Scandinavian activities - The Byzantine Varangian Guard for example established for themselves a strong position within Byzantine society. Harald Hardrada served with them before becoming King of Norway. This \"lure\" could even be applied to Norman ventures in the British Isles, the most obvious example being the adventures of Richard de Clare (Strongbow) in Ireland. So it could be said that Norman warriors and elites continued some parts of Viking culture." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "enb0fqp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I would say that either they had an original of the record in 60 FPS, which was not uploaded back then or recreated the \"missing\" frames by \"averaging\" of the frames before/after of some sort." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce58vvj" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "For long distance transport, power is converted to a very high voltage and transported in high-diameter cables, usually Al for cost. \n\nA very naive calculation (300kV_RMS and 750mm^2 cross-section aluminum wire @ room temperature) assuming all the power of the Hoover dam is used (that's 2080MW) says that the maximum absolute length of wire so that all the power is used for ohmic heating is about 7200 km. So 3600 km because you need a return path, and then a bit shorter than that if you want some power left to do something useful.\n\nIn actuality though I think the power grid is so complex (many transformers and tie-ins to other power stations) that if only one power plant was working, the power would dissipate in the spiderweb of connections, plus the computerized control and feedback systems that ajust load for certain grid sections would immediately fail." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "due9gkl" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Heat is transferred in three ways\n\n1. Radiation - This is IR and other energy which is emitted from something warm\n\n2. Conduction - This is energy transferred between two objects that are physically touching\n\n3. Convection - This is the movement of energy through currents like hot air rising and cold air sinking or running a fan to even out the temperature\n\nWhen you talk about air being a better insulator than water you're talking about conduction of heat. Water is significantly denser so particles bump into each other and pass energy around much quicker than in air. We generally design insulation to have little air pockets so there isn't enough air to have significant heat transfer from convection.\n\nClouds trap heat by blocking radiation transfer. The warm Earth emits IR which on a clear day will continue out into space, but on an overcast day will bounce off the clouds and come back to Earth or be absorbed and warm the cloud. Since there is no mass to conduct heat to in space, the only way for the Earth to get rid of energy is to radiate it out into space so blocking that path results in the Earth staying warm." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clocndm", "clocz1x", "clodww9", "clof1k3", "cloge0n", "clogsww", "cloi9nr", "clok23x", "cloknl6", "clol9dw", "clolhu0", "clome5s", "clonnx8", "clonse9", "clonv94", "cloofur", "clop4wc", "cloq39u", "cloqph5", "clozhgy", "clp2reu", "clp2usf", "clp7vxw", "clp89md" ], "score": [ 3, 2028, 136, 7, 3, 8, 168, 3, 10, 2, 33, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 9, 3, 5, 4, 6, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "1) Types of cereal may or may not be patentable.\n\n2) Patents expire after a few decades, allowing anyone to copy the idea without issue.", "You can't copyright a recipe for food and usually can't patent a food product. The specific form in which a recipe is presented can be copyrighted (the words and formatting), but as long as someone changes up the words they can use the same ingredients, measurements, and steps. Similarly, you can protect branding and food packaging, but not a food product. If someone figures out how to make a Twinkie and sells it with different packaging and branding, they're allowed to.\n\nMalt-O-Meal can get away with it because their packaging and branding is different. For example, they don't use Lucky the Leprechaun with their Marshmallow Mateys cereal (similar to Lucky Charms); they use a kangaroo instead. Also, I don't even think the recipe is exactly the same because their cereals definitely taste a little different. Th\n\nEdit: You can patent some food products, but they have to be non-obvious and novel. Most food products are obvious variations on old recipes (like with cereal). Examples of food products that have been patented include egg yolk substitutes and sealed crustless sandwiches.\n\nEdit 2: You can all go make your own sealed crustless sandwiches. Turns out the product was patented by Smuckers in 1999, but the patent was reexamined and rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2003. Smuckers' application to patent the process for making the sandwiches was also rejected.\n\nEdit 3: The process for making \"marbits\" (the marshmallows in Lucky Charms) is patented: _URL_0_. I don't know what process Malt-O-Meal uses, but as long as it's different they should be fine. The main point that you can't patent a recipe is still true for cereals in general.\n", "In short are basically three things in the world which can protect your product. \n\n* A patent\n* A trademark\n* Copyright\n\n\n\n**Copyrights** get a lot of press these days (due to piracy), you could literally boil it down to the right to copy a thing. applies to media like books and movies and allows the producers of that product to restrict others from using their material. Copyright also provides some protection from people making blatant rip offs of your work. Ie re-publishing Harry potter but just changing the names. Copyrights are long lived but do eventually expire, example many Popeye cartoons are now int he public domain and can be copied and shared freely as well as used in other sources. \n\n\n**Trademarks** are things like a logo or possibly an iconic character. the mcdonalds sign is trademarked. it means you can't use it for your own stuff (if it would be confused with the original product) these can be words and phrases too. Trademarks last forever, for good reason. brand recognition is valuable and as longas you are still using your name it makes sense that you should have protection. Trademark law also requires you to activly protect your trademark or you may loose it. \n\n\n**Patent** , these cover inventions and processes (and sadly software). basically for the most part you patent, *things* . then you can control who can manufacture that thing and sell a license to use that thing in other things. In your specific case Apple and Samsung have portfolios of patents covering all kinds of things. unfortunately they also get patents for trivial \"inventions\" like maybe swiping to unlock or something that is basic and easily copied but falls under a patent. \n\n\nYou can't patent a recipe however, you could patent a process for making a thing. for example the machine or process to make dried marshmallow bits. however you couldn't patent all marshmallow bits. However the cereal could have Trademarks and copyrights on it that's why the rip of brands will have weird but legally distinct names and their font and design will vary just enough to not infringe on the original brand's IP. \n\n", "I think Pringles were patented, but I think it was the machinery and manufacturing process that was patented rather then the Pringles themselves!", "I'm pretty sure you can't patent breakfast cereal.", "Recipes cannot be copyrighted, and patents are difficult to obtain for recipes, since they must be useful. non-obvious, and novel. The difficulty in proving that in a food recipe is documented pretty well [here](_URL_0_). Further, patents are usually only good for 20 years (cocoa puffs, have been around since 1958 for example).\n\nThere is some protection under trademark, but as long as the customer is not going to be confused by the brand, that's indefensible. Pretty much as long as you keep Tony the Tiger off your big-ass bag of frosted flakes, you'll be fine.\n\nFashion designers have the same issue - you can't patent or copyright a fashion design. Some manufacturers will plaster branding on their clothing so they get some protection under trademark law.\n\nI find both of these instances to be a great case for loosening and/or reducing the duration of copyright and patent protection. It can hardly be argued that the lack of protection hurts the fashion, cooking, and food industries. Cookbooks in particular are an indictment against lengthy copyright law, as it's a thriving part of the book industry, despite the fact that little of the meaningful content can be copyrighted. ", "Intellectual Property (IP) is divided into 4 types: Copyright (expressions of ideas - e.g. songs, artwork), Trademarks (names, symboles, or phrases - e.g. company name or product name), Patents (inventions and designs - e.g. the product you buy), and Trade Secrets (secret information - e.g. recipes, plans).\n\nThe issues you're discussing involve patents (things that Apple and Samsung are suing each other over) vs trade secrets (recipes of the cereal) and maybe a dash of trademarks for similar named things. The key is that unlike the other forms of IP, trade secrets have no legal protection. \n\nWith a patent you are essentially telling the public how to make or use your invention with the exchange of exclusive right to make, use, and sell that invention for a limited period of time (currently 20 years from the date of filing of the patent application [this is when people use the term \"Patent Pending\"]). With a trade secret, you aren't telling anyone anything so you get to keep it a secret for as long as you want but you don't get that legal protection.\n\nWith Malt-O-Meal they're not violating any laws by copying or reproducing a recipe as there is no legal protection on that matter (or recipe). Kellogg never filed for a patent on frosted flakes (they likely wouldn't get one either), they never registered a copyright (you can't copyright recipes), and trademarks are limited to names and symbols. Essentially they'd have very little to gain from disclosing the recipe to the public - hence trade secrets. But again that leaves them with no legal protection.\n\nPatents, as with Samsung and Apple have legal protection - again they require the disclosure of how to make and use the invention in exchange for timed exclusivity. This is what allows them to sue one another for copying their ideas (known as patent infringement).\n\n**TL;DR - recipes (trade secrets) and inventions (patents) are different types of IP, while patents have legal protection trade secrets do not.**", "Samsung and apple compete against each other for the top spot, the high shelves. But there are myriad other ultra low cost devices that blatantly rip off their designs without any shame or hesitation. \n\nSame basic thing with cereals. If Kelloggs saw General Mills put a box with similar packaging and contents as Fruit Loops (or whatever) they'd freak out, but since the only real emulatuon goes on in the malt-o-meal (ultra low cost) section, why should they care?", "Apple and Samsung aren't suing each other for making cell phones that taste the same.", "This is not related to food, but the same can be asked about cars. There are many brands of cars but they don't generally sue each other. \n", "There are a lot of answers here already (some accurate, others very much inaccurate), so this will probably get drowned out, but here it goes anyway. \n\n\nThe answer comes down to different types of protections. Apple and Samsung are largely fighting over patents. Patents are intended to protect new ideas by providing a broad, exclusive right to all products using that idea for a (relatively) short period of time. If you invent a product and get a patent, no one else can make or sell any other product covered by that patent without your permission.\n\n\nTrademarks, on the other hand, are intended to tell the public what company made the products and do not protect the products themselves (I'm avoiding trade dress here for the sake of ELI5 answer, but the purpose of trade dress is basically the same as for trademarks: to identify the source of products). Lucky Charms is a trademark and it tells people who buy a cereal with the name \"Lucky Charms\" on the box that it came from General Mills. If they like it they know that every time they buy a box of cereal with Lucky Charms on it they are getting the product from the same company. So long as Malt-O-Meal makes their products and packaging sufficiently different that the public isn't likely to be confused that the cereals came from the big-brand companies, they don't infringe on any trademarks.\n\n\nA couple of quick notes because I can't resist:\n- recipes can be copyrighted, but they don't provide very broad protection because they only stop someone from copying the written recipe, not from making the food that the recipe describes\n- food can also be patented and often is, but this is usually for a new composition of cheese-like products, artificial flavorings, etc. or processes to mass-produce food\n- trademarks and copyright are not mutually exclusive. A logo can both be a trademark that identify the source of a product and copyrighted as a creative design. In some cases they may even be patentable with a design patent.\n- trade secrets are the often used with food, such as Coca-Cola, because they are difficult to reverse engineer. Trade secret protection has pros and cons over patent protection, but usually they cover similar subject matter.\n\n\nsource: intellectual property attorney", "And similarly, what's with all these yogurt commercials doing blind tests and saying who the other brand's was now? Can't they sue or something?", "There is no reason for the lawsuits except for the willingness of Apple and Samsung to engage in legal battles because they are at war for market dominance and will take any and every opportunity to pursue them. They too could be like the cereal industry, but choose not to. ", "Because you can't patent the shape or color of a food.", "Along with some of the stuff that other people have said there is a little more I believe (I hadn't read all the other comments so spare me). This can also have something do with how generics are made. Basically a company can sell as much of a recipe to another company for money. They don't have to sell the entire recipe, but just chunks. That's one of the reasons why most generics and spin-off products are inferior, because the buying company has to fill in what they didn't get. Hope this adds to your answer.", "Not saying this is the case here,but a lot of name brand companies,often sell a slightly different formula of their product,which is then often sold under store brands.", "Most off-brand cereals you see in grocery stores are actually made in the same place as the name brand ones.", "Haha I remember being embarrassed when my mom got the giant bag as a kid. Now that I have to feed myself, well guess who is getting a grain sack sized bag of that blue kangaroo brand? In all seriousness it's because they aren't marketing it as the said product. It's just a food product. How can Pepsi and coke exist if the product is the same? The formula is different even though they taste exactly the same to me. :-/", "Apple and Samsung often absorb companies already holding patents for their \"inventions\" or manage to get vague patents signed off on after much revision.\n\nAs for their battles with each other, the vague patents thing...\n\nApple's D670,286 is a patent for—no shit—a rectangle with rounded corners. This to save the innovative shape of iPads.", "It is hard to hold a patent on food. I mean just because one company makes a taffy apple, does that mean that no other place can place caramel on an apple? ", "Malt-O-Meal has been around since 1919 and is not an off brand. It preceded most of them. Have some respect for GrandM-O-M.", "Most food formulas are so old that any patents or similar expired BEFORE the current war on public domain started in the late 1970s. \n\nNothing new about Corn Flakes Or Wheaties either, there hasn't been in my lifetime I'm 55!", "Part of it is you can't put a patent on a taste, only the recipe. So if someone can imitate that closely it's legal. Now in areas like a phone everything has been patented from the design to the technology so none of it can be copied without permission or infringing on patent laws.", "IIRC Many of those knock off foods are made in the same manufacturing plant as the real ones " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.google.com/patents/US8105642" ], [], [], [], [ "http://store.inventorprise.com/content_articles.php?id=1049" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6ff4a5" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I think that he is asking about the inside of a perfectly reflective box. Yes it would bounce around forever, here's why:\n\nThe photon is an electromagnetic wave in a vaccum, and is classically defined as a pair of coupled wave equations: _URL_0_.\n\nImagine a mirror in 1-D propagation. A perfect mirror, (100% reflection) can be mathematically modelled as a specific boundary condition at the physical boundary, (lets say, X = 0 and X = L), which governs the energy transfer and reflection from the surface. In this case, (1D), the wave equation is v^2 f_XX(x, t) = f_TT(x,t). With an initial condition of f(x,0) = initial_trapped_wave(x) and f_t(x,0)=0, (some initial waveform, and no first order temporal derivative). The boundary condition is such that there is no restoring force acting on the wave front at the boundaries, so something like f_tt(0,t)=0, f_tt(L,t)=0. \n\nThen, without loss of generality, expand this to 3-D and limit wave propagation to some box in R^3. It will just keep reflecting. " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cbz7v52" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "I think you need to be more specific. Anything that uses your muscles will build strength. Push-ups, pull-ups, and standing squats, all use your own body weight to strengthen muscles. If you use these exercises as aerobic activity you will get cardio health benefits. \n\nIf you are talking about anaerobic weight lifting to add muscle, I don't know of any specific health benefits from doing this alone." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eu6dcff", "eu6h3h3", "eu6sdjr", "eu7kjly" ], "score": [ 16, 10, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "No government oversight or enforcement of false product claims. Assume all copy on products is a lie.", "They don't. They may claim 99.9% but not of all germs. If you look at the fine text it's usually one or two organisms only and usually the easiest organisms to kill. Plain soap, water and scrubbing may give the same result.\nAs being the better than others, like all marketing they claim or imply their product is the best but never compare it directly to a competitor so that way they can't be held to account as they can shift goal posts. The best example of that is hungry jacks (burger king for non Australians) with the slogan \"the burgers are better at hungry jacks\". Better then where? Macca's? We have more smoke flavour so we deem that as what was meant by better. Your drunk uncles burnt barbeque? We mean burgers you can buy at a shop. A gourmet burger shop? Well that's a different category of product.", "My favorite is when they add the “even kills the flu!!” When the influenza virus is one of the easiest microorganisms to kill...now if it said “kills bacterial endospores”...then I’m impressed", "The \"99.9%\" claim is a brilliant advertising loophole invented by a Belgian attorney named Jacques \nQuatrevingtdixneuf Virguleneuf in 1783 which allows companies to make absurd claims in their advertisements, while also allowing them to escape liability when the product isn't effective." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ds1pcip", "ds1r31s", "ds22i0k", "ds23smu", "ds26dkq", "ds27agz", "ds2ds32", "ds2hujn", "ds2rjx8", "ds2smhm", "ds2wuaj", "ds36sjy", "ds3cloc" ], "score": [ 657, 347, 4, 16, 2, 54, 3, 4, 98, 7, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Dominos. The force is transfered from the top brick down by the breaking bricks themselves.", "The first thing you need to know is that is is all a trick. They aren't breaking \"bricks\", they are breaking low quality, high sand content paving stones arranged in a specific way to give maximum leverage. Breaking a whole lot of these bricks does take some skill and practice, but just about anyone can break bricks after a few minutes of practice and instruction if they can overcome their fear of hurting themselves.\n\nAs for breaking those big stacks, they are simply knocking one brick into the next like dominos. As I said, it takes skill and practice to do these sorts of stunts. They are just like a skilled magician, they are doing something hard, but not as impossible as they make it out to be.", "So tldr as /kouhoutek said it's a trick. It consists of a moderate amount of power, some speed and a lot of careful selection and setup of materials.\n\nLonger version is that these blocks or bricks concrete with no reinforcement usually around 8inches by 16 inches in size with a thickness of around 1 inch. Usually they will stack (more on that in a min) a bunch of these, chop, punch or kick through them and then look super satisfied because they just proved their dedication by performing an incredible feat of human strength? right? wrong!\n\nFor starters lets look at their strike. If we turn to the exciting world of material science we can discover that when a non reinforced slab of concrete of around an inch in size is subjected to bending stresses (what happens when you hit it in the middle) it has extremely low strength. For a point of reference given the 8x16x1 measurements I would estimate around 130lbs of force required to break this block. Consider that is likely less than the individuals weight and heavy weight boxers can hit for over 1000lbs of force (often well over 3 times their weight) while striking horizontally (much harder to get weight behind strikes than vertically) it really isn't impressive, in fact the hardest part of this would be convincing the person striking of this fact so they hit it with full force without worrying about injury.\n\nNow i know what your thinking, well ok so one block isn't impressive but what about those dudes who do like 20? Again this is a glorified parlor trick. Note that they never break a single big 20 inch thick slab, instead they opt for 20x1inch slabs, why? well again we can turn to science, specifically how force is transferred between objects. When breaking objects in this domino style manner it actually only takes marginally more force to break subsequent blocks, to boost this a lot of people will add marbles or other separators between the slabs to make this force transfer even more efficient.\n\nThese stunts look impressive but they largely aren't, there is no mysticism or super secret sauce developed over 1000 years in some ghetto ass monastery that makes this stuff possible its a basic understanding of materials and the confidence to hit it as hard as you can. The rest of it is physical strength and weight you can put behind the blow. The training element is being able to put your full force behind the strike without worrying about injury (that can be a lot easier said than done and some people do train for a considerable amount of time before being confident enough to do it).", "One of the main factors in the bricks breaking is that there is a space in between each individual brick in the stack.This helps the force of the strike go through each brick in the stack more smoothly", "Energy passes through the upper bricks to the lower ones and breaks them. Bricks are pretty brittle.", "Ever seen Newtons Cradle? the swinging ball thingy. the ones in the middle don't move, the ones on the end do. all the force from the first is transferred to the last.", "We were running a TKD demo with a bunch of 6th+ Dan belts doing a sequence of brick breaks. Most of them were vertical breaks, but none of them were with hands. After everyone did their thing, I ran in to help clean up. They used 3 inch cinder pavers and pencils. The thing I couldn't get was that not only were most of the bricks broken, but the pencils were destroyed too. The bottom group of them were smooshed. Any pencil in the first 5 rows was either split down the middle or in a diagonal.\n\nMy best guess was that the bricks were falling over and causing the damage", "Concrete by itself can resist compression but is shit under tension.\n\nWhenever you try to bend (read apply a force) a material. Lets say apply a force downwards on a material, the top will be in compression. The middle neutral, and the bottom will be stretched (tension). This is where concrete will start cracking.\n\nAlso. The bricks are stacked to have gaps between each layer. The cleaved pieces will hit the next block under it and so on. A martial artists generally only needs to be able to break one block.\n\nTake my word with a grain of salt because ive never been taught to do shows because the only martial arts ive spent time with are silat, jiujitsu, and a bit of mma. Apparently they dont put block-breaking shows in their syllabus", "2nd degree black belt here. I have broken 5-6 bricks at a time for tournaments, belt exams, etc.\n\nIt is something of a novelty but it does take skill and practice. There is some research out there indicating that martial artists and boxers have higher bone density due to repeated striking in practice sessions, which causes micro-fractures in bones that heal over time, leading to stronger bones. I’ve also always used a handwrap (similar to what boxers wear under the glove) to stabilize the wrist.\n\nHowever, the technique is also important. I have a video of myself breaking 5 bricks. When slowed down, you can see a few things right away that help:\n\n1. Momentum - my vertical jump above the stack is pretty high. So there is a gravity assist.\n2. Torque - up until the moment of strike, someone standing off to the left could read the back of my shirt. That twisting motion creates additional force.\n3. The strike itself - we are taught to aim beyond the target. Mentally I’m aiming for the last brick.\n\nThe video doesn’t show the mental part obviously. The first time I broke a single brick it was easily one of the most stressful things I’d done. Hesitation can lead to novices pulling back / not doing the stuff I mentioned above, and failing (potentially causing injury).\n\nAt the end of the day it is flashy and cool. I don’t think you could pick a random person off the street and have them do it without injuring themselves. ", "At a kid's birthday party, they got to break boards. The best was the one broken before the kid even touched it. The guy in charge was bending the boards and breaking them with his hands.", "Wow finally something on Reddit I can answer about. I taught Tae Kwon Do for about 8 years so I'm far from a master but still pretty knowledgeable. As many other people have stated it is due to the martial artist transferring the energy of the strike through each board. This is why many times you will see them use spacers in between boards or cinder blocks, as it makes it much easier for them to break the first board and start the chain reaction.", "They put tiny \"bracers\" in between each brick or board which greatly reduces the structural integrity of the bricks/blocks/boards.\n\nIt's equal parts Martial Arts and Magic Show.", "A little late to the party but I'm a world champion competition breaker (I can edit in proof later if anyone cares, I'm on mobile right now) and this is something I consider myself an expert on.\n\nThe main thing that allows us to break through concrete and wood stacks is energy (or chi/ki) projection, when I hit the top block on a stack I am trying to project my energy into the block on the bottom of the stack, breaking all of them. Think of it as a shockwave of force.\n\nThere are a few other factors that help with this. Something that was mentioned above and is very relevant is bone density, although I have always known it as body conditioning. What this is, is strengthening one's bones by hitting them repeatedly (not enough to cause serious harm) on a hard surface. This creates microfractures in the bone which will allow it to heal thicker and stronger. It also helps build a pain tolerance which is helpful if you miss the concrete and break yourself instead. For me personally, I put a piece of paper or a shirt or something on top of a slab of concrete (so I don't scrape my hand on the surface) and hit it at like 60% power for 5-10 minutes. I repeat this for each strike I am training to use. I also drink a shitload of milk, though I don't actually know if this helps. \n\nAnother aspect is precision. When you are training for competition breaking, especially divisions such as power breaking where you only get one strike, it is extremely important to use the most efficient striking method possible. This means not only hitting your stack in the exact center (not an easy feat to do when you are trying to hit something full blast) but also making contact with the blocks at the exact apex of your strike, for most people this is when the force of their strike passes over their center of balance. I could get much more in depth on this specifically if people want. \n\nSpeed vs power is also a factor, you have to know your body type. Someone with a lot of bulk behind their strikes might find they generate more power if they jump before a hit, while someone like me who is more lean might focus more on rooting oneself in the ground and generating force through speed. \n\nLastly, and this is something that can't exactly be quantified by scientific means, there is the overall energy or ki/chi generated by the breaker before competing. What I mean by this is that most breakers tend to work themselves into a heightened mental state when they are competing. It is difficult to describe, it's like an adrenaline rush combined with flow. When I break I kind of see the world in tunnel vision, the world around me becomes muted and I really only focus on my strikes and my stacks. When a breaker reaches this state it is very obvious, there have been many times where I could feel someone's energy before a break, like how one feels static electricity. For me personally I reach this state through meditation and breathing exercises, just ones designed to work me up instead of calm me down. Other breakers try to get \"ki'ed up\" as many call it by hitting pads (and sometimes people) or listening to music .\n\n\nI have a lot more to say on this and would be glad to answer any questions anybody has. Might not respond right away as I will be training until late tonight.\n\n\nEDIT: Here is some proof! _URL_0_\n_URL_1_\n\nThe video is a clip from the ESPN highlight reel of my routine. The actual thing had a lot more breaks in it with more materials than the ones shown (Including me kicking through a baseball bat) but the video is only available on Facebook and I don't know how to get it off of there since I wasn't the one who recorded the footage. If anyone wants to see more videos of competitive breaking I can link a bunch of myself and my fellow martial artists. \n " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://imgur.com/a/gUA6r", "https://youtu.be/k_ZnKtpskrE" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbubcm2", "cbudwxp", "cbuf3e4", "cbug13g" ], "score": [ 108, 10, 6, 30 ], "text": [ "[Jerk](_URL_0_) is actually a technical term, and part of the answer.\n\nI'm sure you're familiar with that feeling of being pushed forward when you're just braking. That's a result of inertia but it feels as if there was some force pushing you forward a bit, and we can even think of it that way. The same happens to the car, but the car has suspension on each tire. The front suspension springs contract a bit as a result. While you're braking, there's this fictitious force pushing the front suspension down but the springs are also pushing up, and they stay contracted at some length where these two forces balance exactly.\n\nThe actual force of friction doing the braking remains pretty much constant all the way, which means that the fictitious force pushing down the suspension also remains constant and the amount of contraction in springs also remains constant. Then you come to a complete stop and suddenly the force of friction is gone, and with it the fictitious force pushing down on the front suspension. The springs however are still contracted but now there is no force keeping them that way, so they must extend to their natural length. This makes the chassis of the car bounce back a bit. Same as with normal braking it felt like there was some force pushing you forward, with the chassis bouncing back, you again feel as if something's pushing you forward although there actually is no such force, it's just the inertia.\n\nIf you slowly release the brakes just as the car is coming to a halt, then the force of friction gradually goes down which means that the springs gradually extend and there is no bounce (or at least not as big) when you finally stop.\n\nJerk is to acceleration what acceleration is to speed, it's the rate of change of acceleration. With slowly releasing the brakes, the jerk right at the end is small. With constant braking that results in the springs and chassis bouncing, you have a very high jerk right at the end when acceleration goes from some value to zero in an instant.", "So far, none of the replies seem to have addressed what I think is the actual dominant effect here, namely the difference between kinetic and static friction. For example, consider a heavy cardboard box on the relatively smooth concrete floor of a warehouse. Try-- gently-- to push it across the floor. It doesn't move. Push a little harder. It still doesn't move.\n\nPush harder still... and eventually the box starts to slide. But notice that you typically need to immediately *let up* a bit, pushing with *less* force to maintain a \"comfortable\" speed-- that is, to not accelerate.\n\nWhy does this happen? Because the force required to initially \"unstick\" the box from the floor is the weight of the box multiplied by the coefficient of *static* friction between the box and the floor. Once the box starts moving, the frictional force becomes the weight of the box multiplied by the coefficient of *kinetic* friction, which is generally smaller. So the force needed to start the motion is greater than the force needed to maintain a constant velocity.\n\nThe situation is similar in your car, where the relevant friction is between the wheels and the brakes. When you apply the brakes while the car is moving, kinetic friction slows the car down... but once the car slows down enough, there is an imperfect and abrupt transition between the (lesser) kinetic friction of motion and the (greater) static friction of the brakes \"sticking\" to the wheels.\n\nBy releasing the brakes at the last moments, you effectively leave the job of finally slowing to a stop to the (mostly static) friction between the tires and the road.\n", "\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI think it's the simple change of friction regimes in reverse. The car jerks at the moment it becomes stationary, because at that moment the force of friction and respectively the magnitude of acceleration (or rather, deceleration) is the greatest.", "Many of the deleted comments here were incorrect or based on a very superficial understanding of classical mechanics. Other deleted comments were irrelevant personal anecdotes. If you are not an expert in this particular topic, **do not even attempt to offer an explanation**. We do not allow layman speculation, anecdotes, or off-topic discussion on AskScience." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_\\(physics\\)" ], [], [ "http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/wp-content/blogs.dir/342/files/2012/04/i-93de04d1710e8321f0b82ae6990e24e2-friction_graph_.jpg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3la3yb" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "They tell your PC to open up an application, then send that application some data.\n\nOther uses include: Starting a skype call to a number, Opening up mumble and connecting it to a server, opening up steam to download a game, and more.\n\nThey are very useful, and need more use!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1rrjrj", "d1tnld5" ], "score": [ 8, 2 ], "text": [ "Yes, see [wikipedia](_URL_1_) for a list of examples, such as [this one](_URL_0_) which can survive and reproduce above boiling temperature. ", "bacteria that can (or require) extreme conditions to survive are called extremophiles. Specifically, ones that live at high temperatures are called thermophiles. Thermophiles typically live at 50-70 C, so not quite boiling, but there are hyperthermophiles that live at over 80 C. There are probably some of those that can live at over 100 C, but I don't know of any specific examples. I do know that the coloration of hot springs, like at yellowstone, is caused by thermophiles, so that may be a good source for more information. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_121", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6rmbhf" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "They often did, but marble is cheaper than bronze, so *most* replicas were marble. The Roman use of Greek statues was very often a change in context from public to private--many of the most famous statues were originally set up in either official or religious spaces, while the Romans would often place these in private contexts. So a wealthy Roman would have a copy of a famous temple statue commissioned for his garden--or, increasingly likely, would simply buy a premade statue. Marble is a much cheaper material than bronze, so these would generally be marble.\n\nAnother factor deals with material survival. Almost every classical bronze statue you see was recovered from a shipwreck, because bronze statues could be melted down and recast, either into other works of art (Bernini's altar in St. Peter's is a rather famous example of this) or, more commonly, cannons. Therefore, almost all of the classical bronze that survives is that which was taken out of circulation, so to speak." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "caflkt1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Fractional Reserve banking is not started from scratch in any of the economies. They simply plug it in to the system. So there is some extent of money already present in the system for the Fractional reserve banking to work.\n\n > where is the money used to pay interest over and above the principal coming from? \n\nThe system will collapse if everyone will pay off debt. There will be no money left. That is why central banks will print crazy amount of money to keep the cash flow going." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e2uczh7", "e2udtun" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because the air temperature is lower than you body temperature when it blows past your skin it's still taking heat away from the body.\nCausing the air to feel cool.", "As you exist in a location, your body warms the air around you, and basically makes a pocket of warmth. This pocket is close to your body temperature.\n\nWhile your core does need to be at ~98.6°, your exterior should be cooler, to allow the heat to leave through your skin.\n\n\"fast air\" or wind helps to move the pocket of heat you've generated away from your body. As long as the air temperature is cooler than the pocket of warmth you've made, you will feel the difference.\n\nIf the wind is **warmer**, however you would need to be sweaty, or otherwise moist, to feel the difference. As the sweat evaporates, it cools us. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1quwv1", "d1rhc07" ], "score": [ 53, 3 ], "text": [ "Dielectric materials are full of electric charges (positive nuclei and negative electrons). The charges aren't free to move around, but they do get tugged around a bit by electric fields: the electrons and nuclei are pulled in opposite directions in an electric field, and so a tiny electric dipole is formed. This is called polarization.\n\nWhen light---consisting of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, but the electric part is more important here---hits a polarizable material, it creates tiny oscillating electric dipoles. Oscillating electric dipoles produce light of their own at the same frequency. However, the produced light is not exactly in phase with the incoming light. The remarkable thing---and it is quite remarkable that it works out this way---is that the combination of the incoming and all of the produced light is exactly the same as a single light wave with a slower velocity (and potentially a different direction, in the case of refraction). This is not an obvious fact and requires some study of Maxwell's equations to fully appreciate.\n\nThere is a common mis-explanation that the slowing is due to some sort of time delay between absorption and re-emission of photons. It's not *entirely* wrong but it does over-simply. The slowing of light is due to the collective effects of many atoms in the material, and there's no true absorption happening. Plus, you can get rather bizarre effects in special materials, including *speeding up* of light (in a peculiar way that doesn't violate special relativity---only the peaks of the wave move faster than c, not any energy or information). These things are harder to see within the absorption-emission picture but are quite compatible with the collective-dipole-wiggles picture.", "the [FAQ](_URL_0_) has a lengthy article about how light propagates in matter." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/physics/light_through_material" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbsboo3", "cbsbvhr", "cbsecgc", "cbsfoly", "cbsi10p", "cbsi5qv" ], "score": [ 33, 16, 10, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It does and it doesnt, in THEORY it does, as you explained, eventually your numbers come up and you will always be up your initial stake. you reset and start again. \n\nThe problem comes in that casinos predict people doing this, they have max bets, so say if the max bet is £40 (for ease), you start with £10, you lose, up it to £20, bet the £20 you lose and go to £40 and lose, then you are actually down £70 and you cant go up any further. So in theory it works, but in practice it doesnt. I hope this helps. \n", "Two reasons:\n\n1) On roulette, you don't actually win 50% of the time. There are 38 numbers on a roulette wheel: 1-36, and then 0 and 00, which are both green (neither red nor black). The chance of winning a red or black bet is 18/38 (~47%). \n\nBut, you did say *\"In a game of 50/50 chance or near 50/50,\"*, so the second reason is important.\n\n2) How much money do you have? Is it more than the casino has? If not, eventually, you will get a run of bad luck, and get to a point where you can't afford to place a new bet at double the value of your last bet. For example, if you have $1000 to gamble with:\n\n10 losses = you have to bet $512, which you don't have, because you just lost (1 + 2 + 4 ... + 128 + 256) $511 of your original $1000. \n\nEach time you start a sequence of bets using this strategy, there is a 1 in ~1758 chance you hit a sequence that starts with 10 losses. No matter how much money you start with (unless it's more than the casino has), in the long run, you **will** have a run of bad luck that leaves you penniless.", "Works fine if you have an infinite budget and no limit. There's an argument much of the financial system is Martingale in drag.\n\nThose terms don't apply to you, though.", "It works just the same as any betting strategy in a game where you bet before knowing any information, like roulette, blackjack (assuming you always make the right play), etc.\n\n\nIt sounds nice, but it's no different than just betting random numbers. For example:\n\n\n1) Bet 1, lose (-1 overall)\n\n2) Bet 2, lose (-3)\n\n3) Bet 4, win (+1)\n\n\nThat's with the strategy. Here is another example without the strategy:\n\n\n1) Bet 2, lose (-2)\n\n2) Bet 4, win (+2)\n\n3) Bet 1, lose (+1)\n\n\nThe actual reason you are up 1 is that you happened, by chance, to win when you bet a larger amount. It wasn't caused by your betting patterns. And the only thing that really matters (long run) is you played 7 chips. In the long run, you will average the same result whether you bet 7 chips on one hand, 1 chip each on 7 hands, any combination. At the end of the day, you will probably have lost money.\n\nHowever, the reverse of this strategy (bet bigger when you win, that way you are playing with \"house money\") is pretty popular and is a good way to stick to your spending limit for the night.", "No matter what you do with respect to strategy, you can't beat math! When you use this strategy, you are simply **changing the distribution of win frequency and winnings amount**. When you win with this strategy, very often you put in a lot of your own cash for a small payout (several losses before a win). Think of using the strategy as a way to shift the percentages of the game in this manner...\n\n Normal Random betting ~50% chance to win equal payout (100% of bet)\n Martigale strategy ~95% chance to win small amounts (~5% of bet)\n\nSince the strategy requires you to DOUBLE your bet for each loss, and you don't have infinite money, every once in a while you will lose everything. **Don't get caught in the notion that \"10 blacks in a row is impossible!\".** The chance for that is about 0.01%, and it **will** happen. And when it happens, if don't have 1000x of your original bet on hand, you will lose everything all at once. Even if you had infinite money, table betting limits would break your system. Also, roulette is really a 48% chance to win I believe, so the longer you play, the more money you have to give them. It's a mathematical fact.\n \n**TLDR; Think of it as a SHIFT in probability, not a way to cheat the system.**", "Because if you keep applying the betting system eventually youll lose all of your money. Lets say you have 5,000 and are at the casino. You decide youll bet 50$ per game, and double if you lose. And we'll even give you 50 50 odds cause, fuck it.\n\n50 > 100 > 200 > 400 > 800 > 1600 > you dont have enough to double,1850, \n\nLosing 7 times in a row is pretty common, and you just lost 5 grand over a 50 dollar bet. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e9y9b59" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Glucose is our staple energy source. If the body needs energy, glucose is broken down producing ATP and releasing CO2 and H20. If the body does not need energy, the glucose is built in to chains for easy storage in liver. These chain molecules are called glycogen. They are easily accessed and broken down to glucose whenever blood sugar levels decrease to provide the body with energy,\n\nDuring starvation, when there is no energy provided by food, the body has to break down it's 3 main energy stores - liver glycogen, body fat and muscle. Your body begins by breaking down the liver glycogen. Next is body fat and and if desperate - muscles. In terms of weight and total calorific content this comes to, for an exemplar 70kg male; about 0.2kg liver glycogen = ~800kcal, about 15kg triacylglycarides (TAGs = major component of body fat)= ~135,000kcal and 6kg muscle = ~24,000kcal. \n\nAs you can see, body fat is the major energy store of the body. Fat cells exist partly to be used as an energy store. However, the body will break down glycogen first always as its simpler and more direct. Breaking down body fat (TAGs) for use as energy requires two more complex processes; 1) beta-oxidation of fatty acids to the natural precursor for a specific stage in the same natural metabolic pathway as glucose, and 2) gluconeogenesis, producing glucose from glycerol ( a non-carb source!). \n\nMuscles are the last to be broken down, for obvious reasons - we need them. Muscle breakdown doesn't only affect things like leg and arm muscles, but also things like cardiac and diaphragm muscle, so it is really a last attempt for the body to survive by breaking these down. This would probably be around a couple weeks in to starvation and death would soon follow." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4kbx21" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You seem to have a bunch of different questions here. For the questions in the last paragraph you might consider /r/HistoryWhatIf ." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ct7bia7", "ct7bivu", "ct7jcj1" ], "score": [ 7, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Dark skin is caused by melanin. When the sun hits your skin it gets absorbed by melanin and not by your skin cells. This is a good thing because if your skin cells absorb the sun it can cause damage that can possibly lead to skin cancer.", "Darker skin has high concentrations of melanin which can help to protect against UV light and greatly decreases the chances of getting skin cancer. That's why people in places like Africa where they are constantly exposed to intense sunlight have darker skin.", "\"They\" didn't develop darker skin as humanity migrated from Africa into Europe, the protection that darker skin gave from the the sun became obsolete (of a fashion) over thousands of years this became the norm, especially in northern Europe" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "calvvr9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "A photon is a little packet of energy in the form of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. They fly around at the speed of light. When certain photons hit our eyes, they tell our brain that we're seeing something.\n\nThe energy of a photon depends on its frequency (or its wavelength). The lowest energy photons are radio waves, then microwaves, then infrared, then red light, then blue light, then ultraviolet, then x-ray, and finally gamma rays. Out of all of those, we con only see the small amount of light between infrared and ultraviolet." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdjqohi", "cdjvbyl", "cdkhlsv" ], "score": [ 17, 10, 2 ], "text": [ "You are forgetting about [tallow](_URL_0_) candles, which have also been around for a long time. They are made from rendered animal fat. Candles would not have been very expensive, though the very poor would not have been able to afford them.", "Well, this is a bit of a non-answer, but I can tell you how much James Gib, Master of Household to Prince Charles Edward Stuart during the 1745 Jacobite Rising paid for candles at various points during the campaign and provide a few points of comparison to put the numbers in context. Remember that accounting is in pounds, shillings and pence (pence = d).\n\n > Novr. 3 at Lauder, Sunday, to 15 pd Candels at 8d--0.10.0 \n\n > Novr. 13 at Brampton, Wednesday 3 pd Candles forgott--0.0.18\n\n > Novr. 23 at Pireth, Friday for 12 pd Candels--0.1.0\n\nto more Candels 6 pd--0.3.0\n\n > Novr. 30 at Manchester, Saturday to 18 pd Candels--0.9.0\n\n > Decr. 28 to 32 pd Candels--0.16.0\n\n > Janr. 6 at Bannockburn, Monday to 2 Stone Candles--0.14.8\n\n > Janr. 22 Wednesday at Bannockburn to a Stone of comon Candles--0.8.0\n\n > Janr. 23 to 2 Ston Candles--0.16.8\n\n > March 5 Wednesday at Inverness to candles since in town [three days]--2.0.0\n\n > March 11 Tuesday, Inverness to Candles--1.5.0\n\n > March 25 Tuesday, at Inverness pd for Candles since in Inverness--5.1.0\n\n > April 10 Thursday, at Inverness to Candles since y^e 1st of April--1.16.0\n\n > April 12 Saturday, at Inverness to Candles--1.0.0\n\nCompare the entry for Novr. 18\n\n > to a Cheare woman [maid] i: e: washing y^e Kitchen--0.0.9\n\nand on the 21st\n\n > pd to a chear woman--0.1.6\n\nHowever, on Novr. 26\n\n > pd to hugh y^e Cooke--1.5.0 [this can be presumed one day's wage, as it was their first day in Preston]\n\nOn Novr. 28, a woman is paid 10.10.0 for a night's use of her house in the landlord's absence. This appears to be rather rich, as another woman later receives 2.2.0 for the use of her house (Dec. 17)\n\nIn March and April, several servant's wages are noted: Lord Lovet's Servant at 0.2.0, Lady Mcentoch's servant at 0.2.0, Lady Seforth's servant at 0.3.0, and Ladys kilracs Servant [and Mrs Donin's Do] at 0.2.0.\n\nUnfortunately, it's somewhat unclear in many of these cases if it represents a daily wage or the wage for a longer period, but using the numbers we do know, candles were not priced out of range for even a charwoman, though this does not attempt to work out the rest of the household budget of the time.", "Wax and whale oil were actually quite expensive for consistent use. Even the cheaper alternatives of tallow candles, oil lamps, or rush lights were still occasionally used by the upper classes in order to keep down the expense of candle lighting, though obviously candles were preferred because they didn't smell as bad. It was considered an aspect of Louis XIV's wealth that used candles were never relit. \n\nWhich is why in almost all cases with the general majority of the population (at least in Europe), hearth fire was the primary source of lighting in a home. \n\nFrom At Day's Close, a history of night in time past:\n\n*\"Such illuminants (like candles and whale oil lamps) were costly. Prices fluctuated over time, but never did wax or spermaceti candles become widely accessible. To light and heat the palatial home of the Marquis de la Borde, a wealthy Parisian financier, Horace Walpole in 1765 estimated an annual expense of more than 28,000 livres.\"*" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dtawbw6" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Different elements, different methods of formation.\n\nSome of the heavier atoms [like iron] are made in every star, but a few of the lighter ones are only formed in cosmic ray collisions [ lithium, beryllium, and boron ].\n\n\n\nIf you are interested in this, track down this book: [\"The Magic Furnace\" by Marcus Chown](_URL_0_)\n\nIt explains where all the various atoms came from, and how we figured it out. It is very clearly written. I got mine used through Amazon for just a couple of quid." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.google.ca/search?q=the+magic+furnace+by+marcus+chown&oq=The+Magic+Furnace%22+by+Marcus+Chown&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.1641j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dfjxc42" ], "score": [ 36 ], "text": [ "There are plenty of claims, but there is no way for modern historians to confirm any of them. The Anicii only appear in 298, when Anicius Faustus became the consul and I don't think there's any indication that they publicised their Republican heritage - the late antique Anicii originally came from North Africa, whereas the Republican Anicii came from central Italy. Of course, the imperial Anicii could still be descended from the earlier family, but we cannot evaluate this hypothesis with the available evidence. The Anicii's claim to antiquity may have come from their marriage into the Acilii Glabriones, who did have what appears to be a long and distinguished ancestry. But even then this is only based on the fact that a certain Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus (consul in 438) was the son of Acilius Glabrio Sibidius, which has been interpreted by Alan Cameron as evidence that Sibidius had married a female member of the Anicii and added 'Anicius' to his son's name to 'advertise their union'. The Acilii Glabriones claimed descent from Manius Acilius Glabrio, the consul in 191 BC, and their claim was seemingly well-known, as the third-century historian Herodian discussed another member of the family, Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 186)\n\n > This Glabrionus was the most nobly born of all the Roman aristocrats, for he traced his ancestry to Aeneas, son of Venus and Anchises, and he had served two terms as consul.\n\nCameron however points out the obvious problem, since we know of no-one from this family between yet another Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 256) and Sibidius in the late fourth/early fifth century (though there is an unknown Acilius Glabrio from an inscription in the early fourth century). For a family to pass their name through their male line for five centuries is extraordinarily unlikely (see for instance the often-noted longevity of the House of Capet in France - which is only frequently pointed out because it was so exceptional), so it would be safe to presume that descent from a female line and/or forged ancestries were involved somewhere along the way.\n\nThere were of course many other claims. Lucius Aradius Valerius Proculus Populonius, prefect of Rome in 337/8, was for example praised by a friend to be descended from the Poplicolae family active during the Republic, whilst the fourth-century inscription of Creperius Amantius and Caeionia Marina declared their descent from Munatius Plancus Paulinus, consul in 13 AD. The Decii and Corvinii, both families active at the same time as the Anicii, similarly had their Republican ancestry praised by Cassiodorus and Ennodius, two authors writing in Ostrogothic Italy in the sixth century (interestingly, the Anicii were not praised in relation to their Republican ancestors here). Personally, the most fascinating theory is the idea that Emperor Anastasius (491-518) was a descendant of Pompey the Great, as the Republican general was mentioned a few times in panegyrics dedicated to the emperor and the name 'Pompeius' is attested within the emperor's extended family - which is an indication that the family held the name to be somewhat important to pass on through the generations.\n\nUnderstandably, despite all these claims, we have to be cautious, since we are reading what these families and their allies want us to read, not factual reports of their descent. The Romans loved everything from the past and evidently fictional ancestries were omnipresent. St Jerome for instance celebrated his patron Paula's descent from Agamemnon from the Trojan War, whilst Ruus Volusianus was allegedly descended from the Volusus featured in the *Aeneid*. Most famously, Constantine the Great (306-337) manufactured an entirely fictitious familial connection with the relatively recent emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270). There is no reason for us to think that other Roman aristocrats were not capable of writing similar fabrications. Many people no doubt believed that they had many illustrious ancestors, and in reality they probably did, as they no doubt were all descended in some way from Roman families dating back to the Republic, but we have to be very cautious about their claims that they were descended from specific individuals, since the evidence available is not enough for us to test any of them.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e15auqc", "e15bb8r" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Until the 20th Century it was not common for people to wash their hands so often. But we have decided that we really don't like getting sick as much as older generations, or as cats do.", "Two main reasons:\n\n1. Poop isn't really a problem until it enters the body. But, cats don't do as much with their paws as we do with our hands - especially when it comes to eating and touching our faces, where bacteria have a better chance of getting in. Paws are more like feet than hands. How often do you wash your feet when you walk around barefoot? \n2. Your own poop isn't that dangerous to you. Other people's/animals' poop is way more dangerous because it contains bacteria you maybe haven't been exposed to before. Same goes for cats, but they aren't as social as we are and don't have as much risk of encountering strange poop. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dh0ls77" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Sometimes it is a defense mechanism. I've seen angry people use a general anger-filled disposition to hide insecurities and in doing so they become highly irrational. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cej4fna", "cej67y6", "cejbsoe", "cejqms0" ], "score": [ 45, 21, 10, 3 ], "text": [ "You don't feel temperature directly, you feel the rate at which heat leaves your body. So it really depends on the material's heat conductivity and how it's arranged as a heat sink.\n\nGenerally, the rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to temperature, all else equal, and since you can't reach absolute zero, there is no maximum rate of heat transfer. Thus, there is no limit to how cold things 'feel' in this sense, but you'd probably damage your nerves and skin before you got anywhere near that cold, so this isn't really a meaningful statement. At some point you'll just destroy your sense of touch, and it will feel very painful and quickly cause numbness, not a sense of coldness.", "This should probably be tagged medicine in some way, rather than earth-sci.", "So since you are asking how things 'feel' as it gets colder, I would like to point out that anyone who works outdoors in frigid conditions knows that air temperature is likely the least important factor in what you wear to stay warm outdoors.\n\nMost important is wind, because even slight breezes enormously increase heat loss. Just as important is the presence or absence of direct sunlight. On a windless sunny day, you can comfortably work in a cotton hoody at minus 20. Walk behind a wall and you instantly start to freeze to death. Even the humidity has a huge effect on perceived warmth.", "based on my own military training and experience in that area and as an inhabitant of the polar circle.\n\nwith clothes on you definitely feel different colds. \n\nfirst is something like close to 0 C. you know this from the fact that everything you touch melts. \nyou can survive this forever with food and water.\n\n\nsecond is the stage when nature is dealing with your body temperature, snow does not melt when you touch it with gloves. you can sit in the snow, lay in it, for a while and it does not melt. this is the pleasant zone. it is actually far better than the slightly above 0 C because the moisture in the air is significantly lowered. \nyou can touch metal with your bare hand.\nyou can survive this forever with food and water.\n\n\nthird comes the stage when you start feeling the cold on your naked body parts and lungs. it starts to hurt to breath heavily. you avoid breathing through the nose. taking of your gloves is not desired. but you still take your gloves off to light a match or so.\ntouching metal with your bare hand might be dangerous.\nyour calorie need is higher, you can survive without fire and shelter, if you get wet you risk dying.\n\n\nfourth comes the stage when it gets really cold. everything you do is dominated by the coldness. standing still and just breathing deep is tough. you will cover your face. some arrangement to breath through might be desirable.\ntaking off your gloves is not recommended. taking a piss is a massive obstacle and requires thought.\ntouching metal is to be avoided with your bare hand. you will loose a limb.\nif you do not have shelter and food you will die within hours. fire is priority number one. heating water and drinking it warm helps the body to deal with the cold.\n\nstage 5 is when your lungs are taking permanent damage from the cold. this you will notice and it will start occuring after - 40 C. naturally if you live and work outdoors in the cold your lungs are used to the cold better. then it will be somewhat colder but there is a cut off point.\n\n\nwithout wind, for me stage 3 comes around -15 to - 25 C. \n\nfor me it is really hard to notice that it is colder after you are used to the coldness at stage 3 and 4. \nhowever stage 5 is a massive warning sign to seek shelter.\n\nso yes temperature changes in the very cold region are hard to detect untill it becomes really really cold.\n\n\nwhen you are naked this is all different again. \nsimply because you are not built to deal with the temperatures without shelter and clothes. \nat 0 C you can stand and deal for a while but the colder it gets the quicker you simply can not deal with the cold.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e6ivyxk", "e6iw05l", "e6iw363", "e6iwboz", "e6iztha" ], "score": [ 7, 4, 62, 25, 10 ], "text": [ "The quick answer is that we're polluting the seas. And the land. And the air.\n\nBut yeah, it gets diluted. Usually to the point of not being harmful, at least not in the short run.", "I didn't mean to sound snide. Treatment plants handle the chemicals and human waste that are flushed and poured down drains . A big problem are the flushable wipes and feminine products that treatment plants are not well equipped to handle.", "Most of the harmful stuff is removed at a [wastewater treatment](_URL_0_) plant. Things like bleach and soap are fairly reactive, so they get filtered out pretty easily. Some other things (like motor oil or plastics) are more resilient, so they survive through treatment, though. Don't pour motor oil down the drain.\n\nEdit: Cunningham's Law strikes again.", "Every major city and factory has a Wastewater treatment plant they collect the wasted water from you home through pipes. \nAfter they collect the wasted water, there start complex filtration process that clear the water to specific conditions, that are regulated by the government. This water is not good for drinking but is ok for the plants, animals and most important for microorganisms. After natural circles of water in the nature it's comes to us like drinkable water again. ", "Microbeads, made of plastic, are apparently difficult to filter out and don’t break down. They are used in facial soaps and scrubs.\n\nAlso, apparently some pharmaceuticals don’t break down, and can cause problems.\n\nBleach, soap, washing powder all break down quickly." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d2s0yg3" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Yes, its pretty well accepted that the yellow and white cones seen in Egyptian art from the New Kingdom are cones of fat that were meant to perfume the person as they melted. However, they were only worn in scenes where people were meant to be enjoying themselves, like a feast or festival. They were also worn by both men and women in art. Of course, the frequency with which they would have been worn in real life and whether artistic depictions are completely accurate is up for debate, but the basic concept of perfumed cones is sound, as strange as it may seem to us." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2mhxhl", "c2mnue4", "c2mqkep", "c2mhxhl", "c2mnue4", "c2mqkep" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "talk presented by hhmi:\n[youtube video](_URL_0_)", "I don't think it's entirely true that the Y chromosome is shrinking. Certainly it has 'shrunk', but I wouldn't say that's a process that necessarily continues in humans. The lecture that rabrav linked to is quite a good explanation, but it does sort of imply a bit of an anthropocentric view of evolution - you've got this Y chromosome that started out as an X chromosome, and all the stuff it didn't need 'rotted' away until you get to this rather small Y chromosome in humans. I think the whole 'Y chromosome is shrinking' bit is more about telling an engaging story and getting a few laughs out of the audience and not so much a serious suggestion.\n\nI went to a lecture given by an academic a few years ago about her lab's work on the platypus sex determination system ([paper](_URL_0_)). She covered some of the same stuff, but obviously the focus was on the platypus, not humans. Platypodes (the technically correct plural that nobody actually uses) actually have 5 X chromosomes and 5 Y chromosomes, so males are X1Y1X2Y2... etc. Platypus 'X1' has homology to the mammalian X, and 'X5' has homology to the bird Z chromosome (birds have a ZW sex system - in a sense the opposite of XY in that males are ZZ and females are ZW). The bird Z chromosome has actually become one of the autosomes in mammals (chromosome 9 in humans), so the platypus has a system that is sort of half-way between mammals and birds. But it's a system that works pretty well for platypodes, so it persists, and that's the point. Males probably aren't going to go extinct because the Y chromosome in humans used to be an X chromosome and shed a bunch of genes it wasn't really using to begin with over a few hundred million years. ", "In what sense 'shrinking'? Smaller than the ancestral chromosome from which it's derived? Yes, because it's derived from an X chromosome. Actively getting smaller by losing euchromatin (parts containing active genes)? Unlikely, since the genes on the Y (although there aren't very many) are needed for normal development. Losing heterochromatin (inactive DNA)? Well, sometimes it may lose a bit, because the end of the Y long arm is a highly variable region. When you look at Y chromosomes down a microscope you can see (between individuals) huge size variations.\n\nSo, in terms of genetic content - it has shrunk, and may lose more over time, but very slowly. In terms of total size, it varies between people, so while it's not shrinking, some people will have smaller Y chromosomes than others.", "talk presented by hhmi:\n[youtube video](_URL_0_)", "I don't think it's entirely true that the Y chromosome is shrinking. Certainly it has 'shrunk', but I wouldn't say that's a process that necessarily continues in humans. The lecture that rabrav linked to is quite a good explanation, but it does sort of imply a bit of an anthropocentric view of evolution - you've got this Y chromosome that started out as an X chromosome, and all the stuff it didn't need 'rotted' away until you get to this rather small Y chromosome in humans. I think the whole 'Y chromosome is shrinking' bit is more about telling an engaging story and getting a few laughs out of the audience and not so much a serious suggestion.\n\nI went to a lecture given by an academic a few years ago about her lab's work on the platypus sex determination system ([paper](_URL_0_)). She covered some of the same stuff, but obviously the focus was on the platypus, not humans. Platypodes (the technically correct plural that nobody actually uses) actually have 5 X chromosomes and 5 Y chromosomes, so males are X1Y1X2Y2... etc. Platypus 'X1' has homology to the mammalian X, and 'X5' has homology to the bird Z chromosome (birds have a ZW sex system - in a sense the opposite of XY in that males are ZZ and females are ZW). The bird Z chromosome has actually become one of the autosomes in mammals (chromosome 9 in humans), so the platypus has a system that is sort of half-way between mammals and birds. But it's a system that works pretty well for platypodes, so it persists, and that's the point. Males probably aren't going to go extinct because the Y chromosome in humans used to be an X chromosome and shed a bunch of genes it wasn't really using to begin with over a few hundred million years. ", "In what sense 'shrinking'? Smaller than the ancestral chromosome from which it's derived? Yes, because it's derived from an X chromosome. Actively getting smaller by losing euchromatin (parts containing active genes)? Unlikely, since the genes on the Y (although there aren't very many) are needed for normal development. Losing heterochromatin (inactive DNA)? Well, sometimes it may lose a bit, because the end of the Y long arm is a highly variable region. When you look at Y chromosomes down a microscope you can see (between individuals) huge size variations.\n\nSo, in terms of genetic content - it has shrunk, and may lose more over time, but very slowly. In terms of total size, it varies between people, so while it's not shrinking, some people will have smaller Y chromosomes than others." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9rLnoyV0A" ], [ "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7019/full/nature03021.html" ], [], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9rLnoyV0A" ], [ "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7019/full/nature03021.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dovhv4a", "doxtvfw" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The Big Bang created everything. As it cooled down atoms formed. Most were hydrogen. Some helium and lithium fused as well. \n\nEverything else is understanding supernovae and how stars die.. Most of those percentages are calculated guesses, not exact values though. Different types of supernovae have different end results. For example type 1a supernovae is a white dwarf siphoning energy from a companion star until it explodes, releasing all of the elements it created throughout its lifetime. Know that all smaller stars fuse only up to carbon, oxygen and maybe a bit higher. Larger stars only fuse up to iron, maybe a bit higher. This is because anything beyond iron actually requires rnergy to fuse instead of making it. So all elements beyond iron were created in massive star supernovae or stars colliding. ", "Cosmic background radiation is proof of the big bang which formed Hydrogen.\n\nThe hydrogen clumped together due to Newtons universal gravitation law in that mass attracts mass.\n\nThe hydrogen heated up and started to make nuclear reactions.\n\nBy observing stars from earth we can see that they evolve , and have different sizes and colors. When we put the light from the stars through a prism or diffraction grating we see a spectra. When we zoom in to the spectra we see little black lines called fraunhofer lines this shows us the 'fingerprint of the elements' that the star contains. There are also emmission lines.\n\nEverything is fine until we get to iron which is the most stable element. It was then found via the awesome mathematics of electrodynamics that that the heavier elements like gold could not be made by stars going nova or supernova.\n\nIt was postulated that the heavy elements past iron were made via neutron stars colliding. We then last month had direct proof of this type of collision from LIGO a month ago." ] }

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[ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg/2000px-Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg.png" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dtf3jfx", "dtf8bwn", "dtfsd9p", "dtfwys6" ], "score": [ 38, 8, 5, 14 ], "text": [ "Anton LaVey basically made up a faith based on his Ideals. Taking the satan figure as a symbol of defiance from western religions.\n\nLavey did not believe in the existence of any god or gods, as such to him humans are animals that got smart, and should act in that way.\n\nHowever he put into place 2 separate codes of conduct. rules for acting. As well as ritual magics. so it's a bit of a mess before he set up to split his own church into regional competing sub churches.\n\nThere is a shit ton on this area", "Come to r/Satanism we are a great community. As long as you ask serious question you'll get great explanations.", "There are already good answers to this question but I thought I would add that LaVey satanism is more of a philosophy as they do not believe in an actual Satan and could be considered atheistic. There are many other types of satanism including theistic and fascist sects.", "I don't think your question is suitable for ELI5 because the book that defines LaVeyan Satanism is a bit too nuanced for a five year old. \n\nI read The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey a couple of times and I'd like to try my best to summarize what I read because frankly some of the comments here do not appear to line up with the reality in any capacity. I welcome challenges to my assertions. \n\n- It is the only modern religion that was LGBT friendly from the very beginning. This is because LaVey defined it so that sexual enjoyment was a-ok as long as it was with consent and without harming other people or children. \n\n- You know God? In Satanism, God is You. Personal responsibility is both the shield and sword of your life. If you fail yourself, you fail your god. The major sin in Satanism (one of many, I won't list them all) is failing to preserve your own self. As an extension of that Satanism is notoriously anti-drug. After all, how can you be expected to be powerful and aware if your mind is clouded by illusions? \n\n- LaVey considered theistic offshoots of Satanism illegitimate and a cancer because their followers would essentially be sheep for an organized religion. Should I remember right this isn't actually stated in TSB but in some of his other writings. However, TSB does give some obvious clues as to why he would go on to say that. Satanism emphasizes being skeptical, slow to wisdom and receptive of new ideas. He also emphasizes that ideas often shift with the ages and encourages the reader not to get stuck in the mud of dogma.\n\n- Satanism, unlike the mainstream religions, does not recruit teenagers or children in any capacity except for LaVey's son (who asked to be included). This is to prevent bad press and to prevent the rampant child sexual abuse often seen in, say, the Abrahamic faiths. I don't even think the CoS holds a mass, though they might plan events with their own members. \n\n- Pleasure, unlike in the Abrahamic religions, is fine. The \"dogma\" around it in Satanism is to indulge but not obsess. \n\n- Unlike what that chaos meme guy said, Ritual Magics aren't about getting laid. They're about manifesting the same kind of wonder and mystery that captivated humanity's heart and imagination in previous faiths. Outside of that, they can serve as purging psychodrama as is the case with the Black Mass (a parody of Roman Catholic mass).\n\n- To my knowledge there's only one real symbol of the Church of Satan and that's the CoS' Symbol of Baphomet. It isn't required to be worn, it is just a representation of Satanism's powerful and iconoclastic nature. \n\n- Finally, Satanism is big on retaliating against one's enemies. Sometimes it's something simple like a curse (again, a form of psychodrama). Other times it's taken to be a literal thing like crushing a rival business or ruining a rival. Preservation of self and whatnot. \n\nThis is not in any way a comprenhensive, all-encompassing overview of LaVeyan Satanism. If you want to know more, don't settle for what other people have to say about it. LaVey was an intelligent, entertaining writer and the book is an interesting read. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9ysxzd" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "No, sometimes a file is overwritten. So as long as the original file isn't saved as a backup, there's a chance that a 60gb game with a 12gb update will likely stay 60gb.\n\nIf a more efficient code is produced, you can get lower file sizes. Sometimes programs launch with really clunky code that works and is launched to meet a deadline while future versions have better streamlined code.\n\nHowever it's far far more likely for a product to have an increased filesize simply because you're adding to the program rather than removing.\n\nThe most common thing you'll see where a software update reduces filesize is if you install a game with HD textures, but don't have a very good video card, then go into your settings and tell it to use regular textures instead of HD textures. You'll get 2 or 3gb update and you'll go from 50gb down to 32gb." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ct2i6fu" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Saw a comment before that said some woman is trying to sue him for $5 million for who knows fucking what. They said its his business side and not his personal side. So he is still super rich, at least from what I know so far" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwevmva" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "Indeed, medievals liked their timber as square and smooth as we do. \n\nI love [this manuscript illustration](_URL_12_), which comes from the [Bedford Hours](_URL_8_), a prayer book from ~1423 CE. It is supposed to depict the building of Noah's Ark, but it looks suspiciously like a timber-framed house. The artist clearly saw house construction and fudged it to be the Ark. \n\nAnd for our purposes, the tools of house builders and shipwrights are the same: the Bedford Hours shows tools which we would recognize today: saws and adzes for cutting and rough straightening timber. You can see someone at the bottom drilling a hole, and someone drilling a peg-hole in the assembled timber-frame. Scattered on the ground are hammers, wood mallets, chisels, adzes and another type of saw: the frame or bow saw.\n\nWe see these tools again in another picture of a carpenter [here](_URL_11_). But this time he has badly injured himself while truing timber with an adze. This image is part of a set of painting by Antonio Vivarini from 1450; they illustrate the miraculous works of [Saint Peter the Martyr](_URL_3_). The description from the Metropolitan Museum in New York:\n\n > This painting belongs to a series of eight scenes that would have been arranged around an image or statue of Saint Peter Martyr (1205–1252). Here the saint ministers to a youth who had kicked his mother and cut off his leg in remorse. A genial storyteller, Antonio sets the scene in a carpenter’s shop. \n\nThe clever Vivarini has given us a picture of the medieval carpenter's shop: the frame/bow saw again, a long plane, the adze, and various timbers leaning against the workshop walls.\n\n\nReturning to the first picture of the bedford hours: in the bottom left corner is a carpenter working a large plane - the long soled planes are meant to flatten long lengths of wood. The wood he is working on is so large that it rests on the ground, and it's wedged in logs for stability so the planing is straight and true.\n\nNow, look at [this guy](_URL_0_) working in the house itself. Hanging from his belt is a black object - an object which looks suspiciously like a windable chalk line reel for setting long, straight lines, something we still use today (if we can't afford a laser). Or it may very well be a windable cloth measuring tape.\n\nYou'll note that all the images are Christian motifs. Another one which provides us with lots of building techniques is the constructtion of the Tower of Babel. [Thisone](_URL_6_) shows us a 12th century depiction of levels, plumb bobs, and squares.\n\nNow, if the carpenter wanted a polished surface he had other tools for the job. Below is a copy of a [post I did some time ago](_URL_2_):\n\n----------------------\n\n\nThis is one of those weird bits of history that I have researched, going back to when my teenage interest in medieval history dovetailed with a passion for woodworking (see what I did there?).\n\nAnyway, I recollect references to 3 types of 'sanding' of wood before the modern era: a sharkskin called dog shark or dog fish, certain silica-heavy rushes (stiff marsh grass) and leather or cloth impregnated with ground stone, perhaps carried with an oil.\n\nAs I said my 'research' was in libraries over 20 years ago and I remember finding it in a book about medieval building. I remember this because I was seriously stoked at digging something out of the stacks. Sure enough, tonight google found it for me in a reference to a reference. In this medieval terms reference book there is a word 'hundysfishskyn' in [Middle English Dictionary from University of Michigan](_URL_4_), and that points to the book I actually remember looking at: [Building in England down to 1540: a documentary history by Louis Francis Salzman](_URL_1_). Hundysfishskyn is houndfish or dogfish. Unfortunately Google doesn't seem have this book scanned in and available to look through. [But I found another web reference to the text](_URL_9_), take it for whatever it's worth to you:\n\n & gt;L.F. Salzman in Building in England down to 1540: A Documentary History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952) mentions \"sanding\" using rottenstone, scouring rush (aka equisetum, horsetail fern, shave grass, etc.), or dog-fish skin. On the latter, Salzman notes receipts for \"hundysfishskyn for the carpenters\" (Westminster, 1355) and \"j pelle piscis canini pro operibus stall\" (Windsor, 1351).\n\nAs it turns out [Equisetum is known for scouring](_URL_5_).\n\nSo that's a 14th century reference. But wait, there's more!\n\nIn the same obscure web site above, there is a reference to the book [On Divers Arts: The Foremost Medieval\nTreatise on Painting, Glassmaking, and Metalwork by a certain Theophilus of the 11th century](_URL_10_). This book is partially searchable and seems to turn up the reference to the same rush called shave grass for sanding wood; alas, Google does not preview anything but a snippet.\n\nIncidentally, smooth polishing of fine wooden stringed instruments is still done the same today as it was in the baroque period: with rosen powder after shellac coats. \n\nThe above would all be final finishing. After hand planing surface imperfections can be removed with a [cabinet scraper](_URL_7_). If you've used a scraper before, you'll know the burr on the edge will give you a surface finer than sanding as it cuts the grain, not grind it down. Sanding 'fuzzes' the raw grain and so it's preferred for finishing coats that have stiffened the grain enough for the sandpaper to 'cut'. Scrapers are very old technology: basically a thin piece of steel with some flex. Some handplanes in museums carry confused labeling and are actually devices for holding the cabinet scraper: using a cabinet scraper for extended periods will burn your fingers. I have seen examples of cabinet scrapers dating back to the baroque period.\n\n-------------------------" ] }

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[ [ "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ef8tgk3bEB0/VM_0ibIjRrI/AAAAAAAAGT4/MU82tzvZySg/s1600/2015-02-02_225727.jpg", "http://books.google.com/books?hl=fr&id=4MG3AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1w29oq/the_primitive_forms_of_sanding_wood/cey29wb", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_of_Verona", "http://books.google.com/books?id=QaIXR97zpC4C&pg=PA994&dq=hundysfishskyn&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=4triUoPyNOWX1AXJwoDgDQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hundysfishskyn&f=false", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equisetum_hyemale#Uses", "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bPsE6e1ajLs/UfA1cn4FVsI/AAAAAAAADgA/gvGtX1loGW8/s320/babel+no+11+plumb+bob.jpg", "http://ofb.net/~ania/toys/tern14/007web_scraper.jpg", "http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/bedford.html", "http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/polishing-msg.text", "http://books.google.com/books?id=MMiLTJqvYnYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://i.imgur.com/0xnaiDG.jpg", "http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/external/bedford-large.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmgmyqb" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It happened the other way around. Beyond that... let's talk about a few things about how the English Language developed. (This being ELI5, I'm oversimplifying a little bit because the *full* version is more complicated and, not being a specialist in the history of English, I don't even understand all of the details myself. But this covers the case you care about.)\n\nLanguages develop according to rules that apply in a mostly regular manner. One of the rules in the development of Old English to Middle English is that short vowels become long in one-syllable words. (\"Long\" here is literal; it means that it's pronounced for a longer period of time than if it were short. The modern English \"long\" and \"short\" vowels are totally different sounds that last the same amount of time, but they come from the literally long and short vowels of Middle English.) Another is that under certain circumstances the n sound disappears before consonants. Another is that, before n (and this happens before it goes away), long a becomes long o.\n\nThe Old English word for \"one\" is \"an.\" In a lot of situations where it was just being used as an indefinite article, people seem to have treated it like part of the next word, which means it wasn't a one-syllable word and the a didn't become long. Since it wasn't long, it didn't turn into an o, but the n still disappeared before most consonants. By habit, that got generalized to dropping it before all consonants, giving us the pattern we're used to.\n\nBut when you emphasized the fact that you really mean the numeral, that you're using it to talk about the fact that there is specifically one of whatever, it got seen as a standalone word. There's no consonant after it now, so the n never goes away, but it's also a one-syllable word, so the a becomes long (you even see it written that way in late Old English texts), then becomes an o, giving Middle English one (in Middle English a silent e was sometimes used to show that the preceding vowel was long; many silent e's in Modern English weren't silent yet in Middle English, though). The fact that it's pronounced like \"won\" instead of like \"own\" is a little bit of a surprise, though.\n\nScots, by the way, derives from dialects of Middle English that hadn't undergone the change of certain long a's to long o's. That's why in Scots they say \"ane\" instead, which is also a clue that would help us know that the Old English word had an a rather than an o. (In fact we don't even need the hint, since Old English is a written language and we've got plenty of stuff in it to check, but that kind of thing helps affirm the validity of the methods by which we figure this kind of thing out for non-written ancestor languages.)\n\nThere's another word you didn't expect to be related, by the way - the Old English word \"anlic\", a compound of that same \"an\" and \"lic,\" which is related to our word \"like\" but develops into the -ly suffix we use for adverbs, means something is somehow one-ish, which is to say that there's just one of it. In modern English, that becomes \"only\". (I assume the lengthening of the a, and hence it turning into a long o, is influenced by what was going on with \"one\" back when it was still obviously \"one\" with a suffix.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dh4nyja" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Biology PhD student here. In the interest in ELI5ness and not writing a wall of text no one wants to read, I'll write an overview and let you ask if you want to me elaborate more on how any particular part actually works.\n\n**Finding the gene:**\n\nYou sequence the genome of the organism (or part of it), at which point you can use known DNA sequence patterns to predict where the beginning and end of each gene is. As for identifying which gene does what so you know which gene you are interested in, there are loads of ways and a lot of research is basically just this process - I can elaborate on this if you want.\n\n**Moving the gene:**\n\nThere is a technology called the [polymerase chain reaction](_URL_0_) (PCR) that can replicate a single specific gene in a whole mess of DNA a trillion times, so that the entire sample is effectively just that one gene. So you either extract the DNA from the organism with the gene or, more commonly, extract its RNA (essentially its \"genes in use\") and use an enzyme to turn it into DNA, then use PCR on the sample to copy your gene of interest a trillion times. Now you have obtained your gene.\n\nThe next step is to put your gene in a plasmid vector, which is a little circle of DNA that has been specially designed for this purpose (plasmids occur naturally in bacteria, but we have extensively modified them to serve our purposes). You use enzymes called restriction enzymes that cut DNA at specific sequences to cut open the vector and cut off the ends of your gene (in the PCR reaction, you can add restriction enzyme snip sites to the gene copies you make). A useful property of restriction enzymes is that the cuts they make stick back together, so if you cut the vector and cut the ends off your gene in the same test tube and then add an enzyme to heal the cuts, at a certain rate your gene will end up stuck in the vector, since its cuts matched those in the vector. Now you have your gene in a vector. We call this process \"cloning\" a gene, confusing all non-scientists who think of cloning as making identical animals.\n\nNow you want to put the gene into a different organism. If all you want is for the gene to be working inside the new cells, and you don't care about actually editing their genome, you can just put the vector with your gene inside them and you're done.\n\nIf you want to integrate the gene into the genome of another organism, it's more complicated. A disclaimer here is that I've never personally done this, so I am less familiar with it than the earlier techniques. But basically if this is your end goal, you design your vector to have long stretches of DNA on either side of where you put the gene in that match long stretches of DNA in the genome of the organism you are putting the gene in. If you do this, once you put the vector inside the new cells, at a low rate their genome will \"recombine\" with the matching parts of the vector, exchanging their DNA for the vector DNA and moving your gene into them. This recombination is a natural process that occurs with long stretches of matching DNA in all living things.\n\nA final note: you may notice that all the \"putting the gene in the organism\" stuff I described only really works for single cells. If you want to put the gene in the genome of a multicellular organism, you do what I described to a fertilized egg or very early embryo that will grow into the organism. If you want to modify lots of cells in a fully-grown multicellular organism, you usually use a virus. You put the vector inside the virus, and when the virus infects the organism's cells, it delivers the vector. This is pretty hard and most researchers just stick to single cells when moving genes around.\n\n*****\nOh look, it turned out to be a wall of text anyways! In any case, if there is anything you are confused about or any part of the process you want explained in more detail, please ask! I'd be happy to elaborate. This stuff is super important and forms the basis of a lot of modern biological research." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cabvq8q", "cabzbsx" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "While I can't speak to the specific members of the crew that first founded Jamestown, the initial motivations of colonists in the first half of the 17th century were as follows: \n\na) For the rich: A quick profit - either from gold or timber or soap manufacturing or exporting pitch, additionally many were hopeful of the western passage to China that never materialised. \n\nb) For the poor the motivations are harder to discern considering the lack of the records that they were able to leave, but most were persuaded by the hellacious and over-blown propaganda at the time that portrayed Virginia as a paradise (one slogan ran \"In Virginia land free and labour scarce, in England land scarce and labour plenty\"); and considering the state of England's poor at the time it was not suprising that many would leave (although of course they were more or less deceived and the initial colonists died in huge numbers). \n\n\nI think the specific motivations and lives of the specific Jamestown colonists could be hard to discern.\n\n~~~~\n\nSource: Mainly Brogan's 'The Penguin History of the USA'", "The men and boys that went were either second(those who would not inherit land) sons of wealthy families or middle class men who wanted to improve their social standing. As passage included 50 acres of land, the prospects were much better than those in England. Since this was a private venture (the Virginia company) the interview process was pretty lenient so long as you had the money and ability to work. \n\nSource = I was just in Jamestown on vacation and this is what I learned while there." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "drit0x3" ], "score": [ 65 ], "text": [ "In general, no, dust on the mirror doesn't really affect the image produced by a telescope.\n\nMost telescopes are focused at infinity, so a speck of dust sitting on the mirror won't actually be in the image plane. All it does is *very* slightly dim the entire image, since the tiny portion of the mirror covered by dust is no longer reflective, and thus can't add to the overall brightness of the image.\n\nThe only time it really matters (and thus the only time you should consider cleaning your main mirror) is if your mirror gets *really* dusty. In that case the image is significantly dimmed, and all the dust can start producing scattering, which adds an overall hazy quality to the image as photons are now steered from their nice focused path in random directions. In general, this takes about a decade for most ground-based research telescopes to get to this level of dust, and mirrors are usually then sent off for cleaning; in space, where the environment is much cleaner, you'll likely never see this level of dust.\n\nFun fact: Almost fifty years ago, the security guard at McDonald Observatory had a bit of a psychotic break one evening, and shot the telescope's main mirror several times with his gun, point blank. As a very thick piece of glass, the mirror did not shatter, but did end up with a few bullet holes. Just like dust, this really didn't end of affecting the telescope's image much at all, so they just blacked out the edges of the holes (to prevent scattering from the ragged edges of the glass around the holes), and went straight on using it as a research-grade telescope. [The bullet holes are still there to this day](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://i.imgur.com/m0BzMkh.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eg0uip1", "eg11san", "eg2heiw" ], "score": [ 4, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "It looks like there was some kind of handle that selected between \"Voice\" and \"Tone\". The CAD files don't show that detail. Does that mounting seem to do anything inside?", "My father is a radio enthusiast who served as a 1st class radio operator during military service in 60ties' Czechoslovakia. Nowadays he likes to repair 20ties-40ties radios as a hobby.\n\nHe says that he's never seen anything like this in a radio and that he is sure that those objects were NOT a part of a radio. Since there is a robust VOICE/TONE switch, his guess is a siren/megaphone combo.", "I tried looking with:\n\n* Acoustic waveguide\n* Acoustic cavity resonator\n\nAnd got a lot of theoretical papers and the term \"Helmholtz chamber\" seems to be related to those as well.\n\nI tried adding in \"cylinder\", \"cylindrical\", \"double cylinder\" and aluminum, but got nothing.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT:\n\nDoes it look like the voice/tone/receive switch connects to anything internally? \n\n\nI wonder if the tone somehow transmits a pure tone that is used to calibrate some sort of array (or to annoy people). As a tone is a fairly distinctive sound and has excellent signal-to-noise properties, it makes for a good calibration mechanism. That said, it is terrible for transmitting information (except simple Morse or On Off Keying) because it has a low bandwidth (theoretically 0, but practical affects might give it some wander. \n\n\nDoes it look like there is a plug anywhere?" ] }

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[ "https://imgur.com/a/5cM7SrE" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dcbrt3r" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Main reason is asymetric loading of elements and bad programming. \nIn detail: The main goal of a mobile page is to load as fast as possible. \n\nThere are certain methods to achieve this. The two most important (for your question) are: \n1) Load visible stuff first: \nThe first things that will be loaded are things you see when you open the web page. Everything \"below the fold\" (below the point where you need to scroll to see it) will be loaded at a later point. \n2) Load bigger elements later: \nBigger elements, such as images, will be loaded last. So your initial page is loaded fast, and the rest comes at a later point. \nNow to your problem with the layout changes: \nPoor programming causes this. Normally you would place blank placeholders for big elements like images. For example: If you, as a programmer, know, that there is an image that is 500x500 pixel, you will reserve this 500x500 spot with a blank white space. So when the image loads (after the initial loading of the page) you can fill this blank space with the image, without destroying the layout. \nOR you could use two different image qualities. Like one really low quality (and low filesize) one that loads when you open the page (in case the image is in your \"initial load view\") and when this initial load is over, you use your \"normal\" bigger size image to replace the old one. \nReally sorry, for a non native speaker its kinda hard to explain this :( I hope you get my point. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf5z01s" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "It's called 'phantom limb syndrom' and is thought to be related to the the somatosensory system (the neuronal system that senses pain, amongst other things). It's currently thought that this system does not readjust appropriately when a limb is amputated. This results in the continued sensation of movement and pain in the neurones which would originally have connected to the missing limb.\nAnother speculation is that the somatosensory system does readjust, but inappropriately, and so sensation is still felt in the missing limb when other parts of the body are stimulated (eg face > look up Ramachandran's experiment).\nA definitive cause is yet to be confirmed, but the above are current speculations!\n:) (BSc hons neuroscience)\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3jhuza" ], "score": [ 28 ], "text": [ "Through [magnetic induction](_URL_0_). It's the same mechanism for [transformers](_URL_2_), the electrical circuits of which are not physically connected either. See [this diagram of a simple transformer](_URL_1_).\n\nBasically, the electricity from the outlet is used to generate a magnetic field, which generates a current inside your toothbrush." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Transformer3d_col3.svg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c3khhlx" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "With our current methods of ECT, memory loss is quite common. There are a lot of complex idiosyncrasies and variables that play into the pattern and permanence of memory loss (i.e., age, bilateral vs. unilateral ECT, number of ECT treatments, psychiatric diagnosis, length of the seizures, interval between ECT treatments, etc). However, in general this is the pattern that is most common in the research, and this is also what I see clinically:\n\n\n* Patients typically have slight retrograde amnesia (i.e., loss of memories for things that happened BEFORE they started ECT treatment) and it's usually most significant for things in the days (maybe a week or two) leading up to the first treatment. \n\n* There is near complete amnesia (and this would technically be anterograde) for the events on the day of an ECT treatment, as well as fairly significant anterograde amnesia for several days (maybe a week or two) following ECT.\n\n* After the treatment ends, their memory functions return to normal (i.e., they are able to encode, consolidate, and retrieve new information just as they could before). HOWEVER, the time for which they were amnestic (i.e., The days before the treatment, the day of the treatment, and several days after the treatment) are completely forgotten, and will never come back to memory.\n\n* It's important to understand that the memory system requires that you encode and consolidate information into memories in order for you to remember it (i.e., take information from your surroundings into your brain, and turn it into a long-term memory). ECT appears to disrupt that process. Therefore, if information is not encoded or consolidated into a memory, there is no information there to retrieve. Does that make sense?\n\nHope that helps, let me know if you have other questions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci4ipiw" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Great question! Before I get into it, I want to provide a little context. I've talked quite a bit on here about different understandings of 'homosexuality' throughout history. How sexuality was understood and conceptualized has changed dramatically over the course of history, although not in a linear or teleological fashion. When we use words like 'gay' or even 'homosexual' we situate our discussion in a particular time and place. The 'modern' homosexual-gay-lgbt-queer movement has its origins in late 19th and early 20th century Europe, where Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Karl Maria Kertbeny, Magnus Hirschfeld, and others began to create a framework, and some of the corresponding vocabulary, for understanding 'new' ways of framing gender and sexual identity. In the US, we often use the end of the Second World War as a kind of point of demarkation between earlier notions of sex, gender, and sexuality and the more current frameworks. For that reason, I'm going to confine my answer to that period. Although there was a vibrant (and remarkably open) homosexual culture in the US from the late 19th century to the 1930's, there are so many substantial and important differences that it would be both challenging and potentially problematic to compare movements. \n\nThe main organizations of the post-WWII pre-Stonewall era were the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Mattachine was more male-centered, although there were some mixed chapters. DoB was entirely lesbian. Both organizations were formed in the 1950's, at a time of reactionary social-sexual attitudes. Whereas there had been a certain kind of openness allowed by the different social-sexual frameworks of the pre-WWII period, gay life in the 50's and 60's existed almost entirely in the closet. Although both these organizations were created to advocate for gay and lesbian people, maintaining the privacy and anonymity of their members was an extremely high priority. The Mattachine Society was named after a medieval French fraternal organization known for their masks; the name was chosen to indicate the need for homosexuals to be 'masked' from society. The name 'Daughters of Bilitis' was chosen because it was deliberately vague. Members were allowed to use just their first name - or a fake name- at meetings, and their publication *The Ladder* frequently mentioned that the identities of it's members would be protected (although this did not prevent the organization from being infiltrated by informants who provided the names of members to the FBI and CIA.) \n\nBecause of the strongly homophobic social attitudes of the 1950's and 60's, organizations like DoB and the Mattachine Society had a limited influence. They did make an effort to inform and educate the public about gay and lesbian people, but the extremely high social risks associated with homosexuality made any kind of substantial political organizing a challenge. Bars provided their own kind of organized community, particularly for working class lesbians, gay hustlers, 'drag queens' and other gender and sexuality outlaws. The informal (and usually underground) networks created in bars were often far more influential and important that organized groups like Mattachine and DoB (which were small, operated primarily in cities and by mail, and largely made up of the upper middle classes.) \n\nAfter the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, there was a new kind of openness in regards to sexuality. People began to come out in large numbers, and new organizations were formed to lend a voice to this new generation. There was a flurry of activity in the couple of years after Stonewall, and this saw the creation of two organizations - the Gay Liberation Front and it's offshoot the Gay Activists Alliance. Both organizations came to be mostly dominated by white, middle class, cisgender gay men, despite the large number of trans* or gender-nonconforming people of color involved in the Stonewall riots. Despite some exciting action at the beginning organizations fizzled out within a few years, and failed to create a cohesive movement. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot going on in the 1970's. Gay men created impressive social-sexual networks in the 'gay ghettos' found in most urban centers. Lesbians became involved in lesbian feminism and lesbian separatist communities. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign - two of the most prominent national LGBT groups today - were both formed in the 1970's as well. Although they both played important roles in regards to lobbying and political fundraising, it would taking time before political and social attitudes towards gays and lesbians shifted enough for those organizations to gain real political traction.\n \nThe 1980's brought the kind of change that allowed political organizations to enter the mainstream. AIDS brought homosexuality into the mainstream consciousness in a way that nothing else had done before. Groups like ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers were formed to draw political attention to AIDS and Queer issues, and brought a huge amount of visibility to LGBTQ people. By the 1990's gay and AIDS organizations really started to have political and institutional power. As gay became increasingly accepted by the mainstream, these organizations were able to broaden their fundraising base and expand their organizational goals. In earlier generations gay, lesbian, and trans* advocacy groups were small, kept afloat by volunteers and in some instances a handful of wealthy members. \n\nWhen it comes down to it, organizations in the formal sense, played a pretty minimal role in modern LGBTQ movements. Informal community networks - although harder to trace - were hugely important in creating the movement. \n\nThat was a lot of information! I hope that at least kinda-sorta answered your question. And now for a brief list of sources: *Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers* - Lillian Faderman, *Transgender History* - Susan Stryker, *Gay New York* - George Chauncey. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e6o280g", "e6o681i" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "To their own community of academics. But how far back are we talking? Ancient greece? Renaissance? Isaac Newton era?", "Originally, they wouldn't. Or at least they would rely on intuition, self-evidence, or consensus. And even then it was really only pertinent or interesting to themselves, or perhaps the local government who could exploit their mathematical and scientific reasoning.\n\nOne of the first attempts to rigorously \"prove\" mathematical concepts was Euclid in his *Elements.* And his overall strategy remains pretty solid even today. Basically you start with some fundamental truths and definitions; things that are overwhelming self-evident, cannot be broken down and derived from other truths, and are necessary to make the whole system work.\n\nFrom that, you rigorously, in a step-wise manner, start proving more complex things. Every step has to reference either a) one of your fundamental truths (axioms); or b) one of the other complex truths you've already proven.\n\nFor example, his first \"proofs\" is the construction of an equilateral triangle using only a straightedge and a compass (and then proving why it is an equilateral triangle, based upon previously established definitions). He then uses the construction of an equilateral triangle to show that you can \"copy\" lines of a given length from one place to another (given a point). And so forth." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7qfn5w", "c7qh0rg", "c7qj3xg" ], "score": [ 14, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "This is an awesome question, and one that straddles the line between science and philosophy. The real answer is \"we don't know\" and there are fascinating arguments for multiple viewpoints (including arguments that run the spectrum from pure spirituality all the way to quantum physics.)\n\nI'd recommend [this Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) as a starting point. Give yourself an hour or so to it through, follow a few inline links, external links and *see also*s, and prepare to spelunk the rabbit hole.", "They don't call it the [Hard Problem](_URL_0_) of consciousness for nothing...", "Self-awareness isn't as big a problem as just figuring out what it means to *perceive* something. As others have said here, this is far from totally figured out, but Hofstadter argues pretty convincingly that perception is a complex mirroring of outside phenomena inside our brains. In other words, there exists a relationship, or an isomorphism, between events in the world and events in our head. The concept of self, or self-awareness, arises when an entity that can perceive things turns its perceiving mechanisms back upon itself. This is what he calls a \"strange loop\". My favorite explanation is given in his book *Metamagical Themas*:\n\n > ...A sophisticated perceiving system perceives limited aspects of its own nature, and by feeding them back into the system creates a type of locking-in. The locked-in loop itself is given a name, and that name, for every such system, is \"I\".\n\nNotice that he says nothing about neurons, or the substrate that actually supports this system. For me, this is the most important take-away - that consciousness, and a sense of self, can arise in systems utilizing completely different hardware than the human brain, as long as that hardware has the same basic ability to respond to and reflect the external world.\n\nEdit: Hofstadter's ideas really resist being summarized in a few paragraphs, and unfortunately, most of his books are incredibly long and incredibly dense. But he does talk a *lot* about how such a \"level crossing feedback loop\" can be built on top of the brain's neurons. I did a quick google search and I found this dialogue he wrote, called \"Who Shoves Whom Around Inside the Careenium?\" that probably best sums up his views on exactly your questions. It's not very long if you've got half an hour or so, I highly recommend you read it:\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness" ], [ "http://www.cs.indiana.edu/ftp/techreports/TR130.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbouiep" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "IMO it's because there isn't much room to expand on the core gameplay. Sure you can add more songs, but are you willing to spend another $50+ dollars on basically the same game? Not to mention that the equipment (guitar, drumset, etc.) can also rack up the price (some may say unnecessarily). Once everybody played Guitar Hero/Rockband, it lost the sense of novelty that first came with such gameplay." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8kbeef", "c8kbr1l", "c8kc1v0", "c8kc5s6", "c8kcmm4", "c8kfyi0", "c8kh48u", "c8kkmmm" ], "score": [ 56, 17, 7, 5, 134, 9, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "There is a large difference in response to this based on where in Rome you were at the time.\n\nI think it's fair to say there was an incredible, inconceivable amount of denial on the Italian peninsula which culminated in full blown panic in 410CE, again, for Italians.\n\nAll Roman's pride was irrevocably tarnished, however (in my view at least) most outlying Roman provinces sighed with a heavy heart and then simply started fending for themselves because \"they expected this\" and it was just a matter of when, although this didn't really finish setting in until almost 500CE.\n\nI would like to state that, although my expertise is Classical Europe and the Roman Empire, we are getting into the fuzzy edge of the timeline I am comfortable with.", "To piggyback on this question: were there comparisons to Ancient Egypt or other large civilisations that preceded them and fell?", "I've been reading a lot lately about the \"Crisis of the 3rd Century\" and political & military leaders of that earlier period were certainly well aware than the imperium was in trouble. BUT: They had gone through weak periods before and most historians and philosophers seemed rather ho-hum about it. (\"Don't worry, things will get better.\") This being the case, I'm inclined to think your average informed Roman citizen of the 5th & 6th century probably would have laughed at the notion that the empire could ever \"fall.\" After all, the whole enterprise was a thousand years old. And events in hindsight always seem obvious.", "In Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo biography, he mentions that a lot of people complained about the Roman Empire's decadence and blamed it on the Christians because they were \"Atheists\", in the sense they didn't believe in Roman Gods and thus stripped Rome of it's virtues.\n\nThere were a series of smaller invasions before the last ones when the west empire collapsed. I think people realized that there were problems and things were not going well, but most probably they couldn't imagine the empire would fall.", "Augustine's *City of God* was written as a response to the seemingly imminent collapse of the Roman Empire. The sack of Rome in 410 was traumatic to an extent that I think it is difficult for us to comprehend. Today we tend to shy away from pronouncement's like this one from 1905 that said \"the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety of Rome was the safety of all civilization. Outside was the wild chaos of barbarism. Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a thousand miles of western Asia\" but that is absolutely how the Romans viewed it. St. Jerome, on hearing of the fall of Rome, said \"The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken.\" It was apocalyptic in the most literal sense.\n\nBut it is still difficult to actually name the fall of Rome because none of the players involved were aiming for that. Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410, was a Roman military officer who was seeking recognition and reward. Odoacer, who is generally credited with the death blow, invaded because the Roman government would not grant him *foederati* status. However, everyone picking away at it and reaching for their share of the pie had the effect of destroying it.", "All the time - there was always some windbag complaining of the decline that he could see around him. Often, this was equated with moral decline. The *mos maiorum* (The Way Things Have Always Been Done) and sticking to it was a big deal for the Romans.\n\nCato the Elder was always [banging on about luxury and it's perils](_URL_1_). The citation there is to the full Plutarch's *Life of Cato* - you won't have to read far to find an example.\n\nSeneca the Elder blamed declining morality for the decline of oratory. I can't find an English translation of the relevant passage on the web, unfortunately (it's in the preface to the first book of the *Controversiae*). You can find discussion [here](_URL_0_) if you have access to JSTOR.\n\nAugustus actively tried to prevent the decline of morality through legislation - laws promoting patrician marriage and against adultery - the *Lex Iulia de Maritandis Ordinibus* and the *Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis*. Also the *Lex Papia Poppaea* advantaging the production of children. They were poorly received. Augustus was presented as the bringer of a Golden Age (see Horace or Virgil or the *Ara Pacis*) and this was part of his role as the restorer of peace and a return to the Old Ways following the turmoil of the late Republic. An active response to the decline of those times, if you will.\n\n\n", "After Adrianople, Rufinus of Aquileia, declared it to be the \"beginning of evils for the Roman empire then and thereafter.\"\n\nAs far as complaining in better times goes, here's a quote from [Cassius Dio](_URL_0_) regarding the passing of the throne from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus:\n > …after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.\n\nOf course, I'm pretty sure people were complaining about the decline of the moral fabric since at least Greek culture started become hip after Scipio. It also wouldn't surprise me if there were similar warnings about plebs starting to get involved in government back in the day. Too lazy to go look though.", "Rome was always in a perpetual state of thinking their wonderful civilization was on its way out. They had an incredibly conservative mindset, so the changing world always made them think that their culture was in danger.\n\nLivy's *Early History of Rome* was in many ways a condemnation of the Republic in his time. Polybius declared that if Romans lost their morality, their government would fall (which is in many ways what happened). Even in the days of the Empire, people were constantly in thought that they were becoming too corrupt and un-Roman to go on much longer (thoughts expressed in Tacitus's annals).\n\nSo yeah, the various \"Cato\" figures were always asking what was wrong with their country." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25010639?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101715940421", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Major*.html" ], [ "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/72*.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvw3i45" ], "score": [ 31 ], "text": [ "Not talking about symphony, because the real drama is at the opera, c'mon! The Metropolitan opera had been performing German-language opera since the 1880s. During 1914-17 the Met did German opera as usual, but when the US entered WWI in late 1917 they did cancel all German operas. [Check out the 1917-18 season.](_URL_2_) [German was reintroduced pretty quickly though.](_URL_1_) However during WWII [Wagner was performed without interruption, along with other German pieces,](_URL_0_) as well Italian operas. Some of this was due to censorship being seen as unpatriotic, but I mean, some of it's also just practical: you ban all German AND Italian operas for the season, what do you have left? You're probably going to be doing *Carmen* until you want to barf roses. *Madame Butterfly* did disappear during the war though, presumably due to subject matter and not language. \n\nSo, WWII opera didn't fight a war against Axis music per se, the real story is with the singers. During WWII the Met essentially could not hire any top global talent, as at that time the top singers of Italian opera were from Italy and were unable to leave Italy (the Fascists banned opera singers travelling without permission in 1939). Tito Schipa, famously, cancelled his contract with the Met in 1941 to return home to Italy for the war because he was a very loyal Fascist. Top Wagnerian talent was from Germany, so obviously also no dice there. So, the real change at the Met during WWII is they started hiring a lot more American singers instead of Europeans, which was taken to be very patriotic and much lauded at the time. As opera houses closed through-out a war-ravaged Europe, America was also framing itself as this last bastion of opera, and therefore the highest ideals of Western arts and culture. Which is also why the 1942-43 season was saved from getting canceled! Unsold tickets were also given to off-duty servicemen, which of course is mega patriotic. (This is also why Met dropped their dress code during the war, for the servicemen, and it has never returned!) \n\nSo yeah, by being the only ones doing opera AND doing it with American singers, they kinda got to trumpet the Met as this All-American institution during WWII, despite opera being an art form dominated by 2 Axis cultures. Sadly, ethnically German and Italian opera singers living and working in the US at that time also faced discrimination and pressure from the government, and later on after the war they still faced discrimination. Most notably Kirsten Flagstad when she returned to the Met in 1951, after leaving America for her home Norway in 1941, which was occupied by Germany at the time. She was seen as disloyal and her return was protested. But, other than challenging the ethnic makeup of who gets to be a Heldentenor and a Wagnerian soprano, WWII didn't have much lasting impact on German opera in the US! \n\nThis is from *Grand Opera, the Story of the Met* by Afron and Afron, which came out late last year. " ] }

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[ [ "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1944-45&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1944-45&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0", "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1919-20&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1917-18&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0", "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1917-18&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1917-18&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "colc52s", "colc6gu" ], "score": [ 27, 8 ], "text": [ "The term calling \"Shotgun\" came from when stage coaches would transport money from bank to bank like in the old west movies. The person in the passenger seat would be holding a shotgun for defense against robbers.", "On stage coaches the man who sat next to the driver carried a shotgun to ward of robbers. This has been carried over to cars." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cp8qupt" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "It isn't just your router! every Wifi device is listening and broadcasting to everything! It is really chaotic at the signal level. There are several tricks wifi routers use to get around this\n\n1 collision avoidance - the devices actively try to avoid disturbing each other, and N routers (and high end N NICS) actively try to find better paths\n\n2 Channel switching - this is normally manual, but the further your channel is from your neighbors, the better. once you are 5 stations away, you are totally clear of their frequency. Because ther are only 11 channels, you can only have 3 routers be completely clear of each other.\n\n3 Frequency switching - N devices are dual band and can connect at 2.4 or 5ghz. In an automated setup (normally requering matching branded hardware) they may have routines for jumping up to 5ghz automagicaly when things get to crowded. 5ghz has other advantages as well, there is a lot more space because of the higher frequency, so more devices can be there. Plus, fewer devices are already there! most wifi devices and machines like microwaves cloud up the 2.4 band, but don't block the 5. So if you can, set everything to be 5.\n\n4 tagging data (SSID and IP info) and simply sifting through it all- most of what is broadcast isn't going to be a problem for a modern router to simply hear and discard. EVERY wifi device is doing this. It isn't just your and your neighbor's router, all of the PCs are sharing the frequency space too. So a modern router is actually designed to listen to several devices every moment, a good N router can do over 20 (roughly 3-5 per antenna.) However, to give you high speed bandwidth (streaming) it has to focus at least one antenna for that computer, the antenna rapidly and simutainusly litsens and broadcasts. If you have a 4 antenna router, and 2 people watching HDmovies and one gaming, your router will have a harder time dealing with anamolous data and frequency disturbances, it also wont be able to cater to new people, this is when you see your bars suddenly drop and come back (assuming no software problems.) The router has to drop you to check signal quality, or maybe a computer tried to register into the network, during which it had to drop the quality of your frequency for a few seconds to handshake that (it probably also took your friend longer to login to the router, simply because it is not able to pay as much attention to general broadcast while prioritizing registered user data.) But if an N router has a mostly free antenna, it can use that to do a lot of it's work automagicaly.\n\nThe simplist way to avoid those problems is to set a max number of wifi users that can login at any given time, and maybe even bandwidth quotas (cap the bandwidth on your mom's internet box.) But at the very least, don't have more than 1.5 people per antenna (on an N router) if gaming, or 4 per if general office use.\n\nIf there are lots of devices (routers and pcs) near you, then you may want to use your router as if you have 1 less antenna, this will guarantee quality. For lower end/base routers you should do this anyway, because, even if they are N routers, they generally have at least one antenna that is not worth it (fixed/omni direction with poor or no signal shaping routines/abilities) but normally 2 or more are just crap.\n\nMore expensive routers use smarter software, faster processors and more advanced antennas so they can rapidly handle all the traffic and collisions while still offering you a quality connection.\n\nMore expensive NICS do similarly, and can even start having advanced antennas like mechanics and high end beam shaping.\n\nIn all cases for N, they also figure out what works, and hold to a routine till it doesn't. So, keeping your router and computer in the same place is a good thing. They basically figure out that if they operate together in a certain way, a lot of the noise is gone/managable, and make a list of the best patterns between them. When you move any devices in your home (computer and ones that simply disrupt the frequency) they have to readjust. That said, I think modern routers have that adjustment period below 15minutes for most situations. Again, high quality hardware improves their smarts and capabilities in this. It is a required capability of N routers, and N NICS are designed to provide important signaling information to assist. High end NICS have active shaping capabilities as well. Oh, ths is also a high power process (processor and signalling,) so moving your labtop around while on wifi will increase battery usage." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce7nxxv" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I've coupled several articles to get this conclusion, and therefore it could be a simplified conclusion: A person with two short (homozygotes) alleles of the upstream regulating region of the serotoninreceptor encoding gene (5-HTT) are likely to be more sensitive to all kind of stimuli, eg. cold temperatures. However, this genotype does also lead to other fenotypic traits such as anxiety-related personality traits. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2axg7v", "c2axg7v" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "As far as I'm aware, in order for light (or other electromagnetic radiation) to come into being, an electrostatically charged particle needs to either *a) accelerate*, or *b) transition between states with different energies*.\n\nI'm not very clear on how big the overlap between *a)* and *b)* is, but for a) I'm thinking of an unbound electron/proton/ion/etc. slowing down or turning in 'free space', while for b) I'm thinking of an electron bound to an atom moving from one atomic orbital to another with a lower energy.\n\nAll of the types of emission listed in the comments so far seem to boil down to these two situations: black-body radiation is just b) averaged over a bunch of atoms with electrons in different orbitals; bioluminescence/phosorescence/flourescence/stimulated emission/FRET all boil down to b), too; Bremhsstrahlung and Cherenkov and cyclotron radition fall under a).\n\nIn the case of b), what color is emitted depends on the difference in energies of the orbitals that the electron jumps between. In lasers and neon signs there are usually fairly few possible 'jumps', leading to very 'clean', identifiable colors. In blackbody-like emitters such as incandescent lightbulbs, there are lots possible jumps, leading to a mixing of lots of colors -- resulting in what we perceive as white. Heating various substances changes what jumps are possible/more likely, changing the mixture of colors that gets emitted.\n\nInterestingly, you can change the distribution of colors emitted by a heated lump of matter not only by changing its temperature or the atoms that make it up, but also by changing its surroundings -- for example, putting it between a pair of mirrors.\n\n\nFake edit: I guess there's also *c) emission of radiation due to particle-antiparticle annihilation*, but as I know even less about that than the other two, I won't delve into it.\nAnd naturally, if I'm wrong about any of this, feel free to correct me.", "As far as I'm aware, in order for light (or other electromagnetic radiation) to come into being, an electrostatically charged particle needs to either *a) accelerate*, or *b) transition between states with different energies*.\n\nI'm not very clear on how big the overlap between *a)* and *b)* is, but for a) I'm thinking of an unbound electron/proton/ion/etc. slowing down or turning in 'free space', while for b) I'm thinking of an electron bound to an atom moving from one atomic orbital to another with a lower energy.\n\nAll of the types of emission listed in the comments so far seem to boil down to these two situations: black-body radiation is just b) averaged over a bunch of atoms with electrons in different orbitals; bioluminescence/phosorescence/flourescence/stimulated emission/FRET all boil down to b), too; Bremhsstrahlung and Cherenkov and cyclotron radition fall under a).\n\nIn the case of b), what color is emitted depends on the difference in energies of the orbitals that the electron jumps between. In lasers and neon signs there are usually fairly few possible 'jumps', leading to very 'clean', identifiable colors. In blackbody-like emitters such as incandescent lightbulbs, there are lots possible jumps, leading to a mixing of lots of colors -- resulting in what we perceive as white. Heating various substances changes what jumps are possible/more likely, changing the mixture of colors that gets emitted.\n\nInterestingly, you can change the distribution of colors emitted by a heated lump of matter not only by changing its temperature or the atoms that make it up, but also by changing its surroundings -- for example, putting it between a pair of mirrors.\n\n\nFake edit: I guess there's also *c) emission of radiation due to particle-antiparticle annihilation*, but as I know even less about that than the other two, I won't delve into it.\nAnd naturally, if I'm wrong about any of this, feel free to correct me." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fg410ur" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This is what I study in the real world, and partially what my thesis is about, so there’s a lot to say about it! Hopefully this answer doesn’t go on and on forever…I think I've written most of this in previous answers, so here they are, all collected in one spot.\n\nThe Frankish crusaders did try to import a European-style “feudal system” in some ways, but in other ways they also adopted local customs. \n\nThe most important thing to remember is that Jerusalem was much more diverse than France. It was more like Spain or Sicily, so they didn’t create a completely unknown type of society, but it wasn’t anything like France or England. In Jerusalem there were Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Nestorian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Syriac, and Maronite Christians. There were also Jews and a small number of Samaritans. There were Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, offshoots of the Shi’i like the Druze and the Nizaris. Some Muslims and Christians were Arabs, some were Turks or Kurds. When the First Crusade arrived, there was a Sunni Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, but he was mostly just a figurehead, and political power was held by the Seljuk sultan. Several other Seljuk emirs and atabegs ruled the cities of Syria, somewhat independently.\n\nIn 1099, Jerusalem was controlled by Shi’i Fatimid Egypt. The Sejuks had captured Jerusalem from them in 1070, but the Fatimids took it back in 1098 while the Seljuks were distracted by the crusade, then the Fatimids lost it again to the crusaders in 1099. \n\nWe don’t really know how many people lived in the crusader states, but one estimate (by Josiah Russell) suggests that all of Syria had about 2.3 million people at the time of the crusades, living in eleven thousand villages. Three hundred and sixty thousand of them lived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and two hundred and fifty thousand of those lived in rural villages. (Probably, anyway - we really have no idea about actual numbers.)\n\nAccording to the Persian traveller Naser-e Khosraw, who visited around 1050, the population of Jerusalem was about twenty thousand people, and the city was always full of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish pilgrims. Ibn al-Arabi, who visited Jerusalem only a few years before the crusaders arrived, mentions Sunnis living in Jerusalem, but says the cities along the coast and elsewhere in Fatimid Palestine were majority Shi’i. Christians and Muslims had lived together in Jerusalem until 1063, when they were segregated into separate quarters. The Christian community controlled the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and, outside the city, the town of Bethlehem. The Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed by the Fatimids in 1009, but was rebuilt starting in the 1050s (and then the crusaders later modified it into its current structure in the 1150s)\n\nUnder the Muslims, Christians and Jews were dhimmis and paid a specific tax, the jizya. The cities were sometimes governed by a qadi (an Islamic judge) or a ra’is (Arabic for “head” or “mayor”), or more directly by a Seljuk or Fatimid governor. In rural areas there was also a semi-feudal system that the crusaders found familiar and easy to adopt: land was granted as an iqta' and revenue was collected by the muqta', who could rule the iqta' as an independent fief.\n\nSo, that was the situation that the crusaders found when they arrived in 1099. They were now the rulers of this complex, ancient society, and they didn’t really disrupt it too much. They left the agricultural system in place, and the tax system - but now Muslims had to pay the jizya to the crusaders. There were never enough Franks to displace all of the Muslim or eastern Christian leaders, so in all of the towns and villages under crusader rule, there were still qadis or ra’is. The Franks found it easy to adjust to the iqta’ system, so they simply interpreted an iqta’ as a fief and a muqta’ as the fief holder, who owed them taxes and services, just like a fief back in France. \n\nThey had their own system of fiefs on top of that - in Jerusalem, the king had four major vassals (the Prince of Galilee, the Count of Jaffa, the Lord of Sidon, and the Lord of Oultrejordain), and each of those fiefs had smaller fiefs of their own, and these were all governed by Frankish lords, but the villages and towns and farms within those fiefs were left to the Muslims or eastern Christians who already lived there. \n\nOr at least, this is what we're told by one of the crusader lords, John of Ibelin, who was the Count of Jaffa. According to him the County of Jaffa was the most important one. Of course he would say that! It also looks like John of Ibelin was painting an incredibly idealized picture of how “feudalism” was supposed to work in Jerusalem, and not necessarily how it actually worked in everyday practice. Historians in the past usually took him at his word, so Jerusalem has been described as having some sort of “perfect” form of feudalism, but we don’t think of it that way now. “Feudalism” itself is a pretty questionable concept these days (there is a lot of info in the AskHistorians FAQ about that so check that out as well). But in Jerusalem, like in France or England, theoretically the king and his vassals collected taxes from the people who lived in their territories, and those people also owed them military service or some other kind of service. John of Ibelin even lists how many knights each fief owed to the king (he himself owed 100 knights), but again, that is probably an idealized picture.\n\nThe biggest difference in Jerusalem was that the fief holders didn’t always live in their fiefs. They tended to live in Jerusalem or Acre or one of the other major cities, and they collected income from their fiefs, but these were “money-fiefs” for them. There was a lot of agricultural land in Jerusalem, but it was also much smaller and much more urbanized than, say, the north of France were a lot of crusaders came from. \n\nThe crusaders were “Franks” so we tend to think of them as “French”, but there were lots of people from all over Europe: the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres, who participated in the crusade and spent the rest of his life in Jerusalem, lists French, Flemings, Frisians, Swiss, Germans, English, Scots, Italians, and Bretons, among probably many others. Fulcher famously wrote that:\n\n > “…we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned any more. Some already possess homes or households by inheritance. Some have taken wives not only of their own people but Syrians or Armenians or even Saracens who have obtained the grace of baptism...People use the eloquence and idioms of diverse languages in conversing back and forth. Words of different languages have become common property known to each nationality, and mutual faith unites those who are ignorant of their descent...He who was born a stranger is now as one born here; he who was born an alien has become as a native.” (Fulcher of Chartres, pg. 271)\n\nThey all tended to congregate together in the cities, or in rural areas where fellow (eastern) Christians already lived. They didn’t really interact with the Muslims, but that’s probably how it was before the crusaders arrived as well. Everybody kept to their own villages and didn’t mix, so the crusaders did the same. The Franks also established new villages, which is sometimes considered an early form of colonialism. The most famous of these new settlements is probably Bethgibelin. The settlers at Bethgibelin came from:\n\n > \"...Auvergne, Gascony, Flanders, Lombardy and Catalonia. Generally, the largest number of European settlers...were from the central, southern and western parts of France, and a few also from northern Spain and regions in Italy. In Bethgibelin the other settlers were from nearby Latin villages...\" (Nader, pg. 94)\n\nThe towns and cities, especially along the coast (Acre, Beirut, Tyre, etc) were also full of Italian merchants and settlers. The Italians were kind of a state-within-a-state, since they governed their own neighbourhoods semi-independently of the Frankish lords. They were responsible for overseas trade with Europe - we know basically everything that was imported and exported from the crusader states by Italian and Muslim merchants - they sold dates, onions, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, linen, shoes, and hundreds of other products! Sugar was especially important - the Italians also ran sugar plantations and this was probably the first time Europe had seen sugar from cane plants. (They also traded “marshmallow” and “liquorice”, but those were medicinal plants, and not, as I like to imagine, the modern candy.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8v584v" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "We don't know yet -- that's what makes it research!\n\nThere are many people working on [brain-computer interfaces](_URL_1_) to try to develop algorithms to 'decode' brain activity. At this point, however, the outputs that can be measured are relatively crude, e.g., sending a signal of \"up\", \"down\", \"left\", or \"right\". \n\n[This](_URL_0_) is probably one of the most promising achievement to date. The idea is to match patterns of brain activation, measured by fMRI, to known responses to a series of videos. \n\nBut this is still a *long* way from what you are suggesting, since:\n\n* The method required hours of calibration for each individual participant.\n\n* The researchers knew that the participants were watching one of a certain set of videos. The reconstructed images were then also based on those videos (i.e., which video did the brain activity most closely match), not just on the measured brain activity.\n\n* The participants were watching a video, not just imagining something.\n\nProbably the biggest challenge -- besides not fully understanding how the brain computes information -- is the fact that we don't yet have any imaging technologies with the spatial and temporal resolution necessary to reconstruct any detailed imagery or thoughts just from brain recordings. Supposing we could get a much more comprehensive read-out of brain activity, we could probably develop very detailed algorithms to pull out a lot of information using various signal analysis methods. Mind you, that in itself will be an enormous computational challenge, especially since any such algorithms will likely have to be trained for each individual before the outputs make any sense." ] }

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[ [ "http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/scientists-youtube-videos-mind/story?id=14573442", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d28gksh", "d28jzaw" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Reagan amnesty was a lawful compromise with Congress, tax cuts for so many immigrants. I am not familiar with any Bush amnesty so I decline to remark. Obama's executive amnesty otoh is a complete go around of Congress. Executive orders bear no legal weight, they are not law. They are directives to agencies of the executive branch. Once he leaves office, unless resigned by the next POTUS they become null and void. This is seen as an overstep by the executive branch into the legislative branch.", "NPR actually talked about this today. It isn't that Obama made an amnesty executive order, it is that it grants amnesty to such a large amount of people. So the courts aren't really deciding on if presidents are allowed to do this sort of thing, but to what scale they are allowed to go without congressional approval.\n\nBasically, you might be fine loaning a friend five dollars, but not five hundred." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpp8em2", "cppdzau", "cppghqp" ], "score": [ 19, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "When labor is short in supply, companies must increase wages to attract workers.\n\nYou can see this in (pre-oil-bust) Alberta, Canada. You can get paid $15/hr to be a Barista in Fort McMurray, while a few hundred kilometers away, in Calgary or Edmonton, they only make $10. Willing to do unskilled or trained-on-site physical labor? You could easily make $30/hr to start, which is unheard of in the bigger cities in Canada.\n\nThis would theoretically happen in a more widespread fashion if a nation nears full employment (less than 4% unemployment). As there are fewer and fewer potential candidates for each job, companies are willing to (or rather forced to) offer more money to try to lure workers.", "Supply and demand is essentially a race to the bottom if demand is low and supply is high. \n\nWith so many people trying to find full-time work in pretty much every field, it's not going to help wages any. The highest skilled people who will accept the lowest wage will be the ones hired. This lowers wages rather than increases them. \n\nSo, what causes companies to increase wages? Numerous things. The government can step in and put forth regulation, public pressure can make the choices of hiring low-paid workers cost money (See Walmart, and those raising wages alongside Walmart), having higher wages can be used as a competitive advantage against their competition to raise sales (similar to public pressure, but not quite), and/or fewer workers competing for more positions will create a \"workers market\" instead of an employers one. \n\nSo, why aren't companies raising wages? Well, the same reason you wouldn't pay $10 at a store for an identical good that costs $5 across the street: There's no need to and nobody wants to waste money. ", "It depends on the employer, but in general, you get a raise because they would rather keep you than pay to train someone else.\n\nHiring and training employees is expensive. Giving you an extra few cents per hour is cheaper" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpv11jf", "cpv1c0n", "cpv4cxo" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Executive orders (at least in theory) don't grant the executive branch more powers, they work within the powers already granted to the President by the Constitution or by Congress. The courts can overrule an EO if it's overstepped its bounds, and Congress can pass a law overruling an EO if it's based in powers they delegated to the executive.", "The President is the chief executive of the government. He decides how the laws of the country are to be enforced. He is expected to give instructions to underlings to accomplish this. The EO is how he does that. If congress thinks an EO is overstepping the authority of the office, they can, and do, take him to court over it.", "Presidents have a lot of leeway in how they enforce a law, 'executive order' is just a really official way of saying that the president told the people working for him that they are changing how they do things, it's not like a special action that needs ratification.\n\nBasically, it counts as constitutional if the judicial branch(it will go before the supreme court if it's controversial, usually) decide that they aren't going to stop him.\n\nIn terms of checks and balances, the Judicial branch's actual jobs are to settle disputes between citizens and to make sure the executive branch doesn't overstep or deny citizens due process.\n\nThe judicial can't make the executive go through with a new plan that Congress didn't approve (unless they are declaring a law unconstitutional with Judicial Review, but that's a separate issue), but it can always stop the executive or make tell the executive to do what they are doing in a different way. There are no checks that give executive power over the judicial, the judicial can give an order to the executive and the executive has no choice but to listen.\n\nIn countries with serparate branches but no constitution, the judicial branch spends most of it's time monitoring the executive and making sure it is not overstepping its bounds." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chsws8x", "chswsjl" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "The grooves are cut into the face of the club to increase the grip between the ball and the face. The puts a controlled spin on the ball, which makes the ball travel in a predictable path.\n\nIf the ball does not have a controlled spin, it will move in a random path as spin is created and lost as the ball moves through the air - kind of how a knuckleball drifts randomly in baseball.", "The \"lines\" are officially called grooves. My understanding is that the grooves provide a type of \"grip\" on the golf ball to impart a desirable spin on the ball (determined by the golfer--right, left, a little, a lot). A flat face would probably make it more difficult to control the ball flight but I've never played with a flat face." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn2bf2i" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Pediatric medication is weight-based, so for many medications, the dosage strength would have to be severely diluted to be usable for young children to avoid overdose. This is why certain drugs are good for certain age groups of children - the weight difference between an 11 yr old and a 5 yr old, for example.\n\nOther factors come into play as well. The structure of medication (liquid vs tablet vs capsule vs a crushed tablet/split capsule can affect how fast a drug works or how easily it can be ingested down tiny throats.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxrsqqk", "cxrvurl", "cxrw3ep" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not a doctor, yet, but every time I have experienced something similar to this, and found that I have the option of \"scratching\" it as best I can or turning down the volume. I think that the itch is a response to inner ear damage, because every time I have turned down the volume the itch goes away on its own after a moment. \n\nThis may not be the case for you, hopefully, but try reducing the volume next time instead of scratching and see if that works. Call it an experiment that may save your hearing later on. ", "I'd say it's probably the sound waves traveling through your ears causing vibrations. Sound waves (unlike electromagnetic waves such as light) require a medium in order to travel. In this sense, they're closer to ocean waves than they are to visible light. Sound waves are basically displaced air particles similar to how ocean waves are displaced water particles. You can hear because the sound waves cause the eardrum to vibrate which then causes the bones in your middle ear to move. The cochlea then converts this motion into electric impulses that your brain interprets as sound. \n\nDepending on how high the volume is, the sound waves might be causing tiny vibrations in your ear canal (but not close enough to interfere with the vibrations in your eardrum). Thus, you feel ticklish. ", "It's usually the earbud rubbing on the skin that does this since the skin in your ear canal isn't used to stuff touching it. Put a tiny bit of vaseline or something similar on the edges of the earbuds or on the rubber plugs and it goes away." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjqdezf", "cjqdflc", "cjqeooo" ], "score": [ 16, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You use an when the beginning *sounds* like a vowel regardless of if it is one. European starts with a \"y\" sound which in this case counts as a consonant.\n\nEdit: another example you would say \"an hour\" because the h is silent.", "Europe starts with a \"Y\" sound, you go by the sound (not the letter) that comes after the a or an.", "Why is it that I feel weird for saying \"An European\" now?\n\nHave I been saying European wrong all along?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgfuwx2", "cgfvq7o" ], "score": [ 2, 7 ], "text": [ "If you could buy an entire truck-full of tomatoes and wheat, you could probably make pizzas for less. You'd have to make a lot of pizzas though to make it worthwhile.\n\nCosto/Sams Club/BJs work on this model, though it's not quite as extreme.", "Especially when talking about fresh ingredients, it's because there's a lot of waste.\n\nFrozen pizza has a huge shelf life, so if a store buys 100 of them, they're going to sell 100 of them. If a store buys 100 tomatoes, they're probably going to sell 60-70, and the rest will end up in the trash because they're not pretty enough, bruised or rotten. That instantly makes the good tomatoes 50% more expensive.\n\nThe same happens at the wholesale stage because a truck may have been sitting in customs for too long, they weren't stored properly at some point, or the wholesaler bought too much and couldn't resell them in time.\n\nSo when you buy one tomato, you're also paying for the other two that the farmer, wholesaler or grocer had to throw away somewhere along the way." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5ena4r", "d5end6q", "d5eqwg5", "d5eswwg", "d5evrew" ], "score": [ 5, 6, 24, 218, 8 ], "text": [ "I tried searching google but found nothing concrete. ", "In my personal experience, if I'm taking a break from a drug to let my tolerance build back up, i like to take at least a month off.", "I was a heavy drinker (about a pint of whiskey per night) for decades. I stopped drinking about 5 years ago but will still have a few on vacation or holidays. I can still drink the same amount I always did. Your mileage may vary.", "I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER!!! It will never go back down to that tolerance. Tolerance is built by your brain being conditioned to react to alcohol. The time varies from person to person to get close, but that could be 6 months to 5 years.\n\nSo let's say the first drink you ever had was in a bar, when you were wearing a blue shirt, standing with three friends, out of a shot glass, at 5pm.\n\nIf every single day for 30 days you have a drink the same exact way, by the 30 day mark you will have built up a significant tolerance. That's because all of those factors will alert your body that you're about to start drinking and your body starts acting as if it is about to start breaking down alcohol before you even start drinking to keep your body at homeostasis.\n\nNow obviously that's now how you drink because it won't be exactly the same every time so that would be a very strong association, but your body does know when it's about to drink because we are creatures of habit and largely drink in the same way every time. So when you're at the bar or a club where you normally drink, your body will start working toward eliminating the substance. When you're even thinking about it it will happen.\n\nNow let's say you stop drinking. You still go to the bar and with your friends and all the usual places and times you used to drink pass by. Your body will then start going through extinction where the conditions that used to alert your body that you're about to drink will no longer result in drinking and therefore you don't need to start working toward eliminating the drink from your system.\n\nAnd tl;dr finally, even if you stop drinking for 50 years after building up a high tolerance, your body will later react in the same way as it did before and start working toward eliminating the substance even before you drink it because of something called spontaneous recovery.\n\nThat's where a previously conditioned stimulus regains its conditioned response after extinction. **Edit: After those 50 years you do still have some tolerance but it will not be as strong as your tolerance the last time you drank.** This is because a body that has never drank has no idea how to handle alcohol, but a body that has drank obviously does and your body will begin to take the steps immediately instead of trying to figure out how to do it later.\n\nIf you want to simulate this effect, go drinking in a way that you don't normally drink. Drink spontaneously and your body will be surprised into drinking and the reaction will be delayed.\n\nThere's a lot of research on tolerance and heroin done with mice on the topic of classical conditioning. This explains why people overdose. When you do heroin at home 50 times, your body needs more and more every time because your body is breaking it down before it gets in your system. So when you do it the 51st time in a place you're not familiar with (a hotel room for example), you do that same large amount, but your body did not prepare for it to take in heroin so it doesn't get to fight off the drug before it gets injected.", "WARNING: If you're a chronic drinker, then you *need* to detox with doctor supervision or cut back slowly. Stopping drinking entirely after years or decades of chronic usage can gives you seizures, [wet brain](_URL_0_) and a host of extremely bad symptoms that could lead to death. Be careful." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://alcoholrehab.com/alcoholism/alcoholic-wet-brain/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dulat9f", "dulb5u3", "dum7ds0" ], "score": [ 8, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "So this is an interesting question. If I recall correctly from school, type O is what the earliest people had (postulated). Over time mutations have occurred leading to difference surface antigens like the A and B antigen. So while they are recessive, there are still many people with this. If two people who are both O get together and have a baby every single one of them will be type O. But is someone who is AO mates with a BO, they have a chance of creating a O as well. So you can see how they won't be totally phased out.", "O is recessive in its expression - but that does not mean its reproduction is negatively impacted. Many recessive traits are often associated with negative effects, but this isn't quite the case for the O blood type. \n\nThus, while - yes, O is recessive towards the other alleles, the prevalence of the O allele doesn't decline, and remains at the - I believe it was 80%? - thus meaning that O remains a fairly common blood type. ", "Think of it like paint: White paint is white up until you add even the smallest amount of any pigment. Now it's not white.\n\nO+ is 38%, O- is 7% of the population. That means ~~only 42%~~ 45% of the world doesn't have one of the mutations that give them type A or B blood.\n\nAs for why it hasn't declined, blood type doesn't alter your survivability. If having one blood type or another made you die younger, those people in the past would have been more likely to die without children.\n\nEdit: Idiot moment with math." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c69uo18", "c69uqca" ], "score": [ 3, 10 ], "text": [ "We don't know. Our models of physics go back to just after the big bang. They cannot explain the state of matter at the moment of (just before) the big bang - in part because physics as we understand it didn't exist before the bang - our physics came into being along with the rest of the universe.\n\nThere are some Meta-Theories about what might have gone before - but since we can't see anything outside our universe there is no way to test any ideas that depend on conditions external to out universe.\n\nAs far as we are aware, we will never know for certain what caused/lead to the big bang because such prior causes are outside our potential observation.", "No, that is not what Big Bang Theory is. It's a common misconception. Big Bang Theory is about the state of the very (very) early universe and how it evolved from that. It is *not* a theory about how or why the universe got here in the first place. I'm not saying that's not a valid question, I'm just saying that's not what this particular theory is about. \n\nThere's no broadly accepted theory on how we got to that point. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dxgcb3j" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "People generally say that in references to colds.A “cold” is a blanket term for any viral infection of the nose and throat. In the early stages of a cold, your body is fighting the cold directly and most of the symptoms are in your sinuses, nose, and throat. \n\nAfter a few days the virus is pretty much dead and the nose starts to feel better, but at that point so much mucus has drained down your throat that you start coughing to clear it out. So it feels like the cold has moved from your nose into your chest, when in reality the chest symptoms are your body cleaning up after the cold. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c78qh0d", "c78r05o", "c78wr00" ], "score": [ 32, 17, 2 ], "text": [ "Like skin tone, lighter eye color is simply a reflection of lower pigmentation (less melanin). As with many genes, if those genes that influence eye color can mutate to less active forms without dicouraging the survival of a given organism, they may continue to mutate to less and less active forms. This means that if higher pigmentation isn't all that advantageous to some animal, lower pigmentation may result. \n\nThere may be a selective factor at work, however: lighter skin tone was favored for north-dwelling human ancestors because it generates more vitamin D (which, closer to the equator, would have been supplied by the abundant sunlight). Because some of the genes that govern skin and eye pigmentation overlap, lighter eye color may have been coincident with lighter skin color.", "Thus far no proven advantage but it is possible that the genes that contribute to blue & green eye color could be associated with other traits that confer advantage (such as lighter skin tones in northern latitudes).\n\nBlue eyes in humans results from a single genetic mutation which probably spread through founder effect - meaning that all those with blue eyes can trace their ancestry back to the original mutant. \n\nI'm new here so I don't have a badge, but I am in my first year of grad school for biological anthropology. \n", "Who says we only evolve benefits?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "copd2g3" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Because kids love to watch them being open and seeing what surprises are in them, even if they aren't getting the toy." ] }

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[ "https://www.youtube.com/user/SurpriseToys/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QG4n3-rKTs" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cgcjr2m", "cgck3r6" ], "score": [ 8, 6 ], "text": [ "Embezzlement is taking funds that you been entrusted with, and converting them to your own use. Theft is just taking property to which you are not entitled.\n\nSo, Janice is a teller at a bank. She's required to keep a drawer full of cash, count it, dispense it to customers as needed, etc. That money has been entrusted to her, so she's given access to it. If she were to take $20 from that drawer for herself, that'd be embezzlement. If she were to go into the McDonald's across the street and take $20 from their till while someone wasn't watching, that'd be theft.", "\"Theft,\" generally speaking, is the term used to refer to the category of property crimes that involve taking other people's stuff for your own use without their permission. Crimes like \"embezzlement,\" \"shoplifting,\" \"robbery,\" \"larceny,\" \"mugging,\" \"carjacking,\" etc. are all different *kinds* of theft and are distinguished by the facts of the crime.\n\nFor a property crime to be embezzlement, the defendant must have been entrusted with possession of the stolen property *before* the defendant decided to steal it. If the defendant did not have legitimate possession, then stealing it can't be embezzlement. It will be some other kind of property crime.\n\nOther theft crimes have different criteria. \"Robbery\" is usually defined as theft \"by force or fear,\" usually implying that the victim has to be present. \"Carjacking\" is basically robbery, only the property being stolen is a car or other vehicle. \"Shoplifting,\" sometimes also called \"retail theft,\" is stealing inventory from a store. \n\nThese distinctions are made because not all kinds of stealing are equally serious. Pocketing a candy bar from a convenience store is not as bad as robbing a bank at gunpoint, and neither is precisely the same as embezzling corporate funds. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "drks6dw" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The fields produced by a point electric charge moving arbitrarily are given [here](_URL_0_). If you assume that the particle has no magnetic moments, these are the only fields it will produce. If you look at the magnetic field equation, it looks complicated, but you can see that the whole thing is zero if the speed of the particle is zero. So in an inertial frame in which the particle is at rest, the magnetic field that it produces is zero." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liénard–Wiechert_potential" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cht3tfr", "cht8ej9", "chteheb", "chttqnp" ], "score": [ 12, 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The [Avalon Project](_URL_2_) at Yale is one place where you can find many of primary sources related to the topic you are interested in. \n\nIn addition, [this website](_URL_0_) also provides numerous documents. \n\nLastly, the [Liberty Fund](_URL_1_) also contains numerous sources that touch on the Revolutionary period. \n\nEach site contains a treasure trove of unedited transcribed documents that detail the lead up to the revolution, the formation of the Articles of Confederation, and extend beyond the Constitutional Convention. \n\nHope this helps.\n", "Pauline Maeir's *Ratification* is the standard work on the ratification debates, although I think it is important to note that the Federalist papers had practically no influence on the decision to ratify the constitution. ", "James Madison's notes on the convention are among the most complete. They can be found in many places, including _URL_0_ ", "You will have to do your own digging and interpretation, but _URL_0_ has over 120,000 searchable and annotated documents from the founding fathers. \n\nFrom the website:\n > Now, for the first time, users can freely access the written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy. You will be able to search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You will be able to compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/", "http://oll.libertyfund.org/", "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp" ], [], [ "http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/debates/" ], [ "http://founders.archives.gov" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlh2d1d", "dlh5evb" ], "score": [ 4, 21 ], "text": [ "Because, logistically, it is easier for them to be on the same timezone as the rest of Europe.", "Because Nazis.\n\nThey used to be in the same time zone as the UK. But then when the Nazis took over France in WW2, they switched them to the same time zone as Germany.\n\nSpain wasn't directly involved in WW2, but were on fairly good terms with the Nazis so also switched to have a matching time zone to aid cooperation.\n\nFor both it turned out to be more convenient after the war was over so they stayed that way. Now they all work quite closely together, and people and goods cross the borders all the time, so it's easier to be in a single time zone." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjpyps7" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Red, green, and blue (RGB) are the primary colors for **light (i.e., additive color)**. In this case, \"black\" is the absence of any light, and \"white\" is 100% of all three colors.\n\nCyan, yellow, and magenta (CYM) are the primary colors for **pigment (i.e., substractive color)**. In this case, \"white\" is the absence of any pigment, and \"black\" is 100% of all three pigment colors. Each of these pigments get their color from absorbing one of the primary light colors, and reflecting the other two. Thus cyan is the mix of green and blue (absorbs red), yellow is the mix of red and green (absorbs blue), and magenta is the mix of red and blue (absorbs green).\n\nThe \"K\" in CYMK is \"black\". Printers will often add a separate reservoir of black ink for darker shades of color and for black & white printing.\n\n**EDIT:** Bolded some terms and added language for clarity." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9lo909" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Although it is not a book about the Stone Age, Ian Morris's book *Why the West Rules -- for Now* spends several chapters on prehistory as part of a sweeping treatment of the entire history of East and West.\n\nOtherwise, I suggest asking this on /r/AskAnthropology." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvfoet5" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "[This article explains why.](_URL_0_) TL;DR \"Cute Aggression\" is the brains response that could be protective, or a way of venting extreme feelings of giddiness and happiness" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cuteness-inspires-aggression/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "df5058e", "df512vk", "df519m2", "df55xbg", "df56xxa", "df57h1m", "df584yv", "df59ohn", "df5gg03", "df5m8hf", "df5n1ge", "df5sbb6", "df5y3mx", "df5yihh", "df607sv", "df62g2t", "df6n5k5" ], "score": [ 22, 6, 2665, 16, 6, 355, 56, 6, 4, 2, 13, 56, 27, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Water can seep through the ground and pool up in immense reservoirs exactly like oil does. All it takes is some favorable geography - a layer of rock that water can't get through, underneath ground that it can. The water seeps through over time and builds up on that rock layer forming a water table. The depth of this depends on location but in most places yes, if you drill deep enough you'll find water.", "We can also refill them and store more water in them if their geology is well understood via artificial recharge. ", "Technically yes. There are a few types of underground water supplies. The first is the water table. \n\nWhen it rains where does that water go? Well you do see most of it run down the sidewalks, and streets. Where does the rest go? Underground of course. It drains through cracks, and soft soil till it reaches the point of saturation. The bottom of that point is the water table. \nFor example this water table is at 75ft. You take a drill,or even shovels, and started digging a hole you will hit water (depending on the last good rain) anywhere from just below the surface of top soil to 75ft. Where you place the pump in that type of well will give you so much water. If you go into a drought that type of well goes dry rather quickly. \n\nThe second type of underground water supply is an aquifer. Aquifers are deep. My example will be the one near me in San Antonio Texas. Surrounding San Antonio you have rivers. Comal, Guadeloupe, San Antonio, etc. They start in the hills, and flow down to the sea. \nRivers are the blood vessels of the earth. What you see on the surface is just one vain. Underneath them in the cracks in the bedrock are the rest. \nAll that water from the rain that didn't soak into the ground runs off into the creeks that supply most of the river's water. As time goes on between rain storms the upper layer of soil drains the rest of the water tables into the river. Then the river supplies the underground aquifer.\nThe San Antonio aquifer is larger than the city itself by hundreds of square miles. Test wells drilled into it at several locations is how it is measured. Every night the local weatherman on the news will tell you what the level is. On average it is around 640 feet. \nThe water dept keeps an eye on that daily to make sure the population and agriculture have adequate allocations. If it gets low you have restrictions put in place. Like not watering your lawn on certain days. To extreme examples of limiting total number of gallons used per day.\n\nSorry if I put you to sleep. I know a five year old would be.", "In this part of the Netherlands, were I live, the water is just a couple of feet below our feet. In fact: the shed behind our house is slowly tilting because of the wet (marshlike) underground. So yes, water is beneath your feet, and in the Netherlands you can use a kids shovel to find it.", "Short answer, yes. \n\nIt's called an aquifer if there is enough water for economic value. Typically the top layer of water is freshwater, and below that is brackish water which can go down thousands of feet. There is hundreds of times more water beneath the ground than in all the surface water combined. When oil is pumped out of the ground it is emulsified with water, typically between 4:1 to 50:1 water:oil ratio. \n\nSource: m.s. in water resources management", "Hydrogeologist here.\n\nGenerally, groundwater is present in most places across the Earth's land surface. Unlike the picture in most people's heads of underground rivers and caves, the water is usually trapped in the tiny pore spaces (gaps) between rock particles, or in fractures and cracks in the rock.\n\nPart of my job is telling people where to drill wells to get the water they need. Most of the time, it is possible to get groundwater unless the rock is something extremely impermeable like a mudstone or claystone. Even these rocks can sometimes have fissures that may contain water.\n\nOne interesting relationship you can see on maps is the one between river networks and the potential for groundwater. On mudstone, drainage is terrible, leading to most water getting whisked off by rivers before it has the chance to make it to an aquifer. The density of the river network is far higher.\n\nOn a very permeable rock like the chalk here in the U.K., there are far fewer rivers - most of it soaks into the ground and ends up in the chalk aquifer before rivers can form. It's possible to drill wells in the chalk that yield millions of gallons of clean water a day.\n\nHere's a link to an old log of such a well dug in the chalk. It's made of several boreholes, a dug well and a connecting tunnel that they had to lower people down to dig:\n\n_URL_0_", "Wells work by accessing aquifers. Aquifers are not underground lakes, pockets of water, or underground streams. None of those actually exist. Instead, aquifers are usually made of loose or consolidated sand or gravel. There are small spaces (pores) between the grains, like in a box filled with marbles, and water fills these gaps. The pores are connected, which allows the water to flow to areas of lower pressure. Wells are basically holes in the ground, so water flows into them to fill that hole.\n\nHow deep you have to drill a well varies by aquifer. To give an idea of how much they can vary, u/Juanfartez said that the wells in San Antonio were about 640 feet deep, but in the town where I am in western Minnesota, the wells are usually about 80 feet, and the aquifer itself starts at about 20 feet below the surface. \n\nNot all places will have aquifers, because not all types of rock store water and allow it to flow. Clay, for example, stores water pretty well, but it doesn't allow it to flow. You can see this by squeezing a handful of wet clay. Igneous and metamorphic rocks like granite or marble only allow water to flow through fractures in the rock. So while they can be aquifers, they generally aren't very good because they can't hold much.", "I'm trying to diagnose a problem with my well, if anyone here has the knowledge to help, please pm. Thanks.", "Does this work in the deserts? I guess its just deeper there? Costs more to drill/dig? Limited amounts make oasis? ", "Yep. Groundwater depths vary. Some places have shallow groundwater at 3 feet deep, while others are over 50. \n\nPretty much everywhere that has consistent precipitation has groundwater.", "One of the issues about drilling wells is that it will actually destroy the land over time. One of the most notable studied cases is California state's San Joaquin Valley. The industrial farming there is using more water than can be replenished by natural rainfall. This has completely dried out their river for miles on end, one of the longest rivers in the country. It's also removed so much water from underneath the ground, that the actual ground elevation in some places has dropped hundreds of feet. Here's one older article that describes the effects of over-drilling into underground water in that area: _URL_0_", "[This is what happens when you don't call in a proper hydrologist before digging](_URL_0_).\n\nThe contractor ran away to Italy and the landowner is on the hook for the millions it's going to take to fix this.\n", "None of these are really eli5. So, have you ever been to the beach? When the waves go out, there's this smooth dark sand left behind. If you step on that you can see the water get squeezed out of the sand as you put pressure on that spot with your foot. Underground there's a lot of stuff that holds water just like the sand. If you reach the sand with a pump you can suck water out of it.", "Check out the great australian artesian basin. Thats an ancient coast now under ground. Super hot and has lots of pressure", "I often hear that well water Is safe to drink without filtering or chlorination. My question is how? It's not safe to drink strait rain water what makes a well any differant?", "Fun video to add that talks about wells.\n\n[Contamination of wells](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\n", "I live near Bangalore, India and help manage a 200 acre floriculture farm. A lot of farmers rely on groundwater and with monsoon rains failing for the last 8 years has led to borewell depths of 800-900 feet, in some cases, more than 1100 feet. Most are dry.\n\nThere have been instances of farms having to get water tankers every day to keep running.\n\nThe effects of over utilization and global warming are very real and already reaching dangerous levels of scarcity.\n\nThere already instances of riparian states having riots over the allocation of freshwater from the Cauvery river." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://scans.bgs.ac.uk/sobi_scans/boreholes/790558/images/14959295.html" ], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/03/29/california-drought-san-joaquin-valley-sinking-as-farmers-race-to-tap-aquifer/" ], [ "http://www.vancouversun.com/untamed+torrent+well+water+threatens+multi+million+dollar+vancouver+homes/11775190/story.html" ], [], [], [], [ "https://youtu.be/AtJyKiA1vcY" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9irwbv" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Most tribes had their own unique myths but most of these myths shared many common themes. In North America in particular, a common theme is the idea of humans climing out of a dark, shadowy underworld into the earth. In this view life originated in the underworld and at some point for some reason they found their way out, often times by climbing a tree or vien (I cannot remember the explanation as to why they finally found the way out but in many cases thier is a reason). Also in this world view, the world is believed to be in teirs (an underworld, the earth, the heavenly world above them).\n\nAnother common creation myth (particularlly in the North West) was the idea that a creator god formed man out of clay. I can remember one myth in which the creator god did this but that old trickster Coyote distracted god and made him burn the people, they were sent to Africa. God tried again but Coyote made god take them out before they were ready, they were sent to Europe. The ones who came out just right were Native American. (Many creation myths were revised after the arrival of Europeans) \nAnother common theme in these myths were animals with human and spiritual features. \nSorry I could not get into any real detail or provide sources im in a bit of a rush and its been a while since i studied the Native Americans. \n\nMythology is a very interesting subject though, especially cosmology. When studied on various levels these myths reveal all different types of ideas and beliefs that a culture had. Another interesting note is many cultures from across the globe share many similarities in their cosmology. Sometimes its uncanny and it will give you an interesting perspective on human nature.\n\nIf you want to further research this a simple google search will provide you with many native American myths. For the study of mythology and cosmology in gerneral I would recoment the books \"Cosmos and Chaos\" by Norman Cohn or \"The Sacred and the Profain\" by Mercea Eliade" ] }

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