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how did the anime-craze start and evolve in america?

The answer is very multifaceted. Back when anime started to trickle into american television for the first time, one of the things it did was fulfill the rather common need for youth to find media that is (generally) outside the realm of their parent's enjoyments/understanding. In short, kids were attracted to it. Combine that with the fact that many anime shows were relatively cheap to produce. Think Pokemon; most of it is one drawn frame with mouths moving. You suddenly get a marketplace where an entire generation is fascinated with an inexpensive to produce cartoon that is geared towards toy sales and boom. You've suddenly given a ton of networks a multi-million dollar excuse to start offering anime more regularly. There's way more of course. Some of it is culture shock. Anime was more often risking things that American cartoons were not. (Akira.) This created an attraction to more provocative animes as well that capture an entirely different audience than kids, which is a big factor in why you see such a range of people enjoying it. America also made the mistake of not regularly developing cartoons for adults (because how could adults like cartoons?) A lot of anime with mature themes was featured in college "Anime Clubs" which sparked a whole new subset of anime fans.

In The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, a character mislabels a union army because of dust on their uniform making him believe they are confederates. Did this ever happen in real life?

Misidentification wasn't uncommon, especially during the early days of the war when many units had different-colored uniforms. Notably, during the First Battle of Bull Run (July 1861), one of the turning points came when the 33rd Virginia (Confederate) regiment was mistaken for a Union unit. They were able to get close enough to decimate an infantry regiment and capture several artillery pieces, which (along with a charge by Stonewall Jackson and the arrival of some Confederate reserves) started the general Union retreat.

why does eating a lot of rich food cause a headache ?

It could easily be the ingestion of large amounts of salt and/or sugar (which are often heavily used in rich foods) causing dehydration. It could also be elevated levels of insulin being released into the body as the food is processed, or your body rejecting an ingredient in some way. Lots of intolerances can be very mild and go easily unnoticed. The simple answer is, if you're going to eat rich foods, drink a good amount of plain water with, or after eating, your food. It's a good remedy for most of the side effects I mentioned. Any large meal can make you feel a bit rough, so taking your time eating can be a big help as well.

How were WWI era reparation payments handled during the post-WWII separation of Germany?

Fortunately for post-war Germany they didn't have to pay any reparations from the First World War as the payment had ceased in 1932. Reparations had always been a thorny political issue in Germany, even from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In the Treaty itself, Germany was not given a definite figure to repay; rather it simply agreed to pay an indefinite amount that would be decided by a yet-to-be established Reparations Committee. In the meantime, Germany had to pay for the upkeep of the occupying armies with raw materials and food. This is referred to as payment in kind. Eventually the figure was settled as 132bn Marks, or £6.6bn. Given the state of the German economy after the war, and the loss of significant coal deposits in Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine, Germany was unable to keep up with her payments either in raw materials or in money. The result of this was that Belgium and France occupied the Ruhr region of Germany and confiscated all production in payment. German workers laid down their tools in a scheme of passive resistance. However, it was during this time that hyperinflation brought on by war debts, a failing economy and decreased production reached its high point. Germany needed serious help, and passive resistance in the Ruhr wasn't really winning them any friends. The practice was ended and the so-called Dawes Plan was drawn up, whereby Germany would recieve foreign investment and loans, the French and Belgians would withdraw from the Ruhr, the schedule of repayments would be redrawn and a new currency, the *Rentenmark*, would be issued to replace the hyperinflated Goldmark. However, many viewed the Dawes Plan as only a stopgap measure and pressured for a new deal, which was drawn up in 1929. The Young Plan, as it was called, set a new schedule and reduced figure for reparations. Crucially, it set a fixed end date for payments (1988), which was the first time that such a thing had happened. It also required the French and British to withdraw from the Rheinland ahead of schedule, and provided additional loans to Germany. While economically sound, the plan drew criticism from the right wing who viewed it as selling out to international financiers and making Germany dependent on foreign aid. Last but not least, following the deepening financial crisis, a moratorium had been placed on reparation repayments in 1931. In 1932, a conference was held in Lausanne which agreed that Germany should no longer have to make payments given their dire financial situation. By this point Germany had only paid roughly one sixth of what they were originally required to do so. Therefore, German ended and indeed began the Second World War without any obligation to pay reparations. However, following the end of the Second World War, various debts and repayments mostly fell on West Germany. West Germany voluntarily signed agreements with Israel, Greece and Yugoslavia amongst others to voluntarily pay reparations for the damage done to their citizens and economies. Additionally, West Germany agreed to pay the reparations which had not been previously paid from WWI, in addition to other debts accrued. It was agreed that West Germany should not bear the entire weight of debt, and a portion was only to be repaid upon reunification, which did not occur until 1990. However, reunified Germany continued to pay this debt, with the last payment being made in 2010. In summary, Germany ceased to make WWI reparations payments in 1932 but the West German government voluntarily agreed to continue payments in 1953, with the condition that part of the debt only be paid upon reunification. For further reading: Leonard Gomes, *German Reparations, 1919-1932: A Historical Survey* (2010)

bone density after elongated periods of time in space.

Gravity constantly pulls on your body and your bones have to be strong enough to hold your weight, so your body streghthens them to withstand that weight. In space, you have no weight, so your body redirects your resources elsewhere. Your bones don't need to be dense, because of that, so the body weakens them so it can use its energy and materials for other things that are more important.

would a person on earth notice the andromeda galaxy merging with it?

Yes, if Andromeda merged with Earth it would get crowded. If Andromeda were to merge with the Milky Way, no, as long as you stayed away from news, internet and large telescopes.

why do some large retail chains (e.g. blockbusters, border's books, circuit city) grow and expand successfully til they are in every city but then go out of business suddenly without instead just scaling back down as needed?

Because the very nature of the business they provide becomes obsolete and scaling back does not provide a way toward regaining profitability. For example, let's take a retail chain that is hugely successful and everywhere today - Starbucks. They provide coffee to order ready to consume to the public. Let's now take a new business - hypothetically, let's call it eCoffeeMax - finds a new way to deliver coffee to consumers in a better, cheaper way (more selection, higher quality, faster). They find a way to deliver your coffee wherever you are using quadcopter drones - at home, at the office, at school, even on your commute - for half the price and their coffee is better in every way. They'll even accept your junk mail as currency to buy coffee. Now all of the sudden, Starbucks has lost all of its competitive advantage when it comes to capturing customers. It tries to cut prices as much as it can but any further and it will lose money. It shuts down the least profitable stores but now every story is unprofitable because of the new competition. That's what happened to every bookstore in America after Amazon showed up. There was no way to compete. Amazon was the place that got you more books than independent or chain brick and mortar bookstores, at better prices, and at the convenience of shopping without having to go to the store. Blockbusters was tied to physical media as a business model when streaming became widely used. Circuit City relied on brick and mortar stores rather than online stores (Best Buy adapted to this better and shifted business to online sales to balance their sales load). Scaling back wasn't an option - it was just hitting an evolutionary dead end in the business world after the nature of the business changed beyond the ability of the company to adapt to it. There are many businesses today that are at risk. For example, Hollywood movies rely a lot on digital visual effects - used to be mostly for flashy space battles and monsters, but now even present-time dramas rely heavily on digital "set extensions" (adding digital extras walking around a busy city street instead of hiring 100 actual people as extras, adding buildings to customize a skyline, cleaning up an environment or modifying an environment). This work used to be performed by somewhat well paid digital artists in the USA in VFX studios in the US. Now, this work is moving further and further away, just like with manufacturing. At first, it was being farmed out to cheap small operations in the US, then cheap small studios in Canada and Europe. Then, India. Now, China is getting in the game. Our manufacturing base disappeared that way. A lot of it has to do with our government's political priorities. Is it more important to keep jobs and a business here or do you call it "Free market" and let corporations pay for your campaign and make sure you vote against labor union laws and laws that help give tax incentives to keep jobs here? We're competing against nations that fund their businesses using their tax moneys - South Korean corporations got big because the governments subsidized them heavily protected them vigorously. It's not a free market economy out there. We don't order our soldiers to go fight using their own privately purchased equipment while other armies are funded by their government. But in business, that's what we do and worse.

What slang did German soldiers use to describe soldiers from various nations during WWII?

/u/LBo87 gave a good answer in an [old thread](_URL_0_). There is /u/Astrogator's [answer](_URL_1_) as well, which adds one more term. See the last bullet point.

how does a phone battery hold a charge? what is flowing from the charging cord, where does it go into, and how is the phone able to use that charge?

Phone batteries use an chemical reaction something like Li - > Li+ + e- Mg+ + e- - > Mg This means the the electron travels from the lithium electrode to the magnesium electrode creating electron flow and therefore energy. In all chemical reactions u can push/reverse the reaction by adding energy to the aystem. If u add electricity to the system the lithium solid will become lithium aqueous (in solution) this allows it to react again and produce power.

deli meat vs packages sliced meat

Yes. Freshly sliced meat that you get at the grocery store is, well, fresh. Prepackaged meat has to go to through the middle man, who slices and packages it before it's sent to the store. Getting the meat sliced at the deli means it skips the middle man and gets to you, more fresh than the prepackaged stuff.

what was it about the catholic church that allowed it to become the most prominent religion in the world ?

Quite simply, the Catholic Church happened to gain a foothold in the most powerful countries in the world. Spain, Portugal, France, etc. Those countries then spread their faith through their conquests. This of course came from the apostles of Christ spreading the gospel throughout Europe starting in Greece and Turkey.

What about Amsterdam has made it such a popular refuge for radical, creative thinkers, and how did they contribute to the Dutch golden age of the late 16th and 17th century?

During that time The Netherlands was fighting a war of independence, the 80 year war. While it basically stared as a revolt against the Spanish because of infringements of privileges like protection against unreasonable taxes etc.. It soon became also a religious based war between Protestants (Netherlands) and Catholics (Spanish). Since most Dutchmen were still Catholics themselves but against the Spaniards and their inquisition the common idea was that people should not be prosecuted because of their religion. This was specifically mentioned in the [act of abjuration](_URL_0_) (incomplete dutch english translation) send to the spanish king and publicly published in 1581. Besides a certain level of religious freedom several other privileges and rights were mentioned or implied. Like that the prince is there to protect his citizens as like father does his children or a shepherd his flock and not rule them like they are slaves. Also that there should be a justice system that is impartial en equal to all citizens and that there should be a freedom to trade. All this created at situation that you could hardly be prosecuted for expressing yourself if you stayed within certain limits. Also, the merchant class had become the prominent force at the time which means there are a lot of potential supporters for any kind of art and philosophy instead of a singular/limited source of patronage. All the freedoms created in this situation was the main source that Amsterdam specifically and the Netherlands as a whole entered an Golden Age with wealth and creativity. While not a classical history source an easy to read description on how this came about is [Russell Shorto's Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City]( _URL_1_)

I've a Ni-MH recharger. Does it matter if I constantly recharge certain batteries even though they're already full?

NiMH chemistry is much more forgiving to overcharging than other types of battery chemistry, but it's really not good for the cell. Get some extra cells, and only charge ones that have been (mostly) used.

what will keep certain isps from providing "neutral internet" and completely destroying their competitors who don't?

To start an ISP you need to invest in a lot of infrastructure. Most ISPs is therefore limited to a small geographical area. And if there are two providers who need the infrastructure to every house then the service will be twice as expensive for everyone. Just imagine if there were two main water lines running to each house and you could chose between them.

Didn't the Zimmerman telegram serve its purpose?

No, the main aim of the Zimmerman telegram wasn't to bring the US into WW1. It was intended as insurance against the likelihood that the US would join WW1 anyway over Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. This is the full text of the Zimmerman telegram, sent from the German foreign ministry to the German ambassador to Mexico. English translation, obviously, and the emphasis is mine. > We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. **We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding**, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. **You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain**, and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. Signed, ZIMMERMANN Germany had decided to resume Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (USW) in 1917 for two reasons, one military and one domestic political. USW means that submarines may sink any merchant ships in the declared exclusion area, regardless of national flag, and without warning. As opposed to the "Prize Rules" or "Cruiser Rules" traditional international law had applied to commerce raiding, where only enemy-flagged merchant ships were legitimate targets. Ships belonging to neutral countries could be stopped and searched, and seized or sunk if they were found to be carrying contraband to blockaded ports or if they tried to resist the search, but could not be summarily attacked. Any ships to be sunk under cruiser rules must first be given reasonable warning for the passengers crew to abandon ship. These rules were developed with surface warships (particularly frigates and cruisers) in mind, not submarines, and submarines of the era didn't have anywhere near enough crew to search and seize a merchant ship, and submarines relied on stealth to be effective combatants so surfacing and summoning a merchant ship to submit to search or ordering the crew to abandon ship was risky, especially after the British started disguising armed merchantmen as ordinary merchant vessels in order to sink German subs when they surfaced (this was legal under international law as long as the disguised ship revealed its true nature by raising a Navy flag before opening fire). Germany had previously attempted USW briefly in 1915, only to call it off after the US responded to the sinking of the Lusitania (a British ship sailing from New York and carrying many American and British passengers as well as a cargo that included war materiel being imported by Britain). The sinking was done without warning by a submerged U-Boat, the British denied the presence of war materiel on the ship (and the Germans had no hard evidence to the contrary), and 128 Americans (along with over a thousand British and other nationalities of passengers and crew) died. The US responded with vigorous diplomatic protests, stopping about half a step short of threatening war if USW continued. Germany acquiesced at the time and resumed cruiser rules. The military reason was that the German navy had overestimated the effectiveness of USW and underestimated the British and American ability to build new merchant ships to replace those sunk. Based on their mistaken assessments, the Germans believed that they could sink enough merchant ships to prevent Britain from importing the food and raw materials they needed to continue the war, and that this would happen before Americans could mobilize enough to have a significant effect on the war. The domestic political reason was as a response to the British blockade of Germany. Britain had been blockading Germany (with surface ships, operating under cruiser rules) since the outbreak of war, and Britain had been taking a very broad basis for what constituted war materiel. Specifically, food and fertilizer were counted as contraband, since food could be sent to the front to feed soldiers, and since fertilizer could be remanufactured into explosives. Germany had imported a large portion of its food pre-war, and German civilians had been on short rations for much of the war. The Winter of 1916-1917 (called the "Turnip Winter") was a period of particular hardship for German civilians, as the 1916 potato crop had failed, compounding the food shortage. Unrestricted Submarine Warfare was seen as a way for the German Navy to demonstrate to German civilians that they were Doing Something about the blockade and inflicting the same kinds of hardship on British civilians that the British Navy was inflicting on German civilians. Once the decision to resume USW had been made, war with the US was considered inevitable. The idea of the Zimmerman Telegram was to exploit Mexican grievances against the US (not just the lost territory from the 1846-48 US/Mexican War, but also the much more recent US punitive expedition expedition in pursuit of Pancho Villa) to bring another country into the war on the German side as counterweight to the US joining the Entente. Every division the US Army used to fight Mexico was a division that couldn't be sent to France to reinforce the British and French armies, so forcing the US to divide attention between two fronts would further delay substantive American involvement with the war effort in Europe.

When photographing a light, why do streaks show up in regular angular positions around the light?

That's the shape of the camera's aperture, and the effect is called [bokeh](_URL_0_).

When the Sun's red giant phase ends it'll lose roughly 50% of its mass to space, does this excess surface hydrogen have enough mass to create a red dwarf?

Red dwarfs are main sequence stars just like the Sun, except they only contain about 8-50% as much mass. As a consequence, the fusion in their cores proceeds slower, their surface temps are cooler, and their life spans are much longer. During its Red Giant phase, the Sun will gradually lose much of its upper atmosphere to space, enriching its general neighborhood with up to 0.5 solar mass of mostly Hydrogen. Would this be enough raw material to form a Red dwarf star? Sure, if something corralled it together until it began coalescing under its own gravity. But with the Sun still coughing and wheezing in the center of it all, that Hydrogen will instead just disperse into the blackness, until sometime, somewhere, some of it finds some like-minded hydrogen to get all gravitational with.

what is a constituent country and how does it differ from units like state or provinces?

Functionally they are almost identical to US State or Canadian Province. They do not have their own militaries, do not have their own passports, do not have their own treaties and trade agreements, but they do have some of their own laws and self governance. Puerto Rico is a territory. They are partially subject to the US, but are not full members of the US as they have so far chosen to not become a State. They pay some taxes, have their own laws and government, but rely on the US for military support and all trade has to come through the US first. Quebec is a Province of Canada, and Bavaria is a State in Germany. They are a somewhat culturally distinct grouping but are not separate countries, nor are they different from their other provinces or states of their nation as you imply by calling them "sub-national entities".

How important have aircraft carriers been to winning superpower-on-superpower warfare?

So limiting this to the 20 year rule, and thus 1997 first off with only brief references to events and trends past it. We can actually though talk a good deal about Soviet carrier efforts, which obviously play a huge part in how Russian and PLAN Naval Aviation evolved. Simply put, from their origins to today an aircraft carrier is a tool of power projection. It allows you to take a piece of ocean that couldn't be used as an airbase and suddenly you have a fully functional one with up to +75 aircraft ready to go and which can be somewhere 100's of miles away tomorrow. It is a tool to enable expeditionary warfare and a sustained presence beyond the limits of land based aircraft for the power that has one. From Imperial Japan, to the United States and Great Britain, to the French, to other minor carrier nations, it has always been about building the ability to go someplace else and attack there using your big moving runway. To avoid too deep an overview we can then suffice to say that they were crucial to Allied victory in WW2, very important in US efforts in SE Asia in the Cold War and elsewhere, and factored heavily into plans for a NATO/Warsaw Pact confrontation. And carriers through the years have done numerous different missions, often all at the same time. They can first and foremost attack other naval assets(ships, planes, subs), can attack ground targets and support landings, and can protect sea lanes of communication from enemy forces. All 3 have been key over the years from the drive across the Pacific and Battle of the Atlantic, to supporting fighting in Korea, Vietnam, and in the Middle East, to patrolling the North Atlantic and vital NATO sea lanes. This variety of missions, and embracing of robust air power and naval forward presence helped drive the US to embrace the super carrier in the 50's, after temporarily successful efforts by the Air Force in the late 40's to kill earlier designs. While the British were faced with a shrinking empire, up and down economy, and loss of great power status, their navy including carriers slowly transitioned from a broad spectrum force to by the end of the Cold War on focused heavily on leveraging their position to focus on anti submarine warfare on the Greenland-Iceland-UK line. Though the importance of carriers as forward airfields was ably stated in the Falklands when Argentinian aircraft had only a few minutes of fuel to attack while the Brits could maintain a present CAP with their Harriers(though they had short legs too), the Argentines carrier was kept in safe water for fear of attack by RN subs after they bagged the General Belgrano cruiser. Many older US Essex class carriers experienced the same transition, as their usage in operating heavier modern jets waned their usage as anti sub carriers extended their lives by decades sometimes. While the newer super carriers could serve as the attack platforms and the centerpiece of offensive patrols or ground strikes. In a hot Cold War all in the name of ensuring that reinforcements could cross the Atlantic unmolested and fight it out on the plains of Germany. The USSR though was in a very different place, they were for the most part already where they expected to fight and didn't need to take a plane or boat to get there. Thus they didn't have long sea lanes to protect or lack of airfields to support expected hot zones, though like all airfields they were stationary and fixed unlike a carrier. And their naval strategy was markedly different. They had 2 main goals, 1 was to protect undersea "Bastions" essentially heavily defended safezones where their ballistic missile subs could head to and be safe if the order came to launch. The other being to strike at NATO Sea Lanes. This was then achieved by using numerous fast attack subs, of nuclear and diesel varieties, surface ships firing big heavy and fast anti ship cruise missiles, and crucially long ranged shore based naval bombers and patrol aircraft. By the late Cold War a theoretical attack on a US Carrier Group might involve several soviet attack subs say Victor class nuke boat or a conventional Kilo, maybe a surface group of a Kirov battlecruiser a Kresta cruiser, and a gaggle of destroyers, and most importantly several dozen long ranged bombers. This would be split between the fast jet Backfires and the big ubiquitous turboprop Bears, all with the goal of saturating and overwhelming a battlegroups ability to meat all threats thanks to huge for their job missiles like the P-270, Kh-22, P-500 and P-700. So what role for a carrier then? We see it in the limited USSR carrier projects, that aside from the ridiculous Stalin era plans that carriers were meant to simply augment this existing dynamic. To provide additional cover for the Bastions, and to protect surface task forces during the run in to missile launch. We can see this in the few classes of carriers the Soviets actually got completed, ignoring the Moskva's which are really just glorified DDH's and truly dedicated ASW platforms. That leaves us with the Kiev's and Kuznetsov's, both of which have very similar roles and the Kuznetsov's are really just enlarged improved variations on the same theme capable of operating non VSTOL aircraft from the get go. They were meant to simply defend their immediate vicinity to boil it down, and were even equipped with their own anti ship cruise missiles just like the surface combatants(if the trip is likely to be one way why not augment the striking power! this also had the benefit of allowing them to do the legal gymnastics of not calling them carriers and avoiding issues with them passing through the straits into the Black Sea). The Russians did flirt with larger designs over the years but it is a big step, and even the follow on to the Kuznetsov the Ulyanovsk would still have been a ski jump design and carry a large battery of anti surface missiles, though it was scrapped with the end of the Cold War only partly begun. China faces many of the same issues, their primary concern is first ensuring the ability to defend their territory, then to meet enemies in the South China Sea and 11 Dash line of the first island chain. While for much of its existence the ability of the PLAN to project power any further towards the second chain of islands like Guam into the Pacific was simply not possible from a numbers or capability standpoint. Thus a reliance on Anti-Access/Area Denial strategy to protect the mainland and again usage of lots of shore based aviation since the foe mostly had to come to them and they were already mostly in range of what they wanted to hit to start a war (SK, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc.). This has changed though as China has sought to assert itself as a rising power. So fast forward a few years the post Soviet slump meant no new ships and the Russians were left with what they had, hence the 1 Kuznetsov that was ready, and 4 Kiev's all of which were quickly withdrawn from service (2 sold as museums to China, 1 scrapped, and 1 heavily reconstructed and sold to India and in operation today). While the Kuznetsov has lunged from breakdown to breakdown never getting the care she really needs, her unfinished sister was taken by The Ukraine and eventually sold to China who finished her as the current Liaoning, and a near sister was just launched this week. And in the end we should not dismiss the importance of prestige when it comes to having a carrier. Its just something "Great Powers" have and do. If Brazil can operate a carrier so can Russia. If France can make a nuclear carrier work why can't China? If Britain is building a modern 2 carrier fleet why shouldn't the world's largest democracy in India do so? That said the future of carriers has often been a hot debate. No more so at any other time than today with rising costs, advancing A2/AD assets, and evolving faces of warfare. Even in the US questions about what shape the force should take remain in the open and sometimes contentious. For a better understanding of the shape of the debate I would suggest checking out professional sites and sources, one of which is the US Naval Institute, their magazine is pay for view, but their blog regularly publishes excellent work on relevant topics. For instance this was a selected essay by a Midshipman from Annapolis on the PLAN's carrier outlook nd ambitions, perfect as an introduction: _URL_0_

Did the Russians really train their troops with broomsticks instead of guns during WW1?

In 1941 the British troops retreating from Greece to Crete were forced to leave their heavy artillery behind. In an attempt to prevent the Germans from making use of those guns, the British artillerymen took the gun sights with them to Crete. When the Germans invaded Crete those artillerymen were left with sights for non-existant guns In the famous Doolittle Raid, the tailguns from the US bombers were removed (in order to keep weight down) and replaced with broomsticks painted black. Despite both of those, your history teacher is unlikely to tell you the British sent their men into battle with artillery sights but no guns, or that the US sent bombers on missions without giving them weapons to defend themselves. In war, there can be times when soldiers have to fight with less than ideal equipment. Just like the British artillerymen, there were times when Soviet infantry were forced - due to circumstances on the ground - to fight without sufficient arms or ammo. But it wasn't standard practice. The point is that it's easy (and unfortunately common) to point to examples where the Soviets were forced to fight (or in this case train) without sufficient equipment and act as though that was the norm, while almost certainly not doing the same for the Western Allies. So I'm not saying your history teacher was right or wrong (I don't know a reliable source that would confirm their story, and don't know how you could show it never happened) but it's important to remember that context is always important.

How long ago did the modern chicken lose its ability to fly?

Technically, modern domesticated chickens can still fly. Sort of. Not well. But... for short distances and not terribly gracefully^1. They are not flightless. However, their poor flying abilities are the result of domestication, and selective breeding by farmers and the commercial poultry industry (1950s-now)^2 to be larger, faster growing, and meatier while keeping the birds sheltered from any sort of predators. The large breast is actually the flight muscle, but their wings are now too short, and those muscles too heavy to support effective wing loading and flight. While chickens have been domesticated for ~6000-8000 years, [it's pretty clear](_URL_2_)^3 that many of the significant changes occurred in the very recent past (since 1950s). The authors in this study raised a set of lines representative of 1957 (experimental/archival), 1978 (experimental/archival) and 2005 (commercial/meat selected) birds on the same diet, and under the same conditions to study growth and development. While they didn't look at flight abilities of the respective chicken lines, the breast size and conversion rate of grams of food- > grams of breast meat is about tripled. They also measured a significant shift from the 1957 and 1978 lines to the 2005 line in terms of the grams of breast meat/total body weight. So, the 2005 meat-selected line is almost certainly a worse flyer than the 1957 experimental unselected chicken line. ^1 [Forget About the Road. Why Are Chickens So Bad at Flying?](_URL_4_) by Live Science ^2 [U.S. Chicken Industry History](_URL_1_) by the National Chicken Council ^3 M. J. Zuidhof et al., (2014) [Growth, efficiency, and yield of commercial broilers from 1957, 1978, and 2005](_URL_3_) *Poultry Science* - if paywalled, see [Huffington Post article instead](_URL_0_)

what are city states and how do they operate?

Are you asking how the mechanics of city states works in the context of Civ 5? Or are you asking what city states in real life are? Two really different questions.

Was it common for non-Abrahamic religions to have a "bible" of sorts?

There are actually several. The thing is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all emphasize a "closed canon". Buddhism, for example, has a canon (though its often more of a library than a single book). But then again, Jews don't have a single book ("Torah is only understandable with Talmud") and Islam emphasizes generally emphasizes the importance of Hadiths in addition to the Quran. Several offshoots of these (like Mormonism and Druzism, and to a degree Bahaiism) use the core texts of the parent religion, plus additional texts so there's not just "one". * The Zoroastriansn have not only the Avesta, but several other core texts beyond that like the Gathas and the Yasna. * Hindus have the Vedas, and a variety of other holy books of wide acceptance and considerable antiquity (the Vedas are surprisingly unifying--in fact, when discussing India religion it's common to say what became Hinduism was Vedic, and what became Jainism, Buddhism, etc was non-Vedic) * Sikhism has the Guru Granth Sahib * If you want to count Confucianism as a religion, you have the Analects. * If you want to count Daoism as a religion, there's the Dao De Ching of Lao Tse (please pardon my mixing and matching romanizations; I'm on a phone that's cutting in and out of service so I can't look anything up) * Buddhism is complicated. Therevada had the Pali Canon, but Mahayana schools continued producing texts for a much much longer time. * I believe Jainism has a central set of texts as well. I'm going to assume you're in the west and from a Christian, likely Protestant, milieu. While these groups all have a canon of holy books agreed on (to various degrees), it should not be mistaken that , should say Zoroastrians disappear, we could recreate Zoroastrianism only from the texts before us in the holy books. Whether or not you could actually "rederive" Protestantism (or Salafi Islam) from a given set of holy books is beside the point--the religions think they are performing the authentic textual religion (if its not in the text, it's not in the religion--this is Martin Luther's *sola scriptura*). In almost every other religious tradition, recieved tradition is openly given a much more central role (like Catholicism). These books give one part of the religion and they are understood within a particular tradition. It should not be assumed that they explain all of the religion.

Does the recipient of a heart transplant inherit the resting heart rate of the donor?

Only sort of. After a transplant, the heart is generally not connected to the nerves that regulate rate. But cardiac muscle is not like skeletal muscle, in that the nerves do not directly initiate contraction, they just speed it up or slow it down. The heart itself has autorhythmicity. Not connected to those nerves, the heart will beat at its intrinsic rate, which is usually around 100 bpm.

what would be the effect, both positive and negative, if nobody on the planet had kids for 2 years.

Anyone working in childcare or childbirth would need to find new jobs for a while.

how does red dot sights work?

The dot in a red or green dot sight is not actually a coloured point that's hovering in a fix spot in the air like an iron sight does. Instead, the red dot you see is a reflection of a little red lamp that falls onto a spherical mirror which filters out only the red (or green) spectrum. This mirror is installed in a way that no matter what angle *you* look on it, the Red dot will always point towards the spot the bullet will hit. EDIT: That way the Red dot itself is virtual and basically only exists in your eyes, two people looking through the same sight at the same time from different angles would see the spots in different 3-dimensional places, but still pointed towards the target.

What kind of tasks would fill the day of someone running a medieval castle for his lord?

Are you referring to somebody such as, say, a steward? Somebody who would manage the daily affairs of the estate while the lord was away? I'm going to base this on the holdings of a knight such a sub fief beneath a baron. A lord with one castle/stronghouse, and some moderate to small land holdings. There would have been two different sorts of people to fill this role. In the direct lands controlled by the lord, there would have been the field master, or a title similar. There may have been several depending on the size of the lands. This person would have been in charge of the other field hands, ensuring that they were doing the work that they were supposed to, doing it well, and not slacking. The second person would have been the steward. This person was in charge of "the books" as it were. Ensuring that the finances were in order. They were the medieval version of an accountant. Of course, this all assumes that the Lord had the money to pay for these people. Much like later farmers of the Antebellum South period, smaller landowners didn't always have the means to pay these individuals, who were skilled in their own right. If the Lord could read and write, he might well keep his own books, to save money.

stem cell life science research

I'd love to answer your question if you could be more specific as to what it is you're asking.

What happened to the House of Kalākaua or the Hawaiian royal family after their overthrow? Were there ever pretenders to that throne or anyone who tried to stir up political trouble afterwards?

Queen Liliʻuokalani continued to resist the overthrow with political, PR and judiciary actions for many years. The royalist rebellion of 1895 had participants from the Hawaiian Royal Family, most notably Prince Kuhio. As an interesting side note, Kuhio defeated the leader of the rebellion, Wilcox in an election for the House of Representatives in 1902. "The Rights of My People: Liliuokalani's Enduring Battle with the United States 1893-1917", Neil Thomas Proto

Did the Romans ever used pikes?

Pike phalanxes were not standard infantry, but were adopted numerous times, often when fighting cavalry-heavy armies from the east. In preparation for his Parthian campaign Caracalla ordered 16,000 men to be trained in Macedonian drill and fight in a phalanx. Severus Alexander also had elements of six legions formed into phalangiarii, who fought in a phalanx. Arrian of Nicomedia, during his campaign against the Alani, used pike phalanxes to ward off the Alani cavalry. From Arrian's "Extaxis contra Alanos" (Section 15) The infantry should be drawn up eight ranks deep, in a closely packed formation. (Section 16) The first four ranks shall consist of pike-bearers, whose pikes will end in long, slender iron points. The men in the first rank should hold their pikes at the ready, so that if the enemy comes near, they can thrust the iron tip of their pike especially at the breasts of the horses. (Section 17) The men of the second (?), third, and fourth ranks should hold their pikes forward to jab and wound the horses where they can, and kill the riders.

what exactly does shifting my car into d3 do?

It's for driving in the mountains. D will allow your car to go into the highest gear... your car may not have enough power to maintain a consistent speed in this gear, so it will drop into a lower gear to get back up to speed. This cycle can be annoying. D3 prevents you from going to the highest gear. Additionally, when going down a hill, shifting into D3 will use a lower gear for more effective engine breaking.

can sports at an early age effect testosterone levels and how does this effect the physical appearance of someone who didn't play sports at all?

The different sports will cause different things to happen in your body while you're growing up. Yea you're genetics make you predisposed to doing well in sports or not but the type of sport will definitely effect you. The more heavy lifting and explosive workouts you do the more testosterone you will develop and the more manly you get. If you are a endurance athlete cortisol levels spike and you get more feminine traits. I used to be a very good swimmer in highschool and college and the exercise plus my diet gave me moobs. I knew a gymnast girl who has just as broad shoulders and a square jaw like me. You train hard enough your can change your body while you're an adolescent.

What happens when we overdose?

Heroin overdose is similar to any opiate overdose. Opiates depress the central nervous system causing a relaxed, "euphoric" sensation. After the initial rush, breathing becomes more shallow, decreasing oxygen to the brain and rest of the body. Without oxygen, the brain will start shutting down systems, including the nervous system. The individual will feel extremely drowsy and slip into a coma state. At this point, the nervous system is so relaxed that it fails to function. The individual goes into respiratory arrest (completely stop breathing). Once this occurs, no oxygen is being brought into the body and systems shut down and death occurs shortly after. TLDR: Opiates relax the nervous system. Heroin overdose would be the same sensation as being so drowsy that you fall asleep.

In the Ku Klux Klan's heyday, did people see it more as a social club with networking opportunities, or truly as an organization that defending white American interests?

If you're referring to the Second Klan (1915-1930's), it was certainly both. William Joseph Simmons *Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan* was a religious, political, business and fraternal organization. Created during the Golden Age of Fraternal Orders, it was modeled on the multitude of existing fraternal orders like the Freemasons and the Elks, Simmons would often recruit members into the new Klan wearing the badges signifying he was a member of other organizations and Klansmen who recruited new members (Kleagles) specifically sought new members through Fraternal Orders they were already a part of. In addition to this, the Klan meeting was highly ceremonial and even had [assigned room placements](_URL_2_) for each member. Even in the KKK rule manual, the Kloran, (no, I have no clue why they would have modeled it on the Qur'an) it states firstly, "We avow the disctinction between the races of mankind...and we shall ever be true in the faithful maintenance of White Supremacy" followed almost immediately by "We appreciate the intrinsic value of a real practical fraternal relationship." Politically speaking, the Second Klan was Nativist, [anti-Catholic](_URL_1_), anti-black, [anti-communist](_URL_0_), anti-Jewish and Prohibitionist. It absolutely was more dedicated to keeping White American hegemony. The Second Klan was almost certainly more a brotherhood and social organization than the First Klan (1868-1871) who were dedicated to restoring white supremacy to the Reconstruction South, and the Third Klan (1950s-1970s) who were dedicated to preventing black progress during the Civil Rights Era.

why some of websites is not available in some countries?

It has nothing to do with the websites, but rather, the service that the website provides. Netflix can't just take people movies and make them available for everybody to watch, that's illegal copyright infringement. They need to purchase the rights to distribute them, and most distribution agreements come with a particular region.

Was it because of a change in technology or a change in tactics, that machine guns no longer need to change barrels or be watercooled?

All general purpose machine guns (GPMGs) that I am aware of retain the interchangeable barrel function - a GPMG being a roughly 7.62mm belt-fed platoon- or company-level machine gun capable of laying down large volumes of fire. The M240 and MG3, the most common GPMGs in the western world, certainly have changeable barrels, and soldiers are taught to do so when laying down large volumes of suppressing fire. Even the intermediate-caliber M249 Squad Automatic Weapon has a quick change barrel. Now, there are some lighter automatic weapons that do not have a changeable barrel. But that's nothing new. The Browning Automatic Rifle, Chauchat, and Lewis Gun did not have changeable barrels. It generally doesn't become necessary to change a barrel until you've fired several hundred rounds through the gun, or less if you're firing very rapidly. Weapons that don't have quick-change barrels just aren't intended to produce the same volume of fire as a proper heavy/medium/GP machine gun.

Are quarks shaped differently or are they all spheres?

As far as we know, they are all pointlike. This could understanding could one day be improved upon.

why do blue laws still exist?

Many people are still religious and support such laws, so they remain. It is legal to make a religiously motivated law, just not to establish mandatory religion.

the symptoms of a common cold

A common cold has not much to do with actual temperature. It is an infection, mostly by viruses. There are dozens if not more viruses known that can lead to the symptoms commonly associated with a cold. Now, how does a virus infect us? Normally your skin is pretty tight and prevents any pathogen (something that will make you sick) from entering. So, skin drops out. Theses viruses get mostly transmitted by flying in little airborne water droplets. Therefore they can enter your body when you inhale the droplets while breating. In your mouth and and airways there is also a protection layer, the mucosa. This is a thin layer that produces mucus (who would have thought?). This slime hopefully prevents the pathogens from entering and catches them. Your airways have little hairs that sweep the mucus towards your throat and into the stomach were the acid deals with them. Sometimes this doesnt work. It is suspected that cold, dry air strains your mucosa and therefore makes it easier for the virus to enter your body and infect it. It spreads from the point of entrance, aka your airways. However, since it's not much of a threat it will not get very far. This is where your symptoms stem from. Your body sents defensive cells that prevent the virus from spreading and that fight it. This leads to an inflammation of the tissue. Some simply eat viruses or bacteria (*phagocytes*), others release enzyms that damage invaders or molecules that manage the inflammation. Acute inflammation has several effects on the body, fever and loss of appetite being some of them. They are caused on a molecular level by the proteins that are released by the defensive cells. The 5 classical signs of inflammation are pain, heat, redness, swelling, and loss of function. We can definetly find some of that in a swollen, sore throat, cant we? Now, one by one: * swelling fighting needs a lot of ressources and they come from the blood. In order to get them into the tissue blood vessels dilate and get permeable. This is nice but also leads to fluid accumulating in the tissue. * heat and redness Increased and prioritised blood flow into the area (dilated blood vessels, remember?) naturally leads to higher temperature and redness * pain That's of course the one you mostly feel. The defensive cells also release chemicals that stimulate the nerve endings in the area. Stimulated nerve endings mean you feel pain. Inflammation of organs may not always be combined with pain because there might be no sensible nerves. * loss of function This can have multiple causes and doesnt matter that much in the case of the common cold. Okay, but how does all that lead to my symptoms? Inflammated mucosa produces lots of mucus. Not a good combination together with swelling. If the mucus is thin you might just get a runny nose, otherwise a stuffed-up nose. The sinuses may fill with mucus if the nose is swollen and lead to a feeling of pressure below your eyes. A feeling of pressure within your ears can also occur. This is cause by swelling of the [Eustachian tube](_URL_0_) that connects the middle ear and throat to balance pressure differences. Coughing gets caused, who would have thought, by increased production of mucus in your airways. It gets called phlegm then. It contains dead cells, different proteins and much more. The composition determines what colour it has. Fluid and lungs dont work together very well and your body tries to get the phlegm out of your lungs by coughing. The "normal yucky felling" is just a response of your body to the inflammation. Holy shit, this got longer than I expected. I hope I got everything and that I got it all right. Had to look up a lot of things (1 year medstudent) but I think overall it's more or less okay. Ask if you got any more questions and somebody with more knowledge might chip in and correct me if necessary.

nasdaq, dow jones, etc.

They are stock indexes. Basically they are each used as a measure of a certain "basket" of stocks. There are thousands of different indexes used to track different market sectors. The Dow, Nasdaq and S & P 500 are the three most well know in US

Were soldiers traumatized or "shell-shocked" after the Napoleonic Wars or other earlier wars? How were returning soldiers treated by the public? Were they treated for their condition?

Diagnosing mental illness retrospectively is a minefield. With respect to soldiers in history and their relationship with PTSD, I would refer you to the FAQ or past threads like [this](_URL_0_). Paging /u/Iphikrates to comply with the rules on linking past threads.

What were the relationships of the various intelligence services of the Eastern Bloc with the KGB/Moscow?

There wasn't a formal hierarchy, but the KGB loomed large over all of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services, and its primacy was undisputed. Soviet intelligence personnel had a hand in creating all of the Eastern Bloc secret services, and KGB liaison officers were a constant and powerful presence in those agencies' affairs. The Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies provided a constant stream of intelligence to the Lubyanka, along with extensive operational and logistical support. The KGB maintained a shared database of contacts and intelligence called SOUD, enabling them to receive and index intelligence from the Warsaw Pact services (and to share intelligence with them in turn — something they generally did only in the most circumspect manner.) The KGB frequently used those services as their proxies, especially when it came to handling sensitive or potentially compromising relationships or operations — particularly those with terrorist and revolutionary groups. The Czechoslovak StB, for example, was a longstanding liaison between Moscow Centre and the Italian Red Brigades; the Bulgarian DS was a favourite weapon for 'special tasks'. The relationship with the Stasi (in particular the foreign intelligence department, HVA), however, was by far the closest and most important to Moscow. Many of the senior figures in the Stasi had longstanding ties to the USSR, as agents or operatives of Soviet intelligence or the Comintern: Wilhelm Zaisser, Ernst Wollweber and Erich Mielke, three of the GDR's four Ministers of State Security; Markus Wolf, the longtime chief of the HVA. As with many of the institutions of East Germany, the Soviets were heavily involved in the creation of the Stasi (which was closely patterned on the KGB.) The KGB maintained [a number of facilities](_URL_1_) in the GDR, including highly important *rezidentura* (the largest KGB installation outside the USSR) at Karlshorst. KGB officers regarded East Germany as a safe, even dull posting; as a First Chief Directorate officer in the late 1980s, Vladimir Putin was reportedly disappointed to be assigned to the *rezidentura* at Dresden, rather than a more interesting and adventurous station in the West. Part of the reason the Stasi were so important to Moscow was their proximity and access to West Germany and the rest of Western Europe, but it was also thanks to a general reputation for competence and ideological reliability, and a willingness to subordinate their foreign policy/intelligence objectives to those of Moscow. They were thus also entrusted with operations further afield. The Stasi worked alongside the KGB in Cuba, training Castro's intelligence service, DGI — which, in turn, was the preferred Soviet proxy for operations in Latin America. In 1972, when Egyptian strongman Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet (read: KGB/GRU) advisors, the Stasi acted as Soviet surrogates in that crucial Arab state. There's a reasonably large body of writing on the history of the Stasi now — largely thanks to the concerted effort by the post-unification German government to preserve and open up the Stasi archives. There's a lot of interesting information on the website of the [Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records](_URL_0_). In terms of published work: John Schmeidel's monograph *[Stasi: The Sword and the Shield of the Party](_URL_7_)* is a good place to start. Gary Bruce's *[The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi](_URL_2_)* is a good grassroots history. Kristie Macrakis' *[Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi's Spy-Tech World](_URL_4_)* is an interesting specialist history of the Stasi's technical methods and surveillance prowess. On Soviet intelligence, I always suggest starting with Christopher Andrew's work on the KGB: *[The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB](_URL_5_)* and *[The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World](_URL_6_)*. Jonathan Haslam's more recent *[Near and Distant Neighbours](_URL_3_)* is a good history of the Soviet intelligence community as a whole.

How does genetic testing work (in order to test for genetic diseases)?

A person with a genetic disease has a particular gene that differs from the normal, unaffected population. When a genetic disease is identified that can be tested for, the discoverers known what and where the gene is and what makes it different from the normal population. That difference is called a mutation. Mutations come in different forms (insertions, deletions, frame shifts, repeats, substitutions....) but basically all you need to know is that it's a difference from the normal. Now to test for anything genetic you need DNA. Every cell in your body, minus just a few (red blood cells, gametes...) have the full genetic code of an individual inside them. Usualy a cheek swab is done to collect a few cells from the inside of a person's mouth or a few hairs plucked to get the cells at the root. Whole blood can also be used. Once the cells are collected the genetic information can be chemically extracted, amplified, then read. The amplification process is known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and is one of the most important discoveries in the history of biology. It works by synthetically copying the information in DNA over and over. Since DNA is double-stranded and complementary, the information from one strand can be used to re-create the other. So taking a double-stranded DNA, unwinding it, then copying each of the two halves gives you a pair of double-stranded DNA's. Do this a bunch and you get lots of DNA to work with from a very, very small amount. Once you have the DNA you have to actually read it. You can do this the old, hard way where you actually sequence part of someone's genome to figure out exactly what their genetic code is. If there's a mutation it'll show up as a change in the DNA sequence you read out from the normal sequence. Or you can do it the new, fancy way where you have a DNA microarray, which is a chip that has lots of little strands of DNA, each coding a slightly different copy of the gene in question. Which slightly different copy is in which spot on the chip is known going in. To the chip you add the DNA from the individual, but with one extra modification - you add a fluorescent marker on the end so it lights up. The complementary nature of DNA means that the individual's labeled DNA will bind to the spots on the chip that has DNA that most closely matches. A mutation in the individual's gene means that the DNA will bind less to the normal gene on the chip and more strongly to the corresponding mutant (there can be more than 1 mutant to cause one disease, too). Using a chip reader you can find where that is on the chip (thanks to the fluorescent label) and back-check to see what gene sequence (normal, mutant) that corresponds to. The microarrays can do hundreds or thousands of genes at once so this is a much more efficient way to screen someone for a genetic disease.

What varieties of memory are there and how do they work?

Very detailed question, but i'll take a stab at it. I majored in Neuroscience and am now a first year medical student so I know a fair bit about this but I'm no expert. 1. The cerebellum helps to coordinate movement and accounts for one type of memory. This structure has an extraordinarily repetitive/simple neuronal structure and almost everything that makes your cerebellum different from mine is learned. This type of memory would be active if, for instance, you're a baseball catcher and someone hits a foul ball. You would see the ball coming down and *know* where to move your glove to get in front of it. This type of memory is going to be important in actions such as throwing a football or texting without looking. 2. The hippocampus is the site of additional memory functions. There are cells in your hippocampus that form a grid, and fire whenever you are in one area of the grid. The hippocampal grid cells are always helping you to localize yourself in 3D. Other hippocampal cells deal with other aspects of spacial mapping. This type memory is very important in knowing where your favorite restaurant is and enables you to walk around your house in the dark without bumping into things. 3. Everything else: Here is where it gets complicated. Almost everything else you *know* is encoded as a representation of the internal state it evokes and in relationship to other things you know. This type of memory is diffusely located throughout the temporal cortex and is processed in the oribitofrontal prefrontal cortex. To illustrate, imagine someone says to me, "Kim Jong Il." Here's what happens in my brain: The words Kim Jong Il are processed by my auditory cortex and converted into meaning. Now this is a *person* and not a string of words. This gets loaded into my working memory (localized in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.) It calls up everything I know about Kim Jong Il. I think to myself, "he is a bad man." This is because my ventromedial prefrontal cortex has already associated KJI with negative affect and this visceral emotion (processed in my amygdala) is bound to the *idea* in working memory. Things like North Korea, famine, Kim Il Sung, all get called up secondarily, not directly from my working memory but almost bittorent-like, from the cells that were already activated. This doesn't cover all types of memory, but is as good of a introduction as I can muster. This is as accurate as I can be, but there are still no absolutes in neuroscience. Every day we learn more about the brain!

Why does bird poo look how it does?

Birds actually urinate and defecate at the same time - their urine is viscous and highly concentrated (I believe it has a lot of ammonia in it, which is the characteristic smell). The white liquid/paste is the concentrated urine and the black pellets are the feces. Hope this enlightens you! Classic example: _URL_0_

Is there a way to determine the radius of a black hole, or would anything of the sort be a guess?

The radius of the event horizon can be calculated from analyzing the orbits of nearby stars or planets. From the way it interacts gravitationally with its surroundings you can find mass, and thus the radius of its event horizon.

if everyone on earth infected with a common cold got better at this exact second, would anyone else get sick? if so how would it be transmitted considering there aren't any carriers of the virus?

Viruses can survive for limited times on various surfaces which would allow reinfection.

Why does a log burn longer than the same amount of wood chopped up?

If you cut a cylindrical log in two, you increase the surface area significantly. This means more of the log can burn at once, and so it is consumed faster. This is not the only effect. If you put logs in close proximity, part of the radiant heat given off by one can be caught by the other, and structuring the wood may create air currents that replenish the oxygen in the mix.

where does white zit pus eventually go if you don't pop the zit?

It is consumed and carried away by amoeba-like leukocytes in your body called *macrophages*. Here's a video of macrophages doing their thing: _URL_0_

In general, how accurate do you find the CaspianReport's 'History of Islam' series?

> The thing is, Islam emerged in literate times. Historians were writing journals. Scholars were writing diaries and letters. Jurists were writing bureaucratic articles. So from the 7th century onward there was a rich record of documents, and that's why we know so many historical details. Noooooooooooooooooo... Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Ok I'm done having a minor aneurysm. But yeah this is a wildly inaccurate statement. It massively overstates the reliability of the documents he's apparently working from (I.e. Ibn Ishaq via Tabari and Ibn Hisham), is apparently ignorant of how that information got passed down (I.e orally, not written down) and fails to mention how poorly documented the 7th-8th centuries are. /u/Shlin28 gives a great description of just how poorly documented the rise of Islam is on the Christian side here: _URL_0_ I've written quite a bit on the historiographical controversy over the use of these "traditional" sources, for instance here: _URL_1_ I only listened to the first ten minutes or so of this YouTube video, but even accounting for the fact that he's uncritically relying on this dubious traditional sources I heard a good bit of bad history. A shura council is not "like a democracy", for instance. Some effects of the unreliability of those sources as it pertains to the video: We cannot reliably quite Muhammad. We cannot reliably say who was or was not present at battles. We cannot reliably say how many people attended a speech. And so on. There are people who defend the use of traditional sources, and they are of course a matter of faith to Muslims. Its an incredibly contentious issue. Personally I'm not willing to reject their content entirely but find any specific details to be incredibly dubious. As I mentioned in the other post Robert Hoyland's *Writing the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad: Problems and Solutions* is a great essay-length overview of these issues and available as a free PDF if you do a search for it.

How did the American Forces learn to defeat the Japanese during the Guadalcanal Campaign in WWII?

In the air, the Cactus Air Force was tying out new tactics to combat the agile Japanese Zero. "Cactus Air Force" is a nickname for the pilots of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal--codenamed Cactus. These pilots used a mix of aircraft, most notably the Grumman F4F Wildcats (there were some P-39's as well, and some dive bombers too). The Wildcat was heavily armed, heavily armored, and heavy overall compared to the Zero. If a Wildcat pilot tried to turn with a Zero in a dogfight, he would quickly end up with the agile Zero behind him. So, a naval aviator named Thatch came up with a defensive maneuvering scheme that came to be known as the [Thatch Weave](_URL_0_). This allowed pairs of Wildcats to keep their wingman covered from attack from behind. The linked wikipedia page has a good illustration of the tactic. Offensive tactics revolved around diving attacks or head-on passes, where the armament and armor of the Wildcat would make it the victor in most slugging matches. At sea, there was a curious occurrence in warfare. Control of the area around Guadalcanal generally changed hands every twelve hours. During the day, the US Navy was able to largely command the waves--especially as Henderson Field became more established. At night, the Japanese expertise and experience at night fighting meant that they could exert control over the area. There were so many ships of both sides sunk in the area that it gained the nickname "Ironbottom Sound." The clashes gave US naval forces valuable but costly lessons that were applied in the later island hopping campaigns. On land, the Japanese committed troops piecemeal to various assaults on the Marines. Again, the campaign was costly for the Americans and there were several times where the enemy nearly broke through. However, the Marines gained valuable tactical, logistical, and other lessons that applied to warfare in the theater. I don't know of any tactical breakthroughs that were made, instead there were refinements to existing ideas. Coordination between infantry and mortars/artillery was improved. Close air support was practiced (especially with the aforementioned P-39's and dive bombers). Officers and men gained experience in how the Japanese liked to fight as well as what was effective against them. *Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle* by Richard B. Frank is an outstanding account of the battle. Robert Leckie's *Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War* is also good if a bit shorter. However, Leckie was an infantryman in the actual battle, so his insights are incredible. They are more intimately described in his memior: *Helmet for my Pillow*.

why do most current-gen games on consoles require you to wait until it's fully installed, while last-gen games could be played immediately?

At a guess I would say that new games are bigger then a disc can hold, my battlefield 1 digital game was 43 GB (rip my data cap :( ). Im willing to bet that if everything has to be read off the discs the load screens would be all over the place and, with all the massive open worlds lately, that would be a game killer.

Why is it easier to remember a phrase or image than a single word?

The use of mnemonics such at those you describe are likely to work at a number of different levels. Firstly, when thinking about memory and learning, it is important to emphasise the role of attention. That is, when you *personally* create a mnemonic, you are assigning more attention to it which makes it more likely that it will be encoded. Using mnemonics also helps to link the new knowledge, to existing knowledge networks, or unique (and therefore memorable) identifiers. So instead of having to recall the new information from scratch, you can be prompted by its link with the existing knowledge structures, or those unique/memorable things that you will "never forget" (like the silly words). There is a copious body of evidence that demonstrates that using mnemonics such as those you describe can assist in the recollection of new learning. Much of these principles are outlined in the [levels of processing](_URL_0_) model of memory encoding (although I am not up to date on the current consensus on this model). In this model your use of mnemonics is an example of deep level processing. edit: spelling, emphasis

the three scripts of the japanese language and their usage.

Hiragana ひらがな　is like the standard Japanese alphabet. Katakana カタカナ is used for words of foreign origin. Kanji 漢字 is that impossible to read shit that was imported from China. Now, why don't they just get rid of Kanji, since they are such a pain in the ass? They had this debate after WW2, and felt that kanji was part of their culture, so they didn't want to dispose of it. Also, Japanese has an insane number of homonyms, so without kanji it would be a bit tough to know what a written word is.

what are computer glitches and why do they occur?

In really simple terms, it's when you do something the program has no idea how to respond to. In a perfect program this would never happen, but no program is perfect. So for example if you glitch through the wall in a game, the game doesn't really know that you shouldn't be able to do that because maybe you did it in a way the game developer didn't think of. I hope that kinda explains it.

how do companies calculate and quantify the value of a new sponsorship?

Essentially, they guess. It's an educated guess based on past experiences, but a guess none the less. They know the size of their current market, and what portion of that they own. They make an educated guess on how much incremental revenue they will gain from being sponsored by whomever and then offer a deal that shares some of the anticipated revenue increase with whomever is speaking on their behalf. There is no guarantee that they will make more money, but that is a risk they are willing to take, and the deals are full of clauses that allow early termination of the contract for a myriad of reasons.

how does googles new ai work?

It is called machine learning and is quite complex. What it boils down to is that you break a problem into discreet parts, or steps. You show the machine all the different steps it can do. Then you tell the machine what the desired "win" condition is. It goes and compares all the different steps and series of steps to figure out the best way of getting to the win condition. As these models get better and more generic, we can let the win condition be more vague and it has more freedom to learn how to get there. It is entirely dependent upon structures called neural networks, which have an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer. The hidden layer is trained to give outputs to certain inputs. For a board game training data might be all the moves of a bunch of games, and which player won. We don't actually know what the algorithm inside came up with, because we didn't tell it what to do. It learned how to get to the "win" state by analyzing a bunch of data and coming up with its own pattern recognition to apply to new games.

how would people, before television or radio decide who to vote for?

Newspapers were the major way information was spread before radio. Political candidates also did a lot more public speaking. They did "whistle-stop tours" where they basically road trains and stopped in every town and gave a speech. Local politicians would also speak in favor of their party in more remote areas.

Why exactly does spinning rapidly throw off our equilibrium.

This is not my area of expertise. But just in case you don't get a more detailed answer. I'm faily certain what you are looking for is the [Vestibular System](_URL_0_) of the inner ear. It contains a fluid which moves with your head/body and helps your brain understand/maintain your balance. When you spin very rapidly you do something with the fluid in this system that your brain doesn't quite understand. Someone else will need to come in to explain how exactly that fluid is disturbed as I am not qualified.

what makes an everyday expense/activity tax deductable?

My dad's an accountant. Short answer is, you have to have a business or at least individual income to deduct business expenses. If you're an employee somewhere that doesn't count. If you don't file schedule C there are not many deductions you can take like what you're taking about. If you do, but the deductions are all or most of the income, you're asking for audit. If there's plenty of income and the business requires attracting clients, there's little oversight for deductions. But remember, it's deducted from taxable income, not taxes i.e. you only avoid taxes on the spent amount. Unless you spend a lot, your reduction in tax bill is not very large.

Natural sleeping position without a pillow

This is kind of an impossible question to answer from an archaeological perspective. Anything early humans/hominids would have used as a pillow would have been made from perishable materials that do not survive in archaeological contexts. Anything from furs to piles of leaves could have been used by early hominids as pillows. Other great apes make nests out of leaves, it's possible we did too. There's no way to know. As for natural sleeping positions, you're probably better off asking a medical doctor or a biological anthropologist. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Why was the Revolutionary War over after the battle of Yorktown? I never understood why the rest of the British forces didn't keep fighting, especially if they still had significant forces based in New York City, and if Cornwallis wasn't even the commander of British forces in the states.

Cornwallis had one of the armies in the South with Alexander Stewart commanding another in South Carolina around Charleston. The lack of a foothold in the states and resilience of the American army helped push the British surrender and evacuation. British forces held New York City, Charleston, Georgia, and other places but could not fully control full regions. Even though the British army held Charleston, they did not have control of the rest of South Carolina. Slowly, the British forces in SC trickled back to the Charleston area after evacuating other posts such as Camden and Ninety-Six, and losing forts such as Fort Motte. The Battle of Eutaw Springs put an end with British forces trying to gain more control of South Carolina as the army would remain there until total evacuation. Even the great victories of Camden and Charleston did not seem to quell the continuing operations of the American armies. In addition, while Henry Clinton commanded the entire British army, he had distanced himself from Cornwallis after May 1780. Clinton had a disagreement with Cornwallis and for a time he would correspond with Cornwallis for updates they became sporadic by mid-1781. Clinton remained the commander in chief until 1782 when Guy Carleton took over, but the war had just about ended by then. The British army after Saratoga had diminished substantially. Burgoyne's army became part of the Convention army. Not really prisoners of war but could not fight anymore in the war. That surrender took away 6,000 soldiers from the British army - a huge blow. Cornwallis' army numbered to almost 8,000. Clinton had a small force in New York and Stewart's army in Charleston had about 2,500. None of these armies had the capability to go against the larger American force. The British army had spread itself thin with the various theatres that popped up in 1778 including Anglo-French, Anglo-Spanish wars that made them fight not only in the Caribbean but the west including Louisiana and Kentucky (at least, what would become them). The surrender of Cornwallis' army spelled the end of the war effort in America. At that point, the American army had become a well disciplined force that showed no sign of shrinking. With the addition of Spanish and French forces, the British army had a lot to contend with and could not with the decreased amount of soldiers. Often times, army leaders plan on crushing enemy forces and occupy the capital cities to win the war. The colonies remained decentralized and if one city fell, the rest would remain in resistance. The British army also failed to fully crush enemy combatants after a battle. Most militia units in the South had horses for retreating purposes and could swiftly escape the field. American forces also tended to regroup after battles and gain reinforcements, as well as relying on more guerilla tactics. The 1781 campaign started with the battle of Cowpens where the British forces lost and began the Race to the Dan. This would in turn force Cornwallis' hand with the need to chase Nathaniel Greene or beat him to the Dan river. The lose of the battle also spelled disaster for the rest of the campaign as the British army had to leave supply wagons behind in order to march at a quick pace through North Carolina. It also halted his plans for controlling the rest of South Carolina. The long chase ended at Guilford Courthouse with Cornwallis battling a renewed American army. After suffering a Pyrrhic victory, Cornwallis decided to head to the coast in order to get reinforcements and supplies at Yorktown. Cornwallis also had some of the most experienced and seasoned regiments with him at the surrender including the 33rd, 71st, 23rd, the Guard infantry, the British Legion, and German battalions. With morale crushed, Lord North proclaimed the war to be over and the administration switched from war to peace negotiations (and prisoner exchange). Ironically, the naval campaigns in the Caribbean had been quite successful but not enough to continue the war. Matthew Spring, With Zeal and Bayonets Only. John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse. Charles Ross (ed.), Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis.

If we could cause nuclear fusion on Earth (in a reactor, of course), could we use the products for fission?

It would be an unlimited source of energy the same way having a water turbine run on water that we can then pump back up. Law no.1: If it gave out energy, you need to provide energy in order to reverse it and vice versa. Iron is the bottom of nucleus potential energy. Fusion of lighter than iron nuclei with a lighter than iron result is going to release energy. Fission of heavier than iron nuclei into heavier than iron products will release energy. For vice versa you need to put energy in. Imagine all elements lined up in a valley shaped curve with the iron at the bottom. Energy is released only when going downhill.

Why do we have organisms on Earth that can survive in the vacuum of space?

Why not? It is a side effect of having a form to survive harsh conditions on Earth, such as drought.

Did the Greeks and Romans read the "classics"

> Did the Greeks and Romans read the "classics"? Absolutely. I'm much more familiar with the Romans than the Greeks, so I can only speak as to them - though I can't think of any reason that the Greeks would be different - but today's great Latin literature was definitely important back then as well. For example, *The Aeneid* was, by the 2nd century A.D., mandatory if one wanted to claim a "good" education. In fact, it'd often be memorized.[^(Source, missing one page)](_URL_2_) *The Aeneid*, like *The Illiad*, was and is regarded as the epitome of literature in its language, and was, consequently, hugely popular. Plus, it certainly didn't hurt its popularity that it painted the ruling Julio-Claudian dynasty in the best of lights. > Do we have the same Greek and Roman canon as the actual Greeks and Romans? Nope, and it's a real tragedy. Regrettably, "we've lost more of Latin literature than we posses."[^Source ^\(Abstract\)](_URL_0_)^|[Source2](_URL_1_) Entire authors have disappeared from history, and we lack an enormous amount of what the Romans and Greeks wrote. It's the bane of every classicist the world over, but there's not much to be done about it.

Are there any ancient civilizations that did not build stairs?

The wheel is something that would need to be invented in order to be used, wheras stairs and steps can form naturally, so this question would be incredibly hard to answer whilst sticking to the AskHistorians top answer guidelines. The wheel was an invention. Somebody wanted to find a way to reduce the amount of force necessary to move large objects and invented the wheel and axel design to do so. its much more complicated then it sounds.

Why didn't the destroyed cities of Europe change their city layouts after World War II?

Some of it has to do with the internal geography (or metageography) that the residents carried. After a war where the familiar has been smashed, people very often wanted to hold on to some of that familiarity, and spatial arrangements were an important part of social interaction. Besides, what was *below* the ground wasn't necessarily destroyed, so the infrastructure for rebuilding in the same configurations existed already even if the streets were cratered. Minor changes were probably rife: slight widening of streets and roads, tearing up of brick pavements and streetcar rails, expansion of certain facilities, the burying of power cables, et cetera. But I suspect the spatial order was persistent because people *wanted* it to be as much as because it was easier to do. If any city would have been prone to a total reconstruction, it would have been Rotterdam after the Blitz. Although its skyline certainly changed, and the oud-centrum was vastly modified, I am not aware of whether the basic layout shifted (streets, etc). There's a certain psychologically restorative quality to that continuity in the face of an undeniably external, human-created disaster (as opposed to London 1666 or Chicago 1871, which came "from within" and highlighted distinct problems with the prior order), although I'm not sure if anyone's written on it specifically off the top of my head. It would not surprise me if one or another of the spatial theorists has done so. *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* is a great journal to farm for that, if you're so inclined, as is *Progress in Human Geography*. I'm not in my office so I don't have access to my indexes.

f-stop and aperture

Aperture is one of the things that determines how much light reaches the sensor on your camera. Think of it as a hole in a box. Inside the box is a kid drawing with crayons. (Don't worry, he's being fed.) The bigger the hole (the larger the aperture), the more light that gets in, the more the kid can see his paper to draw what he sees through the hole. The size of the aperture is measured in f-stops. The smaller the f-stop, the larger the aperture, or the larger the hole in the box, or the more light that gets in. Shutter speed is also important: how long does that hole in the box stay open to let the light in? The longer the shutter speed, the longer the hole stays open, the more light that gets in. That's one reason why some pictures are blurry: the subject moves while the hole in the box is still open. Sports photographers use very quick shutter speeds (which requires smaller f-stops to let more light in) so they can capture motion without blur. If the aperture was not large enough, and the shutter speed too fast, the photo would be too dark because the settings did not let enough light in to accurately capture the image to the sensor.

how does soap help remove body odor im comparison to plain water?

A lot of the stuff that makes us dirty and smelly is accumulated on our body because of oil. Oil traps in dirt and odors. And if you know anything about oil, you should know that it doesn't mix or dissolve in water. So while rubbing with just water might get rid of some surface oils, we use soap, which breaks down the oil (along with the dirt and odors in it) into smaller pieces that can be dissolved into the water and washed away.

How do we know this is really 2014?

The most definite way is by old astronomical records. We know down to the minute when all the eclipses, periodic comets, etc of history took place, so if there was an eclipse on a certain day of the reign of the emperor Claudius, we know what year that was. Thus we know that there are some years we don't know much about, but there are no missing years.

How and when was it discovered the Mayans hadn't used wheels? Are their other questionable decisions that Mayans were 'blind' to?

The wheeled vehicle is not as intuitive an invention as most people seem to think. In fact, as /u/Daeres explains in [this submission](_URL_0_), it was only ever invented twice and possibly even only once, in the entire history of mankind. The reason the wheeled vehicle did not reach the Americas before Columbus is that they were cut off from the rest of the world where this technology had spread from its original point of origin in the 4th millennium BCE.

how (in north america) social conservative values became aligned with economic conservatism

So there is this thing called [Duverger's Law](_URL_0_) which basically states that our electoral system will cause USA to have two dominant political parties which will effectively shut out all but the remote possibility of a third party candidate being elected. Because politicians want to be successful, they will be forced to align themselves with one of the two major parties. This causes a dialectic relationship between the parties where they must be polar opposites of each-other to remain one of the two successful parties. [Around the time of the New Deal](_URL_1_) the political parties made a shift. Prior to this time, Republicans were a party for the fiscally libertarian, which can be seen in the economic policies of the 1920s. Democrats, on the other hand, included much of the 'socially conservative' south. However, with the great depression and the new Democratic President Roosevelt promoting both [Keynesian economic policy](_URL_2_) and policy reform which promoted helping the economically disenfranchised minorities in the south, the Republican party split over whether to support it or not while the old democratic base in the South all suddenly didn't want to be Democrats anymore. In an attempt to gain votes, the Republican Party started promoting the socially conservative message the southern democrats wanted. The cycle of elections during the 1930s saw many of the old urban republicans become new deal democrats and many old southern democrats become new republicans. Other than slight shifts during the early 1980s and early 1990s, we have held the same party alignment ever since. edit: tl;dr: two parties means they must be opposites of each-other or a third party will take one of their spots. In the 1930s, the Democrats changed, so Republicans followed suit to appeal to the voters Democrats had left behind. also, freereflection is right about the rise of christian fundamentalism being a factor.

how do they make sure that low level employees at the white house (custodians, chefs, etc) aren't going to try to kill the president?

The same way that determine that the high level employees won't do it -- very, very thorough background checks.

Does a colony of penguins stand s chance in the north pole? What about a polar bear in antacrtica?

Unfortunately not open access, but [this article](_URL_0_) is about those exact questions. Two answers to your questions, from that article: > If polar bears were transferred to Antarctica could they survive? And would penguins survive in the Arctic? > Polar bears would probably survive in the Antarctic, and the Southern Ocean around it, but they could devastate the native wildlife. In the Arctic polar bears feed mainly on seals, especially young pups born on ice floes or beaches. Many of the differences in breeding habits between Arctic and Antarctic seals can be interpreted as adaptations to evading predation by bears. > Polar bears would find plenty of fish-eating mammals and birds around Antarctica. Penguins would tie particularly vulnerable because they are flightless and breed on open ground, with larger species taking months to raise a single chick. Bears can only run in short bursts, but they could catch a fat, sassy penguin chick or grab an egg from an incubating parent. > In the Arctic polar bears hunt mainly on the edge of the sea ice, where it is thick enough to support their weight but thin enough for seals to make breathing holes. The numerous islands off the north coast of Canada, Alaska and north-west Europe provide plenty of suitable habitats. The Antarctic continent is colder, with only a few offshore islands, so bears would probably thrive at lower latitudes in the Southern Ocean than in the Arctic. > We can only hope that nobody ever tries what the questioner suggests. Artificially introduced predators often devastate indigenous wildlife, as it is not accustomed to dealing with them. This occurred with stoats in New Zealand, foxes and cats in Australia, and rats on many isolated islands. Large, heavy animals would also trample the slow-growing, mechanically weak plants and lichens of the Antarctic. For instance, Norwegian reindeer have decimated many native plants in South Georgia, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, since they were introduced 80 years ago. > C. M. Pond Department of Biological Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK And > While, as far as I know, no one has ever been stupid enough to introduce polar bears into the Antarctic, there have been at least two practical attempts to transplant penguins to the Arctic. The original "penguin" was in fact the late great auk (Pinguinus impennis), once found in vast numbers around northern shores of the Atlantic. Although no relation to southern hemisphere penguins, it was very similar in appearance, and filled much the same ecological niche as penguins, particularly the king penguins of the subantarctic region. > With any attempt to introduce an alien species, there must actually exist an appropriate ecological niche for it to fill, and it must be vacant. For the most part, the ecological niches occupied by penguins in the south are filled by the auk family to the north. But the demise of the great auk in the mid-19th century at the hands of hungry whalers created not only a vacancy that one of the larger penguins might neatly slot into, but also a potential economic demand for the penguin's fatty meat and protein-rich eggs. > It was perhaps the possible economic opportunities that prompted two separate bids to introduce penguins into Norwegian waters in the late 1930s. The first, by Carl Schoyen of the Norwegian Nature Protection Society, released groups of nine king penguins at Røst, Lofoten, Gjesvaer and Finnmark in October 1936. Two years later, the National Federation for the Protection of Nature, in an equally bizarre operation, released several macaroni and jackass penguins in the same areas, even though these smaller birds would clearly find themselves competing directly with auks or other native seabirds. > The outcome was unhappy for the experimenters and, most particularly, for the penguins. Among those whose fate is known, one king was quickly despatched by a local woman who thought it was some kind of demon, while a macaroni died on a fishing line in 1944, although from its condition it had apparently thrived during its six years in alien waters. > And it soon became obvious that the real reason why any attempt to fill the ecological gap left by the great auk was destined to fail was the very reason that the niche was vacant in the first place — such large seabirds could not happily coexist with a large and predatory human population. Of course, it is the steadily increasing human presence in the far south that is now threatening penguins in their native habitat. > Hadrian Jeffs Norwich, Norfolk, UK

How are primers made for PCR chosen?

If the genome of the species you are trying to make primers for is well-characterised then the job of designing primers is not hard. In humans, while there is a lot of variation between people, the vast majority of a person's DNA is identical to the known human consensus sequence. So if you design a primer to be complementary to a region of DNA, based on the consensus sequence, odds are that any given individual will not have a mutation at that site. You can increase your likelihood of success by placing your primer in regions of the gene that are highly conserved (show low levels of variation between people or even across species). Sometimes if you know that a variation exists frequently at a given site, you can even design your primers to only amplify DNA if it is present, so variation/mutation/polymorphism at that site becomes a feature not a bug.

what will happen to mickey mouse when he becomes public domain in 2023?

He won't become public domain. In 2022 they'll extend how long copyright lasts after the creator's death, just like the last two times.

why do we accept that all the world's diverse species have a common ancestor while human beings are considered to be too complex for having only one paternal and maternal ancestors?

> while human beings are considered to be too complex That has been debunked and is only believed by people who either don't understand evolution or refuse to accept that evolution is a fact.

what is sdk?what is api?

When you walk into McDonalds, you can order a happy meal & get a nice pre-packaged meal (Burger, fries, toy, etc). But say you wanted to walk into the kitchen and make your own meal - you'd still have to use the ingredients the store has. You can't walk into McD & make a Taco Supreme as part of your meal - it doesn't make sense in their context, they don't know what to do with it. The SDK & API is like the menu at mcdonalds. The SDK is the collection of tools & resources you need to build a meal. The API is the list of things you can ask the SDK to do for you - if you ask the McDonalds API for 'slivered onions' it knows how to deliver - whereas the Taco Bell API would have no idea what the hell that means. If you don't like what the McDonalds SDK has to offer. You want waffle fries. You can go closer to basics & use the bare Grocery Store SDK. It's a lot more flexible & you can build more, but you're gonna have to do a lot of the basic development yourself that the SDK had pre-packaged for you, like cutting up the potatoes for fries, not to mention the tomatoes and onions etc. And if you wanted to go really crazy you could ditch the Grocery Store SDK & go all the way back to the Subsistence Farming - the Assembly Language of making meals. But now you're talking about growing your own vegetables & slaughtering your own cow - you got a LOT of work ahead of you before you get to that burger. It's an imperfect analogy, but hopefully gives you an idea

why can humans not digest fiber?

There are actually almost no animals that can digest fibers! Almost all animals who live off stuff like leaves and grass break them down with the help of symbiotic bacteria that live in their intestines. Humans only have a tiny number of bacteria than can break down cellulose, and they only break down enough of it to feed themselves. As for *why* we don't have these bacteria: probably because digesting that kind of food is not very efficient and you don't get a lot of energy out of it (for instance, I happen to have in my head that guinea pigs get about 40 kcal out of 100 g of hay). With a big energy-hungry brain like ours, it's better to have a digestive tract optimised for energy-dense foods like meat, fruit and starchy things, rather than one that'll be welcoming to cellulose-eating bacteria.

why couldn't t-rex have been both predatory and scavenging?

Language like this is usually used for disambiguation. It *can* lead to confusion in the process, but mostly it's to try and *avoid* it. There's often some overlap between behaviour. In fact, *most* carnivores will scavenge when given the chance. There just wasn't much hard evidence of this specifically existing for T-Rex, and it's easier to classify animals in 'either / or' groups, than catering to blurry, movable lines. Bear in mind, this find **doesn't** constitute proof, either (and the blogspot article seems a bit biased). There could be numerous explanations for it, not all of which imply active hunting.

Inspired by Interstellar: What happens to the rotation of a large planet orbiting a black hole?

The reason for the time dilation that happens isn't directly due to the black hole itself, it is more to do with how fast the planet needs to orbit the black hole to maintain a stable orbit. If the planet is moving too slow it would just get sucked into the black hole. So for a stable orbit near a black hole that would result in the time dilation as shown in interstellar the planet would need to be moving at a significant portion of the speed of light. (Maybe someone who understands how to calculate time dilation can calculate how fast it was going for 1 hour local to equal 7 years on earth) As for the time dilation difference across the planet it would be quite insignificant i.e 1 hour on close side of planet = 6.9999999999999999999 years 1 hour on far side of planet = 7.00000000000001 years Regarding the rotation of the planet, the gravity shear is pretty high on a black hole, and high gravity sheer can more easily result in an orbital body becoming tidally locked like the earths moon.

When splitting water molecules by electrolysis, how would sperate the hydrogen and oxygen?

What? If I’m interpreting your question right, the two gasses will collect at the positive and negative poles in the circuit. Putting a test tube or some other container in the water over each pole will collect the gases as they bubble up.

Why is it that every copy of the Bible that I've ever seen has two columns on each page?

According to the Bible publisher Crossway (publishers of the English Standard Version), the reasons are threefold: Printing in a single column increases the page count by 10 to 25%, which increases how expensive it it to produce. For the typical font size, the two columns increases readability (9-12 words per line is considered optimal) Traditionally, the first printed Bibles were printed with two columns, as were ancient manuscripts handwritten by medieval monks. However, there are some Bible editions written in a single column on the page. I have used several of them, it just depends on how the publisher is sizing the font and how thick they want to make it, and how big the book will be. _URL_0_

Were the mentally ill revered and allowed to roam freely throughout the middle ages?

Well you probably don't consider Syria to be western Europe, but I happen to have a source that suggests this was the case in medieval Muslim Syria. The book is a discussion of Medieval Syrian Saints: "Certain men outwardly defied the ideals of Muslim piety by living in a state of ritual impurity, wearing filthy garments, and not praying. Yet, the 'marginal holy man' did not represent a distinct class of saints as such. [...] The *muwallah* may be regarded as variously a cross between a borderline mystic, saint, vagabond, charlatan, and healer." Meri translates *muwallah* as 'one who is mad with devotion to God'. It's unclear whether this refers to a person that we would today consider to be mentally ill. Meri quotes from Ibn Taymiyya: "It is not possible for anybody to say that this is a friend of God. If this [person] is not insane (*majnun*), then he is a *mutawallih* without possessing insanity, or sometimes he would lose his sense of reasoning while at others regain it, and he does not undertake the religious obligations." Meri relates a few sources regarding one particular *muwallah* called Yusuf al-Qamini, who was apparently a popular healer and miracle worker in Damascus the early 1200s. It seems this was a person who had lost touch with reality but that people saw a power or religious devotion in his ramblings. Meri quotes from a late medieval writer, Ibn al-Hawrani: "Yusuf al-Qamini, the *muwallah* whom the common people regard as a *wali* [Saint] Their proof is that he possessed illuminations and spoke words based on intuitions. This is what happens with the soothsayer, the monk, and the madman who has and the madman who has a companion of the *jinn*. This sort of occurrence has increased in our time. God is asked for support. Yusuf used to wallow in his urine, walk barefoot, and repair to the furnace of Nur al-Din's bath. He did not pray." Meri cites a few other examples and goes on to theorize that *muwallah* existed as kind of marginal-charismatic figures. They were on the border between madness and holiness. On the one hand they are recorded as often performing no religious duties (like praying) and doing things that proper religious leader would never do like going outside in soiled or insufficient clothing. Yet on the other hand they associated themselves with religious places and common people thought they might perform miracles and healings. They were beyond the boundaries of normal society, but also involved in it, and in that they possessed a kind of religious charisma. Meri writes: "Men and women did not flock to them because they challenged established norms of learning, but rather for their conventional wisdom and because they regarded them as sacred persons who dispensed miracles and possessed a charismatic personality." But, were these people mentally ill? If somebody today behaved the way these Damascenes did, we would probably regard them as such. However, our modern society doesn't have a category of person that is expected to act in that manner, but the late medieval society of Damascus did, which may have in turn elicited that behavior. So it becomes completely unclear whether a *muwallah* was a person suffering from a medical or psychological condition (schizophrenia, epilepsy?) or rather a highly devoted religious person who felt compelled to act in this manner. Perhaps a combination of both? You might find this to be off topic but a relationship between "marginal" behavior and holiness is definitely documented in folk variations of Islam, both in the middle ages and into the modern era. Meri, Josef W. *The Cult of Saints Among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria* Oxford University Press, 2003. The discussion of the *muwallah* can be found in chapter 2, pages 91-100.

Gluon are reponsible for the mass of a proton but the higg boson are the responsible for the mass of a gluon?

Gluons are massless. Protons and neutrons get a percent or so of their mass from the Higgs effect (which gives a small mass to the up and down quarks), and the rest of their mass from the strong force fields (primarily) that bind those quarks together (and the strong force field is made of gluons). Finally: the Higgs boson does not give any particles mass. The Higgs effect causes certain particles to get a mass by their interaction with the Higgs field that fills space. The Higgs boson itself and the Higgs field that fills space are both consequences of the fact that there is a fundamental Higgs field.

Does a star always have to be at the center of a solar system?

It's a misconception that stars are in the center of a stellar system. In such systems, all objects are orbiting around a common center of mass, the so called barycenter. Is the system a planetary system like ours, the barycenter is inside or close to the mother star, not because "it has to be like that", but because basically all the mass of our solar sytem (99,9%) is inside the sun. Because of that, ti's usually enough to say, that the sun is the center of our solar system, although in fact it isn't (jupiters mass is enough to let the barycenter be outside of the sun). However most stellar systems aren't quite like our own one, with a single star and some planets revolving around it. Most stars are in a binary or even multiple star system and as a stars mass is far higher than a planets mass, the barycenter is much further away from each star than it is in our system from the sun. So the answer to your question is: In our own galaxy it is rather unlikely, that a star is in or close the the center of it's stellar system. It is believed that about 70% of all stars in the milky way are in a binary or multiple star system. Asking if a star could orbit a planet becomes needless, because as already said, both objects revolve around the barycenter and not one rotates around the other. A planet however can never have a mass higher than a star, because if it would, it would start fusion and therefore become a star aswell. The size doesn't matter either. It is thinkable that a gaseous planet can be bigger in size than a very small star, however the star would still contain more mass. I hope, that cleared out the topic.

Before there was Rock 'n' Roll, what music did the rebellious teens of a decade such as the 1930's (and the surrounding years) listen to?

There was a time when Jazz was not fancy, there was a time when it was considered a corrupting influence. It was linked to crime, drugs, insanity, promiscuity... Check [this article](_URL_0_) published in Ladies Home Journal, August 1921. Racism was obviously a component in the prejudice against that music (and some others that were put in the same category).

When were governments first expected to create jobs?

I'll take your more specific question. The sources I've read about the creation of parks in cities (specifically Central Park, which I'll look through my house to find) shows that during the 19th Century there was some municipally centered demands to create jobs, but this was not to create jobs in and of itself, but for the purpose of creating, as stated, public parks. The New Deal was really the time when the idea of "job creation" came into its own. Before this time the dominant school of economic thought was the Classical School (Smith, Ricardo, etc) which denied the existence of involuntary unemployment. Basically most people believed that unemployment could only result from people refusing to work below certain wages, not that in economic crises people could be out of work and unable to find it again. However, by 1933, that was proving to be untrue, John Maynard Keynes also helped by basically disproving it completely in "The General Theory." At this point the Roosevelt Administration were looking for some way to alleviate the crisis, and eventually started the programs composing the New Deal in 1933. A whole portion of the basic program was Relief: meaning job creation through public works to decrease unemployment. After that Keynesian thought dominated economic thought, especially the idea of job creation.

When and how did child marriage start to be seen as inappropriate in the Western culture?

Child marriage was never really "appropriate" in Western culture; it barely happened. According to parish records, the average age for marriage was between 17 and 25 across much of Europe in the middle ages. The average age for women was 20 to 26 in Elizabethan England, and many writers of the time condemned child marriages. Child betrothals were performed between aristocratic families to cement dynasties but it was never a common practice, and they usually waited until at least early adulthood before marriages took place (since children often died). There are of course exceptions among the nobility, as with Henry VII's mother [giving birth to him when she was just 13] (_URL_0_). You'll find pedophilia apologists trying to argue that marriage and sex between adults and children was "normal" in the middle ages, but this doesn't hold up to fact. It didn't make sense for an adult to marry a child, neither socially nor economically, and marrying children to one another before they've had a chance to establish themselves and their skills didn't make much sense either. The stuff about average marriage ages in 16th- and 17th- c. England comes from *Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cyle in Tudor and Stuart England*, by David Cressy. *Medieval Households* by David Herlihy has something similar to say about the High Middle Ages. I'll defer to a good friend of mine who has this to say about early modern Jewish marriages, which sometimes took place between 12-14 year olds for several very important reasons: > First, unlike Christians, most Jews didn't own land. Their property was more often in the form of businesses and the goods involved in them. That means some of the most important things parents could bequeath their children also took the form of the experience, knowledge, and connections (quite) young couples would need to make their own livings. When couples married young, parents could take an active part in the early years of their marriages, show them how to manage their money and their business affairs, and set them up with houses and in their professions. Perhaps unsurprisingly when you consider how young they were, a lot of young couples spent the first years of their marriage living under the roof of the bride or groom's parents. The short answer is that for many well-off-ish Jewish couples looking to the future of their children, their inheritance required a lot more direct involvement than, say, the inheritance of a farm. I have limited knowledge and I may be wrong, but I hope this was helpful.

why do artists upload their full album to their youtube channel for free?

From an economic standpoint, there is a theory that this will actually increase album sales. It is based on the idea that psychologically, you want to do something for someone who gives you something. So, naturally, the thing to do in this situation is to buy the album, even if you can listen to it for free. Additionally, singers traditionally don't make that much from album sales as opposed to what they make from concert tickets. By giving away songs, the singer hopes it will make you more likely to come see him/her in concert.

What happened to the armies immediately after a battle in Medieval Europe?

This is a vague question and has many different points that can and should be considered. But in all, I will do my best to provide an answer to a general battle during the early Medieval period. First and foremost, open battles happened quite infrequently. I mean, very rarely did to opposing forces march to an open field, size each other up and then proceed to give them the business. With that being said... Any armed force that moves about is going to comprise a long chain of soldiers, wagons, tents and various supporters and retainers. Squires and horses for nobility. Each noble or knight could have a couple horses. Blacksmiths. Fletchers. Cooks and pages to prepare food. Some form of surgeon would be present for those of the upper echelon. And the best part is that almost none of these people would see a battle. They would be at a camp that was nearby. Also, we have to remember that a majority of the forces would be levies from the feudal estates of various lords, barons, knights, aka the landed gentry. The levies typically are only there fighting after the planting season and before the harvest (between spring and fall). They are more often conscripted to fight for their lord or face punishment. They don't have retainers or squires to help carry stuff or their equipment. They carry it themselves. They end up feeding themselves. They also typically walked everywhere without the chance to ride a horse. As for a battle, it depends in large part to location, weather and position. Battles do and don't last very long. Some battles are very fast and over quickly due to a complete breakdown in morale if heavy cavalry is involved or if an ambush is sprung. Battles could last days if there were an open field siege (Hussite Wars where the Bohemians created wagon forts to defend from with spears, crossbows and early gun powder weapons). I digress, so I will list some assumptions - this battle is part of a larger conflict between two European crowns; the armies are comprised of the typical feudal arrangement of relatively few nobles and knights in comparison to the levies that make up a large portion of spear troops that are lightly armed; the armies themselves are being led by a semi-important to important general with some relation to the royal family (blood or political); last, we will assume this was a straightforward battle without much in regard to trickery, flanking or betrayal - good ole fashioned battle between two armies and only a few nearby villages or towns. In medieval battle, the goal was not to destroy the enemy completely, although that would have been a bonus if you were invading or defending lands. It was much more important to route or break an enemy army and then take prisoners of worth for ransom. A member of the royal family or someone important in the aristocracy could be ransomed and pay for an entire campaign or fighting season. Lesser lords and nobles would obviously bring less in terms of ransom, but their household or the crown would actually pay the ransom. The peasant levies would still be captured as they pose a potential threat if left behind enemy lines. The levies carried no real worth for ransom except to their feudal lord - the lord would still need to have people available for harvest after the fighting season. As a battle ends, one army is broken and retreats. There will be a time during the evening that people are sent forward to locate anyone important that might have fallen (see articles regarding Charles of Burgundy being located after his last battle and identified because of his scars). Both sides of the conflict would send out these people, also comprised of monks or priests to provide last rights to the dying. Each army would have returned to their respective camps after the battle to assess damage, losses, gains, prisoners, potential ransoms, etc. This would then play into the next parlay between the forces - basically a way to say..."I have this person and these lords, what will you trade me for them?" Quick and dirty version - the armies will withdraw from the field to their own camps, prisoners have been captured and their ransom value assessed. People will check for others on the battlefield that have fallen but have not yet died.

Why does the sun change the color of my hair? Picture in comment

Did you dye it brown? When you lighten hair with a bleach, it does damage it and makes it more vulnerable to harsh chemicals (shampoos) radiation (the sun), wind and any other stress. Also if you dyed it brown, the dye would likely fade off revealing the bleached hair underneath. Most dark hair has some red/gold/coppery undertones. A lot of the girls in Asia lighten their hair and so their hair all has the same reddish tint. Ditto Latinas. FYI, Once when I lightened my normally dark hair to a medium brown color and while I was standing in line to pay for lunch at a cafeteria, I looked up and saw myself on the surveillance camera monitor screen, and my hair looked perfectly blond! I asked someone about this and was told it probably had something to do with the "infra red" camera.

How long did slaves in America retain their specific tribal identities/religions/languages?

Many of the customs survived. If you go by John Thornton's Africans and the Making of the Atlantic World, many of the Slaves, though coming from different kingdoms had many language and religious similarities. So when new Africans arrived in the United States there was little trouble in recreating a society they knew. The biggest change is that it was in the context under English masters. The result is something of a creole culture that combines many elements of AFrica and Anglo culture. Gullah is an example of a language that survives to this day and is a creation of this cultural mix. To hear it go here _URL_0_ . Gullah is still spoken today in parts of Charleston South Carolina. Ira Berlin gives a little different view in "Many Thousands Gone". He states that the Middle Passage, the carrying of slaves from Africa to America, was such a harrowing experience that it more or less shattered the slave psyche. This combined with large language differences made the reconstruction of African culture very difficult, instead entirely new cultures were developed. Out of the two of them, I would say Thornton was more correct, as he is an African historian and would be more knowledgeable about African cultural differences. Elements of African culture still pervade African American society today, I would doubt that any of it has been truly "lost".

how is there a slow lane and a fast lane on the highway if the speed limit never changes?

Some people drive faster than others. Passing on the driver's side is usually safer, which usually means passing on the left. All the people merging in and out tend to slow down the outside lanes a bit, too.

how can a solution to a problem suddenly pop up?

Subconscious mind solves it for you with all of the acquired knowledge and experience. This won't happen if you've no knowledge.

If a king was presumed dead and an heir took the throne, what happens when the old king returns?

A slightly different scene. The Ottoman emperor Murad II abdicated his throne in favour of his son Mehmed II (aged 12). Murad wanted to pursue the beauty of the life, poetry and was fed up with government work. But when his son Mehmed II took over, there was an imminent danger of a crusade (christian coalition) to take over the Balkans. Now after this point there are two different view points as to what exactly happened. 1. Some scientists claim that Mehmed II wrote a letter to his father stating "If you are the Sultan, come and lead your armies. If I am the Sultan I hereby order you to come and lead my armies." 2. Some write that the prime minister (vezir) at the time convinced Murad to come back and take over the throne because of the imminent danger. And so Murad just came back to capital and continued his rule until his death. The same prime minister (vezir) was executed shortly after Mehmed conquered Constantinople because it is claimed that Mehmed always held a grudge against him. In case of Ottomans they just continued their rule.

Does muscle repair faster when asleep, rather than lying completely motionless?

Sleep involves increased secretion of growth hormone, which does stimulate increased protein synthesis in skeletal muscle. _URL_0_

Were Gun Control Laws in the USA originally motivated by racism/Jim Crow?

The bottom line is, yes, there was definitely a racist root to much of it. One of the concerns of the Supreme Court in the infamous Dredd Scott case was that if blacks were citizens, then it would give, horror of horrors, "to persons of the negro race ... the full liberty of speech ...; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." You can imagine how well the concept of armed blacks went over down South. Fortunately, there were plenty of laws on the books prohibiting certain people from being armed, such as one to "prohibit any negro or mulatto from having fire-arms.", as addressed by the deliberation for the Civil Rights Act 1866. For more details on the problems occasioned by the 14th Amendment and the fact that the white government could no longer blatantly say that blacks couldn't have guns, check here. _URL_0_ As a result, modern gun laws came to be crafted a little more creatively. If it was unconstitutional to blatantly say "Whites can carry guns, blacks can't", then they had to find more ethereal ways around it. For example, laws on the carriage of concealed weapons could be...discretionary. California's current one is a case in point. The San Francisco Chronicle article on the matter back in 1923 (available about half-way down this PDF _URL_1_ ) is quite open about how the law was carefully crafted to try to avoid unConstitutionality issues. The target in this case was not blacks, but Asians and Latinos. The still-extant law requires that the Sheriff decide that the applicant for a firearm show 'good cause' and 'be of good moral character', a very subjective assessment which, back in the days, effectively meant 'you're white', but today the application of the law has gone more to a race-neutral position based on whether or not the Sheriff likes the idea of an armed private citizenry. Of course, not all gun control laws were racist. For example, back in the day, it was considered that carrying a firearm concealed was the act of a scourge and scoundrel, and that honest gentlemen carried them openly, this applied to all regardless of race.

What is the correllation between the name of chinese currency yuan and the dynasty?

They use the same character, 元. That's it. It's a common character, meaning "round" or "round coin". To elaborate, the Yuan dynasty was a period of Mongol rule over China, from c. 1260 (de facto, 1271 officially) to 1368 (1380 if you count the Northern Yuan dynasty when the Mongols retreated to Mongolia after Kublai Khan's death and subsequently being driven out of China. *** The Chinese Yuan, referring to the currency, 圆 formally but commonly the above character, is the basic unit of Chinese currency, much like the dollar is to many other currencies of the world. It was first minted during the Qing dynasty between 1888 and 1898 in various provinces. While the modern rendering is officially rénmínbì (人民币) or People's Currency, in daily use 元 is far more common, or kuài (块) or "piece" in certain parts of China. References: _URL_0_ _URL_1_ _URL_3_ _URL_2_ Edited for formatting.

Why are trees in the Sahara flat and wide?

More sunlight is a good thing for the tree, as long as it can get enough water. Other trees don't spread out so much because the competition makes it a wasted effort, but in the Savannah the chance of two trees thriving right next to each other is lower. It's easier for a single tree to reach deep enough with its roots to hit water, and then take advantage of the clear sky above.