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vblagoje

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lfqa

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{ "a_id": [ "ffvpnk9" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "**TL;DR** - It stemmed from existing social pressures all across Mexico, annexation by the US meant the rest of the South's institutions and the Planters gained super strong influence. Sam Houston was alive in 1861, and was vividly and vibrantly against the Confederate Cause, viewing it as antithetical to what he fought for in the Texas Revolution.\n\nSlavery was not the driving factor for the secession of Texas from Mexico, although it was a social pressure that was present. According to the Texas State Historical Association, in 1836 (the Texas Revolution taking place 1835-1836) the population consisted of about 30,000 Texians, 5,000 Blacks, 3,500 Tejanos, and 14,000 indigenous persons. This makes about 10~11% of the population as Black, a significant majority of whom would be slaves. In 1847, two years after annexation, this ratio becomes about 28~29%. These would be mostly concentrated around the Anglo farming communities in the East and North, which would be politically influential and would become adapted to the Southern way of life in short order.\n\nHowever, to look at the Texas Revolution, we need to go back to the beginning. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West.\n\n(Terminolog: \"Texian(s)\" = White Texan, \"Tejano(s)\" = Mexican Texan, \"Criollo(s)\" = White but born in colonial lands, \"Peninsular(es)\" = White and born in Spain, \"Empresario(s)\" = Colonial contractor hired to bring people)\n\nSanta Anna was of *criollo* origins, privileged as a 'continental' Spaniard (compared to 'peninsular', from Spain proper) under the colonial system. When revolution broke out among the *mestizo* masses, he, like a great many criollos, fought in the name of the Spanish Crown to put it down. His senior officer was a *peninsular*, even more privileged than Santa Anna himself, and during this war he witnessed brutal counterinsurgency tactics such as mass summary executions. This was also some of his first experience fighting Americans, defending Spanish territory from sympathetic American agents. When the Spanish homeland fell into troubles, a royalist officer decided to switch sides with an agreement to establish himself as the emperor of Mexico and guaranteeing the privileges of the peninsulares and criollos, with Santa Anna following his lead from then. Mexico's independence was gained later that year. This first emperor proved to be unpopular with the republican masses that had led revolution in the first place, and he tried to shut down republican efforts by closing the national congress and replacing it with a new institution that served solely him. \n\nHere's where fates turn, for Santa Anna conspired in revolution against this emperor he had once supported - he conspired, at least, for the purpose of restoring the congress. He won, and the emperor abdicated and was sent into exile, only to be executed in 1824 when he returned to Mexico once more.\n\nLater that year, 1824, the First Mexican Constitution was drafted and officialized under President Guadalupe Victoria. Victoria had been part of the revolution since the beginning, and was responsible for establishing diplomatic missions and recognition with his neighbors, as well as abolishing slavery. He resolved the economic crisis facing the nascent country, invested in all sorts of infrastructure, and helped to foster a new national spirit.\n\nVictoria's federal constitution and governance style was well-received in the borderland regions, such as The Sovereign Free State of Coahuila and Texas, or just 'Coahuila y Tejas' if you're pressed for time. These border states, which were underdeveloped and lacking in population that was integrated with Mexican society, were free to govern themselves, and conditional immigration from the United States was encouraged to help fill them out a bit more.\n\nAn early Texian rebellion formed with the Republic of Fredonia, in modern Nacogdoches in Northeast Texas (remember the geography I talked about earlier?). This rebellion was started by one Haden Edwards, an *empresario*, on the land he had himself settled. Nearby Cherokee also joined the rebellion, inspiring a white-and-red flag standing for settlers and natives together. As inspiring as they may sound, Edwards was a bit of a jerk - a Virginian of wealthy stock who tried to invalidate land titles that had already been established in the area granted to him, and rejected the elected captain of his militia (which he created by obligation, as part of his empresario contract) in favor of himself. He called for a new mayoral election, but the established residents claimed that it was rigged and appealed to a higher authority, which overturned it, which Edwards did not agree with. With tensions between established settlers and newer ones rising by the day, Edwards's contract was revoked, and he was expelled from Mexico. Without any compensation for his efforts and personal investments both in time and money, he refused to comply. After the newer brand of settlers began to face a few evictions and arrests, the local government was overthrown, and Edwards looked for support among both his previous settlers and among nearby Cherokee, to whom he promised officialized land titles to a *very significant amount of land* while they had been neglected by the state government. He sent word to other empresarios to try to gather support, but none came. The whole affair was essentially bloodless, though the Cherokee chiefs who had promised support were executed by their fellows as a show of support for Mexico when the time came to reestablish order. \n\nAlthough this was, by all accounts, a fairly minor incident, it also had the impact of a butterfly effect of sorts. The rebellion led to a Mexican federal inquiry into the state of Tejas, which under a different president led to passage of new laws unpopular with just about *everyone*, both the established and the new.\n\nThe election of 1828 was a bit crazy, with the fact of Victoria's resignation in the following year looming over everyone's heads and the direction of the country up in the air. Santa Anna and Lorenzo de Zavala, a figure who will play an important part later in our story, both supported the same candidate. Although Santa Anna was most typically a classic Criollo Conservative, Zavala was a Basque criollo, and his family had for that point been colonial, rather than peninsular, for over a century. Zavala, contrasting to Santa Anna, had been involved heavily with the Mexican Revolution in its early days, and had been among those who drafted the Constitution. For Santa Anna, this is possibly because the candidate in question, Vicente Ramon Guerrero Saldaña, had been a hero of the nation and one of those who ruled interrim between the fall of the empire and the new republic's founding. Moreover, he supported plans to strengthen the Mexican position, such as abolishing the means by which Spain kept trying to invade by invading Cuba. For Zavala, it was clearly his liberal ideology that was a draw. As a fun aside, Guerrero Saldaña was of African descent.\n\nGuerrero Saldaña ultimately fell short, losing the presidency to one Manuel Gomez Pedraza. Pedraza was a criollo, a close friend of the now-dead emperor, and was a royalist during the revolution. Santa Anna did not take his victory well, and organized a rebellion - one which Zavala was forced into joining while the Conservative government plotted against him. Zavala, being based quite close to Mexico City and with some fair amount of support, was able to help turn the tide, and forced Pedraza out. Guerrero Saldaña was appointed in 1829, and instituted sweeping liberal reforms in public education, land title, and re-abolished slavery. After a bit of murmuring, and though Stephen F. Austin seemed to have nothing but praise for Guerrero Saldaña, the Mexican governor of Tejas sent a request to the federal level to allow an exemption for Tejas - Saldaña's own words: \n\n > The serious inconvenience apprehended by the execution of the decree of the 15th of September last, on the subject of abolition of slavery in that department and the fatal results to be expected, prejudicial to the tranquility and even to the political existence of the state, and having considered how necessary it is to protect in an efficacious manner the colonization of these immense lands of the republic, he has been pleased to accede to the solicitation of Your Excellency and declare the department of Texas excepted from the general disposition comprehended in said decree.\n\nIn short, while the emancipation of slaves was a big gesture for him, Guerrero Saldaña exempted Texas because, in his eyes, the effective colonization, development, and economic health of the land came before such a gesture. That he only made such an exemption for Texas is due to the fact that it was a borderland territory surrounded by hostile tribes and had a very small non-native population, and so prioritizing its development and stability had been a long-time goal of the federal government. Though, I must point out that these murmurs were not rebellion-worthy, as Austin wrote:\n\n > I have the satisfaction to inform you that there was never the slightest break in the good order of this colony on account of the decree of September 15, because these inhabitants have placed the most blind confidence in the justice and good faith of the government\n\nWhile slavery had played a significant part in the Texan economy at the time, particularly in the northeast regions, they were not terribly upset and uppity over its abolition, and the people were quite content under Guerrero Saldaña's rule. One reason that the prospect of abolition might not have had as violent a result was that Guerrero Saldaña had promised compensation to former is slaveholders to ease the financial and economic burden that the process would incur both privately and publicly.\n\nSounds great, right? Well, not quite. More to follow in Post Part 2." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fhx2vw5", "fhxbgpv" ], "score": [ 69, 677 ], "text": [ "As a a follow-up question, is there any precedent to a former president being considered for Supreme Court Justice?", "There have been very few Presidents who served in public office after the Presidency. JQA is *by far* the most famous of them, due not only to the mere length of his tenure in the house, but also due to the tenacious reputation that he earned while serving, where he became of the leading voices of abolition within Congress, fighting against the Gag Rule, the annexation of Texas, and participating in the famous legal case concerning the slave ship *Amistad*. He was the only former President to go to the House after, but not to Congress, joined in that by Andrew Johnson, although roughly opposite in terms of honor, Johnson serving a mere few months in the office in 1875 before dying in July of that year, and leaving no legacy to speak of.\n\nThere were a few others who had notable post-presidential political careers in highest level of government though. The next most obvious would be William Howard Taft, who was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by the next Republican, President Harding, in 1921, 9 years after he had failed to win reelection. It is often said that this had always been his true ambition anyways, and it is generally agreed that not only did he *enjoy* his time on the bench a great deal more than in the White House, but also that he was much better at it too, establishing himself as an able and forceful leader of the Court through the 1920s, generally seen as consistently conservative in how he kept the court directed, as well as being a strong advocate for legal reform from Congress, resulting in the creation of the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges and the passage of the Judges' Bill.\n\nThe final former President to highlight would be John Tyler, who I'm going to focus on here because conversely he is the most obscure on this count! After the Presidency he returned home to Virginia, and he did attempt to keep his reputation burnished, but didn't seek major office. With the decline of the Whig party, he began to turn toward the Democrats. In 1860, with deteriorating national situation, he attended the 1860 Democratic Convention, and although he didn't campaign for it, \"entertained the delusion\" that he might perhaps be offered up their Presidential candidate, under the impression that he would provide a unity candidate for the entire south to coalesce around. The odds of this were, in fact, nil, and he in the end became a supporter of Breckenridge, the more hardline candidate, announcing his impression of the situation to be \"*live or die, survive or perish.*\"\n\nNevertheless, he wished not to see the Union perish, even if he feared it might be impossible to avoid, and as the wave of secession began, he was a supporter of the Crittenden Compromise, which had hoped to over a means to ensure slavery had stronger protections to alleviate concerns over Lincoln's election, but of course in the end failed. He continued to try to position himself as a force for compromise, offering to head a conference of the six slave and free states closest to the border, but this too didn't prevent the march to war, even if serving in the Virginia delegation gave him further chance to feel like he was trying. He saw a few other honors in the period though, being picked by Virginia to head a delegation to Pres. Buchanan to discuss the crisis, as well as to later meet with Lincoln on the eve of his inauguration.\n\nHis return to public service continued further with his selection to attend the Virginia convention for secession, where he was considered one of the most honored members, and by that point had shifted to being pro-secession, and by the vote on the 17th, had become one of the vocal proponents, and afterwards gave a public speech comparing their coming struggle to that of their revolutionary forefathers\n\nWith secession a done deal, he finally returned to public office, standing for election to the Confederate Congress, and being chosen by Charles City County to represent them in the House. Congress wouldn't meet until February, 1862, so he spent the intervening months negotiating the official terms for Virginia's entry into the Confederacy, as well as the agreement to move the capital of the wannabe nation to Richmond, from Montgomery. He traveled to Richmond to begin his new position... and died a month before the Congress convened, passing away on January 18th, 1862. In the United States, his passing received perhaps the least notice of any former president, the traitor's death going without comment from Lincoln and the government, while in Virginia, a 150-carriage funeral procession and great mourning accompanied his passing.\n\n**Sources**\n\nBurns, Kevin J. “Chief Justice as Chief Executive: Taft’s Judicial Statesmanship.” *Journal of Supreme Court History* 43, no. 1 (March 2018): 47–68\n\nCrapol, Edward P.. *John Tyler, the Accidental President*. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. \n\nWaldstreicher, David, ed. *A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams*. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013.\n\nETA: Formatting and some clarity" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d22n1sp", "d22pp5g", "d2378wx" ], "score": [ 3, 6, 5 ], "text": [ "Unless you've gained weight, it's because your body has gotten used to it. You're BAC isn't changing.", "The original guy who determined the blood alcohol scale (one of the first doctors who worked as a medical examiner in NYC in the early 20th C) developed it through animal testing, using dogs. He used it to find the minimum level at which the dogs became drunk. However, he did test it to see how tolerance affected drunkenness, and found (as you have noted) that dogs with higher tolerance would behave normally even at higher blood alcohol levels.\n\nSo, BAC is the same no matter how you behave, but becoming accustomed to drinking does affect how BAC makes you behave and affects your organs.\n\nIf you are interested, read The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum -- it's SUPER fascinating. There's also a good PBS documentary about it.", "You still have the same BAC. Your body just learned how to function better at a given BAC. *This is a bad thing.* The reason why more people don't die of alcohol poisoning every year is because long before most of us get a deadly level of alcohol in our blood we pass out or start throwing up (which generally causes us to stop drinking for the night). Keep it up and you'll eventually reach the point where you can have 0.35% blood alcohol and still be walking and talking and arguing with the hospital staff right up until your brain forgets how to tell your body to breathe and you die anyway even though the whole ER is working to save you. Not that I worked in hospitals for 19 years and saw this more than once, mind you. I gave up drinking after the second weekend." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f4r3kgp", "f4r3xca", "f4r63n1", "f4r6u58" ], "score": [ 2, 25, 2, 9 ], "text": [ "the bacteria can produce toxins which are not destroyed by heat from what I read earlier (I think my friend also mentioned this awhile back).", "1) Food poisoning is often caused by the toxins bacteria produce as waste. Heat does not destroy these toxins, so if they have already reached a level that is dangerous to humans cooking does not do any good to prevent illness. \n\n2) Contamination can occur after cooking has ended.", "Bacteria, much like humans, will eat and poop. It’s the bacterial poop that causes most of the problems associated with food poisoning and not the bacteria themselves. And while you can kill the bacteria and the parasites by boiling or baking them, if they were in your food long enough for their poop to build up, the food becomes toxic.", "1) Not all bacteria die in cooking (also depends on cooking type e.g. If it's pressure cooked or not) and they survive as a spore such as clostridium perfringens and bacillis cereus.\n\n2) some bacteria produce heat stable toxins that cause food poisoning regardless if the bacteria themselves are dead after. Such as staph aureus.\n\n3) some bacteria survive due to insufficient cooking such as salmonella and Vibrio parahaemolyticus.\n\n4) some contaminations happen after cooking. Such as when you cut the raw meat with a knife then use it to cut the cooked meat without proper washing or when kebab shops keep the shaved off meat in a dish for hours and hours out in the open getting splashed by contaminants.\n\nThat's all I can think of now, but I'm sure there are other mechanisms (also I only talked about bacteria here)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1d15ve", "c1d376x", "c1d5xw9" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I don't see why not. There are lots of species that exhibit extreme [sexual dimorphism](_URL_1_), or where one sex is radically different than the other.\n\nedit: in a totally unrelated note, after reading the article, TIL that there is a evolutionary biology theory called the [sexy son hypothesis](_URL_0_)", "It's hard to believe that cases of extreme sexually dimorphic size differences -- with accompanying difference in brain sizes -- don't have an effect on degree of sapience.\n\nThe [blanket octopus](_URL_1_), for example, has a female 2 meters long and a male just 1% of that. Same with [anglerfish](_URL_0_), as mentioned.\n\nUnrelated bonus quote: *The males have a specially modified third right arm which stores sperm, known as a hectocotylus. During mating, this arm detaches itself and crawls into the mantle of the female to fertilize her eggs.*", "If *undirected* selection/modification is done to decrease intelligence in one sex, it will dumb down the species.\n\nDirected evolution or engineering is another matter. Single sex-specific gene modification may be sufficient, as long as the gene is affecting general brain development. Say, if you like your men normal but women mentally below-average and quadrupedal, you can insert functional wild-type copy of VLDLR gene on Y chromosome and make sure other, autosomal copies are mutated just so:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism" ], [ "http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanket_octopus" ], [ "http://www.pnas.org/content/105/11/4232.abstract", "http://anthropology.net/2008/03/14/mutatons-in-vldlr-gene-in-the-quadrupeds-from-turkey/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dcqilvn", "dcqtm5v" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "when your guts are 'more empty' what they are filled with, instead of a semi-solid mass (food), is gas and liquid. This gurgles more noisily when your intestines engage in peristalsis, a coordinated movement of the muscles that line them, in order to stir up and progress their contents.", "Did you know there is a word for your tummy rumbles? A single one is called a borborygmus, and borborygmi in the plural form. \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cq8h0ax", "cq8h0xt", "cq8h4ie", "cq8hbxh", "cq8hzju" ], "score": [ 13, 9, 2, 3, 7 ], "text": [ "Toyota builds good cars that last long enough to make it to the used market and get bought by these groups ", "Older model toyotas are just really tough. Drive out into rural areas almost anywhere (even developed countries like the US) and you'll find tons of them still in working order.", "Mainly like in instances of the super bowl by example. They make clothi NH for both teams for whatever one wins. Whichever team didn't win, their merchandise is sent to Africa and shite. And as @phcullen said, the end up in the used market", "They are not \"making old models and selling them\" there. Those are old trucks that have lasted long enough that they are sold by their original owners (and likely several others ) until they are eventually shipped over seas and sold. ", "Globally there are quite a few exporters who resell older but still serviceable vehicles to African countries. My mum literally got an e mail from a Nigerian who found her name card in her car. \n \nI'm not sure if he was a prince though. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4e2zzc", "d4e3n4c", "d4egfs2" ], "score": [ 7, 43, 10 ], "text": [ "Wait wtf this is really a thing???", "_URL_0_\n\nExcellent article that gives more detail:\n\n* Everyone uses it, and want to keep to one brand, so someone in better times gets used to using Tide, all of a sudden can't afford it, either steals or buys it on the black market, rather than buying something cheap.\n\n* Since everyone uses it and sales volumes are huge, most stores weren't locking it up at all, and there are literally hundreds of bottles for the taking, so easy target for thieves. \n\n* It's all but untraceable once stolen. No serial numbers or databases like phones, car stereos, or TVs.\n", "Because when you're high you have a nearly 100% chance to forget that you ran out of laundry detergent. Drug dealers love it when you drop by with a few scoops or even a whole box.\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/#print" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkp1kac", "dkp3ykh", "dkp59hp" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "From what I've heard gnats like to lay eggs in the eyes of animals. (Warm, wet, eggs stick easily) and that's why they do it. Could be wrong though.", "Selection bias. You see out of your eyes, so of course you're going to notice bugs near your eyes moreso than bugs, say, near your ankles.", "Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5:Bugs in my eyes, ears. ](_URL_3_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do flies/small bugs seem to buzz around faces more than other body parts? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do flies or other insects fly specifically around your head? ](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do flies fly at my face? ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do flys buzz around our heads? Surely they could be out looking for food or doing other shit. ](_URL_1_)\n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ej1p7/eli5_why_do_fliessmall_bugs_seem_to_buzz_around/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12ufo3/eli5_why_do_flys_buzz_around_our_heads_surely/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b84w5/eli5_why_do_flies_fly_at_my_face/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bm90x/eli5bugs_in_my_eyes_ears/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iz0e7/eli5_why_do_flies_or_other_insects_fly/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e0n7ldv", "e0niwq9" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Most likely because of higher thermal conductivity.\n\nWhen water evaporates, it cools, which makes it less likely to evaporate. On ceramic, the material can transfer heat back into the now cooler water faster, but in plastic it can't, so the water has to wait longer to get enough thermal energy to fully evaporate.", "Evaporation happens at the water/air surface, far away from the material the water has contact with. A different surface can influence how a drop of water shrinks, which has a small effect on the surface tension, but I would be surprised if that is relevant. The different thermal conductivity is a more interesting point." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2eq0uu" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Because taste is a function of smell. It isnt the taste that transfers, it is the scent which you interpret as flavour. Strong smells are caused by particles in the air and they can adhere to other foods easily. For instance, put some strong soap next to some light flavoured food and you will have soapy tasting food. It is not the flavour of the soap, but the smell you are tasting." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ebwfcwc", "ebwhcab" ], "score": [ 32, 142 ], "text": [ "While not answering your question, /u/DubiousMerchant had a [great response on another thread about Kowloon Walled City](_URL_0_) and referenced some source material that may answer your question.", "In 1842, when the British won the First Opium War, they had China over a barrel and could set their own terms for surrender. One of the terms of the Treaty of Nanking was that Hong Kong would be ceded in perpetuity. The whole reason Hong Kong mattered at all was as a natural deep draft harbour, and the treaty reflected this - only Hong Kong Island itself was mentioned. \nIn 1858, realizing that their needs were growing, Britain leased Kowloon up to Boundary Street, and in 1860 the Convention of Peking made the lease permanent. \nAs Hong Kong grew, so did the need for land - and meanwhile the British position of power had weakened. in 1898, Britain leased the New Territories for 99 years. Dealing from a slightly stronger position meant China was able to get another small concession - a small military outpost - a fortified village, really - was excluded from the lease. \nFrom 1899 to 1945, the KWC was almost empty and treated no differently from any other part of Hong Kong, but in 1945 China re-asserted its rights to it. Squatters and refugees pored in, and after a brief confusion the infamous \"anarchist enclave\" was established. China was nominally in control, but generally only cared about the KWC for political gain and negotiation. \nAs the end of the 99-year lease drew closer, Britain and China entered into negotiations - starting in 1982 - to see what would happen when it came to an end. By 1985 it was clear that the end of the lease would mean Hong Kong was returned to China - which made the KWC unnecessary as a negotiating chip. Between 1987 and 1992, the 33 000 residents of the KWC were relocated, and in 1993 it was demolished - replaced by a memorial park.\n\nSources: \n\n* Girard & Lambot - City of Darkness\n* Pullinger - Crack in the Wall & Chasing the Dragon\n* Portisch - Kowloon Walled City\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5m60ul/what_was_life_like_inside_the_kowloon_walled_city/dc1kqqp/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctfbgnr", "ctfd859" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "There used to be malaria (plasmodium parasite) in the southeastern US states. In the 20th century the government worked to eradicate malaria by draining mosquito breeding sites, killing the larvae, using DDT on the walls of houses, providing people with mosquito nets etc. Malaria must be transmitted to the mosquito from a human host, and through their effort it was eventually eliminated.\n\ne: [There are the right type of mosquito \\(anopheles\\) for transmitting malaria still in the US](_URL_0_) ", "Fun additional fact: we do still massively kill mosquitoes because of their disease-carrying habits. Many cities have spray trucks, which are basically pickup trucks with a spray gun on the back that disperse a mosquito killing fog. I used to see them at night in Savannah, Ga. (a swampy, coastal area, very humid and hot). Officials say the chemicals sprayed are only dangerous to adult mosquitoes, and safe for people and pets, but I wouldn't chance it. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7w6ymj", "c7w7e2t", "c7wbnx5", "c7wcn1w", "c7wgk9z", "c7wgz7r" ], "score": [ 29, 228, 22, 11, 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Einstein didn't have a cosmological principal. That article falsely attributes it to him.", "The CP is that the universe is homogenous in every direction and there's no privileged point. Any extremely large structure would violate that principle because it's clearly different than the rest of the universe\n\nOn the humongous scale of the unverse, imagine the galaxies spread out like static on a mistuned TV. Pick a spot, how would you explain to another person, relative to the features on the image, where that spot is? It would be impossible, however if there's a cluster of white dots (galaxies) around the lower left corner, you could describe the spot's location relative to that location. \n\nNot sure the find is big enough to violate the CP. It's not 100% exact, but close as you can see here: _URL_0_", "This a bit of a different question: if this LQG is 4 billion light years across, how much of it is actually quasars? Is it just a region of space that has something like 5% more average-quasar-per-volume than other regions of space, or is it an actual clump of quasar, like a galaxy cluster but larger? \n\nI mean, with a size that large there aren't just trillions upon trillions of quasars just sitting there, right?", "they explain it in the article...\n\nThe principle says that from a wide enough view the universe should look uniform. The stars should look evenly distributed.\n\nWith a 4 billion light year wide object in one location the universe no longer looks uniform. It has a gigantic blotch of stars in one spot.", "I don't see this in here, so if someone could also help me understand: how did we not see this thing before? What was preventing its detection previously? I only know enough astronomy to know how little I know, so I appreciate the help.", "I may not understand fully, but considering how far back in time you are looking to observe this and given the smaller size of the universe back then, wouldn't it make sense for structures to be closer together as they haven't spread out yet? Or even that such a structure doesn't exist now due to its huge size and has broken up or collapsed already\n" ] }

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[ "http://planetsave.com/2013/01/13/biggest-structure-in-the-universe-found-large-quasar-group-of-an-incredible-scale/" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/universe.gif" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "easudjn" ], "score": [ 59 ], "text": [ "Oh boy, one that I can actually answer! I will try to be thorough enough for this sub's standards. For the record, I have a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology, my thesis was written on in-group/out-group formation through auditory processing, and I specialize in adolescent Bipolar Disorder and ADHD. I also have a BSN and am certified as a Psychiatric Nurse.\n\nSo, to briefly answer your question before I explain: Yes, Freud's ideas on hyper-sexualization (and honestly most of his ideas on sexual development and sexuality in general) are considered incredibly outdated and not terribly scientific^1. In fact, Karl Popper (who is regarded by many as the progenitor of modern scientific thought/philosophy) famously used Freud as an example of pseudoscience in his work *Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge*^2 (Popper essentially considered most of Freud's theories to be the pinnacle of pseudoscience, since many of them could not be falsified).\n\nHowever, Freud remains influential to this day for several reasons. First I will explain his impact on modern psychotherapy and psychological/psychiatric science. Then I will discuss why he is such an important historical figure for the fields of psychology and psychiatry. As /u/stev0supreemo mentioned, Freud has also been studied heavily in a literary context, but I'm not as familiar with that area so I won't touch on it too much.\n\nSo, Freud's ideas are, as previously discussed, absolutely insane by modern standards. A lot of it seems like he just made it up himself based on what he saw and thought, and there is definitely some truth to that^3. Im not even going to go into the Oedipus Complex or his stages of psychosexual development because... well because I don't want to. Much of Freud's early work focuses on far more than sexuality and the unconscious mind, and he was actually one of the earliest people to correctly dismiss lack of oxygen during birth as a primary cause of cerebral palsy. However, Freud's biggest contributions that still remain today are most relevant to the practice of psychotherapy and our understanding of unconscious drives. Freud identified, described, and/or synthesized quite a few phenomena of which many are scientifically testable and still widely taught today. Among these are words you're no doubt familiar with: Id, Ego, and Superego (these are...less testable), Libido, Repression, Transference, Countertransference, Projection, and many more. His work on the unconscious and dreams is really hit or miss in terms of scientific validity and empirical support, but there are some aspects that are testable and have been supported by evidence (e.g. he proposed that particular traumatic events or life stressors could manifest themselves in dreams, and there is considerable empirical support for this idea though not necessarily for the deeper interpretation of those dreams)^4. I'll touch a little more on this in the section where I talk about his historical significance.\n\nHis biggest contribution to psychotherapy was probably his advocacy for psychodynamic therapy. He specifically championed a type of therapy called Psychoanalysis that is still practiced today, but psychodynamic therapy is the more general practice of talking to patients, forming a dialogue, listening to them, and helping them work through their issues. I know this seems like a no-brainer now, but back then it was pretty revolutionary (I mean, why would you talk to a crazy person?). There are arguably others who \"invented\" this therapy, and I will leave that debate for more qualified historians (read: actual historians) than I, but Freud undoubtedly popularized the method. He also provided the basis for what many consider the prototypical \"therapist-patient\" relationship, with practices such as trying to remain objective and not judge the patient, maintaining confidentiality (though he was less than stellar on this front), and providing analysis and recommendations where appropriate. The details of modern psychoanalytic practice and how the current practice differs from his original work is way too complicated for a single post (and I was trained in different methods), but a lot of his original techniques were the original basis for modern psychotherapy of all disciplines.\n\nSo to summarize, again, Freud's theories, ideas, and his techniques vary wildly in terms of how well they stand up to scientific and philosophical scrutiny, but they undoubtedly had a massive impact on how psychology and psychiatry are practiced today.\n\nHowever, in my personal opinion (which is shared by others, like Ernest Jones^5 and David Eagleman^6) is that Freud's true impact is a historical one. That is to say: Freud was a freaking *rock star* in his day. Psychiatry was a well established field by the time Freud came around, and Freud didn't invent the concept of psychotherapy, but Freud brought psychology into the mainstream. He gave lectures at universities around the world, he promoted his ideas and his works in sold-out talks. He was invited to speak and participate in events and research in almost every relevant scientific area. His work was so popular that it radically changed the fields of psychiatry and psychology forever. People devoted their lives to either proving his theories or to disproving them (Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Alfred Adler essentially founded their entire fields of work on disagreeing with Freud). The idea that the unconscious mind is the primary driver of human behavior (rather than the conscious mind, which Freud believed was important but only a small part of the human psyche) was not a new one, but it was not a mainstream idea until Freud made it so with his works, such as *The Interpretation of Dreams* (1899) and in *Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious* (1905). This idea touched a huge variety of fields, including criminal justice (can criminals really be responsible for impulsive acts if our unconscious is so influential?), philosophy (how much agency do humans really have?), medicine, and more. His works were (and are) dense and honestly written with an air of authority and certainty that is totally in contrast to how we would expect modern scientists to present their findings. But Freud’s *ideas* were accessible to the common man, and they seem to make sense on a basic level. Freud was certain of his theories, and was famously bad at taking criticism (When somebody pointed out that Freud’s beloved cigars were a bit phallic, he replied, “*sometimes a cigar is just a cigar*”). But his charisma, confidence, and authority sold a lot of people, and his popularity overshadowed almost all of his contemporaries. Like I said, he was a rock star, and without him, I don’t think psychology would look anything like what it is today, for better or for worse.\n\nSources:\n\n1. Grünbaum, A. The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique. University of California Press, 1984, pp. 97–126.\n\n2. Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963, pp. 33–39\n\n3. MacKinnon, Donald W.; Dukes, William F. (1962). Postman, Leo, ed. Psychology in the Making: Histories of Selected Research Problems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 663, 703\n\n4. Stevens, R. *Freud and Psychoanalysis* Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1985 p. 96: \"the number of relevant studies runs into thousands\".\n\n5. Jones, Ernest. Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, vol. 1. London: Hogarth Press, 1953, pp. 94–96.\n\n6. Eagleman, David Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011, pp. 17\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e0378v5", "e03myt6", "e03q039", "e03vorz", "e0404rn", "e042s1o", "e046e51", "e047aln", "e0504ei" ], "score": [ 4528, 35, 4, 22, 81, 56, 5, 19, 3 ], "text": [ "The current level of activity is normal. On average, there are usually ~20 volcanoes in some stage of erupting at any given time. The recent news worthy eruptions (e.g. Hawaii and the recent one in Guatemala) are not connected. So the short answer it's just the coverage and/or the fact that these two eruptions are happening in populated places and that both are being filmed a lot by locals (mostly safely in the case of Hawaii and **really** unsafely in the case of the Guatemalan eruption, you should never be as close to a pyroclastic flow as some of the people shooting video are). As for the rates, couldn't find any particularly good plots, but you can check out [the smithsonian](_URL_0_) weekly eruption report to 1) get a sense that there are lots of eruptions going on that aren't making the news and 2) if you go back into the archives, which span ~18 years, you can get a somewhat qualitative sense that this number of currently erupting volcanoes isn't particularly odd. As a side note, this is not quite real time, so this is the summary for last week so it doesn't yet include the eruption in Guatemala.", "It’s not so much that there’s more ‘recently’ it’s that pretty much everyone has got a camera in their hands at any given moment. I think some of the pyroclastic flows have dedicated web cameras and live streams (especially the Hawaii ones) the technological/digital age is a heck of a time to be alive.", "Most of the eruptions are along the Ring of Fire and it does appear of the last decade there have been more eruptions above sea level than in several centuries. Our experience of “lately” though is minuscule in comparison to millions of years of activity. ", "\"Are they somehow connected or is it a coincidence?\"\n\nThe Hawaiian situation is completely unrelated to the Guatemalan situation. Guatemala is a point along the \"Ring of Fire,\" a system of seams at the edges of several tectonic plates, which are in a perpetual state of physical conflict. Whether it's in the news or not, there is really never a day of perfect peace in that gargantuan horseshoe of natural terror. Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Alaska, the San Andreas fault in California, the chain of volcanoes in Central America, down to Chile. It's rare for somebody NOT to be under present duress along that route on any given day.\n\nKilauea, on the other hand, is a weird hot spot in the dead center of one of earth's biggest oceanic plates, arising from completely different forces deep in the earth, acting upon the central part of the plate from below. Unlike what's happening underneath Guatemala, where the eruptions are the result of the relative movements of different plates. So there's no relationship whatsoever. ", "There's this emergency website, you can monitor all sorts of stuff going on in real time. There's tons of small earthquakes (rarely more than 2.5 on the scale), volcano eruptions, lots of fires, small airplane crashes and other similar stuff going every single day. It's normal. \n\n_URL_0_", "It is worth noting that the current eruptions at Kīlauea in Hawaii and Fuego in Guatemala are nothing new. Kīlauea has been in a constant state of eruption since Jan. 1983. More than 35 years. A few weeks ago a dike intruded further east into the Lower East Rift Zone, causing the fissure eruptions that have been so much in the news. It’s been a long time since Kīlauea burnt down any houses, but as soon as it does it suddenly gets media attention and a lot of people think it’s a new eruption when in fact it’s just another phase of the activity that started in 1983 - just at a new vent location. \n\nVolcan Fuego too has been in a frequent state of eruption for years now, with frequent Strombolian activity and often sending lava flows down the various arroyos descending around the summit. Only when it enters a more explosive phase, producing pyroclastic density currents that kill people, does it make the news. Thus further adding to the general impression that there has been an increase in volcanic activity world-wide, when in fact this is not true. ", "Social media. Time was it took days to find out the salient details on even the most horrific occurrences around the globe. \n\nNow I can receive real time videos of solar flares while checking on my house temperature from a continent away while reading a play by play twitter stream of 8 different sports. ", "as others have said, your planet is much more active than you realize. \n\nCheck [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) if you want to see real\\-time statuses of earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. \n\nVery neat to visualize your planet's activity in near real time right in front of you :\\)", "Coming from Costa Rica, I know volcanoes just go to sleep amd wake up regularly. These last few eruptions in Hawaii and Guatemala are just been covered by the media more but Costa Rica had a Volcano a few years ago erupt every night. I am sure around the world there are other very active volcanoes so this can be seen normal." ] }

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[ [ "http://volcano.si.edu/reports_weekly.cfm" ], [], [], [], [ "http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php" ], [], [], [ "http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c549xag", "c54av4x", "c54b2vx" ], "score": [ 4, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "Why do? The main advantages of [Gorilla Glass](_URL_1_) are resistance to scratching and shattering, which aren't typical problems for cutting boards.\n\nCutting boards made of [Pyrex](_URL_0_), a different kind of glass, are very common.", "Hard surfaces like glass ruin the edge on knives. Cutting boards are wood and plastic to allow better and faster chopping and slicing motions while avoiding bending of the blade edge.\n\nDon't use glass (or stone or ceramic or anything hard) cutting boards.", "Gorilla glass is either harder than the knife, which will damage the knife, or the knife will be harder than the gorilla glass, in which case it will scratch the glass." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "ccm37q7", "ccm37y7", "ccm39el", "ccm39pa", "ccm3bht", "ccm3bpd", "ccm3nld", "ccm3qwt", "ccm4fl5", "ccm4hze", "ccm4jja", "ccm4jje", "ccm4p4z", "ccm56fn", "ccm592t", "ccm5ckg", "ccm5i8d", "ccm5mqq", "ccm5yge", "ccm718q", "ccme6do" ], "score": [ 18, 2, 2, 61, 7, 23, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 14, 6, 3, 6, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "So they don't have to carry cash. ", "Because it is much harder to steal than cash", "It is easier to use a credit card than it is to pay something with cash, especially if you are buying something expensive.", "It makes more sense for rich people to have them. They can afford to hit all their payments. Credit cards aren't supposed to be for buying shit you can't afford.", "It's often quicker and they can buy things on the internet.\n\nAlso, credit cards often provide some sort of consumer protection that cash/checks/debit cards do not.\n\nCredit cards are more than just credit; it's an alternate means of paying for things.", "Aside from everyone's correct answer of it being easier than cash, high-limit cards also have rewards programs such as airline miles. Since they can afford it anyway and often pay off the debt without accruing interest, its basically airfare for the cost of the monthly fee. If you don't use it enough and reach the point where the monthly fee is less than the rewards you're getting, you're essentially losing money. ", "Building credit history. Every 5 and 10 years it basically gets wiped clean and yet it is important to have it to buy a lot of items and get loans. Rich people still need to take out loans, but they do it for a clear advantage. Try getting a larger loan without credit and you are screwed. However, credit cards build credit quickly. ", "Convenience, rewards and risk. Others have spoken about rewards and convenience already, so I won't repeat that. As to risk, if your debit card is compromised, you are out the money and may bounce checks until it's all fixed which can be extremely inconvenient to say the least. With a credit card you don't have that exposure, as the cc co. is fronting the money. If you have overdraft into savings, the debit card risk issue is magnified. \n\nedit: speling", "Credit cards aren't just for rich people. I'm living paycheque to paycheque but still have one. As long as you pay your bills on time you pay nothing extra and it's a great way to build your credit. Further more many credit cards come with perks.\n\nEvery dollar I spend on my credit card gets me a point that I can put towards a free trip to the theatre. Because of that I put EVERYTHING on my credit card, once pay day comes around my entire cheque goes to pay off my credit card. Not only do I have a good credit score, I also have 6 free movies saved up.\n\nedit: Also no annual or monthly fees, and with a credit limit of $5000 if an emergency every occurs I'll have the money available to cover it, even if it means having to pay interest if I can't pay it off on time.", "Regular use of a credit card helps establish credit worthiness enabling one to borrow large amounts of money in the future (like a mortgage). One can also get discounts / bonuses for using a card regularly (like 1-3% cash back for using it or obtain air miles). Sometimes people don't keep all of their money in a checking or savings account so having a credit card with a high limit allows you to not worry about how much you have in the bank. \nTldr - credit history, discounts, less stress.", "Here's the deal. If you buy something with some one else's money but pay it off before you have to pay interest. you can hang on to your money for 30 extra days earning one month of extra interest in your bank account.\nAlso many credit cards offer rewards and with large purchases this can be quite great", "There are a lot of reasons why a rich person would use a credit card over a debit card. Off the top of my head:\n\n1. Float: Rich people don't keep cash laying around in a checking account. Aside from a coffee can buried in your back yard it is the worst place for you to keep your money. You get rich by letting your capital appreciate in interest bearing accounts/securities. A credit card lets you buy things that you want and then delay payment until the end of the grace period, all the while letting your cash accumulate interest until the AMEX bill is due. \n\n2. Business Expenses: Most rich people inevitably will have to put a business expense on their personal card. If you have a good credit card this is actually a great thing. You put large business expenses (first-class airfare, 5 star hotel, expensive client dinner/drinks) on your personal card, and then submit them (not yourself, lol, but your executive assistant does) to get reimbursed by your company. If you put it on your debit card you are essentially loaning money to your company until they pay you back a week or two later. If you put it on your credit card then you get all the rewards points for yourself and you never have to dedicate any of the cash in your bank account to the expense. I know a lot of people who work this system quite well. If you travel for work you can rig the system so much that you almost never have to pay for personal travel ever again.\n\n3. Rewards: If you are rich and you travel then you can appreciate all of the perks and upgrades that come from using an exclusive rewards program on your credit card. Most rich people you see flying in first class or staying in luxury suites didn't pay for it themselves; rather, they got upgraded for free because they were a member of the AMEX Centurian Club or some other program...and with how common point #2 is, they probably used other people's money to build up all those points in the first place. Sometimes the best part about being rich is that the richer you get the less often people require you to use your own money to buy cool stuff. \n\n4. Prestige: Because there is something very satisfying about observing that snooty shop attendant rapidly change their behaviour the moment they catch a glimpse of the black card. ", "We are by no means what you would call rich but my wife and I have enough to live our lives. We use the AMEX for everything that we can and pay it off at the end of the month. Amex offers 1%,2%3% and 4% cash back on different purchases. At the the end of the year we get that money back to do with it what we please. Its like getting free money but it doesnt work if you carry a balance. Only if you pay it off every month. ", "Rich people tend to use credit cards for a few reasons. One reason is because some credit cards offer rewards, such as cash back, flight points and even concierge services.\nAnother reason is because not all rich people have all their money available to them at one time. Imagine if someone with a net worth of 2 million dollars has to make a purchase of 15k. There is a good chance well over half of that money is in stocks, bonds, or some other non-liquid asset. Another good amount is going to be in savings. So when they need that much money, instead of taking a traditional loan out, they can use a credit card and take a month to shuffle money around. This is true for many people, I believe. Also, there is a time value of money, and many rich people can take a month to let some of their money grow and not lose it right then and there.", "Appreciate the comments everyone. You have certainly given me deeper insight on the true purpose and proper usage of a credit. Also gives me a much grimmer view of credit card companies who pitch cards at people who obviously should not be using them{ like college students..}.", "Credit is about the borrowing of time. When you use a credit card, you are using funds that (at that time) do not belong to you. You in turn have made a promise to the creditor that you will repay said monies at a another point in time.\n\nNow, if someone had the means (money) to buy an item, why would they use credit? It all comes down to time -- and more importantly, what else could be accomplished during a span of time. \n\nLet's say I have 100$. I could go out and buy some whizbang product for 100$, thus leaving me with 0. Or, I could use a credit card, which - for that moment - meant I had both 100$ in my pocket and my new whizbang product. Now, if I do nothing with my 100$ and my bill comes do for credit - I pay my bill and have 0$ in my pocket. It's no different than buying it outright, I just pushed the time where I had 0$ in my pocket back let's say 30 days. This doesn't really do much for me in of itself, but does allow me to do other things with my 100$ (if I am wise) that could leave me in a better position 30 days later. \n\nNow in the context of \"rich\" people, having money sit idle (like my 100$ above) is a pretty big no no. Since credit numbers are usually fixed - the terms of when bills are due, the charges (interest rate) on things, etc - they are easy to account for when planning. So, if I know that I have 30 days to pay off the 100$ credit I used, I could - in theory - use my 100$ to make more money right now and 30 days later, have a balance > 0 in my pocket. If I invested 100$ in something with a return > 0$ (or, a return > the interest rate charged per month on my card balance) I would be making money rather than having a zero-sum game at the end of each turn. \n\nThe problem is (generally) folks aren't using credit cards correctly. They spend the 100$ in their pocket as well as buying the whizbang item. They then pay the credit card companies money every month, slowly paying off the whizbang. Much of our economy and viewpoint on credit revolves around this ideal now, which is sad.\n\n", "For the wealthy who pay off cards before accruing interest, it's essentially free money. Buy $10,000 worth of crap through the month, pay everything off before they charge interest, earn miles and cash back and any perks associated with a shiny American Express card without paying a penny more than the cost of what you purchased.m", "there are three potential benefits to owning a credit card:\n\n**1** up to one month interest-free loans\nyou get billed every thirty days and only if you don't pay off your card in full will you be charged interest on the balance you carry over. you can easily purchase an item and pay for it only i.e. twenty days later. this in return saves you from having to spend money you might not want to cash out (i.e. selling stocks) or are wishing to use otherwise until payment date. a loan from a bank costs money, a loan from the credit card company **can** be free — it can even pay you if you factor in the rate of inflation, meaning the item will cost less in a month than it does today simply because of the inflation rate devaluing money in the meantime. money from the checking card on the other hand is gone instantly.\n\n**2** not carrying cash means it's replaceable. your card gets stolen? you lost your wallet? with a credit card you can just get another. cash is gone forever. you can also dispute credit card charges, giving you another shot if you get i.e. ripped off.\n\n**3** certain cards have valuable extras\nmore upscale cards like certain amex offers come with access to concierges, carry insurance or hotel benefits. you could look up the individual benefits if you were so inclined but they can be worth actual money. you can earn a lot of miles and gain instant access to lounges with some cards. it's a simple cost-benefit analysis. the card costs me $500 but last year I spent $800 on those items? of course I get one. \n\ncheck out what this card offers:\n_URL_0_\n\n*The card, available for personal and business use, offers services such as a dedicated concierge and travel agent, complimentary, companion airline tickets on international flights on selected airlines with the purchase of a full-fare ticket, personal shoppers at retailers such as Gucci, Escada, and Saks Fifth Avenue, access to airport clubs, first-class flight upgrades, membership in Sony's Cierge personal shopping program and dozens of other elite club memberships.[2] Hotel benefits include one free night, when at least one paid night is booked during the same stay, in every Mandarin Oriental hotel worldwide once a year[2] (except for the New York City property),[7] and privileges at hotel chains like Ritz-Carlton, Leading Hotels of the World, and Amanresorts. All of the benefits mentioned above are for United States-issued cards. American Express Centurion Cards issued in other countries may include different benefits. The card has recently added new amenities, including access into the Gulfstream Aerospace Private Flyers Club, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Gold, as well as US Airways Platinum Preferred and Delta SkyMiles Platinum Medallion status. In 2007, American Airlines Admirals Club access was added to the list of amenities.[8] As of 2010, the card provided unlimited access to all US Airways Clubs regardless which carrier the cardmember is traveling on (unlike Delta, and American)[citation needed]. The card also features complimentary enrollment in Hertz Rent-A-Car #1 Club Gold and the Avis Rent-A-Car President's Club.[9]\nThe titanium-crafted \"Centurion\" card was first issued as an upgrade for all plastic U.S. \"Centurion\" cards in the first half of 2006, with the titanium version being rolled out to certain other countries as well.\nSome Centurion customers have purchased Bentley automobiles using the card or made purchases exceeding €1 million. The card has no limit; the largest purchase supposedly ever made on it exceeded $52 million for a private jet by Victor Shvetsky.[2]*", "Simply, rewards. I generally run about 2k/mo through my main card, and can generally average at least 2% of that as cash back, its even more if I don't cash the points in and transfer them over to airline miles or hotel points. So, thats conservatively $40/mo of free money. If I transfer those points to my SW rapid rewards account, I can almost get a free one way ticket every month. \n\nI'm not rich, and I pay for all my purchases with credit cards. Credit cards aren't meant for buying things you cant afford, they're meant for buying everyday things while increasing purchasing power. I can spend someone else's money all month and leave mine sitting in the bank. If I have a bad week at work I don't have to scrape buy waiting to make it up. I can continue living as normal and have three weeks to get a nice fat over-time check thats bound to come. \n\nAlso, try disputing fraud charges on a debit card. The bank doesnt really give a shit because its not their money. Amex will jump through hoops if you call them with a dispute. \n\nTL;DR: Pay off your shit every month and get free money. ", "I'm by no means rich, but I manage my money pretty well. I have a credit card for the rewards and the great security features, which I imagine is nice for the rich as well. 1% to 5% cash back and theft protection/peace of mind. If I make a purchase and I have a problem with it (Macmall sold me a broken macbook pro and wouldn't take it back) the CC company will fight it for me. As long as I pay my bill in full each month I don't get hit with any interest charges and all. On top of all that both my visa and discover cars have cash back rewards programs. This period chase gives me 5% cash back on amazon purchases and select department stores. They'll either send me a check for the money (over $20) or I can put it towards my bill. Those would be my reasons to have a card even if I was rich. ", "Next ELI5: Why do credit cards give rewards, cash back, etc. instead of costing less in fees here and there?" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "e8rn05c" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "The short answer to this question is that different Slavic groups were not seen as equal in the eyes of Nazi leaders. However, this was largely due to necessity and logistics rather than true, unabashed ideology, especially as the Second World War progressed. Due to the nature of my expertise, the following answer will be focused on German interactions with Czechs. Despite the exclusion of an in-depth discussion of German interactions with other Slavic groups, I believe Nazi policy towards Czechs and Sudeten-Germans within the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to be the perfect example of the belief that some Slavs could be treated differently or \"better\" by the Reich.\n\nOne thing that should be noted at the start of this, is that even ethnic Germans outside of the borders of Germany-proper were often ostracized by Nazi occupation. Most Sudeten-Germans especially had a particular identity that did not seek to build connection with other Germans in Austria or Germany, but rather sought to create a unique identity that was tied to the natural landscape of the Sudetenland specifically. This was supported by \"Heimat,\" or \"homeland\" groups, which heavily attempted to spacialize Sudeten-German nationalism. Heimat lead hiking and excursion clubs, as well as natural history and preservation groups \"nurtured the idea that [Sudeten] German achievements were inscribed in the [Sudetenland's] landscape” (Glassheim, *Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands*, 27). Heimat activists especially sought to build this identity especially in opposition to a Czech identity that was supposedly based on \"modernity\" and industry, as well as “alienation from the soil, denationalization, and godless socialism” (Glassheim, *Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands,* 33). \n\nWith this being noted, as I've mentioned in [other answers](_URL_1_), Sudeten-German nationalist parties, such as the Sudetendeutsche Partei, were decidedly Pro-Reich, but this does not mean that the Sudeten-German identity was not one completely unique of a wider Pan-German identity that the Reich desired to create. Additionally, historian Tara Zahra has done great work in showing that most of those who lived in interwar Czechoslovakia, both German and Czech, were often more anational, and the lines between what constituted a \"German\" and what constituted a \"Czech\" were often blurred, with many being able to speak both languages, as well as widespread \"mixed\" marriages. This uncertainty of exact ethnicity within Czechoslovakia is especially pertinent for understanding the absurdity of Nazi racial policy within the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the Second World War, as Nazi policy wished to enforce strict racial policies in a place where ethnicity had characteristically been uncertain. \n\nOn the topic of resistance to occupation: many Czech patriots had been disheartened by former President Beneš's capitulation to the Munich Decree in 1938, and Czech Communists had been absolutely mortified by Stalin's signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (a metaphorical deal with the Devil [Hitler] in the eyes of Czech Communists). These facts, combined with the lack of a tradition with armed resistance or partisan warfare among the Czechs (as opposed, for example, to the Yugoslavs), meant that Czechs practiced traditional, open resistance against Nazi occupation comparatively less than other occupied Slavic groups. Where Czech resentment existed, it was usually directed at Sudeten-Germans rather than Reich Germans. Often, many Sudeten-Germans who could, did not initially opt for Reich citizenship due to fear from social and economic boycotts that Czech patriots might call for. Additionally, although Reich Germans occupied high ranking positions within the Protectorate's administration, Sudeten Germans usually occupied entry level bureaucratic positions and therefore were often the ones to deal face to face with Czech dissenters. \n\nCzech resistance was mostly manifested in subjective, less concrete, or otherwise less measurable ways than open armed conflict or \"traditional\" resistance (although resistance groups, such as the Ústřední vedení odboje domácího, or ÚVOD, did exist). Czechs often practiced intentional incompetence at their jobs, especially if they worked in a war related industry, such as steel or weapon manufacturing, in order to sabotage the war effort. Other actions that were deemed \"acting nationally,\" such as making a point to speak Czech rather than German, or telling jokes that undermined the perceived authority of the Reich, were popular ways to resist Germanization that were more ambiguous, harder to notice, and thus harder to punish than more \"traditional\" ideas of resistance. Cited below, Mastný's *The Czechs Under Nazi Rule* is a great work on Czech Resistance.\n\nHermann Göring, among other Reich officials, especially tied their expansionist goals not to ethnicity but rather to an economically strong, industrialized \"mitteleuropäische,\" and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would be integral to achieving this, especially as Czechoslovakia had been the 10th largest industrial producer per capita in the world during the interwar period, and 70% of Czechoslovakia's industry was located in the Protectorate (Bryant, *Prague in Black*, 77, 78). The revocation of Jewish property in the Protectorate was enough to justify the ideological reversal of \"Czechification\" of the Protectorate, and Reich officials allowed non-Jewish Czechs to largely participate in the working economy, with 84% of the Protectorate's industrial managerial roles filled by Czechs in 1941. (Bryant, *Prague in Black*, 84, 85) Especially as the war situation became more dire for the Reich, the original goal of repopulating the Protectorate with Germans changed into a goal to make the Czechs \"German.\"\n\nTo conclude, economic necessity, along with the lack of cohesive and constant resistance compared to other occupied Slavic countries, meant that Czechs were afforded a better status in the eyes of the Reich. However, that is not to say that Czechs did not suffer. This answer's intention is not to belittle the suffering of Czech Jews by the Reich. Furthermore, we should not forget other horrendous acts committed by the Reich against Czechs, such as the [Lidice Massacre](_URL_0_). There is always a great deal of difficulty that comes attached to writing about these topics, not only in an emotional sense, but also because we should strive to avoid attaching collective guilt or innocence to groups. Collaboration and resistance are often grey areas, and harder to define than people would ideally enjoy.\n\nFinally, I find it easier to differentiate between different \"German\" classifications in the Czech language rather than English, so I apologize sometimes if in the above post it is unclear whether \"German\" refers to either a Reich German or a Sudeten-German.\n\nA great book to read for this all, heavily referenced in the above question and cited below, would be Chad Bryant's *Prague in Black.* His chapters \"A Hopelessly Mixed People\" and \"The Reich Way of Thinking\" are especially relevant. \n\n\n*Works of Interest:*\n\nBrandes, Detlef. *Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat; Teil 1: Besatzungspolitik, Kollaboration und Widerstand im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren bis Heydrichs Tod: (1939 - 1942)*. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1969.\n\nBryant, Chad. *Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism.* Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. \n\nGlassheim, Eagle. *Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland*. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016.\n\nMastný, Vojtěch. *The Czechs Under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942*. New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1971.\n\nZahra, Tara. *Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948*. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9jzs2f/was_the_western_powers_appeasement_of_hitler/e775x23/?context=0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dorsxb7", "dos4i63", "dos6e35", "dos6ox0", "dos6z8v", "dosdaou", "dosnz0w", "dosxz0t", "dot0ebm" ], "score": [ 358, 4, 24, 6, 3, 5, 4, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Way back when, television was an analog signal. More accurately, it was a *series* of analog signals that your 100%-analog color television could use to produce a picture. You have three signals for color (your TV only looked at one if it was black-and-white) and a \"timing\" signal that indicated when it should start drawing a new line. The \"vertical hold\" was a sometimes-manual synchronization to that signal.\n\n\"Scrambling\" was really just that. Some of the signals were inverted, some of them were switched. But, fundamentally, you couldn't *add* in junk or actually do significant *math* to obscure the signal, because televisions simply didn't have the ability to un-do that and produce a working picture for your paying consumer. Likewise, before relatively powerful integrated electronics became available, it wasn't economically feasible to give a customer a powerful computerized set-top box just to watch some television.\n\nSo your \"encryption\" was a scheme with only a few variables. Throw off the synchronization here, swap a color field here, and it would make the picture \"off\" enough to be unwatchable. But, likewise, once someone figured out your mechanism, they just had to create a relatively simply \"decoder\" to bring that signal back.\n\nTLDR: Analog encryption wasn't terribly complicated, but it was analog, so it required *hardware* as opposed to something digital, which might be more complex, but also could be done with a wider variety of hardware. Nowadays, everything is digital (because computing power, even for high-definition video, is so cheap) so analog encryption/decryption isn't a thing.", "On the scrabmblers in the town I used to live in. Pin 4 of the chip would be 0 Volts on unsxrambled channel and 5 Volts on scrambled channels. So pulling the chip from the socket and bending pin 4 straight would let you watch anything you wanted.", "I built a couple of those for friends and family. The vertical sync signal was missing, so this box would create its own. You then had to fine-tune it manually to get a stable picture on your TV.\n\nLater, with the DirecTV systems, people hacked the plug-in cards that came with the box. The programming hardware was technically illegal in the US, but was about $80USD from a Canadian company. A friend was part of a \"dark web\" hacker group, and every time DirecTV changed the codes, they would be hacked within hours. Reprogram your card and you had everything. One thing you had to remember was that your box couldn't be connected to the telephone line, else DirecTV could \"call\" your box to see what it was doing. That's how they did remote fixes and upgrades back then. DirecTV finally came out with a new box and card system that couldn't be reprogrammed with the previous gear, so that was the end of that.", "Everyone is talking about \"way back when\" and \"did\" but I have a cheater box rn? I have all of bell broadcasting for free...", "Boxes had EPROM chips. Cable companies sent EVERY SUBSCRIBER every channel that was available. Open box, dremel cut the epoxy chip that came with the box. Install $0.89 chip that you could buy hundreds of....", "For the digital age, things work somewhat differently. \n\nThe encryption itself usually isn't broken but some other part of the hardware might have a flaw that lets you access the key data, be it a season interface, an firmware dump or just insecure key distribution. Once you get ahold of a valid key, you can rather easily emulate most common cryptography systems (in the end it's just some protocol plus AES) either in hardware or nowadays more commonly in software. Nagravision2 had such a major flaw that any key change would lock out pirate decryption for a few hours tops. Most paytv networks will weigh the suspected amount of pirate decryption against the tremendous costs of implementing a newer encryption system (usually that requires at least a smartcard change, tough luck if they went cardless and now have to exchange all the boxes). As long as the illegal decryption process is complex enough to deterr the average teenager, requires expensive hardware or at least some sort of fancy setup, they'll let people get away with it. \n\nMore recently, cardsharing has been the typical way to go. Essentially, there's one valid and paid subscription in a cardreader connected to some sort of server (cable boxes, RasPis, full blown x86 servers, even internet routers like ddWRT boxes have been successfully used) and they handle the requests from the clients that connect via internet. Depending on the card in question, a dozen individual viewers is fairly easy to handle, using two or three cards can even result in as many viewers as your internet connection can handle (and that's a lot since only a few kbytes are sent and received every couple seconds). \n\nRecently though, providers have been switching to systems that pair the card with a particular box or have gone cardless alltogether - really annoying for people who simply want to use better hardware than the usually crappy provider boxes and do nothing illegal otherwise. ", "Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids Iowa had a big controversy wenden management discovered a clandestine line in the plant where cheater boxes were being made. An actual line, with people assigned to it, making professional cheater boxes by the 10s of thousands. Selling them in the 80s fit like 30-40 dollars. ", "Well, imagine tuning a radio...an old school radio with knobs. You either go up and down that AM or FM band and when you hit the sweet spot, the music is clear.\n\nNow try that using 3 different knobs, all on different frequencies and dial into that sweet spot. That's how they were able to mask the true signal before there were true methods of encryption. Once that \"sweet spot\" was figured out, it was just getting that info out to the public which wasn't as easy as it is today. It was more of a \"mouth to ear\" distribution system to keep it on the DL. But it's not dissimilar to modern techniques.", "The best were the K band satellite hacks. Modded boxes for the 8’ dishes that enabled thousands of channels on dozens of satellites.\n\nIt was like the selection available on the internet in the 1990s. Hundreds of channels of anything. The most fun we’re the news feeds - the remote camera feeds from the news stations. Watching the “Off broadcast” shenanigans of the feild reporter were fantastic. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctrw49w", "ctrwax5", "ctrwou5" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "And why does my beard stop at a certain length?!", "The cell which are producing hairs have a limited lifetime. So when the cell die, the hair stop growing and fall. This is true for any kind of hair.\n\nThe growing rate and the lifetime of the cell determined the max length of the hair.\n\nThe hair in our head are produced by super-longlived cell, so they can grow quite long (but not infinite lenght, the record is somthing like 3,3meters corresponding to around 330 month growing so around 27 years but the woman with those hair is around 50 and never cut her hair).\n\nThe hait in other place are procued by cell live shorter times and so have lower maximum length", "Further question, does taking Biaten actually help the hair grow past a terminal length? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fb3mjnn" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I'll take your second question first. The East German government, under Walter Ulbricht, officially called the Berlin Wall *der antifaschistischer Schutzwall* (\"Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier\"). When you remember that it was common for Eastern-Bloc politicians to casually refer to the capitalist west as \"fascist,\" this accurately sums up the Ulbricht regime's justification for building the Wall: It was necessary to protect the GDR from the West. This was framed not merely in terms of military protection and counter-espionage, but also economic and demographic self-preservation.\n\nIn the years before the erection of the Wall, the GDR hemorrhaged capital, both human and economic. Lured by the *Wirtschaftswunder* (\"Economic Miracle\") of the Federal Republic and West Berlin in the 1950s, and the strength of western currency, several million East Germans committed *Republikflucht* (\"Desertion of the Republic\"), fleeing to West Berlin or West Germany. Many of these refugees were young, educated, and skilled - precisely the sort of people that East Germany needed to stay. The unguarded border between East and West Berlin made such desertion exceedingly easy: One had, in many cases, only to walk across the street and report to the West Berlin authorities. This became the only widely available method of flight after 1952, when the East German government sealed the German-German border. In Berlin, traffic across the sector boundaries was an everyday reality. Many resident East Berliners held jobs or studied in West Berlin. West Berliners, for their part, would often cross into East Berlin for cheap shopping, since their Western Deutsche Mark was worth so much more than the Eastern Mark.\n\nThe Ulbricht regime - not without reason - understood this situation to be a lethal threat to the survival of the GDR. His presentation of the problem, both to the broader public and to the GDR's Eastern Bloc allies, was a mix of truth and lies. He talked about the out-flow of goods due to commerce in Berlin, and of the \"trade in people\" - a less-than-convincing attempt to portray the refugees as kidnapping victims, when they were not being portrayed as venal traitors who stole an upbringing from the GDR before fleeing it for pecuniary reward in the West. Building the Wall, from this perspective, was like cauterizing a wound. And a similar medical analogy was deployed by Ulbricht himself. He justified the wall by describing the sort of people it was intended to hinder in an August 28, 1961 article in *Neues Deutschland*, the official paper of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of East Germany: \"Counter-revolutionary vermin, spies and saboteurs, profiteers and human traffickers, spoiled teenage hooligans and other enemies of the people's democratic order [who] have been sucking on our Workers' and Peasants' Republic like leeches and bugs on a healthy body.\"\n\nThe people of East Berlin reacted in much the same way as the people of West Berlin, though their reactions were understandably more muted. First, there is reason to believe that they understood even in advance of the Wall's rise that it was coming. In the days and weeks before the border closure, the number of refugees reporting to West Berlin's processing centers rose dramatically. This was, in part, spurred on by the East German government itself. On June 15, 1961, Ulbricht famously declared at a press conference that \"no one has the intention of building a wall.\" (\"*Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.*\") It has long been speculated that this statement was a dog-whistle to the people of Berlin, indicating that the East German government definitely intended to build a wall. Ulbricht's play here was to force the hand of the Khrushchev government in Moscow, which had opposed the building of a wall, by inciting more East Germans to cross the border, rendering the border situation even more unstable and untenable. \n\nAfter the border was actually sealed on August 13, 1961, there were some dramatic scenes in along the border as East Berliners attempted last-minute flights into the West. Nurse Ida Siekmann became the first casualty of the Wall on August 23, when she jumped from her window on the Bernauer Straße - the front facade of her apartment building was the border between the Soviet and French sectors - to her death on the pavement below. Others successfully dodged through gaps in the barbed wire that, initially, was all that constituted the \"Wall.\" Groups of East Berliners observed the construction mostly from afar, since the builders were guarded by *Volkspolizei* and *Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse* (\"Combat Groups of the Working Class\" - East German paramilitaries). Some of those crowds became vocal in their disgust and anger, but this came to little and was never as open or virulent as the activity of enraged West Berliners on the other side. There was certainly no repetition of the June 1953 strikes and protests that had so nearly toppled the Ulbricht government. \n\nIn the ensuing years, many attempts were made to rush through, slip past, tunnel under, or fly over the Wall, but there was no organized, massive attempt on the part of East Berliners to protest or damage the Wall or its protectors. Whether this was a function of the repression of the East German government, self-control and acceptance on the part of the East German people, or genuine enthusiasm for the Anti-Fascist Barrier is hard to say. It was likely a combination of these factors, in grossly unequal proportions. Especially after the initial shock of the separation wore off, Berliners on both sides of the Wall acclimated to its existence in many ways. Whatever the proportion of acceptance to enthusiasm in the 1960s, how much popular support for the Wall remained by the end of the Cold War was clearly demonstrated by the crowds who cheered its fall to the echo in November of 1989." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1gzzra", "c1h09j6" ], "score": [ 8, 6 ], "text": [ "Air/wind doesn't have any special heating/cooling properties. It follows the same laws of heat exchange equilibrium that everything else does: If you put something a room with warmer air, it'll get warmer. If you put something in a room with colder air, it will get cooler.\r\n\r\nBut your car engine has something in common with your body: it produces heat while it's working. Accordingly, the air immediately surrounding your body or engine is hotter than the air in the surrounding environment. When you turn on a fan and feel cooler, all that's happening is that the fan is dispersing the heat cloud that's surrounding your body (the opposite of what a blanket does: trap the heat cloud so that the heat builds up).\r\n\r\nSo the answer to your question is that moving wind across a thing doesn't have any special mechanism for cooling that thing down. But if that thing has a bunch of heat already around it (as anything that produces heat will), blowing this cloud away can keep the temperature of the object from getting out of control.", " > which is created because of friction (?).\n\nNote that many things that go wicked fast (as in an atmospheric entry) are heated not because of friction but because the air is compressed into a hot [shock layer](_URL_0_) in front of the object." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d0izq5m", "d0jk3bc" ], "score": [ 10, 2 ], "text": [ "It would be equally safe but much much more expensive.", "Hydrogen is already a gas.\n\nDeuterium is a rare form of hydrogen which has a neutron in addition to a proton.\n\nAs was pointed out using deuterium will increase the cost of using it since you have to filter out the regular hydrogen.\n\nOne large problem with gaseous hydrogen is that it take a lot of space.\n\nAnother is that it's very easy for it to react with oxygen causing explosions.\n\nWhat do envision would deuterium be useful for?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d8lvtwc", "d8m0iua" ], "score": [ 11, 5 ], "text": [ "The javelin was a weapon peculiar to Mediterranean warfare, especially for Latin/Italian, Iberian and Celt-Iberian peoples (Sanz 21). The use of javelins (not always the *pilum*, later the *spiculum* and earlier a different type, but javelins are all basically the same in function) remained a mainstay of Roman infantry warfare for basically the entire Roman period. We keep digging them up even in the late Empire (Bishop & Coulston 200). Indeed, missile warfare became in some ways more prominent rather than less in the late Roman period, with Germanic groups also using javelins (such as the *ango*), and there was an increasing trend toward training recruits in various types of ranged warfare, also including archery and slinging (Rance 251-3). Javelins did not go away with the 'fall' of Rome either, and throwing spears (again, the Germanic *ango,* which was based on the *pilum*) pop up in the Merovingian period, though it appeared to fall out of use by the 7th century AD (Halsall 164-5). Archery became perhaps more significant in this period, as it certainly was later (166). \n\nI see no reason why any great developments in warfare (tactical or technological) should be responsible for this gradual fading away of the Mediterranean sword-and-javelin style of fighting. In my view, fighting styles shifted over time for reasons as much to do with society and culture as with technology and tactics. Perhaps the intermittent disappearance and re-use of phalanx-like tactics at various stages of European history might fit this bill: it's not as if shield-and-spear ever stopped being an effective weapons combination.* I think it is perfectly explicable by the massive shift over time in the culture of Western Europe, and the role of the javelin could be in many ways readily filled by archers and the multi-skilled soldiers of the early Medieval period (166). There is a tendency by Westerners to view changes in and the relative effectiveness of different military tactics and fighting styles from a 'technological' standpoint. For instance many casual observers tend to obsess over the exact size and shape and capabilities of the *gladius* and *scutum* in explaining Roman success and ignore the fact that the Roman army in the Mid-Republic was a highly trained, highly motivated force with hugely superior manpower reserves to its enemies. I suppose the point I am making is that shifts in military equipment and fighting styles do not necessarily have to be tactical or 'Darwinian' in any way, but can reflect changes in societies, cultures and approaches over time that are not necessarily 'superior', just different.\n\n\n\n*I am of course aware that the Romans beat the Macedonians and Seleucids, who had all-but-perfected the classical phalanx, but tactics, generalship and superior Roman resources are important factors in this. Libyan (and Carthaginian) spearmen performed usually very well, even against Roman legionaries, in the Punic Wars for instance. Later on the Romans began to re-adopt spear-based fighting styles once more, though the performance of the Mid to Late Republican Roman legions clearly demonstrate that the Mediterranean style of fighting could, well handled, deal with any enemy (though I'm not factoring the fluctuating dominance of cavalry warfare in the ancient to early modern periods in here). The reasons for the use and re-use of spear tactics are probably as much to do with the quality of recruits and training, and cultural shifts, as any 'tactical' necessity.\n\nSources:\n\nM.C. Bishop & J.C.N Coulston, Roman Military Equipment: From the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome (second edition), Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006.\n\nGuy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2003.\n\nPhilip Rance, \"Battle\" from The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Vol II), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.\n\nQuesada Sanz, F. ‘Not so different: individual fighting techniques and small unit tactics of Roman and Iberian armies’ in P. Francois, P. Moret, S. Pere-Nogues (eds) L’Hellenisation en mediterranee occidentale au temps des guerres puniqes. Actes du Colloque International de Toulouse, 31 mars-2 avril 2005. Pallas 70 (2006) 1-25.\n\n", "Roman weapons evolved across the empire's history, and the pilum wasn't exempt these processes. The general idea - a weapon with a long, narrow metal shank that would bend on impact, rendering it useless by the enemy and possibly tangling the shield of the person it hit - stayed relevant, but the form changed.\n\nBy the late empire, we see the pilum replaced / evolving into a barbed throwing darts that archaeologists usually call 'angons' (a Greek word used by a Byzantine author to describe the pilum-like javelins used by 6th century Frankish soldiers). [This image](_URL_0_) shows some reproductions of an early angon style that was popular in both the late Roman army and among 'barbarian' groups outside the frontier.\n\nWe find a lot of these javelins in bog deposits, like [Illerup Adal](_URL_2_). At Illerup, at sometime around 200AD (and on several occasions after that), a bunch of weapons were dumped into a bog. We're not entirely sure why, but the general theory is that they're the armaments of a disarmed, defeated army. The weapons were found in sets, and it was clear that warriors were armed with (among other things) a spear for hand-to-hand fighting and an angon-like javelin. In Illerup, as in the Roman army, we're looking at an organized force whose warriors whose equipment was standardized, including the provision of everyone with a made-to-purpose javelin. That speaks of a particular kind of centralized political structure: someone in charge equipped the soldiers with these standardized, specialized weapons.\n\nAs Roman power began to spin out of control in the west, however, this centralized control started to change. The army became increasingly privatized, and the responsibility to equip and support it devolved onto local elites. Regular weapon factories shut down, and production seems to have in many cases shifted to local production. Sometimes these locally manufactured weapons were still very regular, but in England at least there was an increasing amount of diversity of style, particularly in the spears people used. It's like if the army today shut down, and were replaced with a private citizen militia that had to arm itself: you'd see a lot of military surplus at first, but as time went on things would get more and more chaotic. And in England, and to a lesser extent in France, the weapons did.\n\nWhat that means for weaponry is this: the organized, specialized kits of shield, spear, javelin, etc start to disappear from the archaeology by the end of the fifth century. That doesn't mean they necessarily disappeared from the army - people may not have been buried with every weapon they owned. But I personally think the variety of weapons we see in the ground reflects the larger change in military structure we see by the end of the fifth century in the west: there's no organized army anymore, and individual members of the warrior militia have a lot more individuality and personalization in their equipment. This is when angons start to become very rare.\n\n[An angon of the style more commonly found in the 6-7th centuries](_URL_1_).\n\nIf you ask me why angons - the descendants of the pilum - ultimately vanished, I would say it's a result of a long process of military de-specialization. Warriors continued to use javelins, but the spears that are common in the archaeology during this period are generally more multi-purpose weapons that could be thrown or used in the hand. Some of these spears still have the long, narrow shank of the pilum / angon, but replace the barb with a more versatile leaf-bladed or angular tip ([for example](_URL_3_) - and there are more extreme cases with a much longer shank). These multi-function spearheads (either singly, or in pairs) seem to take the place of the more specialized set of angon + spear that we see in the larger, organized armies of the earlier (late imperial) period. I would suggest this reflects the decentralization and de-professionalization of the army in the early middle ages.\n\nWhen, precisely, the angon was entirely abandoned isn't clear. They disappear from archaeology after the 7th century, but that's because weapon burial went out of fashion. They continue to appear in art for the next 400 years, but whether that reflects reality, or whether the shape had become 'the way' to draw javelins (and outlived the weapons it was based on) is difficult to say.\n\nWhat does seem clear is that by the time armies re-specialized (in the later part of the early middle ages), the pilum / angon does not seem - as far as we can tell - to be given the same privileged place it had been in the old Roman model (whose influence had continued well into the early middle ages)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://legvi.tripod.com/webonmediacontents/Arbeia%20Spiculum.JPG?1463431047092", "https://inthepresenceoftheancients.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/angon.jpg", "http://www.illerup.dk/documents/illerup_84.pdf", "http://www.antiqueo.com/artefacts/migration/ferdelancemero.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5a6u1x", "c5a7mn1", "c5a9azv", "c5agmkp" ], "score": [ 23, 47, 5, 4 ], "text": [ "The presence of bones and shells on the ocean floor depends on where you are. If the bone or shell is deposited in the deep oceans (where the [CCD](_URL_1_) is present) then the calcium carbonate and calcium will be put into solution with the water. \n\nMOST of the shells are broken down and deposited as a carbonate ooze that will eventually become limestone. \n\nIf it is deposited near-shore, then you can get [coquinas](_URL_0_), or other such biogenic rich rocks", "I saw an excellent infographic a while back illustrating a \"whale fall\"--what happens to a whale's body after it dies. I'll look for it. In the meantime, here's an article that goes more in depth about it: [Whale fall](_URL_1_) \n\nedit: My mistake, it wasn't an infographic. It was this [video](_URL_0_). Quite beautiful, actually. One whale can support a community of organisms for 50-75 years after death. ", "[Whale carcass yields bone-devouring worms.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Boneworms on dead whales in Monterey Bay.](_URL_1_) (video)", "Bones rot away too:\n\nDebris field at the Titanic, no human bodies, only dozens of [close-spaced pairs of shoes.](_URL_0_\")" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coquina", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate_compensation_depth" ], [ "http://vimeo.com/29987934", "http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/mammals/whale-death1.htm" ], [ "http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2004/whalefall.html", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URi8KccVkks" ], [ "https://www.google.com/search?q=titanic+\"pairs+of+shoes" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dd03bf6" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Electronic circuits are designed to only allow electricity to pass through certain parts at certain times. That's how your phone works.\n\nIt's a set of boolean functions (1 or 0/true or false). Electricity passes through chip, and it makes a decision such as \"and/or\". If it's 'and', it sends the signal one way, and if it's 'or', it sends it another way. After it does that, this step is repeated through other logic gates that have other functions that aren't and/or (not/or or any of the many other variants).\n\nOnce you submerge it into water, it doesn't follow this designed 'trail', and the phone short-circuits. Because water is conductive, the electrical signals go wherever they can, and electronics can't handle that.\n\nTo make something of a comparison; It's the same reason you get in a line when you're shopping. Imagine if all the customers just threw all their items onto the counter at the same time and talked over each other. The cashier wouldn't know what to do. That's what the submersion is." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmzxw9b" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "There were many economic factors such as competition. The Ottoman Empire had risen to prominence leading up to period of European colonization. They controlled many of the trade routes to the east, and Europeans would have had to pay to use them. So, while it was obviously an economic risk to send ships out into the unknown, the conditions of the time made it a worthwhile gamble and there was a snowball effect once resources started coming back from the New World. In the absence of an empire in Western Europe, there was great competition between powers which sped up the race to colonize. China was already powerful during this period (Ming dynasty). You had the Mughal Empire in northern India, Ottoman Empire, etc. I am not trying to say that these established powers did not try to expand using new strategies, but just think about what risks an internet start-up can take today compared to an established company like IBM or Microsoft, and the kind of disruptive economic growth happens as a result.\n\nIn addition to the economic factors, you must consider the geographic advantage that European countries had at the time. They were better positioned to send out expeditions than any of the powers in the east. It was not as feasible for, say China or Japan to send ships over the Pacific Ocean because of the long journey. They could and did take ships other places, but these places often had established powers and were not nearly as easy to conquer as the Americas proved to be. Meanwhile, after Gibraltar fell from Islamic control towards the end of the 1400s, European ships were able to get safe passage out of the Mediterranean Sea and then further west. \n\nThis brings me to the most important factor in this period of colonization, and the reason why the Americas were a desirable place to colonize: The vast majority of Native Americans were killed by germs that the Europeans brought over. This effect streamlined the process of domination in a way that the Eastern powers could only dream of. The Mongol Empire certainly dominated Asia in dramatic fashion years before this period of European colonization, but they failed to conquer Japan in two separate campaigns. Just think of what they could have accomplished with the aid of these killer germs!\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1uuzvc", "c1uv1z5", "c1uv8pm" ], "score": [ 2, 7, 3 ], "text": [ "Because the solid line [here](_URL_1_) is the effective potential energy of the Earth (or anything) plotted against distance (taken from [here](_URL_0_)). Do you see minimum point? That is the distance where you can have a circular orbit due, i believe, to the symmetry of the potential to the left and right of this distance.\n\nsry for the small crappy pic, I couldn't find a nice one that was about gravity.", "I like to think about this mathematically:\n\nIf we require that the satellite is undergoing uniform circular motion, the gravitational force must supply all of the centripetal force:\n\nF = GmM/r^2 = mv^2 /r\n\n(M is the mass of the Earth, and m is the mass of your satellite) which we can solve to get a relation between r and v, our possible values of orbital radius and velocity for uniform circular motion:\n\nv^2 = GM/r\n\nThis is the relation that tells us we can still have uniform circular motion if we increase the radius, we have to decrease the velocity, and if we decrease the radius, we have to increase the velocity. There are an infinite number of uniform circular motion solutions to the system: each possible pairing (r, v).\n\nNow we want the satellite to be geostationary/geosynchronous. This means that we impose another requirement, that the period of the orbit is 24 hours:\n\nT = 2 pi r/v = 24 hours\n\nWell, this constitutes another relation between r and v, with its own infinite family of solutions (r, v). Combining these equations gives us 2 linearly independent equations with 2 unknowns, which is a system of equations with only one solution. Thus, there is only one possible set (r, v) that gives us geosynchronous orbits.", "Because the lower you are, the faster you have to go, and the higher you are, the slower you have to go in order to stay in orbit. As a result, there's only one altitude where the speed you have to go matches up with the speed that the earth is rotating." ] }

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[ [ "http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/PHY235/LectureNotes/Chapter08/Chapter08.htm", "http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/PHY235/LectureNotes/Chapter08/Chapter08_files/image150.jpg" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dq9fq6m", "dqa6m6o" ], "score": [ 38, 2 ], "text": [ "This is kind of a Thanksgiving version of an answer since I am not at home, don't have access to my books and am writing purely from memory. Should it happen that I have the time and energy to more adequately address *all* of your questions at some later date --like maybe tomorrow?-- I will. \n\nWith regard to whether or not Custer should have seen it coming, the answer is definitively yes. Virtually all of his scouts (an assortment of Crows and Arikaras as well as some old time traders like Charley Reynolds and Mitch Bouyer) repeatedly told him --as the 7th cavalry progressed from the Yellowstone, down the Rosebud and up to the divide separating it from the Little Bighorn-- that there was sign of thousands of horses and travois having passed through the area and converging on the Little Bighorn. All of the scouts would also have been very aware that the Lakota were holding a great council, as they traditionally did every year, and would have known that they had moved it to the Little Bighorn (or \"Greasy Grass\" as the Indians knew it) from the Black Hills under pressure from gold-seekers and a US government policy of official indifference to their treaty rights, which is just to say that they would have had one more reason to be hostile. \n\nThe scouts would also have known that among the thousands of warriors camped along the Greasy Grass were a handful of known \"hostiles\" such as Crazy Horse, Gall, Sitting Bull, American Horse and Two Moons, a Cheyenne war chief who'd seen his wife and children killed by Custer's forces on the Washita in 1868. Custer would have had zero reason to expect anything less than a fight to the death from these men, and while the 7th Cavalry did contain a number of new recruits, many of its veterans would have known that they could expect no mercy from the hostiles. \n\nAccording to several sources I've read, the Arikara and Crow scouts who did not flee immediately before the battle (there were a handful who wisely got the hell out of there) began singing their death songs in the predawn hours as Custer deployed his forces.\n\nThe upshot is that Custer had plenty of warning that he was walking into a deathtrap and, given his experience as an Indian fighter, certainly should have known better. As for why he did not, there are several possibilities. One is that he was relying on his past experience, as on the Washita, which told him that an early dawn attack against a sleeping Indian village could yield good results if it were conducted with speed and aplomb. Another, concomitant factor, may have been his refusal to acknowledge the actual numbers of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne camped along the Little Bighorn. While Custer certainly knew that he was taking a big chance --he had high political ambitions and felt that a great victory could propel him, ultimately, to the presidency-- it's not clear that he recognized that he was taking on 3-5k (possibly more) Lakota and Cheyenne warriors even though, had he listened to his scouts, he clearly should have. \n\nUltimately then, no matter how one slices it, Custer had access to plenty of good intelligence as to the disposition and numbers of the Lakota and Cheyenne camped along the Greasy Grass and definitely should have known that he had zero chance of victory. \n\n", "Also recommended reading is Archaeological Insights into The Custer Battle, an Assessment of the 1984 Field Season by Douglas D. Scott and Richard a Fox, Jr. which provides great insight into the course of the battle based on a comprehensive archaeological survey of the battlefield and subsequent detailed analysis of the artifacts." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cb0nj8p" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Ok. \n\n**HMO** = Health Maintenance Organization. It's where you have one doctor who oversees your general care: your Primary Care Physician [PCP]. Your PCP is the one you see most often, and who is most familiar with your situation. The PCP determines if you need to see a specialist for lab work or additional services, and will write a referral to those other physicians or facilities. If you go to one of them *without* a referral, your insurance pays considerably less (if at all) and you have to pay out of pocket. HMOs tend to cost less per month, and have a lower deductible. (A deductible is an annual minimum amount that you have to pay out of pocket before the insurance kicks in for certain types of treatment)\n\n**PPO** = Preferred Provider Organization. Unlike with an HMO, you do not have a PCP. Instead, there is a list of preferred providers within the network that you may visit as you see fit without being penalized. You can also typically see a doctor who is not on that list and still be covered (tho' not as well). PPOs give greater freedom to see who you want, but tend to cost a bit more per month and frequently have a higher deductible than HMOs.\n\n**Indemnity** = Pay for service. Indemnity plans are mostly a thing of the past, tho' some people might still have access. They let you see any provider without penalty, and do not require you to get referrals or select a PCP. They might require you to pay for the services you receive out of your own pocket, and then the insurance company will reimburse you afterwards. And there's typically a deductible involved." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddglpi4", "ddgmdux" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "That's three dimensions, but two directions; the magnetic poles of the star. The magnetic fields involved create those jets. ", "Doesn't that image [look familiar](_URL_0_)?\n\nThe spectral matter is chasing the magnetic field. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.coolmagnetman.com/images/fldmag1.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6v896v" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Adding to the question, I just today read (\"The Western Heritage since 1300 AP* Edition), that not only were there Catholic and Orthodox representatives plying for religious control of Russia, but there were also Jewish and Muslim representatives too. Was there any reason to choosing one over the other? Were Jews and Muslims stigmatized like they were in the rest Europe?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cufuxtt", "cufuyqp", "cufuyw6", "cufwhz3", "cufwu51", "cufx940" ], "score": [ 7, 3, 2, 4, 2, 6 ], "text": [ "You might not like the answer.\n\nOther animals don't need to wipe because they can reach around and clean themselves with their tongue. They still clean themselves as needed, I'm surprised you haven't seen the dog doing it. ", "Do you think your dog minds when there's a little bit of poop left behind? We're the only animal that does. ", "We don't require it. We are just the only ones that choose to use paper and most of us don't.\n\nAnimals drag their anus on the ground or lick it.\n\nI suppose the real answer is we are the only ones smart enough to do it.", "Where did you shit that you got an ass whiping afterwards?", "dogs dont really care about being dirty (in fact they seem to enjoy it). people wipe their ass because they dont want to smell like shit.", "Another reason besides that humans are the only people that care about having a shit encrusted anus, is that humans (and all other animals) are not designed to shit sitting down. The most efficient way to shit for a human is squatting. \n\nIf you squat to shit, the shit falls out much more efficiently and will require next to no wiping. \n\nNext time you take a shit, put a stool (no pun intended) under your feet, so your legs are raised up. This is closer to a squatting position. You may be surprised at how little you have to wipe." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmyrlp9", "cmyrp1h", "cmyrpki", "cmys7dz" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Is there something about socialized healthcare that automatically mandates all pay is equivalent? ", "why is it that some people think everyone needs an incentive to better themselves and excel in life? some people do it just because they can.", "Countries with public healthcare still have private practices which you can pay money to see. There's a basic service provided by the government, but nobody is stopping patients from purchasing more extensive coverage on top of it.\n\nYou also have to keep in mind that hospitals are still competing with each other, so they will pay more to have good doctors. Yes, everyone's healthcare is subsidized, but a hospital with better doctors will have more patients and thus make more money.", "Many (perhaps even most) doctors pursue their careers not for financial gain, but (for the most part) for the purpose of helping people. These doctors are not incentivized, or disincentivized, by financial gain to \"be better and compete for careers in the toughest specialties within healthcare systems\". Even in a socialized healthcare system however there are specific hospitals, research positions and clinics that are more desirable than others, and doctors within a socialized healthcare system are very much incentivized by these locations to \"be better and compete for careers in the toughest specialties within healthcare systems\". Furthermore, different types of doctors still receive different salaries in socialized healthcare systems (anesthesiologists in Canada, for example, are a different pay grade than a neurosurgeon).\n\nI wonder how much financial incentive there will be in privatized healthcare in USA now that diplomatic (and most importantly trade) relations with Cuba have improved. If I owned a hospital in USA, and was primarily interested in financial gain, I would employ Cuban doctors through the Cuban government to replace most of my staff. And because Cuba is economically poor compared to USA, I would probably be able to do so for *significantly* less than I had for 2014. Cuban doctors are [considered some of the best in the world](_URL_0_) after all, so it's a bit of a win-win, don't you think? Flood the market with doctors and their average pay will drop, making their services affordable to everyone!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg5ygr3" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "Well, \"history\" is the study of text, but generally that means that it only goes back as far as there has been written word (and myths and oral histories etc). In Western Eurasia, this goes back to the Sumerians in about the fourth millennium, although one could argue that you still can't really do \"history\" for some time afterwards. However, we can extend our knowledge of past societies far back before that with archaeology, the study of past material remains. Archaeology can tell us a great deal about the societies it studies, such as economies, political structures, and religions.\n\nNow, to answer your question, the period you are curious about is called the \"Neolithic\" which is a word essentially meaning \"new stone age\" and is a period of time after the development of agriculture and before the use of metal. [Çatalhöyük](_URL_0_) is southern Turkey is probably the most famous Neolithic site in the \"Fertile Crescent\", but an important thing to remember is that there is no \"one thing\" happening at this time. You are asking about the entire surface of the earth, a whole bunch of things were happening, and the spread of agriculture around the Black Sea had about as much to do with what as going on in Florida as the Lapita settlement of Tonga had to do with Homer.\n\nAs a side note, please disregard the Ancient Aliens nonsense in the other response." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.catalhoyuk.com/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fa5utpc", "fa5uykc", "fa5vahj", "fa5vowu" ], "score": [ 3, 9, 19, 4 ], "text": [ "While I can't speak for every fighter, there's some boxers/mma fighters with scar tissue and thats why they open up and bleed easily.", "The gloves aren't sharp but the way it happen is from friction of the glove sliding across the skin & dragging it tight against the skull before tearing it under the force of the punch", "Friction.\n\nEven with gloves on, often times glancing blows still carry enough force to cause enough glove-to-skin friction to split the skin open. This is why you see boxers and fighters put Vaseline on their cheeks and eyebrows.", "Its more of a tear than a cut. But you see some fighters when they get petroleum jelly put on their face before a fight. Its to help keep the gloves from sticking to their skin. As it wears off. Then gloves can stick to the skin and cause it to rip/tear. \n\nMost common spots are also where skin is close to the bone. So cheek bones and eye sockets." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjpwe3l" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "***Hand-eye coordination*** is quite complex, involving *several regions of your brain* dedicated to processing visual information, motor control, proprioception, eye movement, et cetera. \n\nGenerally speaking and without getting into details of human neuroanatomy, this kind of **coordination requires your** ***brain*** **and your** ***body*** **to communicate well with each other**, so they both have to work well. \n\nYour ***genetics*** influence your *potential* to be faster, stronger, smarter than others, so that's a start, and there is a *relationship between motor skills and intelligence* (intelligence isn't actually one single component, but entails many qualities, such as visuo-spatial intelligence). But genetics isn't everything. Humans are born to learn language, but if we trap a human in a dungeon forever, he won't learn anything.\n\n***Coordination*** is related with how efficient your *neuronal wiring* is and *how fast your neurons fire*. The human brain is ***plastic***, which means it can *reorganize itself* to a certain extent (more so when you're young rather when you're older), for example to heal itself, to remove useless cerebral connections to become more effective or to reorganize regions to become more specialized in something (ex. learning a language - which is why it's easier to learn a language while a child). \n\n*Like a muscle, you can train it:* typing is an easy example, you're learning a complex sequence of rapid finger movements and with daily practice you learn to be very quick and efficient. While you're practicing, you're stimulating the brain into changing its cortical excitability (how easy it is to make neurons fire) and reorganizing itself, reflecting you learning how to type and making you better at doing that.\n\n***Summing it up***, some people are born with a better body and a brain that is more efficient at processing and coordinating its information and transmitting everything to the body and backwards, but depending on your physical activity, you're not only making your body stronger/faster but you're also stimulating your brain into getting specialized at \"throwing punches\" (therein the importance of repeating the same punch several times while learning martial arts)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvtlcgk", "cvtlcmk", "cvtlcv3", "cvtlybc", "cvtlypc", "cvtm2df", "cvtolby" ], "score": [ 6, 10, 18, 6, 13, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Because, and I shit you not, the US dollar has replaced gold Bullion as the foundation for the worlds currencies. Instead of stashing gold, other countries stash US dollars in their vaults, and *we* stash the gold. Sort of. There actually is no gold. Just Dollars. The US dollar is currently being used as the reserve currency for many other countries currencies.\n\nIf the Dollar collapses, so do many others.", "Debt is not a bad thing in and of itself, and can in fact be beneficial. Being unable to pay your debt is bad. So far, the government meets its obligations on debt, although they do enjoy making it look precarious. ", "The US is in *such* a better financial position than it was just 7-8 years ago. No one's talking about the banks and financial system collapsing this time. \n\nAlmost all countries have debt. Debt isn't a problem unless other countries stop believing you can pay it back eventually. \n\nThe dollar is neither particularly strong nor particularly weak right now, compared to long-term historical values. ", "Because the people that tell you it will imminently collapse are just trying to sell you the doomsday product. There are a ton of issues with how America's finances are being managed, and the fiat money experiment in general, but a Mad-Max style collapse isn't one of them.\n\nPut very simply, if people all over the world kept lending you money no matter what your debt/income ratio was, and accepted payment from you in the form of pieces of paper that you printed, no matter how much you printed, you're in a pretty good spot. It works until it doesn't.", "Because America's economy does not run like your household economy does. In fact, there are two entirely different fields of study: microeconomics and macroeconomics. It is a common misconception that the US economy can be balanced the same way your household can be.\n\nHaving debt at the national level is not a bad thing, and we even own *most of our own debt.* It is a very complex process that even the most well educated people don't understand entirely, but basically our debt only becomes a problem if other countries stop believing we can pay back our debt, which is highly unlikely.\n\nAs for the dollar, it is not particularly weak right now, even if it is slightly weaker than recent years.", "First off, the dollar has been pretty stable since we devalued it in the early '80s, so I'm not sure what loss of value you're referring to.\n\nSecond, debt doesn't stand alone, it's debt vs GDP, and our GDP is massive. Not that we don't need to deal with our debt, but it's not end-of-the-world level debt...Everyone knows we're good for it.\n\nIt's pretty much unavoidable that we need to bump taxes in order to bring our expenses in line with our revenues. This is facing the same headwinds as the Fed however: raising taxes and raising interest rates both have a negative effect on the economy, and even though *parts* of the economy are doing well, a lot of the indicators aren't as good as we'd like, so this keeps getting pushed down the line.", "Debt alone is not necessarily a bad thing.\n\nThink of it this way. Most people buy a house by taking out a loan from the bank for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their total 'debt' is now far greater than their annual income.\n\nBut the bank doesn't make them pay it all back at once, it's broken down into a system of far lower mortgage payments over a period of decades. As such, while the total amount of debt can seem like a very large number, it is also very manageable to pay off with the average family's finances. Many people even refinance, take out second mortgages or otherwise take out additional loans against their house before paying off the original mortgage so that they have extra cash on hand while keeping their payments low enough to handle.\n\nThe US Debt works on a similar, though much more complex basis. Our total debt might be greater than the annual value of all that our country produces, but we are not required to pay off all that debt at once. We continue to borrow, predominantly against ourselves via government bonds, and can repay the loans slowly over time even accounting for accumulated interest.\n\nAmerica's national credit rating is one of the best in the world because we are so good at being able to repay our (national) debts." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyfi19j" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the man who accepted the german armistice famously stated in 1919, [\"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years\".](_URL_0_) He was correct, WWII began 20 years and 64 days later. He was not the only one who shared that sentiment. Winston Churchill avidly spoke about rearmament during the 1930s, but for the most part the general public did not." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=TmBN9fBcuO8C&pg=PA209#v=onepage&q&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2y541b", "d2y74tq", "d2y8zuf" ], "score": [ 6, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "The debt ceiling is an artificial limit on debt. It has no effect on actual interest rates or the borrowing power of the US. It is simply a red tape tool used to cause debate about spending every few months. Because it was created by congress, they can also raise it. This is like you saying, I'm only going to eat 6 more times. After that 6th meal, you can then tell yourself that you'll raise the total amount of meals by 3 to a total of 9. You will do this every day, adding 3 more meals to the total amount of meals you will ever allow yourself to eat. The US gains debt whenever it spends more than it collects. (taxes, funds, tariffs) The US also gains debt whenever someone buys a US backed bond. These bonds are an investment in the US and accrue interest. The money gained from these bonds pays for whatever our taxes don't. Each year we pay the interest on these bonds. Whenever someone says the US owes debt to China or to Social Security, it really means that those groups own bonds. The only thing they can do is essentially collect the interest off the bonds or sell the bonds. Currently US Bonds are the safest and most secure investment since US is very unlikely to default anytime soon. Because the interest rate on the bonds is so low, it actually makes great financial sense to grow our debt by investing more into the US. So long as the money spent grows the economy at a rate higher than the interest rate on our debt, the US profits. If we were ever to pay off our debt, it would be a later generation, but paying it off any time soon would actually hurt us and make it even harder for future generations.", "There's no rational reason for there to be a debt ceiling at all, and it would be abolished, other than that it's a useful political tool for deficit hawks. The US government needs to fund its operations, and because US Treasury Bonds (read: debt) are considered more or less the safest investment on earth, it can do this really cheaply. As long as the interest payments on those bonds stay reasonable compared to tax revenue, the actual dollar value of the total debt is almost immaterial. Plus, if for some reason the US stopped issuing treasury bonds, it would actually be hugely disruptive to financial markets, which would have to find a new safe place to store excess money. ", " > Are they simply pushing the debt onto the future generation?\n\nNot necessarily. Gov't and most organizations need to borrow money as a part of doing business, and in an inflationary economy, the amount they can borrow will increase over time.\n\nI have a job where I travel a lot. I put my business expenses on my credit card, submit an expense report to my employer, and get reimbursed. Over there years, I have asked to have my \"debt limit\" increased, because the cost of travel has increased. I'm not doing anything differently, nor am I kicking debt down the road, it is just that hotels and taxis and meals are more expensive than they were ten years ago." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ed7zd9i" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " > But what if the external electron is stationary? In that case, wouldn't the electrons inside the conductor undergo length contraction because they have a velocity relative to our external electron, resulting in a net negative charge? Shouldn't that also exert a force?\n\nA steady current in a wire implies that the wire has an overall neutral charge.\n\nWhat this thought experiment is trying to demonstrate is that for a neutral wire with a steady current, performing a coordinate transformation results in the wire no longer being electrically neutral leading to an electric force.\n\nSince both reference frame has to agree on the interaction between the wire and the test charge, the magnetic field manifests itself in the rest frame of the wire.\n\nThat also implies that the external test charge has to be moving to experience this force, or there wouldn't be a charge imbalance from the rest frame of the test charge." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cv9gqb9" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "If you say something is a threat to nation security or something similar you will automatically mobilize a huge segment of conservative votership against someone. It's nothing more than a cheap political move, but it will probably work." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6q24br", "d6r02mq" ], "score": [ 12, 2 ], "text": [ "The main difference between different liquids boils down to their indices of refraction and their dispersion. Changes in the index of refraction would alter the size of the rainbow arc, while changes in their dispersion would change how wide the actual rainbow band is. If the dispersion is negative, it would also flip the order of the rainbow (Red would be on the inside, and violet would be on the outside).", "What /u/shadydentist said about dispersion and index of refraction is true but he/she failed to mention a very crucial part about how rainbows are formed. Weather (intentional pun) a rainbow is possible with other liquids requires explanation on how they are made.\n\nRainbows are made from lots of water droplets in the atmostphere making bajillions of ball lenses. In order for rainbows to be formed, the liquid must be light enough for a very large amount of it to be floating around in the atmostphere which I doubt gasoline would be able to do. \n\nAnother very important thing that a rainbow depends upon is the critical angle of the medium and the angle of the sunlight coming in.\n\nA rainbow is formed by the light hitting these water ball lenses, and dispersing inside the water like you would picture light from a prism. believe it or not, a rainbow requires the sunlight to be coming from behind you. This is because most of the light that comes in from the sun that is now dispersed goes straight through and you don't see it again, at angles, specific wavelengths of light hit the other side of the ball lens at the critical angle and is totally internally reflected back. this wavelength gets reflected back to the person observing the rainbow at that specific angle. hence red is located the top region of the rainbow and green another, they were the only wavelengths that got reflected back at that angle\n\ndouble rainbows occur when there are two internal reflections inside the water and because of the extra reflected cause blue to appear at the top and red at the bottom.\n\nThe reason why water droplets causes rainbows is because light is totally internally reflected around the angle that the light from the sun comes in at. other materials could form rainbows but it would depend on the angle of the sunlight and the liquid's critical angle. \n\nIf you want to see rainbow effects in gasoline you can look up thin film interference in gasoline.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3vm9uc" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This is definitely possible; a more practical arrangement would be a straight track running through a tunnel angled through a mountain range pointed along your desired orbit. You probably wouldn't want to use magnetic levitation exactly either, rather a sled propelled through electromagnetic propulsion.\n\nThere are a variety of interesting hurdles to overcome with such an arrangement. For example firing a projectile down the tunnel leaves a lot of air to move out of the way to allow passage. What do you do with it? It can't escape out the end fast enough so it would compress at the front of the projectile, stealing energy from the launch and perhaps damaging the payload. Engineering vents in miles of launch tunnel increases costs, and due to being underground probably won't exhaust to the surface.\n\nThe benefits to such a launch system are interesting. While it would require similar energy as a rocket launch the energy can be obtained and spent in a different way. You could for example use electrical energy from hydroelectric generators rather than chemical rockets. You don't have to carry as much fuel along with the payload thus increasing the load or decreasing the vehicle size.\n\nDrawbacks might include throwing launch sleds into the plains beyond the mountain range, and your launch tunnel melting and requiring regular maintenance." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca1xm0l", "ca1zyyp" ], "score": [ 7, 19 ], "text": [ "You might try cross posting to /r/linguistics ", "Ooh! I can answer this one. Sort of. \nI studied linguistics at university, and Field Methods is one of the major aspects. So, while I can't talk about the historical aspect, I can talk about the modern approach. I can't imagine there's much that has changed there aside from the rigor of the method (you'll see what I mean in a bit). \n \nThe first step is to build a lexicon - a list of words. If the language is a living one, that's easy enough: the translator simply points at an object either in the abstract (on a map, for example) or in real life and tries to get the native speakers to name it, then records that name (this, of course, has been lampooned by Terry Pratchett when he talks about mountains that are named \"Mountain\", forests named \"Lots of Trees\", and even rivers named \"Your Finger You Fool\"). \nOnce a substantial enough lexicon has been built, the idea is to start looking for patterns - phonetic (sounds), morphemic (units of meaning), lexical (higher units of meaning), and semantic (socially-contextualised units of meaning). \nFrom there, the patterns are tested. The translator will try to generate their own sentences with the information they have at hand. They *want* to get it wrong at this stage, because they will learn more in being corrected than in getting things correct. \nThis process will go on and on, hopefully with multiple translators to correct for any confirmation bias or blind spots (some languages, for example, have a women's version and a men's version, so you'll need both genders translating to get both versions). Ideally, this process will go on for generations, because languages are, no kidding, *huge*. Hundreds of thousands of words, *millions* of permutations, *billions* of potential interpretations. \nAnd this doesn't take into account how some words simply do not gloss well. Look at r/DoesNotTranslate for some great examples. \nProblems, of course, arise with languages that no longer have any living speakers. We can't test the language, so we're left with huge gaping holes in our knowledge. Furthermore, no one's there to correct us if we go off track (by, say, misapplying a minor word, such as the difference between \"educate\" and \"elucidate\"). \nHistorically, recorded language also tended toward the more formal, with graffiti being a major exception. We therefore miss out on a whole lot of colloquial stuff too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2ga9mj", "c2gacrj", "c2gb5hq", "c2gbd7t", "c2ga9mj", "c2gacrj", "c2gb5hq", "c2gbd7t" ], "score": [ 9, 3, 11, 5, 9, 3, 11, 5 ], "text": [ "You have these cells at the back of your eyes that are photosensitive (they have the ability to turn a particle of light into a stimulus that your brain can interpret). Light enters your eyes and travels through a lens, which sort of projects an image of the world onto the back of your eyes, where these photosensitive cells are. Each of these cells then tells your brain some of the wavelengths of light it is receiving. Your brain does the hard (read: extremely so hard you don't even know) part: it takes all the continuous streams of information from all the cells in the backs of your eyes, and BAM, color vision with built in face/object detection.\n\nHow do we specifically see color? These cells are sensitive to wavelength of light, and others are sensitive to intensity. Together, they send your brain data on the color and brightness of the light hitting them.", "That was sort of [explained in here](_URL_0_).", "if you are british you can watch this _URL_0_\n\nits an episode of horizon that explores how people see colour. in recent research there's evidence that not everybody sees it the same way. for example in modern society we see primary and secondary colours as being very distinct. but a certain african tribe find it difficult to distinguish between certain colours. but that tribe sees the difference between certain shades of green more greatly than we do. because maybe it helps them distinguish ripe vegetables when gathering food.\n\nit's a good watch.", "Ok, like a five year old. I'll do my best. \n\nThere are these cells in your eyes that are sensitive to certain colors. There are actually 3 types of these, lets call them Red/Green Sensors Blue/Yellow Sensors and White/Black sensors. This tells your brain what colors you see. \n\nAll the light from a scene goes into your eyes, so your brain has to process it somehow. The cells that detect red/green blue/yellow white/black will get \"activated\" when the color they detect hits them. Think about it like table with different size and shape holes cut in it. Triangles, Rectangles, and Circles. If you dropped a whole bunch of shapes of blocks onto them (light) then only the correct shapes can go into the correct holes (light sensitive cells). Triangle blocks will fall into triangle holes. The blocks that don't fit will just bounce away (because these are bouncy shapes!) Pretend this table is really big, and there are a lot of holes of different sizes everywhere. It doesn't matter if a few triangles bounce off circle holes, because there are so many other triangles holes around they will get activated if there are a significant number of triangle blocks falling onto that area. \n\nThat's basically how you perceive color. It's pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out what all those colors in those positions mean. ", "You have these cells at the back of your eyes that are photosensitive (they have the ability to turn a particle of light into a stimulus that your brain can interpret). Light enters your eyes and travels through a lens, which sort of projects an image of the world onto the back of your eyes, where these photosensitive cells are. Each of these cells then tells your brain some of the wavelengths of light it is receiving. Your brain does the hard (read: extremely so hard you don't even know) part: it takes all the continuous streams of information from all the cells in the backs of your eyes, and BAM, color vision with built in face/object detection.\n\nHow do we specifically see color? These cells are sensitive to wavelength of light, and others are sensitive to intensity. Together, they send your brain data on the color and brightness of the light hitting them.", "That was sort of [explained in here](_URL_0_).", "if you are british you can watch this _URL_0_\n\nits an episode of horizon that explores how people see colour. in recent research there's evidence that not everybody sees it the same way. for example in modern society we see primary and secondary colours as being very distinct. but a certain african tribe find it difficult to distinguish between certain colours. but that tribe sees the difference between certain shades of green more greatly than we do. because maybe it helps them distinguish ripe vegetables when gathering food.\n\nit's a good watch.", "Ok, like a five year old. I'll do my best. \n\nThere are these cells in your eyes that are sensitive to certain colors. There are actually 3 types of these, lets call them Red/Green Sensors Blue/Yellow Sensors and White/Black sensors. This tells your brain what colors you see. \n\nAll the light from a scene goes into your eyes, so your brain has to process it somehow. The cells that detect red/green blue/yellow white/black will get \"activated\" when the color they detect hits them. Think about it like table with different size and shape holes cut in it. Triangles, Rectangles, and Circles. If you dropped a whole bunch of shapes of blocks onto them (light) then only the correct shapes can go into the correct holes (light sensitive cells). Triangle blocks will fall into triangle holes. The blocks that don't fit will just bounce away (because these are bouncy shapes!) Pretend this table is really big, and there are a lot of holes of different sizes everywhere. It doesn't matter if a few triangles bounce off circle holes, because there are so many other triangles holes around they will get activated if there are a significant number of triangle blocks falling onto that area. \n\nThat's basically how you perceive color. It's pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out what all those colors in those positions mean. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j7yps/eli5_why_is_air_invisible_from_my_3_year_old/c29wdrr" ], [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013c8tb/Horizon_20112012_Do_You_See_What_I_See/" ], [], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j7yps/eli5_why_is_air_invisible_from_my_3_year_old/c29wdrr" ], [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013c8tb/Horizon_20112012_Do_You_See_What_I_See/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cn1bunz", "cn1cx0b", "cn1d3kb" ], "score": [ 13, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Yeah, viruses that are overly virulent kill their hosts before they are able to transmit the virus to new hosts, so more deadly viral lineages tend to burn out before being widely transmitted. So there's an evolutionary trade off between high virulence and a strain's ability to maintain itself in a population.", "For viruses that are well established, the trade-off you describe is generally the case. But when a new virus enters a population, there can certainly be high transmissibility combined with high mortality. Some examples of this phenomenon would be smallpox and even measles viruses, especially in pre-modern times, which could be quite devastating.", "In evolutionary biology there is definitely a trade-off between survival and reproduction. For instance, some organisms will forgo survival to have rapid reproductive maturation and success, whereas some organisms (humans) take years to sexually mature and reproduce. It can definitely be argued that viruses are non-living and this axiom shouldn't be applicable, but it seems to address your question since virulence is directly related to how many viral load (viral progeny, in this case) are created. Thus, the more contagious the better at \"reproducing\" the virus is and less likely they are to survive in your system. \n\n\nInterestingly, if that sort of evolutionary axiom is applicable to virus then that is good news for us, as a virus can not be both extremely good at reproducing AND extremely good at survival." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chsho1q" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The compression bands are meant to be worn about an inch or two down from where the tendon attaches to the bone. This helps to take the pressure off the tendon and allow it to heal. Basically the bands make our body think that the tendon actually attaches at the band, rather than at the bone. This allows the tendon to heal because when you use the muscle, the inflamed area isn't being used. \n\nIn response to the person talking about shin splints, the bands for shin splints don't work because a lot of times there is too much compression in the shin and that's what causes the shin splints. Also, shin splints are not usually located in the tendon, as much as the entire muscle. So there's really not a specific area to take the pressure off." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2ysnz3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " > they seem to consistently post losses, in both revenue and market share.\n\nThat's not enough information. Is that in only one market sector? AMD gave up on the PC market years ago, and that only makes up a small percent of their entire revenue stream. They make semi-conductors, and that's more than just processors, but also things like photo sensors, power converters, amplifiers, different types of diodes..." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fczpziu", "fd1m3y7", "fd5w6ex" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Well, unless somehow the mantle is made of entirely iron and nickel, the planet would lack the magnetosphere that earth has to block solar radiation and help maintain a habitable environment for life as we know it. Of course, it could be entirely possible that a new form of life would emerge that actually thrived on the solar radiation bombarding the surface. So I guess, hypothetically, yes, it could harbor life, just not life as we know it.\n\nPlease correct any mistakes I've made.", "Not a core, but a planet with a higher carbon/oxygen ratio than Earth might end up with a mantle composed of diamond and silica carbide. However, these materials are poorer insulators than the silicate-dominated mantle we have, so such a planet would cool fairly rapidly in its interior and lack surface tectonics and volcanic outgassing, which are vital to the stability of Earth's habitable climate.", "Cores don’t form due to density differences. You can actually prove this for yourself in your own kitchen. Make a saltwater or sugar water solution, then let it sit for as long as you can. Assuming enough water hasn’t evaporated to saturate it, you’ll find a homogenous solution with no layers on top of each other, even though the density difference between water and the salt or sugar isn’t insubstantial. When planet-building material separates into layers, it does so because of chemistry. \n\nDifferent types of materials have different forces that hold them together. Each can interact with its own kind. But if two different ones don’t have a way of interacting with each other, then it will take more energy to separate each from its own kind than combining them could release. Therefore, just like how a ball rolls down a hill, the two will separate, because it takes less energy to keep them separated than to combine them. \n\nSo you’d have to have some chemistry that could force some allotrope of carbon out of a solution into its own physically-separate phase, which would then precipitate to the core. I don’t know that we’ve ever seen such a chemistry. Not only would the carbon allotrope (which likely would not be diamond) to sink to the core, it would have to be denser than rocky and metallic phases, and I don’t know how you’d get that. \n\nAt standard temperature and pressure, metallic iron is about 7.89 grams/cm3. Diamond is 3 something. Granted, neither of these numbers will hold up at the temperature-pressure regime at the core, unknown to any mortal experience. But there’s no reason to believe that carbon could ever overtake iron-nickel metal, which is what normally forms cores in planetary bodies. Hard to reckon with the fact that iron has more protons and neutrons in its nucleus than carbon, no matter how you arrange the atoms. \n\nThe rocky minerals at the deepest parts of planets (just before they transition to the core) are oxides, which may have a median density of 4.65 g/cm3 to a maximum around 11. Again, don’t know if we have any cosmic chemistry that gets carbon denser than that.\n\nBut more importantly, I don’t know how we get any cosmochemistry where graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, and other allotropes cannot remain mixed with the rocky materials. In fact, graphite appears all throughout the chondrite meteorites that we believe are samples of the type of material solar-system planets formed from. Even in bodies that have undergone differentiation into geologic layers, the carbon doesn’t seem to separate to any layer in particular. For example, graphite shows up in basalt melts on the earth and the moon, where it produces carbon monoxide and dioxide that help propel the magma to the surface by buoyancy. They wouldn’t be there if they were chemically incompatible with the molten silicates.\n\nBasically, no, I do not think we know of any situation where this could happen." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eyl90xc" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Generally no, gases don't have free electrons. If you ionized it, it would be a plasma (which does conduct), and if you're asking if there is cold plasma, [there is](_URL_0_) (they're in fluorescent lights)." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "e868uyf", "e868xl8", "e868zwy", "e86dpv9", "e86dxmi", "e86i8vd", "e86il1g", "e86mqxf" ], "score": [ 5, 190, 11, 66, 6, 3, 3, 52 ], "text": [ "New money is created every day. A lot driven by fractional reserve banking. You deposit $1,000 in the bank, and the bank then loans out a multiple of that, creating money in the process. ", "When we convert raw materials into other resources, the value increases.\n\nRaw steel and rocks isn’t that useful, but build a building and you can house people/do commercial activities. Wood isn’t useful, but you can print knowledge on paper and books are more valuable than raw wood.\n\nThis concept extends to ideas, not just physical materials. A new technology like self-driving cars increases the value of the economy. A new app that allows you to easily order food delivery also adds value.\n\nAs Long as economic activity exists, humans are constantly transforming resources, and value will increase.", "There’s not only so much money. As value is added to a society they can make more “money” and everything is okay. In fact if societies don’t increase the amount of money in circulation at any time as the value of goods within their society increases then the money becomes more expensive and it becomes harder for the economy to work properly because there isn’t enough money to allow everyone that needs it access to it and that inhibits growth and trading of goods and services. \nThe opposite is also true, if you make to much money then each unit of money becomes worth less and that leads to inflation above what is beneficial. People lose faith that a dollar (for example) will buy the same amount of goods and services tomorrow that it does today. This also impacts the functioning of the economy. \n\nRemember money is really just something we believe has value in it. Shiny metal or paper or whatever, in reality there no to little actual value to it other than what people say it does. Money is just an easier way of doing bartering. Instead of a farmer with milk having to find someone that wants milk and that has what he wants we trade for little pieces of something or electronic digits so we can more efficiently work in the economy. ", "To understand wealth creation, I feel its better to eliminate currency and look at a barter system. \n\nI'm a farmer that handles chickens and you handle plants. My chickens need your plants to eat. You and your big family need the eggs from my chickens to eat. \n\nYou want to be able to buy more eggs. You work longer hours to plant more plants to be able to sell more to me so I can feed more to my chickens. My better fed chickens produce more eggs and you can buy more of them because I bought more plants from you. My farm now produces more eggs and yours produces more plants. We've increased our production, and therefore the size of our economy.\n\nWealth creation comes in when you deal with products that store value. Obviously, chickens eggs spoil and plants die. However, suppose you take a surplus of plants you made and sell it to another guy who in return for those plants, builds you a house. Now you have a house. That is wealth. The people in our little town know that it takes an X amount of plants, or X amount of chicken eggs to build a house. That house is part of your wealth now. You can sell it if you want in the future at a market price.\n\nObviously, I have no idea how farming actually works, but you get the gist of it. ", "In simple terms, the pie (total human economic value) increases as we exploit more of Earth's resources, and do so more efficiently. As the pie grows, so does each slice.\n\nSay you and four friends have $100 between you. One friend might have $50 while the rest of you have $12.50 each. You all really like rocks. You all have a certain number of rocks between you, and trade them back and forth. Obviously, the richer friend has more leverage to accumulate more rocks.\n\nBut the number of rocks isn't static. You decide to go dig up more rocks and bring them back to your friends. Obviously, with these new resources, you'll grow wealthier, but you friends will too. The supply in rocks has increased, debasing the value of each rock and increasing the purchasing power of each dollar. You are all now wealthier despite there being no change in the money supply. Overall wealth increases when the purchasing power of the currency grows.\n\nEconomics is not zero-sum, at least from a human perspective. Technically nature is losing value, but nature is a stingy bitch and doesn't put her resources to use. Printing money actually debases the currency. It can potentially sap wealth.", "Raw resources turned into goods, combined with a constant printing of money to maintain a certain value of the currency. ", "Money is just a tool used to keep track of value. The money is constantly being recycled. Just because Bill gates has billions of dollars doesn’t mean he has billions of dollars sitting in the bank, that billion dollars is all theoretical and made up of assets and investments. Even if it was all in the bank, the bank uses this money to loan to other people and other banky activities. ", "None of these are very useful explanations to a 5 year old...so let me try.\n\nWe're in a class of 20 people and we all really like purple marbles. They're all identical, but as stupid 5 year olds we can't get enough purple marbles. We'll do anything for them.\n\nJake has all the marbles. His parents bought out the store, and he now has ~100 marbles. And he won't give them to anyone. The wealth of the entire economy is 100 marbles.\n\nThe teacher starts randomly gives the kids a toy to keep each day. Some suck (the creepy old stuffed animal) where other's are awesome (Buzz Lightyear with extending wings). Everyone wants Buzz, and his companion toy, Woody. \n\nTeacher gives Jake a creepy stuffed animal, and gives Susie and Billy the Buzz and Woody toys. Jake's really into Toy Story, so he gives 15 marbles to Susie for Buzz and 10 to Billy for Woody.\n\nEveryone wants Buzz and Woody. Now that this transaction has happened, Jake knows that any other kid would happily give him 20 marbles for Buzz or 15 for Woody.\n\nThe total wealth in this economy is no longer 100 marbles, but since the toy story transaction there are still 100 physical marbles in the economy, and two assets (Buzz and Woody) worth a grand total of 35 Marbles, for a total economy the size of 135 marbles. Your marble-based economy just grew by 35%. Even though the number of physical marbles stayed the same. \n\nThere is currently only about $1t of physical US dollars but the US economy is about $20t/yr. So that's like the total value of all the toys being 2,000 marbles while still only having 100 physical marbles.\n\nMarbles are pretty gate, so people start doing all sorts of stuff to do them. Samuel can make a pretty awesome clay figurines that people will buy for 5 marbles; Susie will let you come to her house and watch her 3D TV for 3 marbles, Billy is really neat and will be your friend for 1 marbles/day\n\n\n--How Banks Create Money--\nMartha is a hell of a business girl, and starts a marble bank. Because the class is only 20 people, let's say she's the only bank (so I can talk about her like she's the whole banking industry).\n\nMarbles are great to play with, and look at (they are purple, after all), but it's hard to save 25 marbles up when they're so easy to lose, will roll out of your cubby, might get stolen by that one kid, etc. So, while it might be useful to carry 1-5 marbles on you, it's probably a good idea to give them to Martha for safekeeping.\n\nMartha is in an interesting spot. She now has 60 marbles in her care. What to do with them?\n\nThe Friend for money business is good, and Billy has amassed a fortune: 20 marbles and a number of toys worth a total of another 40 marbles. No toy is quite like his first, though, and Billy desperately wants to buy Buzz Lightyear back from Jake. Its traded hands a few times, and most recently sold for 40 marbles.\n\nBilly could sell half his toys and buy Buzz back, but that might take a while and the rumor is that Susie has 40 physical marbles today and is thinking of buying it.\n\nMartha offers to make Billy a loan, based on the fact that he has 3 people who give him a marble every day for friendship. She'll lend him 20 marbles, and he'll give her all his marble income for the next 10 school days (30 marbles in all). If he is business goes poorly, Martha has the right to seize 30 marbles worth of his toys, which are being put up as collateral. She could then sell those to the highest bidder to recover her losses.\n\nBilly happily accepts, Buzz is his.\n\nBut physical marbles don't really change hands. All 20 of Billy's saved marbles are being held by Martha, and the 40 marbles given to Jake don't come in a bag: but via a bank transfer where Martha deducts 40 marbles from Billy's account and credits them to Jake's.\n\nIn other words, the Bank of Martha just created 20 marbles of value by lending it. BoM could potentially lend far more virtual marbles than exist on Martha's cubby.\n\nAgain, there are about $1t of physical us dollars in the world. If you added them all up, the amount of USD in all accounts is about $10t. So Martha could potentially totally have accounts totalling 1,000 marbles.\n\nThe more that people buy and sell things, the greater the velocity of money and the more that more people get to use it. Wealth, in that sense, is created when you either find ways to sell things for more money, or increase the total number of things worth buying.\n\nHope this doesn't get too buried ;)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3ptdmi", "c3pv908" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ " > Are we \"falling?\"\n\nIn the sense that orbiting celestial bodies are in an [inertial frame of reference](_URL_0_), and falling while on earth also places you in an inertial reference frame, then yes, stars and planets are \"falling\".\n\nBut don't confuse that with there being some sort of universal \"down\" direction that everything's falling toward. Rather, orbiting bodies are essentially in a constant state of free-fall around the body that they're orbiting -- always falling, but with enough \"sideways\" velocity to continuously \"miss\".", "Universe expanding and galaxies moving away from each other means that space itself is expanding. Take a small flaccid balloon and draw a few dots on it with a texta - these represent celestial bodies. Then keep blowing up the balloon - the space between the dots will grow. The scary thing is, eventually, assuming the accelerating expanding universe theory holds, when we look out to the night sky we won't be able to see anything because the space between everything has shifted so much. We'll be alone...........\n\nOr extinct already." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dpj9e52", "dpj9n66", "dpj9z48", "dpjm2zd" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 7, 2 ], "text": [ " In a room of just 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance of two people having the same birthday. In a room of 75 there’s a 99.9% chance of two people matching.\n\nThis is whats called the Birthday Paradox. It has to do with exponents and maths I am not good at, but here is a link that might better explain. (_URL_0_)[_URL_1_]\n\nedit. Fixed link", "Someone mentioned the Birthday Paradox (which is just pure stats on combinations), but also, [birthdays aren’t evenly distributed across the calendar.](_URL_0_) ", "You expect to see lots of pairs (we'd need more precise data to determine whether your group of friends shows more than the expected number, however). \n\nAlthough this is counterintuitive at first glance, it's actually fairly obvious if you look at it the right way.\n\nThe point is that although the chance of any two people sharing a birthday is quite low (1/365), there are so many pairs of people that this *could* happen to, that it becomes almost inevitable that it *will* happen to a fair number of pairs.\n\neg with 200 people, there are 19,900 different pairs of people, so we'd expect a lot of matches.\n\nIndeed with only 23 people (so 253 possible pairs of people) there is already 50/50 chance you get at least one pair sharing a birthday.\n", "Probably some cognitive bias in remembering unusual things better too. Objectively it'd be far more probable to have one person with a birthday than multiple (about four times more probable in fact). With 200 people, on a given day (assuming 365 days and uniformly distributed birthdays) there would be a 31.74% chance exactly one person has a birthday, and an 8.68% chance of exactly two, and it drops off from there (57.77% chance of no one having a birthday on a day given a specific day)." ] }

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[ [ "BetterExplained.com", "https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-birthday-paradox/" ], [ "https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/birthdays-most-common/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccxfgiq" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It's boring. We need something to keep our minds occupied. Reader's Digest was the original smartphone for that." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddr6xvl" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "i covered this topic in a class in university way back in the caveman days they would sit around the fire with their half wild dogs stroking their fur elicited the guard guard guard instinct in the animal thats the theory anyways so basically the theory is we were able to relax knowing we were protected " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f5aph9s" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Here's a reconstruction of the last ~250 million years, which basically shows the break up of Pangea. The thing to remember is that Pangea is only the most recent supercontinent; there have been at least 6 or 7 over Earth's 4.5 billion year history. _URL_0_\n\nThe driving force, very simply, is gravity. Thermal buoyancy in the mantle means that convection cells get set up, and these drag the surface plates along with them. Subduction oceanic slabs are a big part of this, as they draw dense cold material back down into the mantle. New oceanic crust gets formed in mid ocean ridges. There's practically no oceanic crust on the planet older than ~200 million years, while continental crust can be viewed as a silica-rich scum which is not dense enough to sink back into the mantle to get recycled. As a result continental crust is up to ~ 4 billion years old in places. Continents and supercontinents which have been formed can be rifted apart again by rising and divergent mantle convection cells - we can see this happening at the moment in the Afar region of E Africa, where a rift valley is forming which could ultimately form a new ocean basin.\n\nMeterorite impacts have had no recognised impact on plate tectonics (the timescales of mantle flow are in the millions of years)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwBbPa1zqMU" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8f6m6k", "c8f6pds", "c8f72gk" ], "score": [ 2, 14, 11 ], "text": [ "You have the right to *own* both guns and swords. That does not necessarily mean you have a right to openly carry either of them around town.", "If the Congress of the United States tried to pass a law unreasonably restricting your right to keep and bear a sword, that law would be challenged on the same grounds as a law unreasonably restricting your right to keep and bear a gun.\n\n\"Arms\" means arms. It doesn't mean *fire*arms specifically.", "As far as I know, there aren't any Federal restrictions on sword purchases. You can buy and own as many as you like. Most cities, however, have laws against carrying large bladed weapons around in public, for safety reasons. This is all as it should be." ] }

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[ "http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-02-13/news/fl-klingon-sword-arrest-20130213_1_long-sword-klingon-fort-lauderdale-intersection" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cb986qt" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Actually, there are a lot of papyri and archeological pieces from the ancient Egypt which have never been studied by archeologists and egyptologists. These numerous missing objects are actually in the hands of collectionners. \n\nThis is the result of the state of egyptology in the 18th and 19th centuries : Egyptology as a science just started with the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, in 1822. Before that, and until the creation of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in 1858 by Auguste Mariette, egyptian antiquities have been stolen because of their value and the mysticism attached to the old egyptian civilisation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "disc03u", "disjb08", "disjp8g", "dislqey", "disot2w", "disq5k9", "disstrv", "dit08oq" ], "score": [ 133, 2, 2672, 114, 2, 17, 7, 265 ], "text": [ "Psychology undergrad here: The big problem with your chemical senses (especially with smell) is that you can't properly assign a specific perception of an aroma to a certain stimulus. You know very well which porperties a stimulus for your eyes must have for you to perceive it as \"blue\" or \"red\", but what properties does a molecule have to have for you to perceive it as \"cherry\" or even more difficult, which specific molecules do produce the aroma of \"coffee\"? Turns out that this is a very complex question, as many chemically very similar molecules are perceived as drastically different smells or vice versa. Taking this difficulty into account, a complex cognitive representation of the aroma stimulus in your memory seems very challenging. However, your smell is the only sense that doesn't connect with the Thalamus before reaching its corresponding cortex area and limbic structures like the Amygdala or the Hippocampus, therefore the emotional memory of an aroma is much more directly accessible, thus more intensive, and in some way that's compensating for a complex cognitive representation as your sight or hearing can offer. \n\nEdit: Linda Buck and Richard Axel won the 2004 Nobelprize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering research on olfaction, you might want to take a look into this, as it uncovers the complexity of olfactory encoding: \n_URL_1_\n\nThe idea of a certain cell assembly representing an aroma, thus creating an \"olfactory map\", is further explored in this article:\n_URL_0_\n\nAll of this shows that neuronal representation of aromas is very complex and enigmatic, much more so than stimulus representation in the visual or auditory system.\n", "IIRC olfactory senses are more closely linked to memory than visual senses are. You can just look at how inaccurate eye witness testimony is as a point. I had an MR\\DD client that used to smell the pages of his old magazines and toys, and I became curious as to why this might be. What I read was that the sense of smell is extremely powerful and more closely linked to memories than any other sense. But maybe my memory is off (and maybe because u didn't smell my computer first lol).\n\nI'll look for a source in a moment, unless someone beats me too it.\n\nEdit: _URL_0_", "Perfumer here.\nWith training any person would be able to replicate smells inside their heads as well as any visual or auditory input. The main problem is cultural. Our western society does not value the sense of smell as highly as other senses: children are not taught to notice odors, our olfactory \"vocabulary\" is really limited, we are not used to rely on our sense of smell on a day-to-day basis etc.\nThe Jahai people in the Malayan peninsula is the best example I can remember of a culture that highly praises the sense of smell, having even specific vocabulary to describe odors: [an article on Cognitive magazine about that](_URL_0_)\nedit: formatting.\nedit 2: removing link to non-scientific article.\nedit 3: changed \"remembering\" to \"replicating inside the head\".", "Cognitive scientist here. Keep in mind that the pathways involved in memory recall are very different depending on the type of information intended. Visual information is easily recalled and recognized due to it being objectively useful to remember (navigation, object recognition, food seeking, mating, etc), however certain sensory information is rarely required to be recalled in such a way so the pathways are much weaker/nonexistent. You are able to recognize a smell very easily, especially with other cues (if you smell something and see the name, you will easily state that the name is correct or not). Likewise, you can detect if that smell is beneficial or harmful very easily. However there is not much use in, and thus you don't get a lot of practice in, remembering the smell or taste itself. Humans do not use smell for object recognition (we prefer to rely on vision information for this, unlike other animals such as dogs) nor for communication (we rely on audiovisual information, unlike ants) and so these pathways, while able to exist (see blind case studies) do not get as much use and so recalling a smell or taste can be very difficult for us (without practice).", "Very interesting and informative responses here. One piece of information I think is missing: the region in the brain responsible for olfaction is small relative to other organisms. Humans have evolved to navigate visuo-spatially. This is why our visual cortex is massive and our olfactory bulb is small. ([Citation](_URL_0_) ) So, the people who discussed the different pathways olfactory and visual information are correct. But, I think it's important to note how much circuitry is involved, not just which ones.\n\n\nIn regards to the social context of smell. Another amazing aspect of the human brain is its plasticity. We are capable to adapt to such a wide variety of contexts that we've all but managed to thrive everywhere on this planet. This allows our brain to form extra connections with experience. Such as those made in the brain of a well trained sommelier. We can train our brain to process olfactory information more readily but there are distinct limitations. We will never be able to recall a smell the same way dogs and rodents do, which I imagine they are as proficient at as we are at recalling images. ", "First of all, thanks for all the replies! Secondly, I think, due to the poor phrasing of my question, that not everyone in this thread is talking about the same thing. What I meant to ask is why, and, as people have pointed out, I understand that this is a very subjective topic, I cannot recreate a scent or taste in my mind. I can recognize the scent of a hotdog when I smell it, but when I'm hungry and sitting down in my bed, I can't just \"smell\" it like I can picture the shape and color of the hotdog. \n\nPeople have attributed this to differences in culture and our dependence on hearing and sight for survival. I have also heard that the way we use a sensory system shapes the system itself. So, in theory, if I trained my scent or taste at a relatively young age such that I hadn't already developed a rich system, I would be able to recreate scents or tastes within my mind. \n\nI find this all very interesting, so once again, thanks for all the amazing responses! ", "There is a direct physiological reason why you don't recreate smells in your head from memory. \n\nSmell (olfaction) is the oldest of the senses and basically is not processed by the parts of the brain where memories are formed. We can recognize a smell as something we have smelled before, but typically not recreate it later.\n\nMost people with training can create connections between smells and other senses in the brain, like sound or visual, and remember these connections. Still, they don't consciously recreate the smell itself form memory.\n\nThis goes over it well for the more technical:\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd quoting a relevant paragraph:\n\n\"The limbic system is a network of connected structures near the middle of the brain linked within the central nervous system. These structures “work together to affect a wide range of behaviors including emotions, motivation, and memory” (Athabasca University-Advance Biological Psychology Tutorials). This system deals with instinctive or automatic behaviors, and has little, if anything, to do with conscious thought or will.\"", "This thread has me so confused. I can remember smells almost perfectly, especially distinct smells like citrus, lavender, rosemary, etc. Is everyone saying they can't recall what those smell like unless they smell it again? This has me fascinated and confused " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(00)00021-0?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867400000210%3Fshowall%3Dtrue", "http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2004/illpres/index.html" ], [ "https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201501/smells-ring-bells-how-smell-triggers-memories-and-emotions" ], [ "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002771300214X" ], [], [ "www.scielo.cl/pdf/ijmorphol/v29n3/art47.pdf" ], [], [ "http://www.tsbvi.edu/seehear/summer05/smell.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c61i405", "c61ibcw", "c61jqcu", "c61m67j", "c61mw86" ], "score": [ 92, 2, 3, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "That's a pretty complex question. Languages all move at their own pace, and have their own unique history, so it's going to be a different answer for each language. \n\nEnglish has gone through a lot of changes from its \"Old\" to \"Modern\" stages, so Old English and modern English are very different. Here's an exerpt from \"[Beowulf](_URL_2_),\" an epic poem in Old English, written around 900 A.D.:\n\n > Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, \n\n > þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, \n\n > hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. \n\n > Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, \n\n > monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, \n\n > egsode eorlas.\n\nIt looks very different to today's English, mostly because the language hadn't borrowed very much yet from Norman French (that comes later, after the Norman invasion of 1066). It had a lot of very different grammar rules, too - more like today's Germanic languages (eg, German, Icelandic) than today's English.\n\nOld French and Modern French are also very different, but less so than Old English and Modern English. Looking at the oldest written piece of Old French, from the [Oaths of Strasbourg](_URL_1_) (842 A.D.):\n\n > Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet.\n\nOld French looks very Latin, still, but - and I'm relying on your Quebecois eyes, here - you can see where there are elements of Modern French already. (Edit: [Modern French translation of that text here.](_URL_0_))\n\nItalian is a bit different. There is no real \"Old Italian,\" as \"Italian\" was originally many different dialects. What Italians speak today is essentially the same as the Italian dialect spoken in Florence in the 1300s, made popular by Florentine author Dante Alighieri. An example from his \"[La divina commedia](_URL_3_)\" (1308-1321):\n\n > Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita\n\n > mi ritrovai per una selva oscura\n\n > ché la diritta via era smarrita.\n\n > Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura\n\n > esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte\n\n > che nel pensier rinova la paura!\n\nAside from his use of the *passato remoto* tense (\"mi ritrovai\" rather than \"mi sono ritrovato\"), it basically reads like modern Italian, and actually, the *passato remoto* is still often used today in the southern regions of Italy, so even that isn't really obsolete.\n\nI hope that gives you some useful information. If I can answer any questions, please let me know.\n\nEdit: Also, here is a comparison of Old High German (500-1050 A.D.) and modern German:\n\n > Old High German: Oba Karl then eid, then er sīnemo bruodher Ludhuwīge gesuor, geleistit, indi Ludhuwīg mīn hērro then er imo gesuor forbrihchit, ob ih inan es irwenden ne mag: noh ih noh thero nohhein, then ih es irwenden mag, widhar Karlo imo ce follusti ne wirdhit. (From the [Oaths of Strasbourg](_URL_4_) again, 842 A.D.)\n\n > Modern German translation: Falls Ludwig/Karl den Eid, den er seinem Bruder Karl/Ludwig schwört, wahrt und Karl/Ludwig, mein Herr, seinerseits ihn bricht, und wenn ich ihn nicht davon abhalten kann, dann werde weder ich noch irgendjemand, den ich davon abhalten kann, mich an einer Hilfeleistung gegen Ludwig/Karl beteiligen.", "More than about 600-700 years of linguistic drift seems to result in something which is basically another language. I can just about follow Shakespear and Marlowe ('early modern english'), but Chaucer ('middle english') is mostly gibberish to me. Actual Old English (pre-1200) is about as readable as modern German to me (i.e. I can guess at some of the words and sometimes manage to grasp the meaning of simple sentances).\n\nProbably worth posting this to /r/linguistics for a more professional opinion.\n\nEDIT: apparently I was wrong in my assumption that most languages evolve at about the same rate in the long term. The above only really applies to English.", "My Chinese History professor once told us that the Mandarin script hasn't changed (beyond vocabulary expansion) since Qin Shi Huang standardized it in the 2nd century BC. He could easily read texts in Mandarin from the 1st century BC and later without much translation difficulty.", "Not a linguist, but Arabic seems to have been a relatively static language at least since the standardisation of the written Arabic. The written language has a very exact grammatical notation so that, unlike in English, one always knows the 'proper' pronunciation. Of course dialects are still very varied though. Two people, one with the thickest Gulf accent and another with the thickest Moroccan accent, won't be able to understand each other, but for that the 'RP' of Modern Standard Arabic is available to talk in. Modern Arabic is quite different from classical, with its influences from English, French and so on, but most classical terms such as those found in the Quran are still part of the vocabulary.\n\nI interviewed a linguist specialising in Gulf dialects, Prof Clive Holes of Oxford University, a few months ago and he told me an interesting, relevant fact. The 'Bahraani' dialect, spoken by the native Bahrainis who've lived on the island the longest and their mainland cousins on the east coast of Saudi, share their dialect with some highly isolated village people in the mountains of Oman. As in, these Omani people (who have little contact with Musqat let alone lands beyond their nation) have almost the _exact_ same dialect a few hundred/thousand miles north of them. This suggests that they were part of the same group that migrated out of the Yemen which settled in Bahrain and eastern Saudi however many thousands of years ago, and neither dialects have evolved since leaving Yemen (the Yemeni dialect of course has). It's oddly static for such a long period of time.", "Some languages are very conservative--that is, they do not innovate new features or undergo significant phonological change--but not very many. Icelandic and Lithuanian are the two that pop to mind for me: Icelandic is, I'm told, extremely similar to Old Norse, and Lithuanian is reputed to be the living language that most closely resembles Proto-Indo-European, retaining a great deal of features that were lost in other languages." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z5165/just_how_much_different_are_actual_languages/c61io4l", "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serments_de_Strasbourg", "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf", "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Divine_Com%C3%A9die", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8acomy", "c8afhwt" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Matty The Horse Ianello served in Korea.", "One of my favorite fiction books is *The Fortunate Pilgrim* by Mario Puzo, and it's about an Italian-American family living in New York. One of the sons of the family is involved with organized crime (the Italian mafia, if you will) and another is conscripted to go fight WWII. The dynamic between the brothers is great. I recommend reading it, especially if you're going to try to write something similar. It sounds like you intend to focus more on the war aspect than Puzo did (it's only a very short moment in the book), so I think you can easily avoid repeating any of his ideas." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9ksgtq", "c9kslk5", "c9ksxqu", "c9ktdp0", "c9ktdwq", "c9ktene", "c9kth74", "c9l3zjl" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 6, 13, 9, 3, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "You really can't but that's ok. Most will not get offended if you ask nicely where there are from. Same goes for Hispanics as they generally are hard to differentiate but often people will appreciate that you did not just assume anything without asking first.", "_URL_0_ This will help you practice !", "Ask them.\n\nDon't bother guessing, it's not worth it.", "Sometimes you can tell by their surnames. Common Korean names are Kim, Park, Cho, or Han. Very simple. You can usually recognize a Japanese name, like Takahashi, Nakamura, Hayashi, Yamamoto, etc. - very different from Korean or Chinese names. Japanese names never start with V, X, or Z, but Chinese names may start with X or Z. Common Chinese names are Wang/Wong, Chang, Wu, Yang. But there is some overlap, of course, so use this with a grain of salt. A lot of Asians can't even differentiate by looks most of the time, so don't feel bad. Just ask politely like you're just curious and they probably won't mind telling you. ", "I'm Asian, let me just throw this story here: I was on a bus once, two other Asians sat a few rows behind me. They discussed/argued for a good half an hour about my ethnicity, in my language\n\nEdit: just curious, why is it imperative for you to know? Do you ask a white person what is his/her ethnicity? ", "Just by eye? It's hard if you aren't one of those, and it's not easy even if you are. Best to ask. It's usually not a touchy subject.\n\nThere are certain subtle physical features that appear in, say, Koreans but less so among southern Chinese, or in certain Japanese populations but not in Northern Chinese, but because of mixing, migrations, war, etc. relying on those won't be reliable. You can also listen in on them, but again, that's unreliable. I solely speak fluent English whenever I'm outside, and many others do so as well. And being unable to write my language won't help.\n\nSo. Just ask. Nobody's gonna get offended, and it's a good conversation opener.", "Here's a question\n\nCan you differentiate between a Russian, a Pole, a Czech or an Austrian?\n\nThey look exactly fucking alike, barring extreme regional differences.\n\nHowever, get their cultures mixed up and you'll likely have offended them.\n\nIt's the same idea with Asians. Only, they're yellow so they're \"foreign\" compared to the relatively white faces of european countries", "You can't/shouldn't in general.\n\nThere's people that look distinctly Chinese, those that look distinctly Japanese and those that look distinctly Korean. I would estimate like 25% of them look like that. The other 75% it's hard to tell. There's definitely people I could easily recognize but for everyone that I can easily recognize, there's MORE that I can't.\n\nThe other way to try to tell is by their accent or what language they speak. If you're some what familiar with the different Asian languages you can tell what language they're speaking even if you don't understand it.\n\nOr you can tell by last name like someone already suggested." ] }

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[ [], [ "asianlookalikes.com" ], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djc2pe8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "A fear of clowns deals with something known as the \"uncanny valley\". It applies to objects that are close enough to humans to be recognized as such, but they aren't quite \"right\".\n\nFeatures are drawn to be highly exaggerated. Your brain doesn't know how to react. \"It's like me... But it's not. It might attack.\" It's the same reason that people are afraid of dolls. They're so familiar, but something is off." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "flcepf3", "flcfv38", "flcjid6" ], "score": [ 10, 8, 4 ], "text": [ "The patient can still take extra breaths when the body is signaling it needs more oxygen, but a ventilator takes away the work of breathing (the energy required to move the diaphragm again and again). A patients diaphragm may not be able to keep up with inspiratory demands with the rest of the body needing energy for other things, such as fighting off the virus. I don’t remember exactly how much breathing is in terms of energy usage, but a ventilator (if set to the right deepness, pressure, and frequency of breaths) takes away that work so your body can put it to other uses.", "A ventilator has several modes to work on. Some people are so incredibly sick they have no ability to use their diaphragm to aid in breathing, it’s not that it functionally doesn’t work they just can’t. So the ventilator has modes where it does everything for them. Other modes allow the patient to breathe on their own in conjunction with the ventilator, and every time they breathe on their own the ventilator will assist with smaller amounts of pressure to make it easier. \n\nThere are several components to what the settings mean, but I’m not sure I can explain them in 5 year old terms, but if you’re interested and have questions I can certainly try! \n\nSome ventilators are also fancy and you can insert a probe down their esophagus and it can actually sense when the nerve is triggering your diaphragm to contract, and will help with the breathing that way too. Don’t ask me how, we don’t use them in my unit, but my husband has experience with them, I literally thought he was making it up when he was explaining it to me, lol.", "There are a few modes to work with in a ventilator. We sometimes use a ventilator even when the diaphragm is working. We look for impending signs of respiratory collapse. If the body has high needs for oxygen, the diaphragm may get tired by working tirelessly and eventually stop working. So we step in with a ventilator before that happens. Also, there are a few conditions in which when a person breathes out, his lungs remove most of the air and the next inhalation takes a lot of struggle (normally some air stays inside even when we exhale fully so that small alveoli in lungs stay inflated). Consider the example of a balloon. It takes comparatively higher pressure to START blowing in air in a non-inflated balloon but once it has some air in it, it gets easier to fill more air in it. The same happens with lungs. Hence, one mode of ventilator keeps giving a background pressure even after exhalation to keep those alveoli open" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxhkgt0", "cxhnlac" ], "score": [ 19, 9 ], "text": [ "Essentially you've hit the nail on the head with your last sentence\n\n > a perceived lack of opportunity in the North\n\nWhile the First Great Migration (1910-1930) was largely caused by the brutality of Jim Crow Laws and Lynchings, another reason were the increased job opportunities in the North, which largely didn't exist before 1910. The huge jump in Northern manufacturing capability required a massive boost in labor, which African-Americans would meet. Northern manufacturers like Henry Ford even sent men into the South to recruit black laborers for their factories. Before the Great Migrations, there was simply no pull to the North or West for African Americans. ", "To add to /u/Dubstripsquads' response, demand was also created by a series of stiff anti-immigration laws passed by Congress. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first federal immigration law; it officially suspended Chinese immigration for a decade but had mixed effects (/u/Artrw can speak to these). After the establishment of the Bureau of Immigration in 1891, restrictions came on almost a regular basis. In 1902, the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed for an indefinite period. In 1903, Anarchists, epileptics, polygamists and beggars were banned from immigration. In 1906, English language skills became a basic requirement for immigration.\n\nIn 1921, the landmark Quota Act of 1921 restricted immigration to 3 percent of each nationality present in the United States in 1910. Asians were still prohibited from immigration, and the act specifically targeted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, whom the Dillingham Report of 1910 suggested were inferior to other immigrants. The U.S. State Department has [a pretty good precis of immigration laws from 1921 to 1936 here](_URL_2_).\n\nAt the same time the supply of workers was being cut through these anti-immigration laws, demand was soaring with the rise of consumer industry. In addition, the fighting of World War I raised industrial demand to previously unknown heights. In the South, too, there was a cause: The spread of the boll weevil across the South devastated its principal crop and put many farm workers off the fields.\n\nIt would be wrong to say that there was a unified, organized campaign to look to the American South for labor, but it happened anyway ─ 6 million black Americans independently making the decision to move north for employment. As [Isabel Wilkerson's *The Light of Other Suns*](_URL_1_) explains: \n\n > \"There was no leader, there was no one person who set the date who said, 'On this date, people will leave the South.' They left on their own accord for as many reasons as there are people who left. They made a choice that they were not going to live under the system into which they were born anymore and in some ways it was the first step that the nation's servant class ever took without asking.\"\n\nBetween 1910 and 1970, nearly 6 million black Americans left the South, [irrevocably changing the demographic and social map of the United States](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/020/", "http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129827444", "https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cpjvg68" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The notion of 'sea level' isn't actually the current sea level because that changes from year to year and more profoundly from place to place. Weather, moon, the geography of the water body in the area, and climate change, are just a few of the things that change 'actual' sea level (this is all from [Wikipedia](_URL_0_)).\n\nIn science, people are usually trying to describe a standard pressure, which has been generally agreed upon as [standard sea level](_URL_1_) or 101.325 kPa. As for other uses of 'sea-level' where you're literally talking about water level and not just the pressure of a standard system, you're pretty much stuck using the mean water-level or whatever makes sense in the context of what's being described. I doubt that standard pressure will be adjusted anytime soon for increasing global water levels, only because there already remains such a vast variation in sea levels and pressures for the reasons I listed above, but even moreso because the past century of science uses the standard for pretty much everything.\n\nAnd finally, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about when you say 0, but you might be talking about a specific datum?\n > In the UK, the Ordnance Datum (the 0 metres height on UK maps) is the mean sea level measured at Newlyn in Cornwall between 1915 and 1921. Prior to 1921, the datum was MSL at the Victoria Dock, Liverpool.\n\nTL;DR: Standard pressure references probably won't change, but sea-level has already been changing quite profoundly depending on how you look at it." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_sea_level" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdgoy39" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "All bacteria have certain temperatures that their enzymes, or proteins in their bodies which process nutrients and other things perform at the maximum rate. As the environment temperature increases, enzyme action increases until it reaches a high enough temperature that enzymes denature, meaning that their substrate area (where enzymes attach to food) unfold, therefore not allowing them to interact with what they are supposed to. As temperature gets colder, enzymes simply work at a slower pace. So I guess the basic answer to your question is that temperature speeds up enzyme activity, allowing them to process nutrients faster allowing for faster growth. Sorry for the lengthy response..." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ch71lrg", "ch71mp7", "ch71yp9", "ch72en2" ], "score": [ 11, 8, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "He was already found guilty, the issue here is that the sentence for the guilt was out of line considering the sentencing guidelines.\n\nDouble Jeopardy protects from being tried again for the same crime (decision of guilt or not), not protection from an improper trial (hung jury, mistrial, etc).", "Lawyer here! Double jeopardy exists to keep someone from being *tried* multiple times (for the same conduct). That's it. There's nothing saying a defendant can't be re-sentenced.\n\nIn the case here, the trial has already happened. The guy was convicted. The ship has sailed. But the sentence imposed by the trial court was legally flawed, so the appeals court told it to try again. It's not uncommon.", "Double Jeopardy is a bit more complex than people assume.\n\nIt isn't a major concern in the appellate process for cases like this. The man was already found guilty, the question was whether the sentence was appropriate. \n\nMost states have a certain amount of time that it is appropriate to sentence someone for whatever crime. Generally speaking, if you are convicted of, let's say, a \"level X felony\" there is a specific amount of time you are supposed to go to jail. Again, generally, if a judge does not sentence that proscribed amount of time, the sentence handed down is subject to appeal. There is almost always a list of criteria that can allow a judge to go outside the proscribed time, either sentencing more time, or less. For this crime, it seems that one of the criteria was how much control the victim had over the situation. Because the sentencing judge felt the victim had substantial control, the judge sentenced him for less time. The prosecution said that the convicted person should have served at least four years, so they appealed the judges sentencing, not the determination that the person was guilty. (EDIT: It wasn't that the prosecution just felt like he should have served four years; four years was probably what the statute proscribed that he serve. Had the judge sentenced the person beyond what would have been proscribed in the statute then the convicted person's lawyers could have appealed the sentence to try to get it lowered. The same way that certain factors can mitigate the length of a sentence, certain factors can enhance the sentence handed down, like if the crime had been done for racial reasons[depending on the statute, there is a lot of broad strokes stuff going on in my answer because 99% of the law depends on something that depends on something that depends on something])\n\nThis is not a jeopardy issue. A jeopardy issue would be if the original court had found the person not guilty, and then the state charged him again. There would also have been a jeopardy issue if the judge had sentenced him to a time proscribed by that state's statutes and then the state tried to appeal it to get a different sentencing time. \n\nYou are protected from being twice put in jeopardy by the Fifth Amendment, when jeopardy occurs is a legal issue that may vary in each situation and jurisdiction. If I recall correctly, jeopardy generally attaches when the jury is sworn in for jury trials, and I believe when the first witness is called in a bench trial.", "Others answered the main part here pretty well. But I should also point out that there are other ways in which Double Jeopardy does not apply.\n\nThe biggest thing being the appellate courts. When you appeal something, the courts don't examine your guiltiness/nonguiltiness. They don't care about that. They examine the case itself and ensure that everything was conducted the way it was supposed to be conducted. If there's anything that looks like it could possibly be unfair or perhaps evidence was submitted that actually shouldn't have been allowed etc, the appellate courts can overturn the ruling and another trial can commence." ] }

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[ "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2616949/Montana-teachers-1-month-rape-sentence-overturned.html" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c1g2d3z", "c1g2ddp", "c1g2f3k", "c1g2p4m", "c1g2s8j" ], "score": [ 2, 7, 13, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "A little bit of google makes it seem like your dad is right. Because wiki says that the way your teacher did it, it can refer to acetic acid, or several other compounds. _URL_0_", "CH3COOH is the correct way to describe the structure in organic chemistry, but if you're just looking at the stoichiometric formula then the C2H4O2 is technically correct.", "They're both technically correct, but your dad is correcter. ", "I think the term your teacher should have used is carboxylate or acetate if you're referring specifically to the ionic form of acetic acid but this is definitely a situation where many chemists throw these terms without the rigid specificity normally expected of scientists.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nif you scroll down to TMA acetate you'll see an example of this ion.\n\n_URL_1_\n", "We generally write CH3COOH in the lab, however it is still technically correct to write it your teacher's way. The reason why it is more common to use CH3COOH is because that depicts a better physical representation of how the actual [acetic acid molecule](_URL_0_) is structured. As you can see, it starts with the CH3 methyl group on one side, which is then connected to another C atom which has two O attached to it, and then finally there is an H attached to one of the O.\n\nKnowing how a molecule is structured will also help you understand how that molecule will behave in a chemical reaction. For example, if we write it down your teacher's way C2H4O2, we don't see that there is H on the end of the molecule which can ionize, and therefore we don't even know it's an acid! Also present in the molecule that I already mentioned is the methyl group, which is quite apparent in your \"father's\" naming convention. That methyl group might react in a very unique manner in various chemical reactions, so it is important to know that acetic acid contains the methyl group. Another functional group you could single out in the acetic acid molecule is the acetyl group, CH3CO–, which will also react in a very specific manner in many different chemical reactions. I remember seeing acetic acid quite a bit back in my polymer science courses in many different reactions, and the acetyl group played a role in a few of those reactions. In polymer science, it's absolutely necessary to know the physical structure of each molecule you're working with, because that will give you clues on melting temperatures, the behavior of the polymer, strength of the polymer, and other physical properties.\n\nI'm not sure how far along in chemistry you are, so don't let me talk down on you, but knowing certain \"functional groups\" (like the methyl and acetyl groups I just mentioned) is pretty important when you get into organic chemistry and beyond. These functional groups also appear in many other molecules, and they tend to behave similarly in those other molecules as well. Recognizing various functional groups and understanding their behavior will become more important as you advance in your chemistry career.\n\nThere's another reason why a lot of scientists in practice use your father's naming convention as well. It's actually the simplist reason, too. There are actually other chemical compounds that share the same number of H, O and C atoms. For example, HO-CH=CH-OH is a chemical that could also be written out as C2H4O2. Using the CH3COOH naming convention gets rid of these ambiguous statements.\n\nSo to sum up: writing the *very* well known and well used acetic acid as CH3COOH will help reflect the molecules physical structure, which will also help tell the scientist how the chemical may react in any given situation." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2H4O2" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetate", "http://www.silicycle.com/spe-cartridges-ion-exchange-phases", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboxylate" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acetic-acid-CRC-GED-3D-balls-B.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "edwli5n" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "They're not really waterproof, is the simple answer. They're mostly waterproof, and rely on angles to shed and wick the water away faster than it would drip out the other side. \n\nThis means you can make a relatively light and inexpensive material that still allows for airflow. \n\nAs to why your finger makes it come through, it's basically surface tension. When there's nothing touching the inside, the water sticks together and drains down, but when you touch it, the water can stick together and flow onto your finger. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eta3mkt", "eta6gt4" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "There is a radiolab pod cast about this topic....pretty much all debris is clasified by size and tracked individually by an agency sort of like NASA. They ping alerts to crews who might encounter the larger peices so they can avoid it but they said there is pretty much no way to keep track of the really small bits as there is soo much of it.\n\nAlso mentionioned is that if too much builds up due to a major incident then we are pretty much fucked.", "The [US Space Surveillance Network](_URL_0_) includes both ground-based sensors and satellites that do the tracking." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "drllvya", "drlm2z7", "drlmhys", "drlmo53", "drlw7lg" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 9, 83, 2 ], "text": [ "The board of directors vote him out. They might do so under pressure from prominent shareholders. Ultimately, though, the board of directors determine the executive structure of the company (including voting in new board members). He's still the chairman of the board, but that doesn't mean he runs the board, so he can be voted out.", "Public companies like Papa johns are beholden to their stockholders; often there are a board of people who own a majority of the stocks who have more power than the CEO; if they dont like what the CEO is doing they can replace him", "just because he's the founder doesn't mean he owns majority share of the company. when he sold shares of the company to investors for money, he sold majority share away. \n\nbill gates only owns 4% of microsoft.\n\nmark zuckerberg only owns 28% of facebook.\n\njeff bezoes only owns 17% of amazon. \n\nwhoever has majority shares get majority power influence over the board. that's how you share a company with thousands of owners. \n\n", "Papa John's is a publicly traded company. This means that individuals can buy portions of the company called \"shares\" and the company can use that money to invest and grow. John Schnatter kept 25% of the company for himself when they went public, but the other 75% was sold in order to grow the brand. \n\nThe shareholders are represented by a board of directors. Schnatter has a lot of power, but if they all agreed he shouldn't be CEO then they can make him. They can choose a new CEO. What they *can't* do is take away his 25% of the company.\n\nSo he still owns 25% of the company. He still will make millions and millions of dollars from Papa John's. He just doesn't actually *run* the company any more.", "It's a great question, and it touches on a lot of public confusion over what \"CEO\" means, versus Chairman, versus Founder, President, etc. The best way to explain it is to walk you through the differences in how small and large companies are owned and managed.\n\nLet's say you own a corner store with your spouse. Ownership and decision-making rests entirely with you two, right? If you ever disagree on how money should be spent, or how the company should be run, you can probably talk things out, so no formal mechanism for that stuff is necessary.\n\nBut take a slightly larger company. Like say... a Silicon Valley startup just past its infancy. It needs $10M to grow, and the Founder doesn't have that cash on hand. So they go and look for investors willing to pony up the money.\n\nWell, investors don't know this Founder personally. They're not going to turn over, say... $2M to some random person and let them do whatever with it forever, even if they tentatively like what they've done so far. They want to make sure that money is spent wisely. But the Founder isn't going to turn over control of their business, either. So what do they do?\n\nThey vote on it! Typically, they will form a council, called a Board of Directors. Each investor, along with the Founder, gets a seat on the Board roughly equal to how much money they put in. And then the Board votes on all major decisions the company makes.\n\nExcept it's not practical to have the Board vote on *every* decision. (Imagine if the Board had to get together and vote on every hire and fire in a 500-person company!) So the Board votes to appoint someone -- the Founder to start -- to make all the day-to-day decisions, with the caveat that they could vote again to fire that person if they don't like what they're doing. That is the CEO. *The CEO works for the Board, not the other way around,* even if the CEO also has a vote on that same Board. This is the biggest important distinction between a CEO and say... just a President.\n\nThings are a little more complicated in a huge, public company, with millions of shareholders, but the principle is the same. The shareholders vote in groups to nominate a Board of Directors, and then again, the Board votes to nominate the CEO. If the CEO does something that enough shareholders dislike (like, say... pops off in public about kneeling NFL players and tanks the stock price) they can lean on the Board. If enough Board members flip, they can vote to fire the CEO.\n\nBut there is another, important title: In very large companies with large, unwieldy Boards with billions of public shares, the Board will typically nominate its *own* leader, called a Chairman, to manage the Board itself. Ideally, for separation of powers purposes, you want this to be a different person from the CEO, but very powerful and successful CEOs (like Disney's Bob Iger) can often convince the Board to also name them Chairman too.\n\nIt's now *very* difficult to fire the CEO, because as Chairman, the CEO manages the voting schedule and agenda of the very council that could conceivably ever vote to fire them. You can still do it, but it takes a *huge* majority of the Board to overrule the Chairman, and usually by that point the Chairman and CEO realizes they are so screwed that they will negotiate a resignation before it actually comes to a vote.\n\nThis is what happened in Papa John's case. But as part of his resignation negotiation as CEO, he got to keep Chairman. The Board then voted to make his former second in command the new CEO. So you can argue that Papa John really isn't giving up a huge amount of control.\n\nThe politics of these Board seats, CEO, Chairman, Founder, and shareholders can get *extremely* complicated and very dramatic -- just as complicated as any national government, with its dueling separation of powers, factions, voters, parties, etc. [Entire books have been written](_URL_0_) about some of the more famous and dramatic wars for control of major companies, if you're interested in knowing more." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.amazon.com/DisneyWar-James-B-Stewart/dp/0743267095" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cipwze5" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "A sunburn isn't the same as a tan. Tans are caused by the production of melanin in the skin as a response to sun exposure. Sunburns are the layers of your skin literally being burned by sunlight, and the redness is caused by inflammation, not pigment. The redness goes away as healing occurs." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2s0nkv", "c2s1isa", "c2s1zqm", "c2s2pqt", "c2s2x5r", "c2s3ap7", "c2s3ubi", "c2s5arx", "c2s0nkv", "c2s1isa", "c2s1zqm", "c2s2pqt", "c2s2x5r", "c2s3ap7", "c2s3ubi", "c2s5arx" ], "score": [ 13, 37, 9, 7, 22, 4, 18, 2, 13, 37, 9, 7, 22, 4, 18, 2 ], "text": [ "It reduces the overall quality of the housing. It actually creates less available housing and also raises the price of homes that should be lower. \n\nI personally think that it is morally wrong because it is a violation of property rights. If someone wants to rent out his house for $1k/month and someone else is willing to pay that, why should the government not allow the two parties to make that deal?", "One of the main reason capitalism works is that prices somewhat accurately reflect supply and demand. Rent control takes away this information. As a result, there isn't the same incentive to create new developments. Less new development means less supply, which would increase prices, but they're kept artificially low which compounds the problem. You end up with a situation where the government then has to step in to create new housing, because businesses don't find it profitable.\n\nHow disastrous it ends up depends on how out of tune the government rent control is with what the open market prices would have been. This isn't like banking regulations or employment insurance though, it's a reduction of information that never ends well.", "In my town it is not uncommon for tenants to own property down the street while living in a rent controlled apartment at less than half the market rate for 10 years.", "The laws around rent control can get really complicated really quickly, and they vary a lot from city to city . . . but let's say the basic rules are that I'm a landlord and I can only raise rent 2% per year as long as a tenant stays in their apartment.\n\nAs rent everywhere else starts going up, my tenants have nowhere else to go that they can afford. I'd really like to make more money, but I can't raise rent on my existing tenants because they don't want to leave (since everywhere else is more expensive now).\n\nThe landlords and tenants are now stuck with each other. I don't want to spend money fixing the place up, because my tenant has below-market rent. In fact, I don't care if they're unhappy, because I'd be thrilled if they moved out--I can rent that apartment out at a current rate to new tenants in a heartbeat.\n\nThe end result is people wind up sitting on apartments they should have left ages ago, but couldn't afford to, and landlords do the bare minimum maintaining their properties because they'd rather the renters come and go more often so they don't get locked in to the rent control limit. Everybody winds up worse off.", "TLDR: It causes housing shortages and degradation.\n\nImagine rent was fixed at $1/month in Saskatchewan. This is obviously ridiculous, but it'll prove a point.\n\nEveryone in Saskatchewan who is renting would be able to afford to rent. In fact, word spreads of Saskatchewans great rental prices. People begin to move to Saskatchewan, where they can take advantage. In fact, many people who used to own their homes sell their houses and begin to rent. Then one day, there's no more rental properties available.\n\nSaskatchewan Mining Company is looking to hire people all across Canada, but they can't get people to move to Saskatchewan. because there's no housing left. Even new college kids can't get a place to live.\n\nPeople are starting to realize that more apartments need to be built, but no one is willing to build them. At $1 rent, its not profitable to do so. Homelessness increases.\n\nFurthermore, landlords stop paying for things like fixing pipes because they don't have money. The quality of already existing properties declines.\n\nThe same thing happens to varying degrees at any price below equilibrium price (the price the market would set absent of any rent control).\n\nCan rent be set at a price which doesn't have these effects? Yes. But it would require politicians to set a reasonable price, while many in their constituency (renters) would want the ceiling lowered as much as possible. \n\nConsensus from economists is that the market prices rent more effectively than politicians.", "Rent control is bad for cities in the **long run**. If landlords can only charge a very low rate for rent, they won't add more properties and won't bother to maintain the ones the already own. Low rent encourages more people to try and look for apartments. When more people want apartments than there are apartments to be had, **less people get housing, the housing that is rent controlled is in worse condition, and the way in which landlords decide who gets housing often ends up biased** (long waiting lists, giving preference to people they know, discriminating against race, etc.) ", "I'll explain like you're five:\n\nLet's say you are fortunate enough to have a few playhouses that your family gave you as presents. Obviously you can't play in all of them all the time, so you, being a smart little boy or girl, decide to let the other kids from your class borrow them from you for some extra money. Let's say it's going to be $5 per week.\n\nYour friends Arthur, Bashir and Carol can afford to pay you the money because they each have a successful lemonade stand, so they get to have the playhouses for the week. Let's say they borrow it from you like this, while paying, for a few weeks (renting). You also agree that you'll come and help them fix things that break through normal play (i.e. basic landlord stuff). Eventually, you might even have enough money to buy new playhouses, and rent that out to more classmates (invest in more housing). The amount your friends pay you might change from week to week, depending on if there are other fun games they can play or other playhouses in the area they can use (market price for rents).\n\nNow a few new kids moved into town and want to rent a playhouse from you. Their parents don't give them a big allowance (lower-income families), so they can't afford to pay you, and then can't get a playhouse. They think this isn't fair, so your teacher and parents (government) come and tell you that you have to charge less money so the other kids can play too (rent control). They may outright tell you that you can't charge that much money (price ceiling) or you'll get in trouble, so now you can only charge $1 a week.\n\nSince prices are so much lower now, everyone and anyone wants to come borrow a playhouse from you, but there aren't enough to go around (housing shortage).\n\nSo now what do you do? Well, you can't get enough money to invest in new playhouses, so you don't bother to get more playhouses for your friends. You also know that, since there is so much demand, that you don't need to bother fixing stuff that breaks. Even if your friend gets mad at you and doesn't want to keep playing and paying, you can easily find someone else.\n\nThe only way other kids can even get playhouses now is if their parents buy them one (government housing), since they can't borrow from you. So now nobody's really happy.\n\n**tl;dr** You rent some playhouses for $5, your teacher says that isn't fair to the other kids, now you can only charge $1. There are more kids than playhouses and everybody loses.", "Devil's advocate here:\n\nTHE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH!", "It reduces the overall quality of the housing. It actually creates less available housing and also raises the price of homes that should be lower. \n\nI personally think that it is morally wrong because it is a violation of property rights. If someone wants to rent out his house for $1k/month and someone else is willing to pay that, why should the government not allow the two parties to make that deal?", "One of the main reason capitalism works is that prices somewhat accurately reflect supply and demand. Rent control takes away this information. As a result, there isn't the same incentive to create new developments. Less new development means less supply, which would increase prices, but they're kept artificially low which compounds the problem. You end up with a situation where the government then has to step in to create new housing, because businesses don't find it profitable.\n\nHow disastrous it ends up depends on how out of tune the government rent control is with what the open market prices would have been. This isn't like banking regulations or employment insurance though, it's a reduction of information that never ends well.", "In my town it is not uncommon for tenants to own property down the street while living in a rent controlled apartment at less than half the market rate for 10 years.", "The laws around rent control can get really complicated really quickly, and they vary a lot from city to city . . . but let's say the basic rules are that I'm a landlord and I can only raise rent 2% per year as long as a tenant stays in their apartment.\n\nAs rent everywhere else starts going up, my tenants have nowhere else to go that they can afford. I'd really like to make more money, but I can't raise rent on my existing tenants because they don't want to leave (since everywhere else is more expensive now).\n\nThe landlords and tenants are now stuck with each other. I don't want to spend money fixing the place up, because my tenant has below-market rent. In fact, I don't care if they're unhappy, because I'd be thrilled if they moved out--I can rent that apartment out at a current rate to new tenants in a heartbeat.\n\nThe end result is people wind up sitting on apartments they should have left ages ago, but couldn't afford to, and landlords do the bare minimum maintaining their properties because they'd rather the renters come and go more often so they don't get locked in to the rent control limit. Everybody winds up worse off.", "TLDR: It causes housing shortages and degradation.\n\nImagine rent was fixed at $1/month in Saskatchewan. This is obviously ridiculous, but it'll prove a point.\n\nEveryone in Saskatchewan who is renting would be able to afford to rent. In fact, word spreads of Saskatchewans great rental prices. People begin to move to Saskatchewan, where they can take advantage. In fact, many people who used to own their homes sell their houses and begin to rent. Then one day, there's no more rental properties available.\n\nSaskatchewan Mining Company is looking to hire people all across Canada, but they can't get people to move to Saskatchewan. because there's no housing left. Even new college kids can't get a place to live.\n\nPeople are starting to realize that more apartments need to be built, but no one is willing to build them. At $1 rent, its not profitable to do so. Homelessness increases.\n\nFurthermore, landlords stop paying for things like fixing pipes because they don't have money. The quality of already existing properties declines.\n\nThe same thing happens to varying degrees at any price below equilibrium price (the price the market would set absent of any rent control).\n\nCan rent be set at a price which doesn't have these effects? Yes. But it would require politicians to set a reasonable price, while many in their constituency (renters) would want the ceiling lowered as much as possible. \n\nConsensus from economists is that the market prices rent more effectively than politicians.", "Rent control is bad for cities in the **long run**. If landlords can only charge a very low rate for rent, they won't add more properties and won't bother to maintain the ones the already own. Low rent encourages more people to try and look for apartments. When more people want apartments than there are apartments to be had, **less people get housing, the housing that is rent controlled is in worse condition, and the way in which landlords decide who gets housing often ends up biased** (long waiting lists, giving preference to people they know, discriminating against race, etc.) ", "I'll explain like you're five:\n\nLet's say you are fortunate enough to have a few playhouses that your family gave you as presents. Obviously you can't play in all of them all the time, so you, being a smart little boy or girl, decide to let the other kids from your class borrow them from you for some extra money. Let's say it's going to be $5 per week.\n\nYour friends Arthur, Bashir and Carol can afford to pay you the money because they each have a successful lemonade stand, so they get to have the playhouses for the week. Let's say they borrow it from you like this, while paying, for a few weeks (renting). You also agree that you'll come and help them fix things that break through normal play (i.e. basic landlord stuff). Eventually, you might even have enough money to buy new playhouses, and rent that out to more classmates (invest in more housing). The amount your friends pay you might change from week to week, depending on if there are other fun games they can play or other playhouses in the area they can use (market price for rents).\n\nNow a few new kids moved into town and want to rent a playhouse from you. Their parents don't give them a big allowance (lower-income families), so they can't afford to pay you, and then can't get a playhouse. They think this isn't fair, so your teacher and parents (government) come and tell you that you have to charge less money so the other kids can play too (rent control). They may outright tell you that you can't charge that much money (price ceiling) or you'll get in trouble, so now you can only charge $1 a week.\n\nSince prices are so much lower now, everyone and anyone wants to come borrow a playhouse from you, but there aren't enough to go around (housing shortage).\n\nSo now what do you do? Well, you can't get enough money to invest in new playhouses, so you don't bother to get more playhouses for your friends. You also know that, since there is so much demand, that you don't need to bother fixing stuff that breaks. Even if your friend gets mad at you and doesn't want to keep playing and paying, you can easily find someone else.\n\nThe only way other kids can even get playhouses now is if their parents buy them one (government housing), since they can't borrow from you. So now nobody's really happy.\n\n**tl;dr** You rent some playhouses for $5, your teacher says that isn't fair to the other kids, now you can only charge $1. There are more kids than playhouses and everybody loses.", "Devil's advocate here:\n\nTHE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crky9jj", "crkzva0" ], "score": [ 18, 2 ], "text": [ "It plots individual points. \"Insane\" is an exaggeration. Think about this, say you had a super HD 4K monitor and had the graph going across the entire screen. If the software were to individually compute every pixel it displays... it would only have to compute about 4000 points, one for every x value, which is not hard for a computer at all for most functions, certainly easier than making inferences about arbitrary functions (but not necessarily if the form of the function is known in advance).", "Everything outside the mathematical world has to be discretized in order to be represented. Computers do this by stepping over a function and plotting points close enough together to give the illusion of a continuous function. If you zoom in far enough you can notice the non-continuousness and therefore it should be given precision based on the application." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dcoscxw", "dcpb797" ], "score": [ 441, 36 ], "text": [ "To answer the first part of your question:\n\nThe Constitution did **not** specify March 4, or any other date, as the beginning of the new President's term. It stated only that the length of the President's term was four years. And, while the Constitution gave Congress the power to set the date for the selection of Electors, and the date the Electors should cast their votes, it did *not* give Congress the power to set the date on which the President's term began.\n\nCongress met for the first time on March 4th 1789. This date was the [result of a vote of the Continental Congress](_URL_0_):\n\n > Resolved, That the first Wednesday in January next be the day for appointing electors in the several States, which before the said day shall have ratified the said Constitution; that the first Wednesday in February next be the day for the electors to assemble in their respective States and vote for a President; and that **the first Wednesday in March** next be the time, and the present seat of Congress [New York] the place for commencing, proceeding under the said Constitution.\"\n\n[EDIT: So, to answer OP's specific question, it looks as if they were fond of Wednesdays, and March 4th happened to be a Wednesday in 1789].\n\nAlthough Congress didn't count the electoral votes of the first Presidential election until April 6th of that year, and President Washington was not sworn in until April 30th, his term in office was retroactively considered to have begun on March 4th (since that was when the new Constitution \"commenced\").\n\nSince every Presidential term was four years long, as specified by the Constituion, every subsequent Presidential term (until the XX Amendment was enacted) also began on March 4th.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "An interesting side note is that March 4, 1848 fell on a Sunday. Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on a Sunday, and took his oath on Monday. Millard Fillmore, Taylor's Vice President, also waited. Polk did not stay in office for that extra day. Some claim David Rice Atchison, president pro tempore and next in succession, was president for that day. He never claimed to have been president for that day (in fact mentioned he slept for much of that day), and the myth likely began as a marketing ploy by Atchison, Kansas.\n\nJanuary 20th is roughly a month after the Elecorial College vote (the third Wednesday in December) and roughly two weeks after the president of the senate confirms the vote. January 20, 1937 was a Wednesday, so the 20th became the official day (FDR was already in office and the 20th Amendment reached the required number of states ratifying it on January 23, so FDR's second term retroactively began on the 20th). To keep terms four years, it has remained January 20th.\n\nETA: I stand corrected. When arguing to shrink the lame duck period, those explaining why a long lame duck can be a bad thing, point to secession of Southern states with the election of Lincoln and the bank failures in the Great Depression (which FDR addressed pretty much as soon as he was sworn-in in 1932). For some reason I associated the 20th Amendment as a reaction to FDR closing the banks. Instead it was more of a reflection of larger issues related to the ability of government to respond to crisises." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=eU1HAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA861&ots=ARorzTzzMa&dq=%22That%20the%20first%20Wednesday%20in%20January%20next%20be%20the%20day%20for%20appointing%20electors%20in%20the%20several%20States%22&pg=PA867#v=onepage&q=%22That%20the%20first%20Wednesday%20in%20January%20next%20be%20the%20day%20for%20appointing%20electors%20in%20the%20several%20States%22&f=false" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d36l1vx", "d36l4ux", "d36nzb0" ], "score": [ 24, 21, 5 ], "text": [ "There are many videos of what is apparently misconduct in the voting process aimed at benefitting Hillary Clinton and suppressing the supporters of Bernie Sanders.", "Several bernie-supporting delegates were rejected for various reasons, it got rowdy because of accusations of voter suppression, and the hosts said they couldn't maintain security anymore so they had to leave.", "Nevada had what is called a 3 tier primary process. The 1st tier (voting by citizens) went in favor of Hillary. The second tier (delegate Selection at a congressional district level) went to Bernie, because not enough Hillary supporters showed up. The third tier (state level) was last night, and it flipped back to Hillary because (supposedly) 64 2nd tier Bernie delegates were denied entry. When people protested in favor of Bernie,they were ignored. There are several videos of the resulting chaos. In my opinion, the entire delegate/superdelegate process is rediculous and decidedly undemocratic.\n\nEdit: added \"state level\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cprmbva" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Every now and then I remember how pointless and insignificant everyone's lives are." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5p6wfi", "d5pmddr" ], "score": [ 56, 6 ], "text": [ "William Feetham patented a chain-release shower in 1767. In the late 1800s communal showers took hold by French military, under the direction of physician François Merry Delabost who had first tried them out on prisoners for reasons of economics and hygiene.\n\nIn modern times showers did not start to become common until the early 1920s, by which time homes had water heating and reliable plumbing, and had shower heads in existing tubs. But it was slow going at first. A 1954 article in Challenge magazine noted, \"the plumbing industry confidently predicts that the day is not far off when a bathroom and bathtub (with shower) will become a necessary adjunct to every bedroom in the home.\" (Challenge Vol. 2, No. 6 (March 1954), pp. 36-38).\n\n", "Piggy backing on this, when did bathing regularly become a thing, as an idea of hygiene. \n\nSure you see public baths in history, but was it due to hygiene or a social thing. Hot tubs are pretty cool and have nothing to do with hygiene. \n\nLike, was there a time when people didn't bathe regularly and just stank or did most people throughout history bathe? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmcjn5i" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Unfortunately probably not. A relatively recent study pegged the half life of DNA at around 500 years depending on the environmental surroundings. So every 500 years roughly half of the remaining bonds in the DNA molecule will be broken. After 2000 years, you would only expect 1/16 of the bonds to be remaining. And it's all downhill from there. Recently extinct animals could possibly have their DNA sequenced (and in fact the wooly mammoth has been mostly sequenced) but they would be much less likely to be fossilized. So we probably aren't getting DNA from fossils.\n\nAlso, we don't use microscopes to read the DNA sequence. We use DNA sequencing, which I can explain in more detail if you're interested in that." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqonp4p", "cqotla3" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "Think of it this way. For every mirror there is an area NOT lit because light headed for that area was redirected by the mirror, at a loss because the mirror is not 100% efficient.\n\nThat's where the seemingly \"extra\" light comes from.", "The effect would be somehow similar because light would come from many different directions at once, but the total amount of light would be what the single candle produced.\n\nYou can compare this situation to having a flashlight in a dark room. If you point it towards a certain object in the room the light will look underpowered for ligting the whole area and most of the room will be dark. But if you point it to the ceiling the whole room will be lighted. There is no more light or energy in the room, it's just more evenly distributed. \n\nThe light that bounces from a mirror is reduced by a 30% at least." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd5kkcu" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "From a Euro-American perspective, the Sabbath has been around since Biblical times, so the idea of having one day per week to take a break is ancient. \n\nI believe that current 5-day work week started around the later Industrial revolution, when more people began paying attention to things like worker welfare (no more children playing around with heavy machinery), as well as starting to introduce a shorter workday (eventually ending in the 9-5 workday we have now)\n\nHard to say what the sole effect of making a five week day was since it was a change accompanied by shorter workdays and better labor regulation.\n\nWiki: _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Reform" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cejb6ha", "cejc49y" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Hitler discussed this in Mein Kampf. \n\nHe promoted the idea of five sub-races of the Aryan people. Dinaric, Alpine, mediterranean, Nordic, and Eastern Baltic. The best kind of Aryan is, you probably guessed it, are the predominantly blue eyed and fair headed Nordics. \n\nThis was actually very popular, Nordicism I mean, way before Hitler promoted it. Anyway, Hitler said that Germans and other kinds of Aryans have either been diluted and weakened over time (mixing with Jewish people for example).\n\nHe promoted blue eyed and blonde germans as models because they are less not Nordic. Essentially, Germans needed to expunge non-Nordic lineage which will cause them to have blue eyes and blonde hair again. \n\nThe issue with Nordicism conflicted with Italy which promoted Mediterreneanism. ", "see this similar post from a few months ago for previous responses\n\n[How is it the Nazis justified the attempted creation of a society filled with tall, blond-haired, blue eyed people, when Hitler himself did not fit this model?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ "http://i.imgur.com/D6QG6X6.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/T8qFFgE.png" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kjqnp/how_is_it_the_nazis_justified_the_attempted/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxtqngl" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Lets everybody enjoy their holidays without watching TV and having to keep up while with family and gives more time to film and edit episodes\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f9au9e1", "f9b84bf", "f9bbpbz", "f9bgco3" ], "score": [ 63, 9, 6, 12 ], "text": [ "There are animals like a sponge that you would likely mistake for a plant if you didn't know better, and plants that can move and eat \"meat\" like a venus fly trap. I know that plants and animals are different in that plants have cell walls and animals have cell membranes, and given how far back on the tree of life we are related, those two things must be really different and important.", "Animal cells don't have the recipe to make chloroplasts cells, new cell recipes are not easy to develop. It's something that was discovered only once in history by a cell, and all nowadays plant are the descendant of this cell. \n\nSome slugs steal chloroplasts from plants and then do photosynthesis for themselves.", "The distinction seems very vivid in part because it's a simplified way of classifying different living things. Fungi are an obvious weird further case but there are others. Some organisms - like [kelp](_URL_1_), for example - look like plants and can photosynthesize, but aren't *really* plants according to modern classification schemes. Meanwhile, the creepy wriggling [parasite that causes malaria](_URL_2_) is actually more closely related to plants than animals. [Golden Algae](_URL_0_) aren't plants but they can photosynthesise and have cellular tails that let them swim. In short, plants and animals may seem as different as chalk and cheese, but there all sorts of other weird chalky-cheesy mix up organisms out there we don't usually hear about.", "If plant could walk it would require much more energy and photosynthesis can't produce enough food for that much work. \nAnd animals can't do photosynthesis cause they need more energy and can't be dependent on photosynthesis." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_algae", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelp", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodium_falciparum" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ffuej5c" ], "score": [ 19 ], "text": [ "The story you heard is from Usama ibn Munqidh, a poet and diplomat (among other things) from Damascus who often visited crusader Jerusalem:\n\n > “Anyone who is recently arrived from the Frankish lands is rougher in character than those who have become acclimated and have frequented the company of Muslims. Here is an instance of their rough character (may God abominate them!): \n > \n > Whenever I went to visit the holy sites in Jerusalem, I would go in and make my way up to the al-Aqsa Mosque, beside which stood a small mosque that the Franks had converted into a church. When I went into the al-Aqsa Mosque - where the Templars, who are my friends, were - they would clear out that little mosque so that I could pray in it. One day, I went into the little mosque, recited the opening formula ‘God is great!’ and stood up in prayer. At this, one of the Franks rushed at me and grabbed me and turned my face towards the east, saying ‘Pray like *this*!’ \n > \n > A group of Templars hurried towards him, took hold of the Frank and took him away from me. I then returned to my prayers. The Frank, that very same one, took advantage of their inattention and returned, rushing upon me and turning my face to the east, saying ‘Pray like *this*!’ \n > \n > So the Templars came in again, grabbed him, and threw him out. They apologized to me, saying, ‘This man is a stranger, just arrived from the Frankish lands sometime in the past few days. He has never before seen anyone who did not pray towards the east.’ \n > \n > ‘I think I’ve prayed quite enough,’ I said and left. I used to marvel at the devil, the change of his expression, the way he trembled and what he must have made of seeing someone praying towards Mecca.”\n\nThis is one of Usama’s various amusing anecdotes about the Franks. Usually they're probably meant to be jokes, making fun of the big dumb idiot Franks (i.e. crusaders) from the far away land of ice and snow. They’re basically like “dumb blonde” jokes or “dumb \\[insert ethnicity\\]” jokes but from the perspective of a medieval Muslim. There are certainly truthful elements of Usama’s stories, so it’s possible something like this actually happened - in general, both sides seem to agree that the crusaders who settled in the east were culturally different than the new arrivals. But did this exact incident happen? We don’t know, but maybe not.\n\nIn any case, Usama seems to be the only Muslim who got along well with the Templars. For everyone else, they were fanatically devoted to warfare. They often acted without consulting the other leaders of the kingdom, since they felt they had no authority but the Pope and could do whatever they wanted. On one occasion, some ambassadors from the Assassins came to Jerusalem to negotiate a truce, and the Templars ambushed and killed them. It was a major scandal in the kingdom. \n\nThey were recognized as brave and strong warriors, but that wasn't always necessarily a good thing. For the Muslims this bravery was interpreted more as brutal fanaticism. The Templars would attack and kill anyone, anywhere, with little regard for tactical or political considerations, or at least that's how the Muslims felt about them. They were in a way too strong, too dangerous, unlike the more respectable might and bravery of the regular crusader army. When Saladin defeated the crusaders at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, he took thousands of prisoners and many of them were eventually ransomed - but not the Templars. Would the Templars have spared any Muslim prisoners? Probably not! So Saladin had all the Templar (and Hospitaller) prisoners executed:\n\n > \"Two days after the victory, the Sultan sought out the Templars and Hospitallers who had been captured and said: 'I shall purify the land of these two impure races.' He assigned fifty dinar to every man who had taken one of them prisoner, and immediately the army brought forward at least a hundred of them. He ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair, the troops were drawn up in their ranks, the amirs stood in double file. There were some who slashed and cut cleanly, and were thanked for it; some who refused and failed to act, and were excused; some who made fools of themselves, and others took their places.\"\n\nIn other battles they either all fought to the death, or were captured and killed afterwards as well - for example in the Battle of Forbie in 1244, only a handful of Templars survived.\n\nSo the story you heard is just the opinion of one Muslim, who may have been making the equivalent of an ethnic joke, and basically all other Muslims feared and hated the Templars.\n\nSources:\n\nMalcolm Barber, *The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple* (Cambridge University Press, 1995)\n\nUsama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, trans. Paul M. Cobb (Penguin Classics, 2008)\n\nThe account of the Templar massacre at Hattin is by Saladin’s secretary Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, which has been translated in Francesco Gabrieli, *Arab Historians of the Crusades*, trans. E. J. Costello, (University of California Press, 1969)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd3nn6p", "cd3nndh", "cd3pm2a" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The dropped object would accelerate toward the center of the earth until it reached terminal velocity, and once it passed the earth's center it would start to slow down and then fall back toward the center again, oscillating back and forth until gravity and wind resistance would keep it at the center of the earth. If there was no friction/air resistance, it would just oscillate back and forth indefinitely. \n\nIf you *threw* the object downward and there was no air resistance it would exit the other side of the tunnel with the same velocity that you threw it with.", "A [great video](_URL_0_) with Neil deGrasse Tyson that explains everything.", "People that claim it would oscillate back and forth are wrong. It's a nice thought, but it's a misinterpretation of the laws of nature. \nThat would happen if the gravity of earth was created by a small point at the centre of the earth, and that the object \"falling\" could pass through that point.\n\nFirst of all, lets take a look at the formula for gravitational force: F = G*M1*M2/r^2\n\nG is the gravitational constant, we don't need to worry about that for this example. \nM1 an M2 are the masses attracted to each other.\nr^2 is the interesting thing here. The r itself is the distance between the two bodies, but the ^2 means that the relationship is squared. I.e. if the distance doubles, the force is only a fourth. \n\nNow, to simplify things, lets just consider that the object is in a cavity in the exact centre of the earth, lets also assume that the earth is a perfect sphere with perfectly equal density.\n\nSince the object is inside what causes the gravity, we can't really treat earth as just one object, we have to think of it as very many objects stuck next to each other all around the object (I.e. particles), all have an equal amount of mass (and therefore equal gravitational pull). \n\nSo, there are forces trying to pull the object in every direction. As long as the object is perfectly centered, the net force acting on the object will be zero. But if we placed the object slightly off-zero, the formula for gravitational force tells us that the \"pull\" from the particles that make up earth won't be even, the ones that are closer will exert a slightly larger force than the more distant ones, so the sum of the forces would not be zero. Newton taught us that an object will remain in its current state until acted on by a force. Well, since we now have a net force that is non-zero, the object will start to move towards the closer one of the particles acting upon it. The closer it get, the more pull it will feel from the closer particles, and the less pull it will feel from the more distant particles. \n\nMany people like to think that a stationary object at the centre of the earth would be ripped apart, but this is not correct.\nSince gravity act on all particles with mass, ALL of the objects particles will be acted upon by the gravitational forces. I.e. all parts of the object is being \"pulled\" in all directions. But what about the r^2 from that gravitational force formula?! Yes, the particles in the \"northern\" part of the object will get a slightly larger pull to the north compared to particles in the south part of the object. This is a variant of what is called \"tidal forces\". Another example of tidal forces is the fact that your head feel slightly less gravity than your feet. However, the forces are far two weak to overcome the forces holding particles together. So if you happen to fall into a bottomless pit, at least you don't have to worry about being ripped apart :/\n\nSo, trying to get an object stationary at the centre of the earth would be like trying to get a steel ball centered between two magnets (magnets also have this r^2 thing), virtually impossible.\n\nAnother way to imagine gravity being a round bowl, with a pin in the centre representing earth (or any other object large enough to have a significant gravitational field). Put a ball in the bowl, and it will go to the centre and hit the pin = falling towards earth and eventually hitting is. Now, for the \"being in a cavity inside the large object\", flip the bowl upside down, letting where the bowl meets the table around the perimeter represent the walls of said cavity. Try to balance the ball on top of the bowl. It will race to either side, hitting the table (the walls of the cavity).\n\nNow back to the actual question:\nFrom what I wrote above, we can draw the conclusion that the object dropped would start off by falling down, since most of the gravitational forces acting upon it are \"coming from\" lower than where you are holding the object before you drop it. \nBut after a short while, when the object has passed into the earth a bit, you will have gravitational forces from the side as well, and here the above reasoning comes into play. Since the object can't reasonably be exactly centered in the hole, it will get a slightly larger \"pull\" off towards one side of the wall. And subsequently, it will end up sliding down against that wall until the friction overcomes the gravitational force pulling it down (remember, the net sum of the gravitational forces lessen as the object get closer to the centre of the earth), and there it will stop. It will never fully reach half way through." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e94e2xb", "e94e5b4", "e94eq42", "e94fris" ], "score": [ 5, 8, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "It’s the midterm elections for congress and some special elections for governors that are in new positions. \n\nEdit: just considered you might not know what Congress is. It’s kind of like the parliament if your from a country with that. ", "Every two years, the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate are up for election. This gives the possibility to flip the majority party in both chambers of the federal legislature, making it more difficult to pass legislation preferred by the Republican party. (But not enough to give a veto-proof Democratic majority in both chambers). [This is a drastic oversimplification making the assumption a lot of proposed legislation is sharpy decided along party lines]\n\nIn addition, as usual, many state/local elections are held simultaneously", "Basically the Republican party currently hold all three branches of government President, Senate, House of representatives 1/3 of the senate and all of the house are up for re-election. This could potentially leave the Democrats in charge and able to block any and all legislation from the President, in addition they could also impeach Trump on various breaches since he took office which would leave Mike Pence the republican vice president in charge.", "It's mostly too little too late for any real change. Most of the \"divisiveness\" in American politics is just theater to keep voters angry enough to vote for one of the two parties even if they don't like either, just to vote against the other. Meanwhile they happily work together behind the scenes to do things like keep the population in debt and over throw foreign governments that don't let American cooperations abuse their people and ecology." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dcnsysv", "dcntrh9" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "considering there are living witnesses to some of the atrocities, it's hard to deny atrocities happened.\n\nthe Japanese story says there was no high level orders. and whatever stories of individual soldiers committing actions must have been fabrications because honorable soldiers always follow orders. \n\njust like flat earthers, no amount of evidence will ever convince them that their opinion is wrong. and once you're in deep, you're committed to go all the way.\n", "Unlike Germany, which took the high road of apologizing for all of their wartime behavior, the Japanese have never fully taken responsibility for their war crimes. Comfort women (sex slaves) are the other well-established atrocity that comes to mind.\n\nTo be fair, Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking (where many many people learn about the details of the massacre) presents itself as a scholarly book but is not. Japanese scholars have seized on that. Still, the amount of evidence (including photographs) not to mention Japanese behavior all over the Pacific Theater make for a very solid case that something dark and grizzly happened there.\n\nOne particularly touchy issue is a Japanese report sent home describing a Japanese prince having a contest to see how many people he can decapitate how quickly. This is pointedly controversial because it involves Japanese royalty. Nevertheless, it fits with the rest of the scummy behavior and I'm not sure anybody outside of Japan contests this happening.\n\nNumbers are always a difficult thing when it comes to war crimes, but it is laughable to say that nothing happened there.\n\nI award the point to the Chinese." ] }

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[ "https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/business/japan-china-motoya-hotel-apa.html?_r=0" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c61mkxm", "c61op91" ], "score": [ 6, 5 ], "text": [ "It's not a denial of service or something like preferential treatment for a certain race, gender, etc. Actuarial science is just that: a science. Insurance is a business, and the different variables that determine how much someone pays for their insurance are based on past and present statistics of behavior. The price isn't set for me just because I'm a non-married white male with no dependents and so on, it's because all of those factors statistically show that I am a higher risk for an insurance claim. There is chemistry in the human brain involved as well that helps explain why the 18-25 partition has an upper bound of 25. There are subgroups within that partition as well.\n\nIf there was a flat rate insurance cost for everyone who owned a car, regardless of age, gender, driving history, etc, there would be a massive outcry from the 'safer' drivers who then pay more than their share for the claims of the young and old.", " > I believe there is a law that companies can't discriminate against things like age, sex, race, and in some states, sexual orientation\n\n\nRace is subject to strict scrutiny in discrimination. Age and sex are subject to a rational basis test (for instance, is it discriminatory to not give a 12 year old a driver's license?)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cl6n81w", "cl6ur7z" ], "score": [ 66, 37 ], "text": [ "in 1977 NATO agreed to adopt a 2nd round in addition to the 7.62x51mm round, specifically the SS109 steel tipped round which was designed to pierce a soviet style steel helmet at 600 meters.\n\nJane's Infantry Weapons 1986–1987, pg. 362\n\nThe Small Arms Review vol.10, no.2 November 2006.\n\nIt's 4am and I haven't looked into the details of the agreement but I'm assuming it's related to the US introducing the M16 and 5.56mm round in 1960. ", "There's two questions here. One, why was an intermediate rifle round* chosen? Two, to get to your question why was 5.56x45mm specifically chosen?\n\n*\"intermediate\" rifle rounds are rifle cartridges which are smaller than full-sized rifle rounds. For example, the Russian 7.62x54mmR, which has a 7.62mm bullet and a 54mm long shell (the brass part of a cartidge that contains the primer and propellant). By contrast the Russian 7.62x39mm round fire by the AK-47 fires a shorter, lighter 7.62mm diameter bullet from a shorter 39mm shell. The 5.56x45mm is thus an intermediate round, whereas the 7.62x51mm NATO round is a full-sized rifle round.\n\nTo answer the first question, the end of WWII and the immediate aftermath saw a doctrinal shift amongst many world militaries. Observers realized that many infantry engagements were happening at realtively close ranges (25-400m). At those ranges, rifles firing full-sized rounds had several disadvantages. The heavy recoil of the larger rounds made quick follow-up shots difficult and allowed enemy soldiers armed with submachine guns (the Soviets frequently equipped entire battalions with SMGs for close assault work) to outshoot soldiers with bolt-action and semi-auto battle rifles. The heavy and bulky ammunition limited the amount of ammunition soldiers could carry. And the pistol cartridges fired by submachine guns simply didn't have the reach or stopping power needed to be an effectively replacement for full-sized rifles. So a compromise had to be reached.\n\nArms designers came up with a simple solution to these problems: the intermediate round. This idea actually predates WWII, and several firearms inventors had proposed mid-sized rifle cartridges. The best-known example is the .276 Pedersen round, which would have been fired out of the M1 Garand (Douglas MacArthur intervened and had the M1 chambered in .30-06 instead).\n\nHowever, intermediate cartridge development really accelerated toward the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War. In 1943 and 1944, Germany developed the StG43/MP44, which fired an intermediate round: the 7.92×33mm Kurz. In 1945, the British began work on the .280/7mm round, which they planned to fire from the EM-2 bullpup rifle. And of course the Russians had the SKS (and later the AK-47) in 7.62×39mm.\n\nNow, to answer the second part of your question: why was the 5.56mm round chosen? Why not .280 British or one of the other contenders? Well, part of it came down to the fact it was an American design. As the largest nation in NATO, the largest arms buyer/producer, and the founder of the alliance, the US had enormous clout over NATO standardization decisions. Once the Americans decided that they wanted to go with the AR-15/M-16 combination, any NATO member that wanted an intermediate round (and still wanted to be able to buy/borrow ammo from US warstocks in the event of an emergency) more or less had to go with 5.56mmx45. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctm980c", "ctm9nnh" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Because people want something to be upset about and this is the newest thing. Two weeks ago, no one ever even knew about this goddamn lion. The news said we should be mad, so everyone got pissed. Outrage gives people a feeling of purpose.", "Stories have characters, setting, plot, conflict and resolution. \n\nA rich American dentist traveled to Africa to shoot a lion named Cecil for fun. \n\nThis is a very striking premise to a story and sets up the characters, setting and plot. People want to experience the conflict (the backlash against the dentist, the morality and legality of hunting etc) and then see that conflict resolve (will the dentist be brought to justice?).\n\nThe broader issue of rhinos becoming extinct is very hard to tell as an interesting story. It's like the difference between a blockbuster thriller and a long, but important, documentary series.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfqv42w" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Your question is certainly welcome here but you might want to try posting it to /r/AskAcademia too – they're good with career advice." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clm19mv" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Your body is not an anatomical mirror. Your left side does not mirror your rigt side. Same as your left index finger is not identical to your right index finger. Thus your veins runs 'differently' in your body, meaning that some are close to the skin and some are not.\nAnother contributing factor might also be that you havent always exercised like now, and from childhood may have had a prefered arm (and leg) you used more than the other, leading to this arm being repetitively used more throughout life.\nNb! I am not a native english speaker." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fahh27q", "fahiqc9", "fahrs7o", "faiecu0" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "If you say that it's literally same exact milk (same brand, same type, same size, etc) then its probably different stocks. Lets say Whole Foods bought milk 2 weeks ago and Safeway bought theirs 2 days ago. So WF's milk is older, and thus expires sooner.\n\nHowever if you mean that brands are different, but product is essentially same - then it depends on what kind of milk it is, how it was processed, how it was made, from what animals (cows, goats, almonds (yes - almond is an animal :P )) etc. Pasteurised vs natural, etc. \n\nNo, the expiration date is not dictated by retailer. Rather its dictated by producer - whoever produces it marks it on the package.", "It's likely one of two options:\n\nIs the Safeway milk ultrapasteurized? It will say so on the label. Ultrapasteurized dairy products are heated to a higher temperature which better sterilizes them and allows them to last much longer than standard pasteurization. Some ultrapasteurized products are shelf stable (they don't require refrigeration until opened). However the higher temperature affects the flavor of the product, and is more \"processed\" which is similar to \"chemicals\" on a food label. \n\nThe other option (are they coming from the same processor, same brand, etc) is Whole Food's acquisition path for dairy takes more time than Safeway's (which may have different paths for different classes of products). If Whole Foods routes all purchases through warehouses then to stores, while Safeway has ships milk from processor to stores Safeway will consistently have fresher milk but higher shipping costs. This can be worth it if Safeway attracts customers with their milk.", "Probably the one with the short code was processed using HTST and packaged traditionally, while the other was UHT processed and packaged in an aseptic environment.", "If they were the same product from the same plant they will have the same expiration date. \n\nMilk products sold in the United States have a plant code. First two digits is the state the rest is the plant. They are limited on how long they can sell it based on the type of pasteurization.\n\nRegular homonogized pasteurization has a couple week shelf life. Ultra pasteurization has couple months and UHT has the longest, it’s also shelf stable, meaning you can keep it on the counter. Pasteurization changes the flavor profile that’s why everything isn’t just UHT milk. \n\nHowever for any milks, once you open them they all last the same. About 1 week before they go bad. \n\nTo recap, pasteurization is not an indicator of quality, and shelflife is based on pasteurization not quality." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chinp8d", "chinska", "chiofn0", "chismyx" ], "score": [ 38, 14, 8, 3 ], "text": [ "Yes although we don't have anything close to the technology to make that. If exploded in a vacuum it would look the same as a regular nuclear bomb, if it was in contact with regular matter than there'd be an intense burst of gamma radiation as it annihilates with regular matter.", "Assuming it was used on an anti-matter Earth (completely comprised of antimatter) than it would generally operate the same. \n\nIf you made on here then it'd be a giant waste because simply dropping golf ball of antimatter would result in the release of about 60x the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.", "Just to add some details:\n\nThe yield of conventional nuclear bombs is a somewhat tricky thing to control. Because the nuclear fission part doesn't fully undergo fission, the yield is entirely determined by the specific dynamics of the implosion process. As you can imagine, this could vary a great deal from explosion-to-explosion unless extremely tight engineering requirements are used, combined with very careful experimentation. Even then, we should expect to have some error in estimating the yield.\n\nAntimatter bombs, on the other hand, could be virtually predicted down to the megajoule. Once the device starts to be destroyed, it is guaranteed that all the antiparticles will find a companion. But I suppose the radiation could possibly trigger some subsequent nuclear reactions which could add to the yield and create uncertainty.\n\nThe most pressing challenge is the energy inefficiency and scale of creating anti-matter. If we get beyond that, reliable containment will become a very major challenge.", "What might be practical in the medium term future would be an anti-matter triggered fusion bomb. This would theoretically only require 10^−13 gram of antimatter and would result in a much lighter and \"cleaner\" atomic weapon than is currently feasible. The thought of a nuclear hand grenade is frankly terrifying though." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cicqwex", "cicrzx5", "cid0noy" ], "score": [ 12, 53, 24 ], "text": [ "hi! could you specify which country you're referring to? thanks!", "Yes, that is the case. During the 1970s and 80s these plastic crates were regularly pilfered because of their solid construction and light weight. Today manufacturers have copied these designs and they're sold in stores as consumer goods.\n\nSome states have similar laws for shopping carts, possession is illegal.", "I don't feel like this is a history question at all. Really a cursory google could answer this:\n\n > Theft of milk crates, as it turns out, is an issue taken very, very seriously by the dairy industry. The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), which runs a whole website devoted to public education on the issues of milk crate misuse, estimates that dairy companies lose 20 million milk crates a year to theft. At about $4 per crate, that’s an $80 million loss per year. That represents just a fraction of a percent of gross national fluid milk sales — in excess of $20 billion in 2012 — but dairy profit margins aren’t huge, and $80 million is $80 million.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso:\n_URL_1_\n\nThink about it, they are a great size, and incredibly sturdy therefore they are desirable. The practice in the industry is to place the empty ones outside so the worker can take them with them.\n\nI've acquired a few myself." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://modernfarmer.com/2013/08/illegal-use-milk-crates-anything-besides-milk/", "http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/05/nyregion/return-crates-milk-industry-says.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4dv8gk", "c4dving", "c4dvzwl", "c4e21fc", "c4e25m9" ], "score": [ 7, 29, 21, 7, 4 ], "text": [ "[Check this out.](_URL_0_)\n\n > Every device connected to the public Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods (also called a 'dotted-quad') and look something like 127.0.0.1.\n\n > Since these numbers are usually assigned to internet service providers within region-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the region or country from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. An IP address can sometimes be used to show the user's general location.\n\nThere is more detail at the website I linked (including showing you your IP address and location).", "Kids these days are exposed to porn at a far too early age.", "It's called \"geolocation\". Every computer on the internet has a unique \"IP address\" (sort of like a telephone number). ISPs generally get large blocks of continuous IPs & assign sub-blocks to a geographical area. Through a lot of work, people have built databases that can figure out what geographical area your IP is likely to be coming from.\n\nIt's not always perfect. For example, they always place me two states away.", "they dont. It's actually real live local girls waiting to hook up. It's posted by your local ISP.", "they use your webcam then ask millions of mothers who is jerking it in the video, and then they find who it is and ask for the address " ] }

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