Datasets:

vblagoje

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{ "a_id": [ "ck6hy5i", "ck6k4pf", "ck6krbz", "ck6ljlu", "ck6qtlt", "ck6wcw7", "ck76gt6", "ck7a63t" ], "score": [ 655, 22, 133, 8, 16, 3, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The kinds of figures that were lauded by Soviet propaganda were \"everymen\" who, because of their love of their country etc. etc., rose to do incredible things. The case in point here is Alexey Stakhanov, of the Stakhanovite movement. It would have been at odds with Soviet ideology for science-manufactured supermen to be the heroes.\n\nTo elaborate a little more: Stakhanov was a coal miner who supposedly performed way over his quota limit in the Stalin era. The Soviet propaganda organs manufactured a \"movement\" out of his feat, encouraging all workers to perform well above their (often unrealistic in the first place) quotas. \n\nAnother who fits this description is Trofim Lysenko, a \"barefoot agronomist\" who had some rather loopy ideas about how to improve crop yields (under collectivism) that were at odds with Western genetics. Lysenko's essentially peasant status was one of the things that made him appealing for the propaganda organs, and it led to denouncements of more stereotypically elite scientists as bourgeois. \n\nMy generalization is primarily for the Stalin era (1928-1953). I don't know how much flexibility there was under later Soviet premiers in their heroic archetypes. Under Stalin one of the most popular plots for films was a variation on \"boy meets tractor,\" just to give you an indication of what Socialist Realism meant for various types of media. It does not involve space aliens who can fly, fight for peace, justice, and the Soviet way, etc., or mutants (god forbid), or science-augmented men, or anything like that. These are _deus ex machinas_ and as we know there is know _deus_ other than the hard-working \"new Soviet man\" under Marxist-Leninism!", "hi! these posts asked similar-ish questions; you may find them of interest, especially the first one, which goes more in-depth on the cultural background\n\n* [During the Cold War, did the Soviets have their own James Bond character in the media? A hero who fought the capitalist pigs of the West for the good of Mother Russia.](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Did the USSR and other countries have a \"Superman,\" or other related type icons.](_URL_0_)", "The hero in Soviet propaganda was not usually an individual, although as already mentioned Alexey Stakhanov was one exception based on a real person, often it was the Soviet Union itself that was the hero, or the collective proletariat internationally.\n\nThe enemy was often clearly defined as stereotypical capitalists or Fascists, sometimes it was a combination of the two. There were many Soviet cartoons that depicted war, as does Captain America, but they were more likely to make it look dark and foreboding, compared to the Captain America-version where it is a chance for the hero to realize his true potential. The Soviet films more often showed the victims, and expressed sympathy for their plight, and the saviour was the combined Soviet might and the enemy was a gross caricature, such a dirty, violent pig as in [Fascist Boots on our Motherland](_URL_4_) from 1942. \n\nThe cartoon from 1967, [Prophets and Lessons,](_URL_5_) is a good example of the Soviet hero being the collective people of the Soviet Union. It begins with White-Russian rats being forced out by the revolution. They go to the West and find a Capitalist prophet (profit?) who preaches that they need to crush the Soviet Union, but every attempt by fascists and capitalists is easily crushed by the Soviet Hammer. The Capitalist press predict economic collapse of the Soviet Union, but the unstoppable communist worker and industry is the hero, and is unlikely to fail, \"even in 100 years!\"\n\nA good example of war being the enemy is the 1972 animated film for children, [Ava Maria](_URL_3_). It begins with religious iconography on the walls of a large banquet hall with a Christmas tree, fat capitalists in tuxedos, their wives in ball gowns, and uniformed Generals, who pop a Christmas cracker and gold coins burst out and then war begins in Vietnam. American soldiers are indoctrinated by the church, in league with the capitalists, and scenes of aerial warfare are shown with religious music playing. \n\nIn one scene a little girl holds a doll up to an American soldier and he guns her down. \n\nThere is an American propaganda poster shown that says:\n\n > USA is proud of you!\n\nThen it goes to the only scene with words, which is a voice-over on top of scenes of civilians being bombed and burning, destroyed jungles. The theme is that proletariats are the same the world over, the civilians weeping over their dead in Vietnam are equal to the working Americans who are shown weeping over coffins draped with American flags:\n\n > The land into desert the color of blood, they blight, the earth is dying with no end to this fight! \n > \n > Black Boeings, like thieves in the night, steal our husbands away, far out of sight, the women weep and the children cry, somewhere across the sea, we hear them weep yet this war will not die! \n > \n > Black Boeings, like thieves in the night are flying. Our husbands are killing people, and now they too are dying. And each dawn messengers call. Telling us of our own husbands' fall. We learn that our own husbands are dead. Yet this war will not end. There's no end in sight...\n\nThere is no singular hero to come and save the day, but there is a montage of news footage of American anti-war demonstrations showing babies, old people, and working-man type people peacefully marching with rows of police watching over them, and then charging into them with batons and riot shields raised, then scenes of tear gas, rioting, and police beating people. \n\nThere are also have scenes with the little Vietnamese girl who was gunned down holding her doll out with outstretched arms superimposed over the riot scenes, and the film ends with a church-like image of Jesus holding the Virgin Mary, who is holding the dead Vietnamese girl. \n\nApparently, the hero is the man or woman in the street willing to stand up against the capitalists.\n\nIn the 1962 cartoon, [The Millionaire,](_URL_0_) a bulldog inherits his master's fortune and becomes the stereotypical Soviet-version of a capitalist, flaunting his wealth, abusing the little people, mocking peace demonstrators, and hoarding his wealth. Once again, there is no hero to save the day, just the dutiful proletariat bidding his time, while the evil capitalist is dumb as a dog, and so bound to fail. \n\nThere was a cartoon aimed at youth in 1979 called The Shooting Range ([Part 1](_URL_1_), [Part 2](_URL_2_)), which could be looked at as an anti-Captain America. \n\nThe enemy is once again the evil capitalist, and the American city is his sidekick. An average guy is unemployed after his car breaks down, and the hustle and bustle of the freeway-dependent city is impossible to navigate without a car so he loses his job, after some desperate times he meets a woman and they go to work for the capitalist on his gun range. Their job is to replace the targets as they are fired on by a group of fat capitalists. They valiantly perform their duties, but it turns out their real job is to serve as targets themselves. They gain their dignity, and walk off the job, leaving the capitalist with egg on his face. However, because of the structure of the city, he quickly has another couple to replace his lost workers. \n\nedit: spelling\n", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Captain America was propaganda for the WWII period, not the cold war.", "I've spent the past 6 or so years of my life studying Soviet and Russian culture, so if it's acceptable to speak in an 'amateur expert' capacity, I'd like to shed a bit of insight into why a Captain America just doesn't really fit with the Soviet/Russian mentality.\n\nRussian culture puts a pretty high value on being an authentic, real person (in the areas where it counts). Because Captain America is a totally unrealistic fantasy, it would be kind of silly for the Soviet government to create this idealised, fictional figure with the counterparts to the most valued traits in the American mythological figure. If a boy goes to his mother and asks for a Comrade Soviet Hero-man costume for his birthday, she would look at him funny and say, \"Why? You're not Comrade Soviet Hero-man, and never will be. Why delude yourself like this? Go study for your lessons or practise something you're good at, instead.\"\n\nAlso, Soviet (and still Russian, to a certain extent) culture didn't really look kindly upon an individual figure being so famous and admired unless he was part of the Communist Party leadership. This became even more the case after Stalin's death and the Khrushchev government's attempt to erase the traces and dangers of the 'cult of personality.' A superhero really goes against this idea; why create a myth about this hero person who can do anything and is beloved by all when this turned out so catastrophically last time?\n\nA good Soviet citizen didn't go out and save the day; this was the job for Comrade Stalin or (later) a brilliant Party figure. A good Soviet citizen played his or her part as a cog in the great state machine.", "Most characters created for youth were pacifists and peaceful. There was [Alisa Selezneva](_URL_3_) - time travelling space girl from communist future appearing in several books, movies and animation. [She had less pacifist friends though](_URL_0_). Apart from her I can't remember any teenage-oriented multi-franchise heroes, others were mostly for younger children (with fairy tale characters or talking animals) or too bizarre to talk about it ([Investigation Held by Kolobki](_URL_1_)).\n\nThe most similar to Capitan America were probably [Elusive Avengers](_URL_2_). This is sort of Western about group of teen fighters in Russian Civil War.", "There was a Soviet superhero, a fictional character, called Uncle Styopa. He was an unusually tall man, literally a giant. Worked as a policeman, a firefighter and a navy. He was a depiction of an ideal Soviet citizen: honest, brave, no-mercy for criminals, and always ready to help people in trouble.\n\nTechnically, Uncle Styopa had all features of a superhero, and even his unusual size can be considered as a \"superpower\".\n\nHe first appeared in Mikhalkov's 1936 childish poem, but later, in 1964, Soviets made a cartoon, which was very famous in USSR.\n\n[[_URL_0_]](https://www._URL_0_/watch?v=4p8-M5dLWIc) - here is the cartoon, so you can have an insight on how it looked.\n", "Having grown up in the USSR I don't recall any fictional superheroes and I agree with others that this would be a very anti-Soviet concept. Soviet propaganda generally trumpeted hard work, honesty, and such virtues to which the idea of someone who can achieve great feats with less effort would have been antithetical.\n\nHowever I want to mention a few popular figures who haven't been mentioned yet. First is Gagarin, the first man in space. He reached an almost superhero status and many kids wanted to be cosmonauts just like Gagarin.\n\nSecond is Lenin himself who was the subject of many propaganda stories regarding his honesty, hard work, and humility. My feeling is that few people really believed these stories, but Lenin's reputation was not tainted the way Stalin's was (probably because he died so early) and this led to him being presented as the kindly father of the Soviet Union.\n\nThird is a variety of old Russian folk heroes such as Ivan the Fool and the Bogatyrs (such as Ilya Muromets). They generally did not have magical powers themselves (according to Wikipedia Muromets did have superhuman strength) but would through honesty, hard work, and kindness recruit a variety of magical helpers to help them accomplish impossible tasks." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11155q/did_the_ussr_and_other_countries_have_a_superman/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/188xka/during_the_cold_war_did_the_soviets_have_their/" ], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETJt_zbnKk", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cEDCeJuBPg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cEDCeJuBPg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lMhOtp62xc", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taA1cr85-L8", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOQwfMLJJd0" ], [], [], [ "http://s00.yaplakal.com/pics/pics_original/3/8/1/2633183.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbRi39692oE", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elusive_Avengers", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisa_Selezneva" ], [ "youtube.com", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p8-M5dLWIc" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ec29va8", "ec2b1sy", "ec2egrw", "ec2howq" ], "score": [ 7, 32, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "We do know. It's just that our society has rules that deviate from natural instincts. That's what you get taught.", "We don't really get taught about the mechanics of sex in our education/external source learning. But it's not a very difficult concept to figure out once you're ready for the moment.\n\nAnimals don't have to worry about things like consent, unwanted pregnancies causing a financial burden, or the long upbringing of a child due to the way they birth their young (more or less fully formed and able to do many things independently). We add a lot of that on from the complex social structure we have.\n\nOther animals with complex mating structures do have to learn what is and isn't acceptable about sex through group pressures (ex; a young male lion getting attacked by the male of the pride for trying to mate with one of that male's mates), and it isn't conclusively proven, as far as I know, that animals don't learn how mating works through seeing it happen to the adults in their herd.", "Well, for one thing, animals do it out in the open for all of the other animals to see. Humans don't do that.", "Animals know how and when to mate due to instinct-driven impulses in their brains that are triggered by pheromones released in estrus, or when the female indicates through hormonal and physical changes that she is ready to mate.\n\nHumans have pheromones as well but the human sense of smell isn't as strong as that of most other animals and thus hormonal changes are usually the easier way to tell when (regardless of financial or mental stability) it's time to mate." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2mksu4", "d2mkvum" ], "score": [ 5, 5 ], "text": [ "A lot of times when you get angry it's because you feel a psychological threat, like the threat of embarrassment or losing status somehow. Your body can go into 'fight or flight' mode, which increases your adrenaline and your blood pressure.\n\nSo, people that are real angry feel their heart pounding, they get flushed, they have a lot of energy - they feel almost as if \"their blood was boiling\".", "Technically, no. What happens when you get really angry is part of the \"fight or flight\" reaction we are all pre-programmed with. Part of the process, whether the reaction is from fear, or being scared or in this case, anger, is that you pupils dialate, heart rate increases, and your blood vessels open up as wide as possible to allow more blood flow. I am sure you have seen some get really red faced when they get angry right? All your blood vessels, including your tiny ones close to the skin (capillaries) open up. This is in case you need to sprint your ass off because you are being chased by a saber toothed tiger. The body reacts the same to stress regardless of what causes it. You will feel hot because you have more blood flow. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmnwsp1" ], "score": [ 92 ], "text": [ "Two points to make here; Mutilation was a particularly gruesome tool used by the Byzantine (and lots of others), and they used blinding to far greater scope and effect than purely as a way to eliminate potential rivals.\n\nThere is an inherent second level to this question that greatly effects the outcome; what was the reason for the blinding?\n\nSometimes they were done to instill fear in a conquered people, sometimes mutilation happened to eliminate a rival from making a move on the throne (Castrated men could not be Emperor), sometimes it was done to punish criminals. The list goes on and on.\n\nThere is evidence that this was a special skill of executioners (even if it didn't result in death) or that they at least had people who explicitly focused on this method of mutilation, as the Byzantine Emperor Diogenes was overthrown and as a punishment, he was explicitly blinded by someone who had no practice, resulting in his death by infection (probably sepsis) several days later.\n\nThe Byzantine did develop eye-scoops, but there were a variety of tools this could be done with. Daggers, knives, tent pegs, sometimes burning coals, and heated metal bowls.\n\nI am not aware of any material that explicitly describes the method, however I was able to find depiction of the blinding of Leo of Phokas, that suggests they basically just held the guy down by sitting on his legs and pinning his arms behind his back, and gouged his eyes. I cannot tell you if this was \"normal\", or particularly personal, however Leo Phokas (Leo the Younger) lived in the 10th century, so this was still 'sort of early' in the perfection of this gruesome technique.\n\n*I have come across articles that suggest boiling vinegar was used. Other, similar articles have suggested that Byzantine would explicitly \"fake\" blinding on certain people, in an act of cruelty and punishment, or even force them to blind themselves by putting cloth over their eyes and being unable to take it off. However I have been unable to satisfactorily substantiate either of these. I included them merely as a frame of reference to the depth and breadth in which mutilation could be used.* \n\n**EDIT** [Link to Leo Phokas image](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Blinding_of_Leo_Phokas.jpg/300px-Blinding_of_Leo_Phokas.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg7q6v0", "cg7v1u8" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Rome's navy was actually very important when it had to undergo the Punic Wars against Carthage. Being that Carthage was on the other side of the Mediterranean, sea dominance was critical at the time. Since Hannibal had to march his army across Gaul and Hispania (modern day France & Spain) and while he did manage to keep Rome on its toes for a while he simply didn't have the forces to take on Rome's defenses. Critically, if he had the sea power necessary to bring over more units consistently and quickly, Rome may have fell. However, skilful Scipio Africanus managed to land a sizable force at the doorstep of Carthage in North Africa and his key victory in numerous skirmishes near the city caused the Carthaginian's to capitulate to an Armistace. However, afterwards, even during civil wars and conflicts with outsiders; their Mediterranean dominance wouldn't be challenged until the fall of the Empire because most enemies of Rome in the Mediterranean had been subdued. Another potential candidate is the Macedonian Wars in which the Roman's subjugated Greece but from what I've read the naval battles were skirmishes and mostly blockading on the Roman's part. Another major engagement of the Roman Empire was during Antony's Civil War but this was an exception to the peaceful \"Roman Lake\" that was the Mediterranean.\n\nSome key Battles were the Battle of Actium (Antony's Civil War) & the Battle of Lilybaeum where Rome crushed the Carthaginian Navy and asserted naval dominance. \n\nRome's navy would be challenged during it's collapse when outside groups like the Goths, Arabs & Vandals (who rose a navy and engaged Rome's) but ultimately the western half was in such a decline that the navy didn't do much to impede them. \n\n ", "As /u/laker_man said, it was very important during Republican Rome's struggle with Carthage, in particular the First Punic War, which was essentially fought primarily at sea after Rome quickly took over the inland parts of Sicily with help from Syracuse, which also controlled a good portion of the island. Some of the more notable battles in this war were Economus which was by far the biggest naval battle of the three Punic Wars, Battle of Mylae where Rome demonstrated the Corvus (Crow), allowing them to pin Roman and Carthaginian ships together allowing the Romans to board much easier, rather than ramming the ships, and the Battle of the Aegates Islands, where Rome's victory was the final tipping point where Hamilcar Barca decided it was time to make peace with Rome. It's an interesting little fact that during this war the Roman population actually dropped, which is contributed to the large losses at sea Rome suffered due to storms and top heavy ships.\n\nAfter that, Rome could said to anywhere in the Western Mediterranean she liked without meeting much opposition, as there were no other entities that could come near to match her strength. The Roman navy did continue to fight in her wars, even facing Hannibal Barca after he fled Carthage to serve the courts of the East. After this, my knowledge is sparse as it isn't the time frame I've normally studied, or even read of recently. I do know that Pompey cleared the Mediterranean of pirates in a six month time frame, gaining him much popularity.\n\nSources: \nThe Fall of Carthage, Adrian Goldsworthy\nIn the Name of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy\n(Sorry the sources aren't varied for authors, I'm stuck on my ship and don't have access to most of my books)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e3yk5ri", "e3ykrka" ], "score": [ 15, 5 ], "text": [ "Let's limit the question to production and release of eumelanin (=\"true melanin\") in human skin; melanin can be found in other odd places and in different forms.\n\nEumelanin production is stimulated by UV-B-caused DNA damage in the form of pyrimidine dimers in melanocytes, a type of cell dispersed in the bottom layer of the epidermis. Depending on skin color (race) there will also be some basic level of production independent of UV exposure.\n\nThe melanin is packed into melanosomes, which the melanocytes then transfer to neighboring epithelial cells, to protect their cell nuclei and the layers below the epidermis (the bottom layer of the epidermis is where cell growth happens, the cells just pile up and differentiate as they get into the higher layers).\n\nI'm not aware of this process being limited to any particular time, beyond the stimulation following UV exposure (which would usually happen in the middle of the day, but you never know).", "The epidermal layer of your skin contains many differentiated cells, including melanocytes and keratinocytes. \n\nEvery person has roughly the same amount of melanocytes, but their activities differ greatly. When exposed to UV rays, sun rays, melanocytes activate and create the pigment melanin to protect the skin from the sun.\n\nThis melanin is then passed down to keratinocytes, which reside in a more superficial layer of the epidermis. The deposition of melanin in keratinocytes leads to the darkening of the skin.\n\nTherefore, although we all have the same amount of melanocytes to create the melanin, increased exposure to the sun leads to greater amount of melanin production." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f1zetj4" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Your eyes when closed still allow some light which is coming through your eyelids. This gives it a reddish hue. When eyes are exposed to this color this much then they adjust which results in lack of red when you open your eyes." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eax6aov", "eax7jqv" ], "score": [ 45, 5 ], "text": [ "Yes. It's called a cell saver. The blood is suctioned out of the surgical field; washed, filtered, and centrifuged; then transfused back to the patient. It takes some time to set up, but it can save you using a few units of blood. ", "Yes, cell-saver can be used. It isn't a direct exchange though. You lose clotting factors after washing the blood. It also damages some red blood cells in the process. You end up transfusing blood back in that isn't as efficient as when it came to the machine. Not a huge deal, but it starts to be a problem if you really run into trouble. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eo3l69a", "eo3lifs", "eo3qbzc" ], "score": [ 68, 3, 11 ], "text": [ "First of all, your saliva is much more conductive than your skin.\n\nSecondly, 9 volts is times stronger than 1.5 volts.", "The technical answer:\nYour skin poses a much higer resistance than your saliva, which Is in fact slightly conductive.\nIf the resistance is higer than the flux in a given system then the current shall not pass.", "Think of electricity like water. Water has pressure and volume (how much water is coming it at one time. The bigger the pipe or hose, the more volume). Volts is electrical pressure.\n\nAA and AAA batteries are 1.5 volts. 9 volt batteries are, unsurprisingly, 9 volts. So they have a lot more pressure. \n\nLike water, electricity doesn't flow thru all things easily. You fingers have more resistance to the flow than your tongue AND the electricity has to flow further, which is harder.\n\nSo the 9 volt is like shooting a garden hose thru tissue paper and the AA is like trying to shoot a squirt gun thru the box the tissue came in." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dt12ly1", "dt1pzhl" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Super simplified laymans knowledge version: psych drugs affect various neurotransmitters in the brain (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, etc), these neurotransmitters are multipurpose and some regulate motor function in addition to mood. ", "The movement issue is specifically related to Dopamine. In Schizophrenia it is believed that dopamine transmission is over active in the pre-frontal cortex (a 'thinking' bit of the brain). In the basal ganglia (a 'movement' bit of the brain), Dopamine signals trigger start of movement.\n\nAn ideal anti-psychotic drug would reduce dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex but leave it alone in the basal ganglia. We don't have any ideal drugs, we have some OK ones. The old ones eg haloperidol block Dopamine more or less equally everywhere, and have a high rate of causing movement problems. The newer ones are a bit more selective, but not really selective enough, at least not for everyone. Movement problems are seen less commonly, however." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvojty9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The answer for this is fairly simply, apologies therefore if this seems rather sparse for a top-level post. \n\nFranklin does not discuss the Revolution, because he died before finishing the autobiography. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dw201sl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Because most of us are not going to be in a situation where we need crazy outside the box imaginations. Most of us are going to have jobs where we’ll need the knowledge and competence in that particular field, and would only need a limited imagination to problem solve within the scope of our position. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dlp6ta8", "dlp6xmd" ], "score": [ 13, 4 ], "text": [ "[Uranium glass glows green under UV](_URL_0_) and was pretty popular in the mid-20th century. However it's not the radioactivity making things glow, it's a regular atomic transition. Radium was also used as a glowing paint before it was realized how horribly dangerous that is, and tritium is occasionally used for that now. In those cases, the radioactive decays are initiating an atomic transition.", "Uranium itself doesn't glow. \n[Radioluminescence](_URL_0_) happens when a particle of ionizing radiation collides with an atom, rising one of it's electron into an exited state. The electron then go back to it's ground state by emitting a photon.\n\n[Tritium is sometimes used as a permanent light source (for watches and sights)](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://klotza.blogspot.com/2016/07/do-radioactive-things-glow.html" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescence", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_radioluminescence" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdvuf8b" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The nullhypothesis is a statistical question. \n\nIt is the question you ask in order to disprove your hypothesis.\n\nIf you cannot disprove it with the data you collect, then the hypothesis must be correct.\n\n(Well, most likely correct.)\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6v8wb3", "c6v91vw" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "They become so called space junk or [space debris](_URL_0_).\n\nThe ISS had a most recent event, where they had to dodge an oild satelite [Source](_URL_1_)", "Ideally, low earth orbit satellites would be de-orbited intentionally when they are no longer needed. Then they'll just \"burn\" in re-entry. Or the satellites will de-orbit themselves eventually due to small atmospheric drag.\n\nFor geostationary satellites, the propellant needed to de-orbit them is much more than a satellite is likely to have and de-orbiting naturally wouldn't happen in a long long time. So instead they use their last bits of propellant to boost themselves into a higher [graveyard orbit](_URL_0_). That's just an orbit above geostationary orbit where they can then remain without being in the way of operational satellites. At least that's how it should work, apparently often satellite operators are unable to do that." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris", "http://www.examiner.com/article/international-space-station-may-have-to-dodge-debris-from-old-russian-satellite" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ejhpin7", "ejhqymr" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "If you mean does the surrogate influence the foetus it grows in any way then yes. While not all that common, it is possible for the foetus to take on the mitochondrial DNA of the surrogate mother, whilst still retain the egg and sperm donors DNA within the rest of their genetic make up.\n\nHere is an article about it, there are many more you can read if you're interested.\n\n_URL_0_", "The term you are looking for is [maternal effect](_URL_0_). The genotype and environment of the mother have a huge effect on a developing embryo, conferring native immunities and manipulating the way that the embryos DNA is marked and packaged (epigenetics)." ] }

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[ [ "https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/12/4/401/2182299" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_effect" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "er50uxs", "er5193j", "er51ro5", "er59bha", "er59lfe", "er5atuj", "er5o5yg", "er5vxue" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's like buying a really nice warranty for your phone.\n\nIf your phone breaks, and you don't have the warranty, then you better hope you know how to fix it.\n\nBut, if you bought the nice warranty, then you get 24/7 support from the manufacturer who will answer any questions you have, will fly a guy over to your house to fix it for you, and will check on your phone regularly to make sure its working right.", "If a software vendor sells a company a *perpetual* license to their software, that means the customer (the company) has purchased one specific version of the software. It typically does not entitle the customer to bug fixes, updates, new features, nor does it entitle them to call the software vendor when they have a problem with the software. \n\nIf the company wants bug fixes, updates, support, etc., then they *also* buy a support & maintenance contract which allows them to get those things from the software vendor. New features are typically not included in support & maintenance; for that the customer has to buy the next version of the software. \n\nSome companies that purchase perpetual licenses *do* forego those support & maintenance contracts to save money. But, if they forego that and something goes wrong with the software (say, a critical bug), then the software vendor has them over the barrel, especially if the software is critical to the company's business. The software vendor can then charge the company oodles of money to fix the problem, since the company hasn't bought a support & maintenance contract. \n\nNot all enterprise software is sold that way. A lot of enterprise software is sold as a *subscription* license, which typically includes support, maintenance, *and* new features. The upfront cost is frequently less; the downside is if you stop paying the subscription you lose *all* access to the software, whereas with a perpetual license you have access to the version you bought for as long as you want (i.e. \"perpetually\"). \n\nThere are benefits and risks for the software vendor and for the customer with both approaches (perpetual or subscription), so companies and vendors choose a model that fits best for their needs.\n\nEDIT: Note, all of the above applies mostly to enterprise software, not consumer software. Business models for consumer software are similar, but there are differences.\n\nEDIT 2: Some corrections for clarity.", "It's a pretty broad term that basically means \"you'll help us do whatever weird thing we want your software to do\". That could be any number of bizarre and highly specific IT/software issues that companies have.\n\nHere's a piece of equipment that puts out analong signals to a dot matrix printer from 1973. Talk to it.\n\nWe started a field service office in Thailand and their database is in Thai. Talk to it.\n\nWe're upgrading all XP machines to Win10 and something broke and now the printers don't work with your software. Fix it.\n\nCan you add another field for dates before 1970?\n\nWe need Polish language support.\n\nCan this output data to an excel file every six hours?\n\nCan every user have a unique login?\n\nWe dropped this and now it needs the software installed again.\n\nRather than keep a team of software specialists on hand, companies prefer to outsource this kind of work to the people who know the software best and work with it all the time. You may go years between major changes so nobody on your team really remembers how to do it.", "At its most basic it involves having a telephone number that you can call when you are out of ideas and having access to updates and patches for the software.\n\nThis may not be much help in solving any issues you might have but sales people can be quite convincing and businesses like the idea of having someone they rely on and potentially sue if something stops working even if the actual text of the agreement says they really can't.", "Software is an increasingly complex system-of-systems. When you bought a microwave in the 1990s, it was controlled by a computer. You push buttons that are read by the computer's input circuits and the computer's output circuit turned on the microwave generator, inside light, LED display, and the rotating table motor. The people at the microwave oven company wrote the software for that computer, and it was immutable. It was literally unchangeable, blown fuses in a ROM chip. No software maintenance, and no Internet of Things.\n\nToday's microwave can scan the barcode on the frozen meal, go out onto the Internet to look up how to cook it (and tell the microwave company's data partners what you are eating so they can sell that data to marketing companies, that's who paid for this feature to be added to the microwave oven). For that to work, the software in the microwave has to be upgradeable/updateable. \n\nYou don't pay for that software maintenance, the marketing company does (you're not the customer, you're the product). That maintenance is needed, not because the microwave generator works differently, but because the Internet changes. You might get a new router, or your ISP might update the protocol services it provides. All these external changes mean the software in the microwave needs to change to adapt. If you forgo the maintenance changes, things stop working because all the people at all the other companies keep changing things.", "Programmer here building/supporting software. While most of our job is to expand the software with what our customer wants, the support and the maintenance part of the job are two slightly different things.\n\nPlenty of bespoke software that companies use can be very specific in its usage, and maybe not as idiot proof as things sold on app stores for the general public. So what that means for support is that when our customer fucks something up, be it imputing wrong data to not getting things done before automation kicks in, we can go in the database and manually change things that our software does not allow.\n\nFor maintenance, it is all about keeping all the different technologies we have used to build the software up to date. This would be keeping up with reported security threats that have been found in our code or in code that we use (like when using flash or html5). This is what I am actually doing at the moment at my job, since it the software had not been keep up to date before I joined, a security threat revealed in a framework we use, and now we need to go through the code and make sure that it is compatible and works with the latest version that does not have the security threat.", "All software has bugs. In addition quite often standards change and the existing software needs to be adapted to the changed standard.\n\nI worked maintenance on stock exchange software in Asia for quite a few years. We had 3 people working full time just adapting our software to changes the stock exchanges made to their software and to any bugs the customers found.", "I helped implement new software at a library, and the support/maintenance team was a huge help.\n\nBasically, the library bought a software and had a vision of what it would do. This vision was what the management understood from the sales person. None of them were IT people, so they were mistaken on a few things.\n\nSo the actual set-up of the software and tools was part of the support. We also had a company rep train us (the IT guys) so that we could train the staff. Then over the next couple of weeks we would ask questions of the support team, and they'd help us troubleshoot problems. A lot of it was \"Did you turn it off and on again?\" weird stuff, but you have to learn this at some point.\n\nThen about a year in the library buys some new bar-code scanners, and they don't work with our system. So we call the support team and ask them why. Turns out it didn't work because it was a barcode language that wasn't supported. So they forwarded it to the maintenance team who coded a solution, sent us a software patch to test out, and when it worked they forwarded that patch to all their clients.\n\nI can't say this is exactly how it works with all software companies. This has been my experience on a large number of occasions, though." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9ktf7q", "c9kxn2e" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "These types of questions have been brought up a lot around here so I will try to sum them up and then post ones I am referring to later (bed time).\n\nOne post talks about how men in these battles would actually be pretty bad at aiming and only be drilled in firing and reloading, some never said \"aim\", only \"level\". Also, and I think this is the stronger of the two points; the bayonet was the one who did the damage in these days. Charges en masse to take a certain position or route the enemy were how you took the field in that era, it wasn't as if they stood there and shot at one another for hours without moving or flanking or what have you. Muskets certainly killed people, but they were inaccurate, often clogged or malfunctioned and were heavy.\n\n\nAs a side note, I remember reading something about how men in sieges who were first in were paid to do so. I have no source but perhaps someone could back me up on this. If not, I'll just scratch it out.", "Going a bit before your time-constraints but the set up is essentially the same with an example from the Napoleonic Wars. The Grande Armee was both a by product of up and coming reforms of Napoleon in terms of logistics but the heart and soul of a soldiers life was relatively unchanged from Royalist rule. \n\nThe actually battle was certainly a killer but the constant marching knocked off about 4/5 of an actual recruiting party, according to biographical accounts of the Napoleonic Wars. That is only 2 in 10 recruits that pass training will actually march with their corps at any given time due to sickness or injury. It is said time and again that getting to the battle is the hardest part. The search for food and water, fuel for fires, bedding and shelter affected the simple infantryman a lot more than a mere battle. In fact, most of the soldiers that marched with the eagle were mad keen for it as battles often gave promotion and plunder. \n\nA unit on the march is essentially never at full strength (something which Napoleon gave colonels eternal strife for; he had an enough library of notes about each and ever regiment in his army detailing officers, strengths and performance figures). \n\nCoherency was maintained first and foremost by the junior officers and NCOs of the army. A new recruit was often paired with a fellow soldier that shared the same cot whilst in barracks and the same bowl at the mess. \n\nSource: Autobiographies of Captain Blaze - Life in Napoleon's Army by Elzear Blaze; Captain Jean Roch Coignet of the Guard, Lejeunne vol 1 and 2, Swords around a Throne - Col J. Elting (ret). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chcok2t" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "[Speakers rely on auditory feedback of their own voices when speaking.](_URL_1_) I'm not sure if that article is open-access or not.\n\nA pretty cool demonstration of how much hearing your own voice can disrupt your speech is [delayed auditory feedback](_URL_0_). If you've ever spoken in a room with an echo/reverb or been able to hear your own voice during a phone/Skype call, you may have experienced this effect.\n\nIf you have a headset / smartphone, you can check out some free Delayed Auditory Feedback software/apps and try to speak normally with different delays, it's a real trip.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_Auditory_Feedback", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167639397000265#" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fg09p5i" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I would suggest cross posting this question at r/AskAnthropology. They even have an entry in their faq regarding this subject." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eklae8p", "eklpwfy" ], "score": [ 17, 5 ], "text": [ "We use really small tools!\n\n & #x200B;\n\nKeep in mind that eventhough DNA is very small, it is absolutely necessary for an organism to have a full access to it and to manipulate it with critical accuracy. A single mistake, and the whole cell can become cancerous! (it usually commits suicide before that happens, it's called apoptosis). To do so, cells have specialized \"tools\" (tool=protein) that can unzip/dupicate/fix DNA with an amazing precision.\n\nMost of these \"tools\" don't really EDIT your genome, since it remains untouched during the lifetime of most cells. But some organisms developped tools that can actually cut, add or delete bits of your DNA (most common examples: transposons which are basically parasitic genes, retroviruses/retrovirii/whatever you want to call them...). By using these tools in a clever way, we can edit the DNA of any living organism in any way we want.\n\nThere are limitations, but they keep being pushed back as we discover new tools. Have you heard of CRISPR-Cas9?", "In vivo (life) or in vitro (lab setting) because there are different tools for each? In vivo, like how others pointed out, we can use a bacteria's \"immune system\" (CRISPR-Cas9) to do it. In vitro we boil the DNA, cool it down, introduce an error via an error-prone, heat-resistant copying protein (e.g. TAQ polymerase) or RNA primer with an error, copy it, then cool it down. There are other methods as well but the these are either the most common or most talked about." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d55wcxs" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Due to the Pauli exclusion principle, you can't have have all the electrons in the same orbital, so you have electron shells and valance electrons and all that. The same applies to protons and neutrons. The important thing here is that it applies to them separately. As you add neutrons onto an atom, they have to have more and more energy. If there energy of the last neutron is more than the energy of the last proton, then the neutron might decay into a proton, electron, and anti-neutrino so that it can go into a lower energy state. Or it could do another kind of nuclear decay." ] }

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[ "www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-1/static-electricity/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c2tnx3f", "c2tnx3f" ], "score": [ 4, 4 ], "text": [ "Edit: Note I'm talking about image storage, which I think is specifically what you're asking about. There is a related but separate area of the brain that just collects raw sensory data (eyes > optic nerve > lateral geniculate nucleus > occipital lobe > secondary association areas like dorsal and ventral stream > rest of brain) but this would be akin to describing the camera, rather than the film, I believe. Onto the film: \n\n**Encoding**(general)\n\nVision isn't \"stored\" in the brain in the data-encoding-retrieval sense. I know what my car looks like, for example, but within my neurons we won't find a neural-binary equivalent of a jpeg. This is because what we call \"vision\" encompasses much much more than pixel colours. \n\nWhen you're \"encoding\" something your brain is actually quite bad at storing it exactly as it is seen. What happens is that as your visual stream is running, there's a lot of interpretation happening. You remember a particular spatial arrangement, a particular feature or focal point, a particular cognitive impression that connects the visual field to a mental schema, at least four discrete spatial relationships (1. for the visual field relative to the object, 2. for the field objects within arms reach, 3. for the field objects outside of arms reach but relative to you, 4. your overall geographic location).\n\nEach of *these* things I've listed is further interpreted with any emotional or physiological responses you are feeling prior to encoding and as a reflection of encoding. Even if the data attached to it is that the stimulus / emotion / physiology is \"unremarkable\". \n\nLastly (for simplicity) you've got fear learning centers and reward centers that encode particular patterns that ultimately have to do with behavioural responses to visual stimuli. \n\nLastly (because I just thought of another big one) you've got more specialized regions that interpret, store, and retrieve visual data related to language. \n\n**Where is it encoded?**(specific)\n\nThe short answer is almost everywhere. If I say \"envision your parents\" you're not retrieving a face, you're retrieving an entire file while simultaneously interpreting the retrieval of that file. If you're in a good mood, or you're tired, or you just saw something that reminded you of something else - all of these will affect whatever it is that you retrieve. Actually these things will also affect how you initially stored it as well.\n\nSo when you retrieve visual information what are you doing? You're making yourself aware of these files and then interacting with them dynamically. That being said, specific memory recall will be associated with brain regions that are involved in the experience that encapsulated the encoding of that memory. \n\nFear learning, anxiety, stressful situations. \n\n\n- \"Envision something associated with that horrible experience from your past.\" \n- You'll see the amygdala (fear center) light up as well as other limbic (emotional centers) structures. \n\nNavigation and spatial processing. \n\n\n- \"Envision walking through your house.\" \n- You'll see your hippocampus (spatial processing, skill learning) light up.\n- [London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI\nand Neuropsychological Analysis](_URL_1_) - a few studies have shown cab drivers hippocampi light up more as they become better at recalling visual clues, routes, spatial arrangements related to driving around a complex city, etc. \n\nActivities / Behavioural\n\n\n- \"Envision playing sports\" \n- You'll see your premotor cortex and your motor cortex light up. \n\n[Dr. Adrian Owen](_URL_0_) actually used these areas as binary \"yes\" and \"no\" centers to establish that patients in vegetative states sometimes maintained awareness. \"If your dad's name is Tim think of tennis, if it's Randy think of your house\". They then use fMRI to look at the brain region that lights up. Some patients scored 100% despite being in vegetative states for decades.\n\n \n", "Edit: Note I'm talking about image storage, which I think is specifically what you're asking about. There is a related but separate area of the brain that just collects raw sensory data (eyes > optic nerve > lateral geniculate nucleus > occipital lobe > secondary association areas like dorsal and ventral stream > rest of brain) but this would be akin to describing the camera, rather than the film, I believe. Onto the film: \n\n**Encoding**(general)\n\nVision isn't \"stored\" in the brain in the data-encoding-retrieval sense. I know what my car looks like, for example, but within my neurons we won't find a neural-binary equivalent of a jpeg. This is because what we call \"vision\" encompasses much much more than pixel colours. \n\nWhen you're \"encoding\" something your brain is actually quite bad at storing it exactly as it is seen. What happens is that as your visual stream is running, there's a lot of interpretation happening. You remember a particular spatial arrangement, a particular feature or focal point, a particular cognitive impression that connects the visual field to a mental schema, at least four discrete spatial relationships (1. for the visual field relative to the object, 2. for the field objects within arms reach, 3. for the field objects outside of arms reach but relative to you, 4. your overall geographic location).\n\nEach of *these* things I've listed is further interpreted with any emotional or physiological responses you are feeling prior to encoding and as a reflection of encoding. Even if the data attached to it is that the stimulus / emotion / physiology is \"unremarkable\". \n\nLastly (for simplicity) you've got fear learning centers and reward centers that encode particular patterns that ultimately have to do with behavioural responses to visual stimuli. \n\nLastly (because I just thought of another big one) you've got more specialized regions that interpret, store, and retrieve visual data related to language. \n\n**Where is it encoded?**(specific)\n\nThe short answer is almost everywhere. If I say \"envision your parents\" you're not retrieving a face, you're retrieving an entire file while simultaneously interpreting the retrieval of that file. If you're in a good mood, or you're tired, or you just saw something that reminded you of something else - all of these will affect whatever it is that you retrieve. Actually these things will also affect how you initially stored it as well.\n\nSo when you retrieve visual information what are you doing? You're making yourself aware of these files and then interacting with them dynamically. That being said, specific memory recall will be associated with brain regions that are involved in the experience that encapsulated the encoding of that memory. \n\nFear learning, anxiety, stressful situations. \n\n\n- \"Envision something associated with that horrible experience from your past.\" \n- You'll see the amygdala (fear center) light up as well as other limbic (emotional centers) structures. \n\nNavigation and spatial processing. \n\n\n- \"Envision walking through your house.\" \n- You'll see your hippocampus (spatial processing, skill learning) light up.\n- [London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI\nand Neuropsychological Analysis](_URL_1_) - a few studies have shown cab drivers hippocampi light up more as they become better at recalling visual clues, routes, spatial arrangements related to driving around a complex city, etc. \n\nActivities / Behavioural\n\n\n- \"Envision playing sports\" \n- You'll see your premotor cortex and your motor cortex light up. \n\n[Dr. Adrian Owen](_URL_0_) actually used these areas as binary \"yes\" and \"no\" centers to establish that patients in vegetative states sometimes maintained awareness. \"If your dad's name is Tim think of tennis, if it's Randy think of your house\". They then use fMRI to look at the brain region that lights up. Some patients scored 100% despite being in vegetative states for decades.\n\n \n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v9/n3/authors/nrn2330.html", "http://193.62.66.20/Maguire/Maguire2006.pdf" ], [ "http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v9/n3/authors/nrn2330.html", "http://193.62.66.20/Maguire/Maguire2006.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccmfbyh", "ccmjzyl", "ccmlngb" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "My answer has no scientific basis, and is pretty much just my own experience, but I think when we are concentrating on certain tasks (in this instance playing LoL) and we hear things that not only distract us, but also annoy us, it either makes us want to try even harder to tune them out and continue doing what we are doing, or stop doing our activity and either politely/cruelly ask/tell them to quiet down. Neither option being a win-win type of deal, especially if you know the person won't care what you say. Like a toddler that isn't even yours.\n\nSome people handle this better than others and have a better tolerance, but I think it's just human nature to not want to hear something unnecessary and annoying for a prolonged period of time.", "Mine is also from no scientific basis, but i am speaking from experience.\n\nLoud noise in general that isnt monotonous tends to anger people. This is especially true of mental patients (the real life kind, not the television kind). Quiet calms people, loud (and especially sudden) noise irritates people. Sometimes that irritation can go a bit further than that, especially if youre already 'looking' for a reason to get worked up. We all know the stereotype of the child screaming and the parent groaning. All it is is instead of groaning you get the flicker of an idea to shut it up manually.", "Look up *Hyperacusis*, it may explain things. I think I may have something of this nature to some degree because every day noises drive me unnaturally insane. Also look up a scholarly study called the *Pessimism of Noise*.\n\n\nI would add hyperlinks but my phone hates me at the moment.\n\n\nEDIT: [Got on my computer: Hyperacusis](_URL_0_) \n\n\nAnd the latter is called [On Noise](_URL_1_) by Arthur Schopenhauer and it is an essay, not a study. However it is interesting; he claims that the more intelligent people are, the less they tolerate noise.\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis", "http://www.egs.edu/library/arthur-schopenhauer/articles/the-essays-of-arthur-schopenhauer-studies-in-pessimism/on-noise/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnzwwae" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The first four are of American troops during WWI. No patches, distinctive hats, puttees (like an ace bandage wrapped around the shoe tops and lower leg). \nTho others are from WWII, one of an infantry division (91st?) corporal/technician on a what looks to be a plow horse (the 91st had a tough time). Another is an ambulance crew wearing \"dungarees\" (cotton fatigues), black boots, and patrol caps, which looks to me like post-WWII stateside training. The ambulance is one of the standard types, and vehicle had their USA serial number prominently displayed back then. The tourist on the balcony is wearing the Service Forces patch, so the war is probably nearly over; he looks to be in Italy or on the Riviera. The last two are P-38 fighters being unloaded by British workers, judging by their clothes. " ] }

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

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{ "a_id": [ "co1291w", "co17rtk" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "You might be interested in some threads from the WWII FAQ section on \"[The atomic bombs](_URL_2_)\" as well as from a recent search:\n\n**Overview of the Atomic Bombings**\n\n* [Could America have used the atomic bomb on a purely military target or some other more ethical way to force Japan's hand into peace?](_URL_4_) - 118 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters here lay out the issues as considered by US officials at the time.\n* [Why was an invasion of Japan or the dropping of the atomic bombs argued to be necessary for Japanese surrender in World War 2?](_URL_7_) - 25 comments, over 9 months old.\n * A user flaired for the subject matter weighs in with an overview of the strategic situation and comments afterwards discuss various recommended books giving contrasting views on the subject as well as the importance of the *unconditional* surrender that had been demanded by the Allies.\n* [Why didn't Japan surrender after the first atomic bomb?](_URL_9_) - 500 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The topmost commenter gives a big overview of the issue, talking about both the decision to use the atomic bombs and the Japanese reactions as well historiographical debate on the bombings' motive and importance.\n* [Would the Japanese have likely agreed to total unconditional surrender after just a \"warning shot\" pf the atomic bomb?](_URL_0_) - 36 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread address the mentality of the Japanese high command in the days just before the atomic bombings.\n* [How did military leaders first describe the capabilities of the atomic bomb to US President Harry Truman?](_URL_1_) - 2 comments, over 9 months old.\n * A flaired user links to copies of the documents that were eventually relayed to Truman and used in his decision to use the atomic weapons.\n* [Would it have been worse if America hadn't nuke Japan?](_URL_6_) - 36 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread dive into American memory of the bombings and counterfactuals involving all the myriad of ways things may have gone differently without the bombings.\n\n**Did Atomic Bombings or the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria make Japan surrender?**\n\n* [There has been some controversy on the true effect of the atomic bombing of Japan. Was it the bomb, or the Soviet declaration of war that ended WWII?](_URL_8_) - 19 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread showcase the arguments made by in favor of the Soviet influence on the Japanese surrender using diary entries of the Japanese officials and other records that previously had not been looked over in analysis of the issue.\n* [Why did Japan surrender?](_URL_5_) - 33 comments, over 2 years old.\n * This thread goes into several criticisms of Hasegawa's conclusions regarding the Japanese surrender.\n* [Are Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's conclusions about the Soviet's influence in triggering the Japanese surrender of WWII widely accepted or are they in dispute? If he got it wrong, how did he get it wrong?](_URL_3_) - 27 comments, over 2 years old.\n * This thread not only gives further criticism of Hasegawa but details how he has been received in the historical community.\n\nI'd love it if /u/restricteddata could chime in on this question since he is a flaired user that is very well read on this topic, is involved in the matter at an academic level, and has given more high quality answers on all of its facets than I could link to in any single comment.", " > What I mean is, it seems really haphazard and unusual to just drop massive bombs and decimate civilian cities. \n\nBy that point in World War II it was common to do this — [the US had already dropped napalm on 67 Japanese cities](_URL_1_), killing well over 100,000 people — but that shift did not happen overnight. In fact, at the beginning of the European phase of World War II, the USA was the leader in trying to get pledges from the British and Germans not to bomb cities, and all of this kind of tactics sort of slowly built up over the war. As an aside, \"decimate\" means, in a literally sense, killing 10%. The atomic bombs killed about 30% of the populations of the cities they were in, so they were far worse than decimating them.\n\n > Was it really necessary?\n\nThis is a question that hinges on the meaning of the word \"necessary\" in this context. There were a lot of factors that went into these actions. They included, for example, whether the US could end the war before the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan (which certain US policy people saw as a possible advantage), whether the US could have tried to find a diplomatic solution with Japan, whether simply waiting it out would have ended the war either way, whether waiting for the Soviets to declare war on Japan would have provided the final straw, and so on. Popularly you will see it discussed as a question of atomic bomb versus invasion, but this is not quite the terms they used at the time, and the time scale on the invasion was not immediate (it was not scheduled until November 1945). Another, less-talked-about consideration was whether the US would be able to make such an expensive, resource-hogging weapon and not use it in combat as soon as possible (some of those who were in charge of making the weapon clearly had this particular bias, as they felt that without combat use the weapon would be seen as a boondoggle). There were also those who believed that the first generations of these weapons would need to draw blood of people were to take them seriously in the future, knowing that there were possibilities for nuclear weapons to become many thousands of times more powerful in the very near future.\n\n > Could they just have bombed the shit out of a not-so-populated area to demonstrate what was possible with the nuke and maybe prompt a surrender or something?\n\nThe idea of a \"demonstration\" was [definitely pushed](_URL_3_) by many of the scientists who worked on the project, but was [also explicitly argued against by the top scientist leaders on the project](_URL_0_). On the very first, tentative \"target list,\" [the top slot was \"Tokyo Bay,\"](_URL_2_) which was probably a \"demonstration\" idea (set the nuke off in the middle of the bay and the Emperor and other high command could not help but see it, and casualties would be minimal). But as the weapons were incredibly scarce (they would have two to start with but only a trickle of new bombs after that) the military was not a fan of \"wasting\" one. But yes, it could have been done — there is nothing technical preventing it, and it was considered. The question was never put to Truman.\n\nThe question of the \"context of the atomic bomb\" is a very tricky one because a lot of what is passed off as considered history is really just self-justifying jingoism that has its origins in official propaganda. (I don't use the term \"propaganda\" lightly — it was very deliberately constructed in order to justify a controversial action.) Some of the propaganda does have truthful aspects to it, but a lot of it elides over actual discussions and considerations that were being had at the time, before it was known what effect the atomic bombs would have on the war. It is today not even clear, in fact, that the atomic bombs _are_ what caused the Japanese to surrender, to give you an idea of the basic uncertainties that remain among professional, serious historians. \n\nIf you are interested in reading more, the books I'd recommend are:\n\n* Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ — Rhodes' book is not what I would call up to date in terms of the historiography of using the bomb (it was published in the late 1980s and a lot has been revealed since then), and focuses primarily on the scientific/technical aspects of making the bomb, but it is very readable and still holds up pretty well. \n\n* Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's _Racing the Enemy_ — Hasegawa's book is a very careful triple-history of the end of the war from US, Soviet, and Japanese perspectives. He ultimately argues that the Soviet invasion, not the atomic bombing, is what convinced the Japanese to surrender when they did, a thesis I'm not sure I find 100% compelling personally, but even amongst skeptical historians Hasegawa has gone a long way to shedding light on the inner machinations of the end of the war and its intrigue, and his argument that the Japanese were deeply disturbed by the idea of fighting the Soviets as well as the Americans is at least persuasive enough for most to say that it was _at least_ as important as the atomic bombings, if not more.\n\n* Michael Gordin, _Five Days in August_ — Gordin is a friend of mine so I am biased here, but his book is a wonderful explication on the historical trickiness of sussing out what people's opinions were _at the time_ and not what they were _after they knew the results_. In particular he shows that before the Japanese surrendered, and before the atomic bomb was thought to have \"worked\" (that is, ended the war), the notions about the bomb that the people at the time who were involved in the decisions regarding it were very fluid and very uncertain. Personally I find this to be a very important point, and one that always needs to be reemphasized, because people like to cite Truman's much later memoirs (or Stimson's justifying article in Harper's, which was actually written by the military general who ran the bomb project) as evidence for how these people thought at the time, when the documents from the time make it clear that their views changed very much in the postwar, perhaps more than even they themselves realized.\n\nAs an aside, when I mention propaganda masquerading as history, it is because a lot of people see the answer to your questions as having a political tint to them — e.g. if you are a conservative you must believe X, if you are a liberal you must believe Y, and so on. I always emphasize to my students that this is a silly way to think about history (obvious once pointed out) and that the reality of these events usually avoids being put into straightforward modern political categories. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zzeq1/would_the_japanese_have_likely_agreed_to_total/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22b90c/how_did_military_leaders_first_describe_the/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_the_atomic_bombs", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24gvwd/are_tsuyoshi_hasegawas_conclusions_about_the/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ydn10/could_america_have_used_the_atomic_bomb_on_a/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rmc3g/why_did_japan_surrender/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xagc8/would_it_have_been_worse_if_america_hadnt_nuke/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c1qzy/why_was_an_invasion_of_japan_or_the_dropping_of/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15kb3w/why_didnt_japan_surrender_after_the_first_atomic/" ], [ "http://www.dannen.com/decision/scipanel.html", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/03/12/firebombs-usa/", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1945-04-28-Nordstad-Target-Information.jpg", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/28/martian-perspectives/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d00hyzk", "d00hzy1", "d00mgi6" ], "score": [ 45, 14, 7 ], "text": [ "There's no cure for influenza once you're sick. It's a self-limiting and mild infection that your immune system will fight off, all you have to do is keep your body working long enough for it to do so. That means sleep and fluids.", "You can take meds, but they largely tackle the symptoms of your immune system fighting the infection. Not the cold or flu itself.\n\nYour immune system will do a pretty good job but staying well hydrated so toxins can be readily flushed out will definitely help.\n\nIt's good all round health tip. If your urine isn't colourless, clear (not cloudy) and copious you should go get some water or juice. Having a ready supply of fluids for your kidneys to flush rubbish from your system is never a bad idea. ", "A fire truck needs more water when fighting a fire than when rescuing a kitten.\n\nOnce you've been infected there is little we can do except wait for the body's own immune system to build up an immunity.\n\nThis is a pretty resource intensive operation so you need to replace more fluid than normal." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f33xce8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that sleep helps the body heal from a lot of different things, including this.\n\nThe 5-year-old version is that while asleep, your body can put all of its focus on maintenance instead of giving you energy to do stuff. This includes healing wounds and injuries. It would make sense that damage from muscle tension after sleeping on them funny would also be easier to heal while the body is fully focused on healing." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ei6nqie" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Contrary to a lot of internet confusion, no leaflets warning about the atomic bomb were dropped on Japanese cities prior to the bombing of Nagasaki. Certainly none indicated any actual possible targets. You can read the whole story [here](_URL_0_), as well as read the official report on the leaflet operation which is linked to there. The long and short of it is that because of difficulties in producing the leaflets, and a desire to change them to reflect the Soviet entrance to the war, they were not dropped until after the Nagasaki attack. Nagasaki, in fact, got leaflets dropped on it a day _after_ it had been bombed, because the leaflet campaign was not at all coordinated with the bombing plans. There is no way anyone in Nagasaki would have known it was a potential atomic bomb target (and in any case, it was the fall-back target — Kokura was the actual city that was planned to be bombed, originally)." ] }

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[ [ "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5nsosy" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I am not a Bach scholar, so take this with caution.\n\nMy understanding is that we don't have much to know about his private life. There aren't many personal documents of his... For other composers we have many letters, and even fragments of conversations. We have many accounts of them because they were celebrities in the big fashionable cities, in a time in which artists were deemed important, but this was not the case at all for Bach. \n\nWhat you describe (\"fairly religious and perfectionist,\" \"kind of secretly wild and temperamental,\" \"a fatherly if dull figure\") are indeed not very descriptive, rather stereotypical, ways to describe the life of a person. As you say, there is a very romanticized view of him, created in the time of [Great Man theory](_URL_0_).\n\n" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d8y47so", "d8y49jt", "d8y4b3d", "d8y4fdt", "d8y8h9k" ], "score": [ 3, 8, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There aren't really any historical precedents and the closest contemporary examples (e.g. Somalia) sure don't look good.", "They can't... or at least... not on a scale that we would recognize as a country.\n\nA country without a government would just be a bunch of people living in a geographic area... with none of the connections, services, or bonds that would give them any real semblance of identity on an international scale.\n\nAs soon as you start creating institutions, to provide things like roads or police... you've created a government.", "Usually, they don't. Some other power asserts itself in the power vacuum, and/or the overall structure suffers serious and debilitating destruction. ", "No, because then it wouldn't be a country. It'd be an area where (possibly) people live. ", "A structure ballistically similar to a government emerges. A person or people are at the top, usually the people with the most guns, and ranks, levels and hierarchies trickle down all the way to the bottom.\n\n Somalia" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5wfaf3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Some groups of humans separated at least fifty-thousand years ago. Just look how different some dialects are in the US although they only had about 250 years to form and English is a pretty established language and you don't find new things you need new words for twice a day.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "da4j066", "da4ohpb", "da4putq" ], "score": [ 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I know YouTube stopped doing this as many people were not watching all the way through, so they now only pre-load in segments, say 30sec intervals. What may what happened to you is the player is incorrectly showing the buffer. ", "The reason for this is that it will pause to buffer any time that your estimated time to reach the end of the buffer of the video plus the rate at which it is loading intersects the rate at which you're watching the video.\n\nSay you have 10 minutes buffered of a 25 minute video and you're downloading the stream at 30 seconds of playback per minute. You'd reach the end of your buffer before you finish watching the video so buffering kicks in at that point. \n\nThis can seem random because internet connection speeds vary.", "It is like a food buffet. You get bits as you need them, since there is no guarantee you are going to want another plate after your current one. It would be wasteful for the buffet to give you a ton of food that you may not eat. It would also lower the quality of service for other people eating food there, as they would have to wait for the cooks to cook up a new big batch of food.\n\nJust like the buffet, buffering in this fashion saves bandwidth on your end (dont load the entire video if you dont want to watch the entire video) and reduces total network load on the server" ] }

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[ "http://imgur.com/a/v4Iyc" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "d0rwnu5", "d0s4szz" ], "score": [ 13, 6 ], "text": [ "To the best knowledge we have at present, radioactive decay is not perceptibly affected by any external conditions such as temperature or pressure.\n\nChemical composition of the substance slightly affects some forms (electron capture, internal conversion) of radioactive decay for some substances, but this is related to the availability of electrons in specific shells of these substances.", "If you are dealing with room temperature to colder temperatures, no. But as an extreme example, if you heat Re-187 up enough to fully ionize it, it's half life will go from 42 x 10^9 years down to 33 years. The reason this happens is that Re-187 undergoes beta decay, but the mass difference between Re-187 and Os-187 is small that the escaping electron doesn't have much kinetic energy. It doesn't have enough energy to escape the atom. So in a neutral atom, it can't decay because the escaping electron can't find a space to settle because the orbitals are filled with electrons. You ionize the atom and now the electron has an empty place to live.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.5190" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dmpeewq", "dmphk1e", "dmqur6i" ], "score": [ 4, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Most synapses are formed during development and the number of synapses in humans peaks in early development. This process is largely governed genetically during development. This synaptic maximum is followed by a period of synaptic pruning that ends in adolescence. A lot less neurogenesis or synaptogenesis is taking place in the adult brain. Recent studies have shown that some does occur, in contrast to long-standing ideas that there was no neurogenesis in the adult brain. Synaptic pruning is associated with learning as is synaptic plasticity, which is the strengthening or weakening or synaptic connections, but I don't think that synaptogenesis has been associated with learning in the way that you are imagining.\n\nTL:DNR: The vast majority of synaptogenesis is developmentally patterned based on a genetic program and then from there synapses are pruned in childhood.", "The short answer is that neurons somehow are genetically programmed to travel in certain directions and make connections with certain other neurons. We know that its genetically controlled and not environmentally controlled because neuronal cells in vitro have been shown to make connections, even without the presence of any environmental stimuli.\n\nHonestly, we don't know much besides this. There are lots **observations** we can make on this topic, such as the fact that as neurons make connections, they're chemically directed towards other cells, and that many, many neurons die during development-- the ones that survive are the ones that tend to actively make these connections.\n\nBut outside of that? You're basically asking how the brain knows how to construct itself, which is a question that neuroscientists all over the world are trying to answer. It's a simple enough question to answer **chemically**, but outside of that, if you can come up with an answer, you likely have a Nobel Prize waiting for you", "Try this. You want the neurotrophin chapter (so scroll up a little from the link).\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kBW4BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=neurodevelopment+TrkA&source=bl&ots=aM6JCuvwPX&sig=ACMIYdcRgzFmHOUrOJ-RtOsHQ4M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiViOnvspbWAhVHFMAKHanFB4gQ6AEIMDAD#v=onepage&q=neurodevelopment%20TrkA&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ebj95h2" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Songwriters often contract with a publishing company to market their songs for commercial purposes. That means they sell the rights to commercial use to the company, and the company pays them royalties (either a flat dee or a percentage every time the song is used). This is a benefit to the songwriter in many cases because they do not have the time or the expertise to promote their work commercially. So they focus on writing, and let the publisher do the selling.\n\nJohn Lennon and Paul McCartney actually formed their own publishing company, called Northern Songs. They sold shares in the company, and eventually another company called Associated TeleVision bought enough shares to affect a takeover. Lennon and McCartney then sold the rest of their shares, and entered new deals for Beatles songs after 1969.\n\nIn 1985 Associated TeleVision sold off it's music publishing business, and Michael Jackson bought the company's publishing rights to Beatles songs. That gave Jackson the right to market those songs for commercial use, which made him a substantial amount of money." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgzudq6", "cgzvpsq", "cgzytds" ], "score": [ 32, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "No. The freezing of light actually involves absorbing light in a very cold gas. It's so cold that the atoms have an \"absorbed\" state that lasts a very long time before re-emitting the light in its former trajectory. Not directly related to relativity or anything like that.", "Nope. Light slows down as it travels through any material (air, water, glass etc.) The speed of light in a material is defined as it's index of refraction where v (speed of light in the material = c (speed of light in vacuum) / n (refractive index). Materials with very high indecies of refraction (such as an ultracold gas) will cause the light to slow down considerably. In the article you are referring to, the light energy is trapped by a spin wave in the ions of a Praseodymium crystal. Time has not in any way stopped.", "I understand the thinking that led to this question, but there is nothing special about the speed that a photon (piece of light) is moving at.\n\nThere is something special about the 'speed limit' of the universe that is often known as The Speed of Light or 'c'. When approaching this speed, we start to see strange time effects. Light is just a thing in our universe that happens to usually go at that speed, but slowing it down doesn't change c.\n\nIt's going the speed limit of the highway that matters, you can't change that by slowing down the other cars." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6l65mw", "d6l9392", "d6lbw7c", "d6lgq15" ], "score": [ 5, 7, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Lack of time, mostly. When you've got a 40+ hour job, kids to raise and other obligations, it becomes much more difficult to devote time to seeking out new culture. Stuff that you're familiar with is comforting and easy and people would rather devote what little free time they have to stuff they know they like rather than potentially wasting it on something they might not.", "As we get older, we recognize a craze is just that--a craze. Why invest time and money in something that won't be around six months to a year from now?", "Maybe a little nostalga and what your exposed to during your impressionable teenage years. Im 45 and i still hear new music that i really like, but it doesnt seem as important to me as it did back in the day. Maybe its that entertainment is not my only form of escapism/enjoyment so i dont put as much emphasis on it.", "The crazes seem less distinct and more short lived, but then they cone back two years later in a different form.\n\nI mean, they're still selling updated version of the same toys they advertised when I was a kid" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c1jfpc9", "c1jfqxz", "c1jfvq9" ], "score": [ 9, 13, 4 ], "text": [ "Humans can communicate without language.\n\nCommunication through a shared cultural experience like language is another story. Birds and whales have been known to sing in regionally-specific patterns which could be considered a form of expression through culture.", "There is some evidence to suggest that orcas (killer whales) exhibit this kind of phenomenon. The species has a huge geographical distribution, and different populations feed on a wide variety of food and tend to specialise in one type of hunting. Some hunt fish, and others mammals like seals, which makes some populations much more likely to attack humans. This specialised hunting behaviour has led to the development of unique vocalisations known as dialects, which are different for different groups of orcas. This leads to the suggestion that communication and cooperation between two normally disparate pods woould be difficult, if not impossible. There is a little about the topic on Wikipedia, which is a good start if you are interested.\n\n_URL_0_", "Subspecies of birds have different songs. See the subsection on songs [here](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Vocalizations" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Sparrow" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cit9yoi" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I'll assume that we're trying for a Swedish style system because, hey, that's worked. I'm on mobile, so I won't pull sources unless you guys need them.\n\nOver there, they spend about 4% of their GNP on education and research, one of the highest rates in the world. This would amount to about 640 billion dollars in national education costs if we spent at 4%, which is 10 times the Department of Education's budget. The issue would become raising the extra 580 or so billion dollars annually to fund this. Some ways to accomplish this might be to raise taxes or to skim some money off of the military budget, but we're never going to get 580 billion from that.\n\nWhile this calculating certainly involved plenty of hand waving and assuming, it demonstrates the need to have a certain amount of payment from the students in a country as large as the US. The way that we should go about fixing the education issue isn't to go the opposite way the country is now, but to find some reasonable ways to calculate the costs per student. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7a3ck9", "d7a3ea8" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Having lived in the UK and Australia I can say that in these places at least this usually means that there is a speed camera stationed up ahead and the other driver is warning you.", "They're trying to say \"pay attention\" but they can't really do much to specify *what* it is. Maybe you need to turn your headlights on. Maybe there's a speed trap or an accident ahead.\n\nIt's not like sign language - there's no singular meaning to it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "db6iugs" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There's always room for discussion but perhaps the section [Travel and contact across the Atlantic before Columbus](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican#wiki_travel_and_contact_across_the_atlantic_before_columbus" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwqeqs8", "cwqez7k", "cwqf6v4" ], "score": [ 7, 4, 34 ], "text": [ "I haven't read Wilson and Wilkins' book, but I've read several reviews of it which, as far as I can tell, tear it apart. [Here's one response](_URL_2_) from Rev. Jack Davidson of Eugene, OR, engaging with a number of Wilson and Wilkins' primary sources - from the Slave Narrative Project - and pointing out how they must be taken with a great awareness of context that Wilson does not exhibit.\n\nFurther, [here's another response by attorney Thomas Alderman](_URL_1_), explaining how Wilson and Wilkins grossly misrepresent the origin of the Civil War, which was indeed about slavery - a point also [explained in great detail on this subreddit](_URL_0_). ", "On a similar note to this, I just had a history discussion yesterday on this very same subject where we looked at the arguments made by James Henry Hammond (Letters to a English abolitionist). It's a good read for anyone wanting to know how southerners justified slavery at the time. I haven't read the source you shared op, but a brief skim through as shown me a few similarities. ", "Accuracy: Little to none.\n\nTo begin with, it isn't even entirely by those two pastors, as it seems to have [heavily plagiarized](_URL_0_) another work from two decades prior.\n\nThe publishing house, [Canon Press](_URL_2_) of Moscow, Idaho, seems to specialize in publishing Evangelical tracts on topics such religiously inspired fiction by the likes of Kirk Cameron to convince people of creationism or a DVD on the death of freedom of speech whose cover is an LGBT activist painted in ominous red and black, carrying a chain-saw (with interviews with Ted Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, and others). In other words they seem to be publishing non-specialist propaganda for the fringe of the Evangelical community. Not a serious publishing house. \n\nSecond, the two essential pillars of the piece are refuted, in one case, and irrelevant to most people, in the other. \n\nThe first pillar is that Southerners should take pride in the Civil War because slavery wasn't the cause at the heart of the conflict and because criticisms of slavery are largely exaggerated. [Here](_URL_1_) is a great post by a mod refuting that argument in great detail. \n\n The other pillar of their case is that:\n\n > The truth is, Southern slavery is open to criticism because it did not follow the biblical pattern at every point. Some of the state laws regulating slavery could not be defended biblically (the laws forbidding the teaching of reading and writing, for example). One cannot defend the abuse some slaves had to endure. None can excuse the immorality some masters and overseers indulged in with some slave women. The separation of families that sometimes occurred was deplorable. These were sad realities in the Southern system.\n\nIn other words, the primary mistake made was not following biblical slavery, which implicitly seems to be fine by the authors. If you believe the bible literally, maybe their detailed justification of a certain kind of slavery would be interesting or even pertinent. If you don't believe it literally (or just aren't Christian at all) their arguments on this point are completely irrelevant. \n\nBoth successfully sidestep testimony from slaves, as well as non-slave sources such as countless newspaper adds referring to scars from lashes, which contradict the version of history they want to spin: That abuses were isolated cases of bad apples. They cite whatever backs that up and ignore whatever contradicts it.\n\nIn short, there are surely more serious historical revisionists to read for 'the other side of the debate' than these two." ] }

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[ "http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_the_South", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y0fTaMBESs" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/civilwar#wiki_causes", "http://web.archive.org/web/20130830105312/http://www.joshualetter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=63", "http://web.archive.org/web/20130830105624/http://www.joshualetter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=60" ], [], [ "http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3edss0/was_the_american_civil_war_about_more_than_just/cte2mj9", "http://canonpress.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dn3twdq", "dn3u0e3", "dn3ul3h" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 10 ], "text": [ "No complex concept here. People cooked or baked every day, and ate the products soon so they didn't have a chance to rot. ", "Everything was made fresh.\n\nYou didn't store chicken breasts in a freezer, you had a chicken coop. If you wanted chicken for dinner you went outside, picked a chicken, snapped it's neck, and started preparing it to eat.", "A combination of fresh food and storage methods that didn't require cooling.\n\nSmoking, air drying, salt curing, pickling, fermenting, and canning can preserve foods in hot weather. Foods like cheese and some sausages are preserved by being covered in a layer of beneficial mold to prevent other bacteria that would cause spoilage.\n\nAnother common method was the use of a root cellar, a (usually) unfinished room dug into the earth and lined with shelves for keeping fruit and vegetables. They'd be quite a bit cooler than above ground. The house I grew up in was built in the late 19th century and had a root cellar that was consistently around 60 degrees regardless of how hot the summer was." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csay242", "csayivi" ], "score": [ 11, 3 ], "text": [ "I can tell you about the Carolingian organization and the birth of feudalism\n\nCarolingian administration was in some aspects a direct inheritor of Roman tradition, attemtping a centralized imperial administration, where important regional powers were actually functionaries of the empire, so their authority was derived of their posting by the emperor. In this way, you had regional administrators, which were submitted to the vigilance of *comes*, a title of Roman origin. These *comes* were in charge of traveling the empire through the seasons, visiting landlords who were far away from their own jurisdictions, in order to verify that they were properly fulfilling their functions. In this sense, the person charged with performing a task, received *honorum*, which was the appointment to office, and *beneficium*, which was the benefit given together with *honorum* as payment.\nIn principle, *honorum* was easily revokable, and was not to be inherited by the holder's offspring, but in reality, the office was almost never revoked, and was most often passed directly from father to son. This tendency was intensified as the functionaries gained more and more gravitas, to a point when revocation became not only something that the emperor didn't want to do (in most cases), but also something he **couldn't** do, even if he wanted.\nThis privatization of charges came with a confusion of the concepts of *honorum* and *beneficium*, becoming one and the same, and hence feudalism was born.\n\nRegarding the economic administration, the Carolingian Empire kickstarted the confusion of *Res Publica* and private business that characterized medieval politics (to some extent) and particularly, medieval treasury and economic policy.\n\nIn the matter of warfare, Carolingian forces were highly centralized, which made the military much less flexible, and given that flexibility was needed to confront the menace posed by the non-Latin Christian peoples (vikings, muslim raiders and Slavic invaders), this centralized scheme of military structure was replaced by a highly decentralized one, where regional authorities took direct charge of local forces to react quickly to threats. This capacity of the local powers to better protect their people, further helped them to consolidate and legitimate their **authority of autonomous origin**.\n\nMy sources are \n\nDonado Vara, Julián, *La Edad Media. Siglos V-XII*\n\nRosamond McKitterick, *Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity*\n\nand others that I don't have at hand to quote.\n\n\nEDIT: to correct some typos.", "This question is covered in some ways by Ian Wood's *The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751* and was a pretty good read. He does a pretty good job showing that there is some continuity at least initially between Rome and Merovingian Gaul. In many instances the \"bureaucracy\" so to speak continued to function immediately after the Western Empire dissolves, but then evolves into its own organism that is based much more centrally around monasteries (see Matthew Inne's *State and Society in the Early Middle Ages*). In a Carolingian context they drew on older Roman and Frankish traditions, not to mention Christian ones, in order to maintain legitimacy. So there is a relationship between the three, but in some senses this is blurred, such as Charlemagne's so-called \"imperial coinage\" which has provoked a lot of debate. While some historians have seen the coins as representing this Roman heritage, others have also seen other influences. Rosamond McKitterick in her book *Charlemagne: the Formation of a European Identity* argues that the Carolingians relied on a plethora of earlier traditions in order to augment, maintain, and construct their political power. If you have any other questions let me know, I tried to give more of a broad overview. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e80zioc", "e80zy70", "e8117mb", "e815z4m" ], "score": [ 4, 4, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Like any other companies's profits. It goes into bank account and used to pay for things later. \n\nMaybe later next year we build a new factory. Maybe we buy new machines. Maybe we get big bonus. \n\nOr maybe be put it into an investment account until we find a use for it.", "Some gets saved, called retained earnings. They might use this for later investment in the business, for acquisitions, and to keep a cushion for leaner years, etc. They also often pay out dividends to shareholders with at money.", "Some it goes to investors, in what's called dividends.\n\nSome of it goes to employees, in the form of bonuses.\n\nMost of it goes into operating accounts. When you hear Company A bought Company B for $zzzM, that's them spending that money. When you hear of a company building a new plant or putting new machines in a plant, that's them spending that money.", "All of the above, depending on the decisions of that company's board of directors.\n\nSome invest it all back into the company. Others pay dividends to shareholders. Others hold it in safe assets or cash for future usage. Or any combination of the above.\n\nThis does not in any way reduce the amount in consumer accounts." ] }

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[ "http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/filtered?sortBy=profits&first500" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cde7zcx", "cdenicn" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "I personally have no knowledge of any in modern times that did this on their own accord, though Germany post WWII was forced to deindustrialize. The [Morgenthau Plan](_URL_1_) was proposed by [Hengry Morgenthau](_URL_0_.) who was the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Post WWII no one in the world wished for Germany to be able to rebuild its military in the way it had, and the plan was to deindustrialize it to the point of it becoming an agricultural society. The German heavy industry was meant to be lowered to 50% of its power as it was in 1938.^1 Many other more exact restrictions were implemented for efficiency, steel production was reduced to 25% of its previous capacity being limited to 5,800,000 tons of steel every year.^2 \n\nDating back to post war Berlin, many plans were being made for deindustrialization. On February 2, 1946 a dispatch directly from Berlin read:\n\n\"Some progress has been made in converting Germany to an agricultural and light industry economy, said Brigadier General William Henry Draper Jr., chief of the American Economics Division, who emphasized that there was general agreement on that plan.\nHe explained that Germany’s future industrial and economic pattern was being drawn for a population of 66,500,000. On that basis, he said, the nation will need large imports of food and raw materials to maintain a minimum standard of living.\nGeneral agreement, he continued, had been reached on the types of German exports — coal, coke, electrical equipment, leather goods, beer, wines, spirits, toys, musical instruments, textiles and apparel — to take the place of the heavy industrial products which formed most of Germany's pre-war exports.\"^3\n\n\nOf course as a result of all of this, major economic faults ensued throughout Germany killing their economic state on a global scale. Many reprimands were taken from their country by other superpowers post-war. And the German industry would have to be rebuilt from the ground up for many years to come.\n\nIf you have any further questions or want to know more. Feel free to ask.\nCitation:\n\n1. Henry C. Wallich. Mainsprings of the German Revival (1955) pg. 348.\n\n2. \"Cornerstone of Steel\", Time Magazine, January 21, 1946\n\n3. James Stewart Martin. All Honorable Men (1950) pg. 191.", "Thou Cambodia was never an 'industrial nation' the Khmer Rouge, of Cambodia, 'de-industrialized' the county by closing factories and forcing the Urban population into Agricultural farms. The Khmer Rouge were influenced by the idea of Primitive Communism or agricultural Communism which i guess they thought would make the country fairer and more sustainable. The reality is that the Urban population couldn't farm very well which resulted in famine and widespread devastation. \n\nThe Khmer Rouge went to extremes to de-modernise the country: they closed Hospitals and schools and killed any intellectuals. People were thrown out of hospital beds and into the streets and teachers were sent to the 'killing fields' for execution. \n\nThe Khmer really pushed the Idea of being self-sustainable but at the end of their short four year reign the county was in ruins with 25% of the population dead _URL_0_ \n\n " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau,_Jr", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan" ], [ "http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "egqdi7z", "egqem3p", "egqf3g1", "egqmmya", "egqrq9y", "egrvsx0" ], "score": [ 2, 4, 2, 7, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "yeah hand sanitizer is a good stop gap if you're in a place you can't wash and just wanna disinfect, but you cant just use hand sanitizer and never wash your hands :(", "Yes, not clean. But also the dirt is not as dangerous anymore, just \"stuff that shouldn't really be on your hand\".", "It's good enough for most everyday purposes, because the germ corpses can't infect you since they're dead. \n\nAdvanced situations like surgeons have to scrub with soap and water to remove the dead germs, as if they get inside a body where they're not expected the body might fight them anyways", "What is your definition of \"clean\"? If dead bacteria are unclean, when why aren't dead skin cells?", "Sanitizing is different than cleaning. Sanitizing (hand sanitizer, Lysol spray) kills the germs/pathogens; cleaning (soap and water) removes dirt. Ideally, you do both (Lysol wipes). Hand sanitizer is best used if there is no physical dirt on your hands. Otherwise, wash them in the sink. ", "Being too clean is also disadvantageous.. No matter how much you disinfect your skin, germs will attach to it no matter what.. So it's better to have dead germs attached to it so there is no place for the alive one to attach to to your body. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dup4f3s", "dup723n" ], "score": [ 27, 9 ], "text": [ "An observer who sees the spaceship moving at speed 0.9*c*, will see both light signals moving at speed *c*. The distance between the ship and the front signal increases at a rate of 0.1*c*. The distance between the ship and the back signal increases at a rate of 1.9*c*. The distance between the two signals increases at a rate of 2*c*.", "Both laser beams appear to move at speed *c* to a spaceship pilot moving at 0.9c. They also appear to move at speed *c* to any external observer. If the lasers are visible light, the forward beam will appear to be ultraviolet, the rearward beam will appear to be infrared to \"stationary\" observers.\n\nThe reason you're having trouble is that you're assuming that velocities combine using ordinary addition and subtraction: they don't. To understand special relativity, you need to let go of that assumption, and instead start from the idea that the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same for every observer." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dd7l3rf" ], "score": [ 31 ], "text": [ "Boats are designed to have their weight supported for the entirety of the keel length. \n\nIf you tried to launch long boat pointy bit first, you'd have a time when the front is in the water, the back is still on the dock and the middle is unsupported. This (potentially) kills the boat. \n\nAnd there's no real need to slow one down, since they're designed to withstand many assloads of force, at least in the directions they're designed to handle force. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxmq6xq", "cxmq9di", "cxmqbwj", "cxmqs85", "cxmroj4" ], "score": [ 4, 8, 4, 2, 9 ], "text": [ "Heat moves in 3 ways, convection, radiation and conduction.\n\nWarm air in the room, comes near the cold window, cools, and settles downwards towards the floor. Warm air comes in to replace the cold air that is settling at the floor. This creates a circular current of warm air coming to the window, cooling and circulating downwards. Convection\n\nA blanket will stop or slow that circular air flow. Off the top of my head I can't think how it would reduce heat loss through radiation or conduction. Hopefully someone else can explain that.", "Well, just as you said, the blanket will only delay the cold from getting inside. However, it is more helpful to think of it as delaying the heat from escaping. It is all about how quickly heat is able to travel through a medium. Take a piece of copper or steel and a piece of cork, and keep them in the same space for a while. Measure their temeratures to make sure they are exactly the same. Then touch them. The metal feels colder than the cork simply because it can absorb heat from your fingers more quickly. In the same way, the window will remove heat from your room more quickly than the blanket, even though theyre the same temperature.\n\nYour specific example also has alot to do with convection, but that is pretty much a whole other discussion...", "You are correct. Insulation only impedes the flow of heat. It is beneficial when you are trying to heat or cool your house. If it is cold outside, the insulation slows the transfer of heat from your house to the outside. Then you don't have to burn as much fuel to keep your house the same temperature, because less heat is escaping.\n\nIt works because insulation has a high thermal resistance (R-value). It basically slows down the heat trying to leave your house, forcing it to keep you warm. It works the same way in the summer, except now the heat is trying to get into your house, and the insulation doesn't let it get in as quickly.\n\nEdit: For a demonstration of R-value, put your hand next to a window (assuming it is cold out where you are). Windows have low R-values compared to insulation, so you can feel the colder air next to it. The air next to the wall will not be as cold because the R-value of the wall is higher (because the wall is insulated).", " > Why is it not cheaper in the long run to buy lots of good insulation (say 3x as much) in the hopes of saving on fuel required to restore the temperature to the desired level?\n\nIt *is* cheaper in the long run to have a properly thermally insulated house. In Germany, all newly built houses are required by law to have double-glass windows and good, modern thermal isolation built into the walls. \n\nThe other answers here explain how/why insulation works.\n\nBtw, if you'd completely turn off the heating in your house, eventually the inside *would* become just as cold as the outside, when we ignore small heating effects from the inhabitants, or things like solar heating through glass windows.", "It's not so much that it *takes longer* for heat to travel through the insulation (although it does). The useful thing is that less heat travels through the insulation *per unit time*.\n\nIntuitively, you can think of heat in the 18th-century way, like [an invisible fluid](_URL_2_) that leaks from place to place. Hot things contain more of this \"fluid\" and cold things contain less. If your house were perfectly insulated, like a thermos, you could just heat it up and turn off the furnace and it would stay warm indefinitely no matter how cold it is outside. If your house is really poorly insulated, you have the furnace on full blast but most of the heat escapes immediately, like trying to fill a wicker basket with water. Insulation slows the escaping heat to a trickle so the furnace only has to make up the loss.\n\n > Why is it not cheaper in the long run to buy lots of good insulation\n\nIt absolutely is cheaper in the long run! But insulating your house costs a bunch of money *today* and heating a drafty house costs a little money today and a little tomorrow and… it adds up to even more money after a while but you don't have to pay it all at once. Some people don't think about it and just do the expensive thing by default; other people would like to insulate better but simply don't have the cash *right now* to do it properly. (This is a general problem: being poor is expensive. [ELI5](_URL_1_), or [ELI25](_URL_0_).) Many local governments do have programs to help people get over this hump, though." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor/282979/", "http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloric_theory" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccz5wzo" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "Mixed.\n\nSome pirates utilized them to great ability, if your definition of \"pirate\" encompases privateers, buccaneers, corsairs, and freebooters. For simplicities sake, I'll use the term \"pirate\" as a catch all term for non-traditional non-governmental forces though including those groups that were *sanctioned* such as privateers.\n\nSome pirates used them as guides against the Spanish. For example Sir Francis Drake used Cimmaron Indians as a guides to ambush the Spanish \"Silver Train\" in 1573. Morgan used them in his sack on Panama and Portobello.\n\nA particular tribe called the Mosquito often were hired by buccaneer and privateers to be hunters, fishermen and \"light infantry\" scouts in raids on towns. These men were known as \"strikers\" amongst the Europeans.\n\nAt the same time, they were not altogether friendly. Many treated the Natives poorly. They would raid their villages, sell them into slavery, and other various evil acts. In fact, Francois l'Ononnais was so notoriously cruel that he was captured by the Kuna tribe and eaten alive. According to Exquemelin:\n\n > tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air; to the intent no trace nor memory might remain of such an infamous, inhuman creature.\n\nBut then again, l'Olonnais was reputed to be one of the most evil bastards to sail the Caribbean. And that's saying a lot." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cie5lw8", "cielhxv" ], "score": [ 16, 3 ], "text": [ "Oil fields are where they are as a due to the location of ancient organic-rich basins. Why were the organic-rich basins there? Tectonics, they generally drive the placement of landmasses.\n\n\nFor oil to be extracted, it needs:\n\n- a source rock: often these are shales with high carbon content, the remains of ancient accumulations of algae and other bio-material\n\n- a heat source: the rock needs to be \"cooked\" to chemically transform the bio-material into the gases and liquids that make up natural gas and crude oil. This can only occur in a narrow range of elevated subsurface temperature. Too high and you'll burn the organic matter, too low and it won't transform into high-quality petroleum.\n\n- a \"storage\" rock: the oil needs to be held within a porous media so that it can easily be extracted, and so that the yield in a given field is high.\n\n- a cap rock: usually the transformed liquids and gasses are imiscible fluids that don't combine well with one another or water. Since petroleum is less dense than water, it wants to float to the surface (where it would quickly degrade). To keep the oil stored in one place, it needs some kind of \"pocket\" to be trapped in. These are usually low permeability antiforms or salt diapirs.\n\n\nIn summary, oil fields are in places that were once basins with lots of biological activity. The basins had to be turned into rock, cooked, stored, and capped in order to create petroleum and prevent it from degrading. Furthermore, if a field has experienced these geologic phenomena, it still needs to be economically extractable, which is dependent on proximity to the surface, engineering, infrastructure, politics, cost of crude, etc.", "To expand on /r/mrterzaghi, for the production of the host rock requires a high volume of foram creation. Forams are the primary organisms that lead to the creation of oil and natural gasfields. However, when we are talking about a high volume, we mean a HIGH VOLUME. \nForams are little single celled protists. Who just float in the ocean, eat and grow. \nAs they die, layers and layers of them fall to the bottom of the ocean. The dead forams as well as falling sediment cause the layers to sink lower into the Earth. The layers containing the forams must drop to a depth low enough for the heat from the interior to \"cook\" the forams and seperate the hydro-carbons. When the forams are cooked, they become oil or natural gas, depending on the heat at which they are cooked. \n\nThe average geothermal gradient (the rate which the rock heats up per unit of depth) is 30 degrees C per Kilometer. For the creation of oil, the heat needs to be between 50 deg C and 130 Deg C, and for natural gas, 120 Deg C and 200 Deg C. So the layers of sediment that are contain the forams must be pushed to at least more than a 1.5 Kilometers for the Earth internal temp to cook the forams to create the oil. If the layers sink more than 6.6 Kilometers bellow the Earths surface, all of the organic matter will be burned off and we get nothing. \n\n\nNow about the creation of forams themselves. In order for there to be a high rate of foram production that would lead to the creation of an oil or natural gas field, there needs to be very specific circumstances.\n \n* Foram production is found mostly in warmer tropical waters of 20 Deg C or higher. \n\n* The majority of carbonate production takes place between 30- 36% salinity levels. \n\n* The influx of fresh water from major river systems can also conflict with the carbonate production, so the area should be away from fresh water influx.\n\n* The depth of the water for carbonate growth usually does not exceed 200m, manily because that is the depth below photosynthesis in the oceans. \n\n* To maintain a even environment for the carbonate production, warm ocean currents must also be present. these bring in fresh nutrients, fresh sea water and a continues flow of warm water. \n\nSo, the places where we see large oil fields are places that are sites of ancient sallow seas. Areas like the middle east and Texas that have a relatively low elevation, when the Ocean level was slightly higher, these areas would have been warm, shallow seas. which are great places for a high production rate of Forams. \n\nAfter these circumstances are met, and the layers of forams are pushed deep enough and are cooked, than all the circumstances that /r/mrterzaghi described must be met as well. \n\nQuestions? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "faytg73" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "How do you know when to go to the bathroom or shield your eyes from the sun with your hand?\n\nOkay it's not exactly the same, but we can all explain how it's because of chemical signals and hormones that indicate to the organism to change their behavior, but ultimately to really know what it's like to be a caterpillar is a subjective experience that they're not very open about, unfortunately. I'm meeting with the head of caterpillar state in my backyard again tomorrow, we tabled the topic at our last meeting but I'll try and raise it again." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5ly3yq" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Not particularly. The vast majority are in your large intestine and appear to be feces in training. Each individual bacterial cell is much smaller than the average human cell, thus the difference." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvrsr9x" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "the smell (in general) is because of the molecules carried by the air like salt in the sea. That means that when you're smelling, let's say an orange, you absorb orange molecules that carries the smell. \n\nWhen air is stagnant, you get something like the dead Sea (to continue the metaphor) where because the water never changes, it becomes heavily charged with salt. Here the air is charged with odorant molecules because it's not moving. It's the same smell for a lot of cases because all rooms are quite similar, they all get dusty, they have walls, paint, etc... These dust particules and other objects and materials emit odorant molecules that mix in the stagnant air of the room giving its particular smell. \n\n\nI hope the answer satisfies you. \n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckn79av", "ckn7gt5", "ckn7iux" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Yelp was accused of manipulating reviews, almost in a Mafia-like fashion. Business owners would get calls from Yelp asking if they wanted to purchase advertising (Yelp's main source of revenue). If they said no, some noticed their positive reviews disappear. No definitive statistics exist on this. But Yelp did go to trial and was acquitted. ", "There are pretty well-documented cases of Yelp asking businesses to pay a few hundred bucks a month for advertising, in return for which negative reviews would be removed or deemphasized:\n\n_URL_0_", "They have been accused of allowing businesses to pay to enhance their Yelp rating and ruining the reputation of businesses who refuse to pay.\n\nThis is based on a large body of anecdotal evidence (although there is not a lot of hard and clear evidence demonstrating how exactly they may be manipulating reviews).\n\nWhat is known for sure is that businesses often get contacted by Yelp and asked whether they would like to join Yelp's program (for a fee) which comes with a bunch of different benefits like advertising, more control over your business' Yelp page etc.\n\nAnecdotal reports suggest that businesses who refuse to pay the money and join may end up with bad reviews being highlighted and good reviews being hidden/buried under the bad reviews. These reports also suggest that businesses who do pay to join get their better reviews highlighted and their bad reviews hidden/buried.\n\nYelp has denied many times that this happens and instead claims that they have a sophisticated algorithm that takes into consideration many different factors when determining which reviews to highlight (by bringing them to the top of the main page) and which reviews to hide (which sometimes require you to click on subtle/hidden links to find). Yelp is, however, unable to explain how exactly the algorithm determines which reviews get higher priority and which get hidden from view.\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "evb71zy" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "There were rumors of each of them being the sibling to have survived, actually - and bear in mind that the full story we know of the Romanovs being executed in the House of Special Purpose was not publicly known at the time. People weren't even really sure that Nikolai and Alexandra were dead, let alone that their children had also been put to death in a basement in Ekaterinburg. (Note [this excellent discussion about Larissa Tudor](_URL_0_), said to be Tatiana, by /u/mikedash.) There were actually quite a few men who claimed to be Alexei! It's hard to imagine this, as a Millennial or younger and having grown up with a) all of this in the past, since none of them would have lived beyond the 1980s given their birth dates, and b) a number of fictional representations of the matter, especially the Ahrens-Flaherty musical animated film and Broadway show, but for many years it seemed quite plausible that one of the group had managed to survive and was out there, able to be found and to give evidence of the tragedy.\n\nThe main reason Anastasia is thought of as \"the one\" is that a woman named Anna Anderson claimed to be her through much of the twentieth century (from 1921 to her death in 1984). She was found in a Berlin canal in 1920, having jumped in in a suicide attempt; she wouldn't identify herself, had a few scars as evidence of some past injury, and was obviously mentally disturbed. As \"Fraulein Unbekannt\", she remained in a mental hospital for more than a year, hardly speaking, but behaving in a \"ladylike\" way that made the nurses curious. She also requested and read books in French and English, and spoke Russian as well as German, according to one witness. The first Romanov connection came up a year later, when she was shown a copy of the magazine *Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung* with the grand duchesses on it and a headline about a potential survivor (inside, the speculation was about Anastasia) - her manner changed, and later one she drew a nurse's attention to the resemblance between her and Anastasia. The nurse was reluctant to do so, but when she finally asked her flat-out if she was the Tsar's daughter, the unnamed woman came out with a flood of details about her escape. Word filtered out through a fellow (but short-term) inmate who came to believe she was indeed Anastasia, and reached the Supreme Monarchist Council in Berlin, an antisemitic group that coordinated with aristocratic Russian emigrés. One of the latter briefly recognized her, and then the flood of visitors began. In 1922, she was released into the custody of a minorly aristocratic married couple who'd become very close to her, who kept her in comfort.\n\nAt this time, she really didn't work to take the place in society the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia would have been able to have - she just insisted that she was Anastasia when people were brought in to look at her, although she only asked to be called Annie. (I suspect that this is a huge part of the reason why her story was so compelling - a woman who stands up and says, \"I'm Anastasia. Money please!\" is automatically suspicious, while a woman whose case is only brought to people via supportive third parties and who never asks for anything but her name is seen as having more integrity.) She didn't always recognize the people she was supposed to recognize (and was in turn dismissed by many of the people who came to see if she was the girl they had known), she was very opposed to speaking in Russian, and her escape story was fragmented, contradictory, and uncorroborated by any real evidence; she was also emotionally volatile and, according to the couple's daughter, had no social skills or grasp of refined behavior. Being unable to support herself and a suicide risk, she was passed from supporter to supporter for years. Most importantly, despite her generally obscure situation and the fact that the living people who'd been closest to the royal family dismissed her claim, her story was blowing up across Germany and then the world: tiny scars on her body were represented as the evidence of her having been shot and stabbed, people who'd denied that she was a Romanov were said to have embraced her as a niece or cousin, and many other pieces of \"evidence\" suddenly appeared in the popular consciousness. Multiple adaptations were made, fictionalizing the already-fictional story she told: *Clothes Make the Woman* (1928), the classic *Anastasia* (1956) and a different German one in the same year, the Broadway show *Anya* (1965) ... Decades later, a thorough investigation was undertaken - as thorough as they could be without being able to test DNA - and the courts declared that she failed to meet the standard of proof for taking back Anastasia Romanov's identity, though the newspapers frequently leaned heavily on her side. And now, of course, we do have DNA evidence that shows that she was not Anastasia, and was most likely a Polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska, as rumors had had it even during her lifetime." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aba044/who_was_larissa_tudor/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccm6uzx", "ccm6vmn", "ccmbeje" ], "score": [ 86, 5, 4 ], "text": [ "The Oort cloud isn't actually emitting any light, so there isn't anything for our telescopes to pick up on. Distant galaxies, on the other hand, are composed of countless stars as bright as or brighter than our own. Its the same reason you could see a lighthouse from miles away out at sea, but not your hand in front of your face in a dark room. ", "Galaxies are large, bright objects, meaning that they are relatively easy to pick up with telescopes, even at absurdly large distances. The stuff in our solar system isn't bright to start with, as it depends on reflected sunlight. And that gets dimmer as the distance from the sun increases. Once you get out into the oort cloud, you're talking about objects so dim that our largest scopes can't really see them at all. ", "Think of it like being in a field at night. You can see city lights off in the distance, but you can't see a tree 50 yards away." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn2a7pl" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Firstly, Moscow was never a large city prior or during Mongol conquest. And it was sacked.\nSecondly, Novgorod avoided the fate because it was far enough away to the Mongols to not bother to go there. Novgorod accepted the Mongol rule anyway.\nThirdly, there was no 'powerful Russian state' based out of Kiev prior to the Mongol conquest. While Kiev principality was the richest and most populous of all Russian principalities, it was still relatively small. United Rus ceased to exist more than half a century before Mongols came.\n\nThe reason why Kiev never recovered was not even tied to the Mongols. The source of the Kiev wealth and power was trade along Dnieper river from the Baltics through Novgorod and to the Constantinopole and then Levant and further east. But this trade 'dried up' with the decline of Byzantine Empire and because Crusades reestablished alternative trade route with the East through Mediterranean sea.\n\n Because of that Baltics-Volga-Caspian Sea became a main trade route in the Rus lands. Novgorod controlled the Baltic part of the route still but Kiev was now out of the way. Because of that center of power gradually switched to the Vladimir and then to Moscow. It would happen even without Mongol invasion just more slowly.\n\n The sources for the post are various lectures by historian Klim Zhukov (unpublished) and Khrustalev's work \"Rus and Mongol invasion\" (Хрусталев Д. Г. Русь и монгольское нашествие (20-50 гг. XIII в.). — Спб.: Евразия, 2015)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "coq8qrs", "coq9p1d", "coqvzlf" ], "score": [ 9, 6, 6 ], "text": [ "Hi! You might be interested in this similar thread:\n\n* [How was it that Protestantism spread so far and to so many people in Europe, when previous heresies such as Catharism and Fraticelli were much smaller and more confined?](_URL_0_): A flaired user answers the OP's question plus some follow-ups.", "Well, I think the most important post on this topic is the ones by /u/idjet who [explains](_URL_0_) that there is actually little evidence that the Cathars even existed.\n\nI think your question misunderstands the nature of both Catharism and Protestantism. Not only are there the problems with the existence of Catharism that /u/idjet relates, Protestantism was not originally perceived as a heresy. It was a protest against the abuses of the Roman hierarchy, and a call to reform, not a heresy agaisnt the doctrines of Christianity as it was observed in the West. What is, to me, more interesting is that the protestant reform movement was successfully outright rejected by the Church majority, forcing both sides into a schism, when previous reform movements such as the Cluniacs and Franciscans were absorbed into, and helped to strengthen the Western Church.", "In the European west of the high and late middle ages, no heterodox form of Christianity stood a chance of success in the face of the alignment of power of Catholic secular and ecclesiastical institutions and law. Whether it be one-off 'heretics' like the raging independent Henry of Lausanne in the 12^th century, or the Waldensians that grew out of the movement Peter Valdes (Waldo) started in late 12^th century, whether it be the spiritual Franciscans or the various forms of Beguines or the Free Spirits of the 13^th and 14^th century, none could survive the enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy through either the Church's aggressive preaching and prosecution (the medieval inquisition, et al) or through the secular support and enforcement of the same. To be heterodox was not just a religious matter but effectively became a secular crime.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNor could what one historian usefully called the 'debris of pre-Gregorian forms of Christian worship' survive the rooting out and persecution, and this includes the varieties of worship wrongfully collected under the term 'Cathars' and those 14^th and 15^th century targets, witchcraft and devil worship.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nNow, as for the question of 'which social groups were most likely to be attracted to the 'heretic' religions', this is a problem that historians have tried to solve for centuries, and the Roman Church tried to solve itself in the middle ages. A sociology is, frankly, impossible for one single reason: the definition of a 'heresy' is entirely contingent and changeable depending on the prevailing definition of orthodoxy at the moment. So, for example, in 1179 at the Third Lateran Council Waldensianism was normalized in relation to Roman Catholicism and officially considered orthodox; within two years Valdes was excommunicated by the same papacy for not following certain 'rules' set down, chief among them that Valdes must follow instruction of the Bishop for whatever diocese they happened to be preaching in; the followers of Valdes were suddenly found themselves considered 'heretics'. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nTime and again we see that heresy in the middle ages was not simply a matter of one making a deliberate choice from a smorgasbord of religions. Yes, at times some followers chose to align themselves or *believe* in a heterodox Christianity with deliberateness, the spiritual Franciscans, Beguines, Waldensians in the following century would qualify as deliberate dissenters, or in the Church's view as willful heresy. But, at the same time, and this follows for those regions in the 13^th century which we call Cathar, the poor infrastructure and assiduousness of the Church (for whatever reasons) just did not cohere the beliefs of the population - which lead to great heterodoxy in the *practice* of Christianity (but not necessarily the core beliefs). Chief testimony to this are the fairly voluminous inquisition records from the 13^th and 14^th century which tell not of an organized, heretical counter-church, but of a diversity of practices at a low-level; this would include not observing certain sacraments, not attending church on required days, minor infractions of theology, and the like. I would suggest in fact that many of the 'violations' which inquisitors turned up could in fact be found across Europe at the same time, but it is only because inquisitions gained a foothold in southern France that we know of it.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nThe links in other comments in this thread speak to the power which *permitted* Protestantism (the Reformation) to flourish; by the same token power was the reason Catholic orthodoxy was the law of the land for centuries after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and made effective development of wide-spread, uniform heterodox beliefs impossible." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ovpon/how_was_it_that_protestantism_spread_so_far_and/" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20qcoq/cathars_and_ranters_didnt_exist/cg5t9ki" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d4d6kdj" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Shakespeare was writing for a \"common\" audience, as well as for a noble one. His plays were ones that everyone could understand, which did mean that there are several that have \"low art\" in them. Much Ado about Nothing comes to mind, there are several dick jokes in it, as does Romeo and Juliet (the nurse has several humorous lines). He was certainly very popular, but he was seen as a great author, not as the defining voice of that period. After his death his plays were put on, but he was not the most popular playwright then. His popularity really grew in the 18th century into the 19th, and has only grown from there.\nMuch of how we view Shakespeare today is due to how it's taught in schools, where it is read as \"fine literature\", when in actuality it was very quick and full of humor and life. Remember, in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet it reads \"..is now the two hour mark of our stage\". Imagine reading all of R+J in two hours and you get an idea of how fast paced and different these plays were live than read. \n\nTL;DR: Shakespeare never sucked, was often crude in his humor, and the widespread adoration of him really kicked off in the 18th/19th century. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmnidcn" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Originally, the CHEKA was originally drawn from Petrograd Bolshevik members. As it grew into the 1920's Felix Dzerzhinksy, the man Lenin put in charge of the CHEKA after its initial head, Moses Uritski, was shot and killed, recruited from members of the Bolshevik faction he knew to be trustworthy and not squeamish. Basically, it was an invitation only club, one could not simply join, one was recruited. \n\nEDIT: I forgot to reference your original question, the CHEKA was reorganized in the early 1920's into the Joint State Political Administration (OGPU), basically changing the nameplates on the office doors, Iron Felix was still running the show. \n\n_Ronald Hingley, \"The Russian Secret Service: Muscovite, Imperial Russian and Soviet Political Security Operations, 1565-1970\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdaeqfe", "cdaqw0e" ], "score": [ 13, 2 ], "text": [ "When there are major incidents, local emergency workers generally establish a command post-type place where things like fatalities are reported as soon as they're located. When they give the death toll, they give it based off the numbers that have been reported thus far.", "[Relevant SMBC that never fails to make me laugh.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2440" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c68eeed", "c68f84x" ], "score": [ 7, 4 ], "text": [ "The 12 particles and 4 forces of the Standard Model. It stops at the elemental particles like quarks, gluons, electrons, photons, neutrinos stuff like that", "Well it matters who you ask. Most will say that right now, and most likely for as far as we will know, it stops at the fundamental particles. But String Theorist will argue that actually all of those particles are made up of strings. The vibrations of these strings determine what kind of particle is \"made\". String Theory is a very thick subject, and also deals with the multiverse, extra dimensions, and gravitational seeping. \n\nPersonally I don't believe in String Theory, and I think that we do stop at the fundamental particles, and the base understanding of the universe (a single universe, 4 dimensions, etc.) But until we can find a way to prove or disprove String Theory (we can't) there will always be people who will disagree on this subject. \n\nSo the answer you question without bias, we simply do not know if there is anything beyond the scale of the fundamental particles. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c58i3zh", "c58kla7" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ " > I assume they don't have a voice box, otherwise they'd be able to talk, right?\n\nNot right. Pretty much all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals have a larynx (aka, \"voice box\").\n\nTo quote Wikipedia:\n\n > computer-modeling techniques have suggested that the species-specific human tongue allows the vocal tract (the airway above the larynx) to assume the shapes necessary to produce speech sounds that enhance the robustness of human speech. . . In contrast, though other species have low larynges their tongues remains anchored in their mouths and their vocal tracts cannot produce the range of speech sounds of humans.", "Animals can \"talk\" so to speak. Just not in any human language. They communicate through certain sounds as well as body language. Even you can tell the difference between barking and whining, and though we may not always know what dogs trying to say while barking, because it could mean many things, whining is a sound that they use to tell us or other animals that they're sad or hurt, and we recognize this because by instinct humans make a similar sound. So yeah, of they didn't have a voice box they wouldn't be able to make sounds period." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4vdwak" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Forgive me for not directly answering the question, but since there are no responses yet, I'll give a little background on the Turner thesis. You can find the text of the thesis online here (1920 republishing): _URL_0_\n\nThe American frontier was officially declared \"closed\" in 1890, with Turner publishing his thesis in 1893. The big idea here is that the frontier changed Americans, as the Americans changed the frontier. The frontier is postulated as what makes Americans \"American,\" bestowing virtues on its settlers as they struggle against the environment. This quote (from the 11th paragraph of chapter 11) illustrates this point:\n\n > American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not \n > carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to \n > Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new \n > strength each time it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution, \n > but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit \n > people, made the democratic type of society in America for three \n > centuries while it occupied its empire.\n\nAs years and decades passed, the Turner theory waned in influence, as few people believed that the closing of the frontier had drastically changed the character of America, as Turner believed it would." ] }

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[ [ "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/turner/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c679gu1", "c679s6b" ], "score": [ 17, 27 ], "text": [ "Unfortunately, there are few sources available to answer this definitively. Most chronicles from the time would be more concerned with the affairs if the Church and of those people rich enough to matter.\n\nIt is certainly recorded that peasants could often find themselves victims of deliberate attacks by their lord's enemies, as it was easier to attack their source of income than their source of strength. William the Conqueror ordered the North of England to be laid to waste in the Harrying of The North, as can be seen in Domesday Book. And The Black Prince was known to treat his aristocratic enemies with unprecedented respect, but would barely blink at the thought of razing a village to the ground as a military tactic.\n\nThat said. Accuracy doesn't sell a lot of film tickets. One glaring example featured in Braveheart was the rights of Prima Nocta, where a lord could have the first night with a peasant woman after her marriage. This is total fiction. \n\nWhen it comes to a lord's treatment of his own property, its almost impossible to say, but It seems unlikely that a lord would destroy his own property without food cause, after all, that is the way most peasants were treated. Laws were introduced in the 13th century prohibiting amputation, and trial by ordeal... suggesting they were common practice beforehand.", "First thing to be considered for western europe (old Western Empire) the \"peasants\" have two origins, slaves and former slaves, or former citizens that fled the cities when plague and invasion struck them. The lords were germanic warriors (Franks and the like) who were given lands in exchange for the fight, and later on became \"administrators\" for the Merovingiens king and the Carolingiens Dynasty. These administrators were of course \"local\" bosses, but their function (Count, Duke etc.. derives from administrative-militaristic title of the Roman Empire) became hereditary. \n\nduring those era the slaves weren't freed and mostly were kept slaves, somehow it ended. \n\nThe violence was in their social status. They weren't \"peasant\" per se ( depending on the areas) but various social \"classes\" of under statute that were dependant on an administrator (who later on became a \"noble\" in the full sense of the term) and owned him various obligations depending *again* on there status. In return this administrator had full right of \"justice\" (i.e. when a dispute arose he was the one to settle it), \"police\" (i.e. he was obligated to ensure \"safety\") and fiscal rights (they preserved the taxes in the name of the ruler).\n\nSome peasants were legally binded to the land they lived on, some were free men (fully owned their lands, rare and hated), some were middle free men (not serfs, but worked the land for nobles).\n\nDepending in the area the common point was that they \"owned\" to the nobles and the king obligations, services \"corvées\" , and supported the fiscal burden. The full fiscal burden. \n\nThe western-european society was a society of orders, nobles, clergy and third-state. Clergy is to be considered apart as it predated the two other orders. But nobles and third-state weren't the same \"race\" litteraly. the third-state itself englobed every non peasants like artisan, merchants, \"soldiers\", clerck etc...\n\nAnd on that basis they didn't have the same rights and obligations. Nobles had what we called \"priveleges\" they didn't pay taxes, had their own justice (by their suzerain or their peers) and were limitless in the powers they held onto their lands, with the limits more or less important of their vassals controls (Rights), the Church (who offered a lot of protection to the peasants) and the religion/faith. They had to act as christians. edit : and of course the King.\n\nBut the peasants : couldn't in most case leave the land they were born onto without consent of the lord (or a letter authorizing them to), they couldn't marry without the consent of the lord (changed a lot and depended of the areas, mostly when the boy was not a serf), they couldn't hunt, they had to work for their lords' fields before their own subsistance, they had to paid to use the \"public\" oven, they had to paid for using the water pipe, etc...\n\nThey were subject to the Lord's justice and it could be cruel, if they had a conflict with their lord he was judge and party, unless they appealed to the church or the King (which they could do, and sometimes did, but rarely, Louis IX of France is the \"icone\" of such things, and the full expression of how the kings of France viewed their powers/duty i.e. to be \"king of justice\" for the Realm subject). \n\nThey could be requisitionned to fight if they were seen wandering on roads, they could be requisitionned to construct or clean said roads by the kings' officers or by their Lords without being payed of course. When siege broke out they were requisitionned to build fortifications etc...\n\nOften the partied obligations were written in a \"contract\" that variated wether the peasants was a free men or a serf. And it made the \"laws\" of the parties, as far were these contract negotiated ? I don't know. And never studied one. But I know they weren't strict piece of paper, they were \"customs\" and customary before being a document. The peasant owned certain things to the lord because that was \"how it was\" for other peasants and since their fathers' father.\n\nThey revolted also, and lords killed by their peasants weren't that uncommon AFAIK. But you can imagine what happened if someone killed a senator or a well off citizen now, same things but with medieval punishment.\n\nBut that asides, the army were often living \"on the land\" so in war times the area were pillaged and destroyed by the standing armies. And when two lords wared against each other, if the goal wasn't conquest then the \"economic\" forces were targeted.\n\nIn the penal punishment also, they could be hanged or left to rot on pikes, while nobles were \"decapitated\" and buried. \n\nOverall their situation was really shitty, at least for those that weren't free or hadn't fled (a reason cities boosted around Bishops in the late middle ages was that they were powerfull enough to create \"safe heavens\" for fleeing peasants).\n\nIt was part of a system more than an exceptionnal furry on the poor ol'peasants. But the myth that a nobles could just go and kill their people isn't true, they needed to have \"reasons\" (albeit skewed) to kill the workforce. Christiannity was both the prison (\"God wills it\", as the Crusaders said) and the best protection of the common folks.\n\nAnd most important this is from my \"legal\" knowledge for Western Europe (mostly the old carolingien empire). I know viking influenced areas had different rules regarding that. The Hispanic peninsula was also very different, since the kings needed men to fight they gave them lands and rights. (but slaves working for the muslims that weren't killed became serfs for the new masters).\n\nIn the East the situation was very different also, in \"russian\" area, the Kievan Rus used to be very \"liberal\" (no reference towards US politics, I just don't see another word for it) and the peasantry eventhough separated from the \"warriors\" had a lot of protective rights with a [code written](_URL_0_), which continued in Novgorod after the Mongol invasion, but changed when [Muscowy took over](_URL_1_). the peasant were becoming scarce so they were more or less turned into legal furnitures (which wasn't the case in the west after the early middle age) by a new code of laws.\n\nI know Magyar peasants had it quite bad also.\n\n**Disclaimer** : I'm a public law jurist, so I know a little about legal history of Europe's public and administrative rules (mostly about Rome/France though), this is a rough protrait that I think is accurate. But if a specialist could add/correct me I would be glad." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cr37m8i" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Somebody is paying them to. Since it's not you, suspicion would have to fall on the app producers, or the data sellers that benefit from the data extracted by the apps." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckdup95" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > So say it was completely possible to drill down to the exact center of the earth. How would gravity change from the surface of earth to the core?\n\nIf the Earth were the same density throughout, gravity would drop the further down you went, and would reach zero at the center. \n\nThis is because of something called the [shell theorem](_URL_0_), which states that a spherical shell of matter acts like a point mass from a distance, but has zero net gravitational pull at any point inside the shell. As you dive deeper into the Earth, the layers above you behave like the shells described in that theorem.\n\nIn reality, since the Earth does not have uniform density, and is actually denser closer to the center, what you'd actually see is a small *increase* in gravity for the first part of your trip, which would peak somewhere in the mantle, and then begin dropping, still reaching zero at the core (ignoring small variation caused by the Earth not being a perfect sphere).\n\n > If, again theoretically, we were able to drill to the exact center of the earth, what would happen when we reach it? Because gravity, from what I understand, is pulling everything towards a center of mass, then at the very center, wouldn't gravity be equally distributed from every single angle around you? So essentially, if you were at the center, would you float, suspended by gravity from all angles?\n\nYep.\n\n > If the core of the earth was hollow, essentially empty space, how would gravity react? As there is no actually \"center of mass\" of the planet any more, would an object in the core be \"sucked\" to the side of the hollow core?\n\nPer the Shell Theorem, there would be no net gravitational force on anything in that hollow space (i.e. you'd be weightless anywhere in the space, and would not be \"sucked\" to the side)." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dyyubjc", "dyyuc8h" ], "score": [ 4, 5 ], "text": [ "Your subconscious continues the learning process while you do other stuff or sleep. Also your body and mind are now well rested and it makes it easier to do stuff.", "I just heard a really great interview with sleep expert Matthew Walker. He had a theory about this. The ELI5 version is basically that your brain \"practices\" what you learned while you sleep, which makes you better at whatever it is you are trying to do. This is one of the reasons why it's important to get at least seven hours of sleep a night.\n\nIf you want to hear more, check out the Joe Rogan Experience episode #1109. That's the interview I'm referring to." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cezsjfi", "cezsxw3" ], "score": [ 9, 14 ], "text": [ "Lorica segmentata was designed largely as a form of scale/plate hybrid armor that had overlapping strips of metal that allowed a wide range of protection. Its initial advantages, namely being more sturdy and resilient as a form of armor, were outweighed by its cost, and the technical proficiency necessary to create it.\n\nBy no means was the Lorica segmentata standard-issue for all Roman legions. Only a handful at a time possessed them, and largely based on seniority. By contrast, lorica hamata, or chainmail, was tried and true, and had been used since antiquity. Everyone knew how to create and use it, and it was relatively cheap and effective.\n\nThe period in which it was created and implemented was also the high-watermark period of the Roman Empire, when the Empire possessed a technological proficiency, with economies of scale, and labor markets that would not be rivaled until the industrial revolution. What ended it largely was the period of instability known as the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war and strife that lasted several decades and nearly ended it.\n\nThe resulting reconstituted Empire stabilized in the Fourth Century under the reign of Constantine and his sons. Constantine reformed the military away from a legionary model towards a rapid response model, firstly to eliminate the political threat the army posed, but also to posture the Empire towards defending its borderlands. However, by the end of the Fourth Century and the beginning of the fifth century, Rome was confronted with a new stream of problems: barbarian incursions.\n\nWhile barbarians had been encountered quite frequently, and many even made deep incursions in the Empire, only to be drawn back, this was the first time in which Barbarians had scored several crushing victories over the Romans, notably at Adrianople, where the Eastern Roman Emperor was slain by roving Goths.", "[Dan Howard](_URL_2_) tells us that the main reason for adopting the Lorica Segmentata was that it was far cheaper to produce than Hamata. Furthermore, because of the wide coverage provided by a scutum, the most common area of injury for a legionnaire would be the shoulders. Lorica Segmentatas' reinforced shoulder plates make it seem as if it was developed with that in mind.\n\nVegetius tells us that the main reason for dropping the Lorica Segmentata was because it was too heavy. Supposedly, the legionnaires got soft and couldn't bear to wear it anymore. Vegetius lamented this slothful attitude, because of the Lorica Segmentata's greater protection in comparison to the armor of Late-Antiquity. \n\nHowever, this is probably not the only reason, nor the main reason for the abandoning of such armor. [This comment](_URL_0_) by [u/bitparity](_URL_1_) tells us that the later emperors required a lighter, more mobile army attached to the emperor(s) that could more quickly respond to internal and external foes throughout the empire and its borders.\n\nLorica Segmentata also required much more effort to maintain compared to the Lorica Hamata. Rust was a very big problem for the plates. The use of leather under metal in high mobility situations would also lead to quick degradation of the leather, as it would constantly rub up against it during any sort of movement. As the empire's logistics collapsed, it is reasonable to believe that the legions could no longer adequately maintain their platemails and went with the sturdier alternative.\n\nReturning to Dan Howard, he claims that chainmail was actually the preferable alternative in most aspects aside from blunt trauma. It allegedly provided better coveragewith greater mobility, while not requiring the legionnaire to wear additional inner lining. It also was far easier to repair, as you could use a wire of metal." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dx0v2/why_did_the_roman_army_choose_to_abandon_its/c9ur99p", "http://www.reddit.com/user/bitparity", "http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cj94fe7", "cj94mod", "cj96t8w" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 8 ], "text": [ "I do it because I feel like it helps me focus. The music seems like a distraction, especially if it's loud.", "Depends how loud you have it I suppose...I usually play mine pretty loud in the car so I turn it down out of respect for the people living around where I'm headed.", "The same reason it's now illegal to use a mobile phone when driving. It's been [shown](_URL_0_) that we can't multi task as well as many of us think we can. Basically, our brain can't divide our attention 2 ways whilst retaining the same level of focus. It's much easier to focus on the visual side of driving when you don't have a constant audio stream to process at the same time." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.jhu.edu/news/audio-video/brain.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dx086rt", "dx1cji9" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "It's not technically bad, it's just dumb (no offense). All that will happen is the charger will generate heat from the current while slowly losing charge to the resistance of the cable used to plug it into itself. Longer cables will provide more resistance, though most cables for such a thing won't be terribly long.; but ultimately it'll just die. All the while degrading the battery.\n\nTo put it in super layman's it's a circular human centipede. Without a raw energy source it'll eventually run itself out and die.", "As /u/mrspacebear said, it's not bad, just pointless.\n\nThe charger will try to charge itself. But it's not smart enough to realise that it's discharging slightly faster than it's charging. All that happens is the battery will drain slowly, even though it thinks it's charging." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu2n9pa", "cu2njqy", "cu2ojfq", "cu32ckq" ], "score": [ 9, 5, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Average work week in the US is 47 hours a week. Full time is 40 hours. There is no required amount of vacation time in the US, the average number of days of paid vacation a year are 12 (this includes paid federal holidays), The average number of sick days a year are 10 and they are generally non-paid days off. \n\nIf you work hourly wages you will seldom get paid time off. So while you may get 12 days of vacation you can seldom afford to take more than one or two days off in a row because taking a week off means you don't get paid for one week of work that month. ", "It's a cultural thing. Work is considered an incredibly important part of life and in response to u/gamewolph, that idea has been around for a long time. It likely dates back to the US being largely agricultural for quite a while, the work attitudes of which stuck with those that moved into cities or got different jobs.\n\nThat and the government doesn't have nearly as much control over corporations or people, while union lobbying is huge even it has its limits. Besides, a lot of people would probably be pissed if they had that sort of limit on their work week a lot of Scandinavian countries do.", "This is more of a theory then anything I could back up with a citation. But it could be down to the fact that the governments in Europe are generally picking up the tab for citizens' health bills and unemployment benefits. So from the point of view of the government, they'd rather have two people working 35 hour weeks, than one person working a 70 hour week and trashing his mind or body in the process, and another person working 0 hours and getting unemployment benefit.\n\nSometimes we do see suggestions of further restricting the working week in order to \"spread out\" employment more.\n\nBusinesses would probably prefer there be no working hour restrictions at all, and they do seem to have more influence in the US than in Europe.", "Employment is generally \"at-will\" which means either the employee or employer can terminate employment at any time for (almost) any reason. So, you've got to be pretty compliant with your employer's demands or risk losing your job.\n\nWe have a low minimum wage; so, people earning minimum wage or close to it will often have multiple jobs just to make enough money to support themselves.\n\nIf you have a college degree, chances are your position is classified as \"salaried exempt\". An \"exempt\" position is exempt from laws requiring overtime pay. There's no maximum to how many hours your employer can demand you work, and, since they don't have to pay overtime, they will often overwork employees rather than hiring more staff.\n\nThere are no federal laws mandating any paid time off. Hourly employees generally get none. Salaried employees generally get some holidays, a week or two of vacation time, and occasionally a handful of sick time. I personally get 9 holidays, 13 days of vacation, and 5 sick days every year, which is fairly good. Sometimes you can negotiate for more vacation time when you get hired, but if you asked for the 4 or 5 weeks that is common in Europe, you'd be laughed out the door.\n\nThere is also a strong work culture in the US, where the company's needs often come before those of the individual. It is generally frowned on to take more than a couple consecutive vacation days, and you may not be permitted to take your vacation time if there's a lot of work that needs to be done. It's also often expected that you keep up with work emails during your vacation time and that you remain reachable at any moment by your superiors." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1k3nn2", "d1kgjzl" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "[From youngest to oldest...](_URL_0_)\n\n0. **[Holocene/Anthropocene Extinction](_URL_4_):** Ongoing. By all accounts, humans are now in the midst of a [6th major extinction](_URL_2_). Only the culprit this time isn't an asteroid or a volcano, its human activities. We are causing rates of extinction to be much much higher than the expected background rates. For example, on average [1 species of mammal is expected to go extinct every million years](_URL_8_). We are currently experiencing rates that are 10x as high as this. The causes are almost always traced back to humans (over-hunting, pollution, habitat destruction...). I think it is very hard for us to conceptualize just how bad its getting, just how many species are at risk of extinction, how many ecosystems are on the brink of collapse. The signs are there, the evidence is mounting - we have time to change this around. We have a lot of positive examples of species and ecosystem recovery, and I think we need to see what we did right in those cases in order to live sustainably on this planet with the other species. **Cause:** Human Activity\n\n1. **[Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction](_URL_5_):** 66 million years ago. About 17% of all families, 50% of all genera and 75% of all species became extinct In the seas all the ammonites disappeared and the percentage of sessile animals (those unable to move about) was reduced to about 33%. All *non-avian* dinosaurs became extinct during that time (avian dinosaurs survived). The boundary event was severe with a significant amount of variability in the rate of extinction between and among different clades. Mammals and birds, the latter descended from theropod dinosaurs, emerged as dominant large land animals. **Known Cause:** [Asteroid impact](_URL_6_) and aggravated by giant flood basalts called the [Deccan Traps](_URL_1_)\n\n2. **[Triassic–Jurassic Extinction](_URL_10_):** 201.3 Million years ago. About 23% of all families, 48% of all genera (20% of marine families and 55% of marine genera) and 70% to 75% of all species went extinct. Most non-dinosaurian archosaurs, most therapsids, and most of the large amphibians were eliminated, leaving dinosaurs with little terrestrial competition. Non-dinosaurian archosaurs continued to dominate aquatic environments, while non-archosaurian diapsids continued to dominate marine environments. The Temnospondyl lineage of large amphibians also survived until the Cretaceous in Australia (e.g., Koolasuchus). **Possible Causes:** Volcanoes, giant flood basalts, climate change \n\n3. **[Permian–Triassic Extinction](_URL_7_):** 252 million years ago. Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species (53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species, including insects). The highly successful marine arthropod, the trilobite became extinct. The evidence of plants is less clear, but new taxa became dominant after the extinction. The \"Great Dying\" had enormous evolutionary significance: on land, it ended the primacy of mammal-like reptiles. The recovery of vertebrates took 30 million years, but the vacant niches created the opportunity for archosaurs to become ascendant. In the seas, the percentage of animals that were sessile dropped from 67% to 50%. The whole late Permian was a difficult time for at least marine life, even before the \"Great Dying\". **Possible Causes:** Volcanoes, giant flood basalts, climate change, long term methane release\n\n4. **[Late Devonian Extinction:](_URL_9_)** 375–360 million years ago. At the end of the Frasnian Age in the later part(s) of the Devonian Period, a prolonged series of extinctions eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera and at least 70% of all species. This extinction event lasted perhaps as long as 20 million years, and there is evidence for a series of extinction pulses within this period. **Possible Causes:** Volcanoes, asteroid\n\n5. **[Ordovician–Silurian Extinction:](_URL_11_)** 450–440 million years ago. Two events occurred that killed off 27% of all families, 57% of all genera and 60% to 70% of all species. Together they are ranked by many scientists as the second largest of the five major extinctions in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct. **Possible Causes**: Continental drift causing global cooling.\n\n**More Information**\n\n* [More on possible causes and their exact mechanisms](_URL_3_).\n\n* Another thing that is worth understanding is that these extinction events did not just happen overnight...while the cause may have been sudden or dramatic (e.g. asteroid) the extinctions and effects lasted thousands to *millions* of years.\n\nEdit: spelling and clarity\n", "A great book on this if you want more info, \"The Sixth Extinctio: An Unnatural History\" _URL_0_. It covers the previous answers here in more detail, and goes into the history/discovery of the extinctions, and modern implications of human activity leading a sixth." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Major_extinction_events", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Causes", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_extinction_rate", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic–Jurassic_extinction_event", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician–Silurian_extinction_events" ], [ "https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250062187/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_uEt.wbGAE8BQW" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "digca1k", "digcr3f", "diggtc8" ], "score": [ 4, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Oil is so cheap there that solar and wind aren't affordable in comparison.", "But they are:\n\n[Source 1](_URL_2_)\n\n[Source 2](_URL_1_)\n\n[Source 3](_URL_0_)", "Solar and wind are strictly local power sources. There isn't any feasible way to transport wind or solar energy to Saudi Arabia's main oil customers (US, Western Europe, China) and the countries immediately bordering SA do not have energy needs on the same level." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/saudi-arabia-oil-revenue-production-solar-power-shift-electricity-energy-opec-a7488626.html", "http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/saudi-arabia-creates-unit-to-focus-on-renewable-energy", "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-20/saudis-kick-off-50-billion-renewable-energy-plan-to-cut-oil-use" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctg6z7o", "ctg71b6", "ctg7o5q", "ctgj80x" ], "score": [ 79, 230, 486, 11 ], "text": [ "Hello everyone, \n\nUnfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread. In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_2_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. \n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_1_), or a [META thread](_URL_0_[META]). Thank you!", "As another aspect to this, if geographic proximity to the theatre had no impact on deployment, did experience with the terrain? Like, would draftees from New Mexico be more likely to be deployed in North Africa because of experience with deserts?\n\nEDIT: Reworded for clarity", "As /u/eleventeenth_beatle and /u/drpinkcream noted, branch of service played a major role in theatre deployment. I'm going to just address the Army in this comment. \n\nMy understanding is that deployment was not done by *draftee* but by divisions, which were the primary independent units of the Army (see _URL_1_). \n\nSo the next question is, how were divisions assigned geographically, and how was a division's recruitment pool generated?\n\nPer Maurice Matloff's \"The 90-Division Gamble,\" (_URL_2_), the manpower allotted to divisions had to be carefully regulated so that there wasn't too much of a drain on American industrial capability, and there was about a year's worth of training time for a given division before it was deemed combat-worthy. Furthermore, divisions didn't get all their troops at once - it was a piecemeal process as troops trickled in. (John Brown, [*Draftee Division*](_URL_0_), p. 16). The divisions pulled troops in from all over the country - for example, the 88th Division got one shipment largely from the Northeast, and then another from the Midwest and Southwest, dubbed 'Okies.' (Id., p. 17). \n\nSo you had divisions 'coming out the door' after a year after drawing troops from all over, and being assigned to one of four areas: Europe, North Africa, Pacific, or reserve within the US. (Matloff). The bulk of the Army's divisions were dedicated to Overlord, since the invasion had to be a massive punch a) to get through, b) to mollify the Soviets who were desperately calling for aid. \n", "I asked this before, but the thread never took off, so maybe I'll try and piggyback on this one:\n\nWhat were the odds of getting conscripted in WW2, or the Vietnam war?\n\nI mention those 2 instances as they seem to be the most prominent in the popular culture I'm exposed to, but I would assume it's happened in plenty of other times and places.\n\nSo if you were an eligible candidate in (insert war/country of choice), how likely were you to be drafted?\n\nI checked the FAQ and didn't see anything similar based on some keyword searches of the page." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&title=", "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules" ], [], [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=W9YeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=selective+service+world+war+2+division&source=bl&ots=xELHzDAzcw&sig=9_hxYSAgrvDBlPcr66mQik_lEj8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBDgKahUKEwjbjIuIx_fGAhVMig0KHVbqBzM#v=onepage&q=selective%20service%20world%20war%202%20division&f=false", "http://www.historyshotsinfoart.com/USArmy/backstory.cfm", "http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "du63n4x" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "People often look less flattering when faced front on. If you’re creating an artwork you most likely want it to look as aesthetically pleasant as possible. This would be much harder if the subject looked ugly. \n\nAlso when drawing or painting the (technical) purpose is to create depth. Facing front on would decrease the potential to display this depth and thus make it less realistic or 3 dimensional. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckypc7k", "ckyq43r", "ckz76fn" ], "score": [ 2, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "It makes more sense to think of a common ancestral population rather than individual. It is always a population issue, not just an individual.", "In evolutionary terms \"common ancestor\" is not used to represent an individual. The term defines a species from which two other species diverged. In the classical evolutionary tree schematic used to represent evolutionary history, a common ancestor is a point at which a branch forks. ", "'Common ancestor' usually refers to species but it's also true that every human can trace descent from a single male patrilineally and a single female matrilineally. These two humans didn't necessarily live at the same time, and certainly weren't the only humans around at their time, but they are the man and woman that directly connect every human alive today." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d6l4zzu" ], "score": [ 21 ], "text": [ "It's about temperature and solubility. Coffee is the same way, you're toeing a fine line with certain flavor compounds that come out at certain temps.\n\nFor instance, if you boil the water, once it's all mixed in with the tea leaves it'll sit at say 204F (95C), this is hot enough to get all of the good flavors out of black tea, but in mate will draw out bitter compounds, if you use water that hasn't boiled and it's steeping at 190F (87C) then it won't be hot enough to draw all of the desired compounds out of black tea, but will be perfect for mate because it won't draw out the bitter compounds." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ep6pknm", "ep6vuw8", "ep82aau" ], "score": [ 12, 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Not really, no. The length of time that's passed even over the entire existence of mankind is a very small portion of the universe's age, so the factor by which the observable universe has grown during humanity's existence is very small.\n\nThere is a more fundamental reason why we can't see further as time passes, though. As you state in your question, light that travels a greater distance started travelling further into the past. This allows us to look back into the universe's history, but there is a limit. At times earlier than about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that it was essentially opaque, with light being unable to travel freely, and so no light will ever reach us from before that time. (Light emitted immediately after the universe became transparent is what we now observe as the [cosmic microwave background](_URL_0_))\n\nThere are hopes that one day, astronomy using neutrinos or gravitational waves will allow us to look beyond this boundary, but these techniques are currently in their infancy. In any case, the first stars formed much later, so observing beyond the CMB would not reveal any new ones - instead, it would tell us more about the conditions of the Big Bang, and maybe, what (if anything) existed before it.", "All the stars you can see with the naked eye are in our galaxy, most of them closer than 1000 light years. The age of the universe doesn't matter on that scale and the number of stars in our galaxy doesn't change notably over 1000 years either.\n\nThere are some things we can see today that were not observable yet in the past because the light from these objects didn't reach us yet - but this is a process that happens on the timescale of millions to billions of years, a few hundred years don't make a difference.", "I have to partially disagree with the previous answers. I totally agree that we don't see 'noticeably' more stars. As everyone else has said, the timescale of human existence is too small in the cosmic perspective to make a difference. But you asked about 'in theory' not 'noticeably'. The Milky Way is forming new stars at a rate of a few solar masses per year. So over the course of a few hundred years, there will be a few hundred more stars in the Milky Way. Some stars will also die, becoming white dwarfs / neutron stars / black holes, but these are more rare occurrences. (The expected rate of supernovae in the Milky Way is around 1 per century, much smaller than the star formation rate). We aren't able to see all the stars in the Milky Way with the naked eye (not nearly) but as long as the star formation rates dominate star death rates throughout the galaxy, then it doesn't matter where we are in the galaxy, we'll still have a higher nearby star formation rate than star death, and therefore more stars in the sky as time passes. One source for star formation and death rates in the Milky Way: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background" ], [], [ "https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/milky-way-supernova-rate-confirmed/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfjqfjn" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "People go broke mainly because they don't understand that if you are not making money right now, you should not be spending it. They don't invest the money they make in something that will make them money and they spend large amounts of money because they have it right now. They don't think about the future. \n\n\nAlso, another big thing is that once people find out you have money, they all want to be your friend. People you haven't seen for years will suddenly show up. Your dad that you haven't talked to or seen for 20 years will knock on your door. Many people don't know how to say NO. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cql6y85" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Wind chill is simply a way of expressing the enhanced rate of convective heat transfer on surfaces due to convection. This applies for all surfaces, not just human skin. So yes, a tree will have more heat transfer away from its surface when the wind is blowing just like a human would.\n\nHowever, heat transfer will only occur when the surface is a different temperature than the surroundings. Trees are not warm-blooded, so they will simply the same temperature as the surroundings. The only time they will be different is when there are sudden changes of temperatures, like a sudden cold front, etc. In those cases the trees will cool off faster with the wind than without." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvbsez8", "cvc9w47" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "They always have to do this to separate out the victim's DNA. Adding one extra isn't too tough - if you know there are two perpetrators, they test quite a bit of DNA and can get 3 different results. In a large gang rape, it gets increasingly difficult, but apparently is improving. Here's an interesting article on it:\n_URL_0_", "If you read further into a process referred to as STR profiling, it is a method that is used by forensic scientists to determine if a sample contains a mix of two or more DNA types. It basically involves the amplification of specific alleles through a method of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR); more specifically real-time PCR. Through the evaluation of certain trends in the data obtained, such as analysis of the allele peaks, it is possible to determine all contributors to a DNA sample. I studied forensic science for the past four years, and it is a pretty detailed process. However, I would recommend looking into it as the technology involved is quite groundbreaking :)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3990198/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdhq2np" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This [YouTube](_URL_0_) link shows some of the items a British solider would have during the Japanese invasion of Singapore. Some canned food, grenades, .303 ammunition, gas masks and a few other items that I can't make out. It also brings up another question for you. Which theater in WWII and which time period during the war. \n\nEquipment would be different for an army regular fighting in France, compared to someone another in North Africa. Logistical facts of war and the area of operation could change it up quite a bit." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbszSQaIGz8&t=19m" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dx4efps", "dx4g0bg" ], "score": [ 20, 15 ], "text": [ "Fusion reactors are created using super-cooled magnets that sustain the fusion reaction. Unlike a fission reactor that would go into meltdown if enough damage were to be done because the reaction is self-sustaining, a fusion reactor would simply shut down since the reaction cannot sustain itself.", "Nuclear fusion is comparatively very difficult to achieve. It'll only happen under very specific conditions (high temperature and pressure) and if those conditions aren't met, the reactions stops. Current fusion reactor designs are mostly based on very precisely controlled magnetic fields. They're not fire-and-forget solutions, because small instabilities in the fusion plasma can quickly grow and destabilize the entire plasma if they're not controlled by actively manipulating the plasma.\n\nConsequently, if a fusion reactor would be damaged or otherwise rendered inoperable, the fusion plasma would very rapidly destabilize, destroy the reactor wall and expand outside the reactor. This process would cool down the plasma and lower the pressure, which would cause the fusion reaction to stop.\n\nIf there is no mechanism to safely wind down operation (or there is no time for such a mechanism to activate), the loss of magnetic confinement would likely cause major damage to the reactor and the surrounding structure, but since the fusion reaction stops almost immediately once confinement is lost, there is no chain reaction.\n\nFission reactors are very different, because once the right circumstances are created, fission reactions are self-sustaining and prone to runaway phenomena, where the reaction rate increases rapidly. Because of this, fission reactors have to use so-called control rods that are there to deliberately slow down the reaction to prevent such a runaway reaction. While fusion reactions take effort to keep going, fission reactions take effort to stop." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7gmyoh", "c7gn3he", "c7gn6ay", "c7goqu5", "c7gsusx", "c7gxk4z" ], "score": [ 9, 4, 20, 14, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "The answer is pretty straightforward. Mass shootings didn't occur when the shooter could only fire one round per minute.", "I think a better question would be did killing sprees occurred prior to the type of 24hr tv news coverage we have now on scales which would be considered 'mass' according to the weapons used.", "Have you ever heard of the expression \"running amok\"?\n\nIt comes from the Malay term *(meng)amuk*, which refers to a type of killing spree. Dating back to premodern times, amok is a type of killing spree in which a sudden perceived mistreatment causes someone to go into a fit of rage and murder several people. Amok usually ends when the perpetrator is killed by bystanders. It is classified as a mental disorder in DSM-IV.\n\n[Some psychologists have compared](_URL_0_) [amok to the modern spree killer.](_URL_1_) (Two links.) So killing sprees do not seem to be a solely modern phenomenon.", "**This thread will be ONLY about Historical events. There will be NO current politics or I will burn this thread to the ground.**", "I also wanted to ask this question, but broadening to any lethal means. Stabbing sprees have also happened in parts of the world where guns are less accessible, so technologically this broadens the range of dates considerably.\n\nWe might also narrow down the criteria to lone-wolf attacks (as opposed to those planned by state or non-state organizations), the targeting of innocents (as opposed to specific assassination attempts), and some evidence of mental imbalance.\n\nThe amok reference partly answers my question...", "Although not a mass shooting, the Bath School disaster (1927) came to mind. Andrew Kehoe, a farmer & school board treasurer, killed 38 children, 6 adults, and himself. Blew everyone up except his wife, who he beat to death. \n\n\n[Wikipedia](_URL_0_) Interesting read and lists a lot of references.\n\nActually makes me wonder if this is Americas first VBID(Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) suicide bombing...?" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=66bBlXMEVYAC&pg=PA131#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-22/forensic-psych-on-violent-minds/4146324" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster#References" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbul9m2" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "hi! Hopefully some of the NZ specialists will drop by to address this question, but meanwhile, you can get a little start here\n\n* [Why has New Zealand embraced indigenous culture more than other former British Colonies?](_URL_1_) - /u/Cenodoxus makes a few comments on adoption of the Haka\n\n.. and if you're interested in New Zealand history with regard to Maori integration more generally, this thread may be useful; it includes links to a few more (including the above post)\n\n* [Why were the Maori so much more successful at resisting colonization than Australian Aborigines or other Pacific Islanders?](_URL_0_) - featuring /u/b1uepenguin\n\nAll of the posts have been archived by now, so if you have follow-up questions for any of the commenters, just ask them here and mention their username to notify them " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ibo8l/why_were_the_maori_so_much_more_successful_at/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1daol9/why_has_new_zealand_embraced_indigenous_culture/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c1b9w31", "c1b9xn2", "c1b9xn9", "c1b9xp5", "c1b9y4d", "c1ba910", "c1bblz5" ], "score": [ 2, 7, 13, 5, 3, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Maybe mathematical statistics (not too sure what they're including in the course though) or real analysis (although I don't know if you really need a whole course in this). What area of physics are you thinking of? Experimental, theoretical or computational? ", "For the theorist: Group theory (this might be in \"algebraic structures\"), topology. For the experimentalist: stats; no, real stats, meaning Bayesian stats. Possibly there's a physics class that teaches this.", "I'm afraid it's unavoidable: Sooner or later, you're going to have to wrap your head around group theory. It's as essential to modern physics as calculus was to Newtonian dynamics.", "I did a full-on math major in addition to my physics major, and now I'm in grad school doing particle theory (supersymmetry calculations and such things).\n\nMy math major ended up consisting of classes in linear algebra, complex analysis, ODE, PDE, honors abstract algebra (2 semesters), honors real analysis (2 semesters), and a senior seminar in chaos theory. (This was at Michigan State.)\n\nThe abstract algebra classes were very interesting for seeing how we build up the integers, real numbers, and complex numbers from scratch, but they're much more useful for the knowledge they impart on group theory. The real analysis classes ended up not being that useful for me, since it's about building all of calculus from the ground up, but I still value the experience of getting my ass kicked with some tougher math theory (though your experience in that class may vary if it's not that tough).\n\nIf you're interested in quantum computing or other theoretical stuff, I'd suggest algebraic structures (if that gets you group theory) and/or topology. Maybe you can take both?", "Physicist here, but all of those classes are essentially math tools. The real math, as I understand, is in abstract algebra.", "I once met with physicist John Ellis, and asked him what piece of advice he would give an undergrad physics student, and he said \"Take as much math as you possibly can!\" Two years into grad school, I couldn't agree more. Algebraic structures sounds like it would be the most useful for you, and topology and analysis probably would be as well. And statistics is going to be useful for *any* researcher.", "I'm an (applied math) grad student working in Quantum Information, I would definitely recommend doing at least the extra courses to get the math degree. As others have said, if you want to work in theoretical physics you really need to pick up some group theory. I'd order the direct applicability of your choices as,\n\n* Algebraic Structures\n* Mathematical Statistics\n* Topology\n* Analysis\n\nReally you don't need a great depth of knowledge to of any of them to get by in a generic theoretical physics environment - although you probably will need to learn some things quite thoroughly to pursue your specific research. Nevertheless, studying any of these subjects in depth will add a very powerful toolset to your mathematical problem solving and all of them are well worthwhile for this alone.\nIt might be worthwhile to pursue a foundation in combinatorics if that's not covered by discrete mathematics (this is an area in which I'm unfortunately rather weak, and I do suffer for the lack of it)\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dh5gfsb", "dh5gsv7" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The ground our feet evolved to have an arch on wasn't really flat. Floors, sidewalks, and other manmade flat surfaces aren't really natural; they're just easier to sweep.\n\nFeet do best on paths with little rocks or gravel, grassy areas, sand, and other rough or uneven surfaces.", "It's not the flatness of shoes that damages your feet, it's the overall shape. Your toes actually need to splay out a bit as you put pressure on the front of your foot, but the majority of shoes are too narrow and cramp your toes together which prevents this. If your foot can't move, the muscles (including those around the arch) become weak. \n\nFlat feet are generally a result of weak foot muscles and can be corrected with exercises and better footwear" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn63e8g", "dn63fdn", "dn63gkv", "dn63lc2" ], "score": [ 5, 5, 10, 8 ], "text": [ "The separation of church and state simply states that the government cannot support or suppress a specific religion. If you were to not allowed to pass a law that was in line with a religion you wouldn't be able to pass anything really.", "The Constitution guarantees that all Americans can freely practice their religion. It also states that the government will not favor one religion over another. That's all it has to say on the matter. \n\nIt does *not* prohibit American lawmakers from taking inspiration from their or their constituents' religious beliefs.", "Separation of church and state doesn't mean that people can't use their religious principles to create laws. It means that the government won't set up a state religion, and you are free to follow any religion you want.\n\nPeople are going to campaign for laws that fit what they feel is important. If the majority of people in your country is some flavour of religious, then there is a good chance their religion helps form what they find important. ", "The first thing to remember is that the US Constitution alone doesn't create the separation of church and state. The bill of rights ensures our religious freedom by ensuring that Congress \"make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\"\n\nThe exact meaning of that phrase has been battled over for centuries, but the modern court precedent is that it does NOT prevent Congress from making a law based on religious ideas, but prevents those laws from unfairly favoring one religion over the others. \n\nRemember, the fear was that we'd create a \"Church of America\" that was as bad as the Church of England. After all, many common sense laws like murder or theft have roots in religion, like the Ten Commandments, so we'd never want to completely ban religion-related laws." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctrgn30" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "side note: did experience differ from Black British and West-Indies/African immigrants? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dkrzbtv" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Because the word \"realm\" (the closest translation) is too general. Even German has multiple words for \"realm of a king\" vs \"realm of an emperor\" vs \"realm of someone else\".\n\nBy saying \"the Nazi realm\", what do we mean? Do we mean Germany and Austria, where the Nazis actually ruled directly? Do we mean those two AND all the surrounding countries they conquered, where they held control though puppets?\n\nWhereas if we say \"the Reich\", we know immediately what was meant. They themselves distinguished between \"Reich\" and \"occupied territories\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "edyumjr" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Yep, they're still alive!\n\nA potato, carrot or beetroot is essentially a storage container for the plant. Take the carrot - it's a biannual, meaning it has a two-year life cycle where the plant spends the first year of its life gathering energy and nutrients, and the second year spending its stores on reproduction. All through that first summer, the carrot leaves gather energy from the sun, store it in the form of carbohydrates using carbon it gathered from the air, and send those carbs to its tap root for storage. You ask how it can live away from the main plant, but the fact is that when winter comes, the carrot *is* the plant - the green parts of it have wilted and died. Removing the carrot from the soil doesn't change much, as it's essentially dormant at this stage, waiting for spring - it doesn't need any water or soil nutrients, because it's not metabolically active.\n\nBut plop a carrot down in the soil - or, in the case of your pantry, conditions that are close enough to being in spring soil to accidentally trick the carrot that it's time to get going - and it'll start burning all those carbs, making flowers to mate with other carrots and produce seeds. Beets are also biannuals, and work along the same lines.\n\nPotatoes, meanwhile, are perennials, meaning they have multi-year life cycles - each year they'll divide their efforts between making some leaves to gather energy, making some tubers to store energy, and making some flowers to reproduce. You can cut a potato off from its root system and it'll happily grow a new one, because (unlike most animals) their bodies are decentralized. A root can't easily regrow a whole plant - it needs energy from sunlight to do it - and a leaf can't easily regrow a whole plant, because it needs nutrients from a root system. But a tuber is a nice store of everything needed to rebuild a whole plant, including a pack of stored solar energy." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmi9wln", "dmibcfn" ], "score": [ 113, 3 ], "text": [ "Not exactly true. Catholic Church does not opposed lay reading Bible. In fact, reading of the Bible is part of the Mass and regular attendee of the Masses will hear a large portion of both Testaments in span of few years.\n\nGiven, that Catholic rites formed in the period of nearly universal illiteracy that alone shows that Church was never against peoples learning the contents of the Bible.\n\nHowever, Catholic have a different stance on interpreting it. Theologically it's based on 2 Timothy, where Paul gives eponymous Timothy right to *righteously divide the word of truth* and in practice it means that only the Church hierarchs (bishops, approved theologists and such) can properly interpret the Scripture and teach doctrine as spiritual successors of the Apostols. \n\nHence the problem Church had with the Bible translations was not laymen reading the Scripture, but laymen reading *heretic interpretation* of it.\n\nCase in point- papal bull in 1713 as you name it, commonly known as [Unigenitus](_URL_0_). The bull was targeted against heresy called *Jansenism*, and ascetically against Pasquier Quesnel, one of the main advocates of Jansenism. Who, by the way, spread his teaching by publishing abriged version of Gospel with commentaries (*Abrégé de la morale de l'Evangile*).\n\n*Unigenitus* condemns 101 notions of Quesnel, giving source of condemnation:\n\n > _URL_1_ is useful and necessary at every time, in every place, and for every kind of persons, to study and know the spirit, piety, and mysteries of sacred Scripture.\n\nPope point to *1 Cor. xiv. 6*:\n\n > Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you and speak in tongues, **what good will I be to you, unless** I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction?\n\nor the very next Quesnel proposition:\n\n > 80.The reading of sacred Scripture is for all.\n\nPope replies with the Acts of the Apostles:\n\n > And on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. **“Do you understand what you are reading?”** Philip asked.\n\nIn short, Catholic view is that reading the Bible is pointless- or even harmful- if you do not how to interpret and understand the text, and it much better leave it to the properly trained professionals something that is made even mere clear rebuffing statement 85\n\n > To interdict to Christians the reading of sacred Scripture, especially of the Gospel, is to interdict the use of light to the sons of light..\n\nPope responds pointing the most famous lines of Luke:\n\n > No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.\n\nAnd that essentially it: Catholic Church is not against lay people reading (or hearing) the Bible, but is very much against theologically-inept Joe's going wild with they own interpretations of it. That's the job for properly trained and educated priests.\n\nIt somewhat similar how modern scientists and academics are often opposed to amateur researchers.\n\nP.S. In English speaking world Catholics have image of Bible haters, because of suppression of John Wycliffe, who was proclaimed martyr of reformation. However his work was suppressed not because he dared to translate Scripture to English, but because he views were, in fact, *extra heresy*. He even openly denied authority of the *spiritual liege*!\n", "As a follow-up question, did only the Catholic churches have this opinion? (if they really did that is)\n\nDid the eastern orthodox churches agree with this policy? Is it based in scripture or medieval politics?" ] }

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[ "https://i.imgur.com/MI9jV6n.jpg", "https://i.imgur.com/ZCP0YPW.jpg" ]

[ [ "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Canons_and_Decrees_of_the_Council_of_Trent/Second_Part/Condemnation_of_the_Errors_of_Paschasius_Quesnell", "79.It" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cunjahb", "cunl0ew", "cunozwz", "cunv7tb", "cupuyco" ], "score": [ 3, 52, 8, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Just for ref ... America experienced a crash not a recession. Their markets were artificially valued so high that the correction threaten to basically devalue the American dollar to the point of worthlessness.\n\nCanada is experiencing a shrinkage of GDP for 2 quarters (that's what a recession is). They happen naturally from time to time. The oil value going down isn't helping though given quite a bit of GDP at least out west is tied to it.", "I don't know about the average Canadian, but Alberta has been experiencing steady lay-offs since oil dropped, and all forecasts predict more. That said, it's not like the situation is going to affect the other parts of Canada any more than any other region of the world that relies on oil for every-day transportation, industrial, or household use, etc. It's not like any place within Canada outside of Alberta is any more or less oil-dependent than the rest of the world.\n\nThe difference between a Canadian recession and a US recession (or crash) is that the US economy is far more central and significant to the rest of the world. The sheer difference in size between the two economies means that any relationship is asymmetrical. If America slows down, the world including Canada slows down. If Canada slows down, no one really notices. Canada's economy was dependent on Alberta's oil. Canada needs to sell oil to be prosperous. Canada is competing with OPEC. Oil-importing countries (including the US) aren't concerned where their oil is coming from as long as they are paying the lowest price. If Canada isn't offering the lowest price, it sucks to be Canada.", "As an on-topic question, can someone please ELI5 what a recession is exactly? ", "The government officials and big banks that caused the financial collapse apologized for it.", "Not to sound insensitive but I honestly believed Canada's economy was based off maple syrup costs and their maple syrup reserves... \n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "https://news.yahoo.com/canada-officially-recession-first-half-2015-131114485.html;_ylt=AwrC1ClGpOVVGS0A6AzQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBybGY3bmpvBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--" ]

[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/why-does-canada-have-a-strategic-maple-syrup-reserve/261869/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cobvzms" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The rings are actually quite a dense mass of particles so your chance of hitting something massive is very high. If you hit the rings plane at more than (say) ten metres per second you will be in a lot of trouble." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdl2rih" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "Great question! There's been a lot of investigation into biological differences related to depression; much of this work (at least that I'm familiar with) is related to hormonal differences. However, you're asking specifically about structural differences, so I'll give you an example from morphometry, though this admittedly is potentially related to hormone dysregulation.\n\nMany studies have shown morphological differences is in the size of the anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala, among some other areas (see meta-analysis _URL_0_). The ACC is involved in affect regulation and motivation, two areas which are impaired in major depressive disorder (MDD). The amygdala is an important area for emotional learning as well as fear and aggression. \n\nThe decreased size of these areas may be due to dysregulation of the HPA axis which controls the release of gluccocorticoids, a hormone associated with stress. Past studies have demonstrated a link between early childhood stressors, adult brain morphometry, and the course of MDD (see _URL_1_ and _URL_2_). \n\nIt's important to think about the ontology of MDD then not as someone simply having a different brain, though that may be the case. Rather the course of MDD may be dependent on a number of biological (e.g. genetic), developmental, and situational factors which interact to bring about the disorder. One must consider factors like early childhood experiences, genetic predispositions, and recent traumas, which may lead to hormonal dysregulation (say, of the HPA axis), which may culminate in structural differences." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032711001480", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395610000154", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16616722" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck9kdni" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "it's not just the cords. it's the shape of the voicebox. the throat. the teeth the cheek. and the muscle control" ] }

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