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Why did England and France develop a strong centralized government while the Holy Roman Empire stayed decentralized and fragmented? | #**Summary**
Possible reasons for a decentralized and fragmented HRE
1. Structural causes
- Elective monarchy and papal coronation
- No single "capital city"
- Harder taxation and recruitment?
2. Religious and political causes
- Augsburg and Westphalia led to confessional stalemate
- Religious fragmentation trig... |
Why do many people take sniper kill counts for granted? Can we really trust any of the offical numbers, some as high as 4-500? How reliable are the figures? | Follow up question.
Wasn't the only way to "confirm" a kill to collect the dog tags? I highly doubt that snipers collected dog tags, especially when their targets would usually be surrounded by soldiers?
Edit: had a little dig around online and found that some snipers in WW2 would claim a hit (bullet hitting target) ... |
In fantasy it is common to read about colored or painted armor. Is there any historical basis for this? | Oh yes. When I first read your question I thought of enameled armor but some poking around turned up [this wonderful article from The Met](_URL_0_). Depending on the fantasy story, I doubt armor was *quite* as colorful (at least anything that wasn't gold, silver, or bronze, but as the article details there were many te... |
How common was the surname 'Hitler' in Germany/Austria prior to the 1930s? Did people later drop it because of its connotations? | This is some anecdotal evidence.
The name "Adolf" was a relatively common one in Belgium prior to World War II. One of the most famous 19th century Belgian politicians was [Adolf Daens](_URL_1_). After World War 2, the name died out. Parents stopped naming their babies Adolf, but I don't know if existing "Adolfs" chan... |
During timeperiods with more oxygen in the atmosphere, did fires burn faster/hotter? | Yes. And during periods with lower oxygen levels, fires burned more slowly or not at all. Some natural fuels will burn at high oxygen concentrations but not low. [This article](_URL_0_) examines these relationships. Wildfires may actually act to stabilize atmospheric oxygen levels. If the concentration increases, ... |
When in high school I remember somebody telling me the fire us made of a different sate of matter (different being not solid, liquid or gas) called plasma. Is there any truth to this statement and if so what exactly is plasma? | > Is there any truth to this statement and if so what exactly is plasma?
Absolutely it is true!
The standard response is that plasmas are the fourth state of matter, just like you can heat a solid into a liquid and a liquid into a gas you can heat a gas into a plasma. The transition happens because individual atoms r... |
Why can you rename, or change the path of, an open file in OS X but not Windows? | The Windows filesystem identifies files by their paths (including the file names)—if you change a file’s path, applications and the operating system will perceive it as a new file with no connection to the original.
The OS X filesystem identifies files by an independent file ID, which remains fixed if the file is move... |
what are the "loudness wars", why are they happening, and why should anyone care that music is getting louder? | Music is getting compressed so it sounds louder. Before this you're set your volume to your preferred level and would hear everything from quiet notes to very loud and distinct drum hits. Now the quiet notes are louder, the mid range is louder, and consequently the formerly loud and distinct drum hits are just barely l... |
how do processors work? how is a simple silicon chip able to perform calculations? | This is a complicated topic built on very simple ideas. If you go step by step you should be able to wrap your head around it.
**What is a semi-conductor?** Starting all the way down at the atomic level. In pure silicon crystals, the atoms are neatly arranged, and all have their outer electron shell full, so it won't ... |
Is it possible that society actually needs wars as an engine for progress in technology? What does history say about this? | This question is so broad, the answer will depend pretty much entirely on what you want it to be. It would be easy to name many cases in which war produced technological innovations, but just as easy to cite many cases in which it didn't. Whichever point you want to prove, you can pick your examples to match. Someone w... |
how do companies like walmart profit from selling gift cards to other services when a gift card costs the amount of credit it's worth? | it is a strategy used to get people in the door, much like a sale, it is ok to not make as much money on one or two items because usually when people come in they buy more than they were intending to in the first place, it happens. so to get people in the door it is actually more profitable to sell some things at a red... |
The Norse people were shown to be capable raiders, especially in the British Isles. The Anglo-Saxons despite divided were socially and militarily organised, why did they, or others, never seek or attempt to attack Scandinavia? | I afraid that I cannot offer a single definitive answer to 'why X didn't Y' type question of OP. Instead I'll make some corrections to OP's premise below.
First of all, there was no known unified large-scale kingdom in Scandinavia before the middle of the 10th century (until the rise of the Jelling dynasty in Denmark... |
islands like hawaii seem to very quickly get diverse vegetation even though they pop up in the middle of the ocean, so where do the first seeds come from? | Seeds travel in many ways. Some get there by water, traveling on air currents (think dandelion) or by animals (bird eats seed, undigested seed from excrement finds new home), and by humans.
In Hawaii's case, many of their trees and plants were brought to the island by early settlers.
Edit: removed inaccurate info... |
If photons are smaller than atoms, why don't they pass through solid matter? | The closest thing to "size" for a photon is its wavelength. Different types of light have different wavelengths: x-rays have really short wavelengths, while radio waves have really long wavelengths. Visible light is somewhere in the middle.
If the wavelength is small compared to whatever we're dealing with, then you c... |
I know of absolute zero at -273.15°C, but is there an absolute hot? | We don't know if there's a maximum temperature.
In certain models -- string theory is one of them -- there is a maximum temperature called the *Hagedorn temperature*. This arises because the number of possible high energy states increases sufficiently fast that as you put more energy into the system, it gets spread o... |
why does light only penetrate 1000 meters of the ocean and not the entire ocean? | Roughly speaking, every metre of water will reduce the light by a fraction. Let's say that after 10m half the light is gone. After 20m, only a quarter would be left. After 100m, only a thousandth of the light would be getting through. (Number pulled out of my thin air.) In practice, presence of creatures/debris/differe... |
Did the Soviet Union have competitive entrance examinations for Universities? If yes, how did they differ from the ones in Europe and US? | As a follow up question to OP's question, how common was it for Soviet universities to increase the difficulty of the entrance exams for, so-called, "undesirables"?
[This article](_URL_0_) highlights the unfairness of entrance exams given to prospective Jewish students at the mathematics department of Moscow State Uni... |
What is the significance of the use of "I am" instead of "I have" when Vishnu says, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"? | You would probably receive a more thorough and knowledgable answer if you asked this question in /r/linguistics.
However, I can tell you that the [present perfect](_URL_1_) construction "I am become" is not the result of a direct translation of Sanskrit, but an artifact of early modern English that most likely stems f... |
On YouTube I can watch extremely detailed videos of ancient Roman battles that show what each section of the army did and at what time. How is this known, exactly? Was there just a scribe sitting on a hill recording the battle? | Well yes, there were always reporters for the [*Novum Eburicum Tempora*.](_URL_0_)
But seriously, it is worth just looking at the source material for this. The reconstruction of Teutoberg is more complicated than most in part because batlefield archaeology has actually played a role in shaping our understanding of it,... |
How exactly does the rabies virus control human beings (stop them from drinking)? | Rabies infects neurones that control respiration and swallowing.
There is an automatic cycle you usually don’t notice around breathing and swallowing.
The rabies infection of the neurones controlling that cause it to become unreliable.
An infected person starts to have trouble swallowing and the negative reinforcemen... |
how come when you crack your knuckles underwater, it is incredibly loud, but when you try and scream underwater, the sound is muffled to a whimper? | Water transmits sounds quite well, so if an action vibrates the water to make a sound, you'll be able to hear it clearly in the local area. However, sound does not cross mediums very well. When you're trying to talk (or scream) underwater, the sound is being generated by vibrating air in your vocal chords. When this hi... |
Did 'Population: ' signs actually appear outside towns in the American West? If so what was their purpose? | American expansion always included strong elements of boosterism: wanting to believe that your town was bigger and better, or would soon be bigger and better, than other nearby towns. Because I’ve never seen any suggestion that population signs were posted for view by passing railway passengers, I believe the practice... |
why does orange juice after brushing my teeth with mint tooth paste feel like the gods are punishing me? | Orange juice is very sour and very sweet. Your tooth paste temporarily makes you unable to taste sweetness. Without the sweet there to balance it, the sourness of orange juice becomes kinda overwhelming.
[A similar thing happens with the miracle berry, which blocks sour and salty tastes](_URL_0_) |
Is there anything special or discerning about "visible light" other then the fact that we can see it? | It's not amazingly special, but there are some good reasons why animals have similar ranges of vision (although some go a little bit into infrared and ultraviolet). I can't talk about evolutionary pressure because that's not my field, but I can talk about the physics of light and why if I was the engineer tasked with d... |
How were the Romans able to replenish so much of their manpower despite devastating losses in battles such as Cannae? | I take it your question is less about Roman logistics and more about the specific fact that the forces at Cannae were effective crushed as a standing army, and how did Rome recover from something like that?
First thing is first, with Cannae specifically there were very real and very profound consequences. Several cit... |
Why do you see double when drinking or sometimes experience the situation where you need to close one eye to concentrate on written text? More specifically, what mechanisms in the brain create the situation where hemispheres of the brain might not communicate correctly in this situation? | Thank you for this question, there is some fascinating work in the brain going on here.
Alcohol is a "depressant". This means that it slows down the brain. When we are intoxicated with alcohol our eye tracking slows down (along with a lot of other brain processes).
Eye tracking is what makes both of our eyes look at ... |
How come Ireland adopted the language of England, but not its religion, while Finland adopted the religion of Sweden, but not its language? | I can't speak to Finland and Sweden, but in Ireland, English was pretty heavily enforced as a language by the British colonists. Irish was prohibited in British National Schools, and the famines hit the rural areas, where Irish was a majority language, much harder than urban areas where English was more popular. There'... |
why do all animals, even insects, seem to go nuts over the red dot? | > Felidae (all kinds of cats from large to small) brains and eyes are geared to a) notice motion and b) play with their prey. Playing with prey is the best way to kill possibly dangerous animals... especially things like venomous snakes. Dodge in, bat the hell out of it before it can strike, dodge out. After 5 or 6 rep... |
why has no one crossed a dandelion with a carrot or parsnip, thus creating a nutritious vegetable that grows wild as a weed? | A few things. First, dandelions *are* nutritious vegetables that you can eat lots of ways.
Second, a weed is just any unwanted plant - they typically grow more aggressively than cultivated plants because they are evolved specifically for the environment in which they are found and because they don't waste any energy p... |
if george washington warned us about the power of parties, how was he imagining the government to work? | A multiple party system is fine. The more groups there are, the more they have to work together as a team to meet the majority set in the rules and pass a law. Thus, the things that get passed are generally what the majority approves of.
A two party system leads to black-or-white, zero sum thinking. If my team didn't ... |
What was the truth behind the Allies' accusations that the German Army committed horrific war crimes/atrocities in Belgium during World War One? | This is an important and complex question. The **TL;DR** on it is "yes, more or less, but it gets complicated."
To begin with, [here is a proclamation](_URL_3_) by the German General Otto von Emmich, distributed widely in Belgium in the autumn of 1914 as the German army crossed the tiny nation’s borders and began its... |
why does a knife need to be moved to be sharp? if you touch a knife it's ok, but if you drag your finger down the edge it hurts. | Knives are still sharp straight-on and can cut that way. However, at a microscopic level, even straight-edged knives have tiny teeth. So when you move the edge against the item to be cut, you are actually running a tiny ultra-sharp saw across it.
[Micro photo of a razor's edge can be seen here.](_URL_0_) |
When and why did golf become the default "upper-class hangout/dealmaking" activity? What filled that role before? | In ancient Persia, there was quite an exciting sport that we've been able to reconstruct from artistic depictions, and also the preserved fragments from the ancient Persian *On the art of entertaining officials*, an important handbook for satraps and other royal officials. Whenever a group of royal officials were serio... |
How different is breast milk to formula in terms of the baby's health? | Please remember that this is /r/askscience. While it may be tempting to share your own experiences as a parent, this forum is for a discussion of science. **Please refrain from sharing your own experiences or speculation/guesses.**
There is a lot of research on this topic, so please make sure to use scientific sourc... |
The new kilogram definition seems complex. Why not define it in terms of the mass of a proton? | It is not possible to precisely collect X protons under conditions that it could be used for a standard of mass. You could try for example saying that a kilogram is the mass of (0.1 m)^3 of water, but then you'd have to control precisely for temperature, pressure, isotopic composition, etc in a way that is precise to 1... |
growing up my mother always told me to never start a pot of boiling water from hot tap water only cold. what's the logic behind that if any? | In the past, hot water was stored in a separate holding tank where it was kept heated. This water was not necessarily "safe" for drinking as the same water could be sitting for days at a time.
I've also heard that old lead pipes leach lead into hot water, but not into cold water. This explains why hot water would be ... |
I have heard that H. P. Lovecraft came to regret his racist views later in his life. Is this true? | It's hard to answer the question of how someone felt inside, but to the extent we can judge a man's feelings and thoughts based on his words, the answer is no, he didn't. Or, at least, he didn't state in a public way that he did.
S.T. Joshi, certainly one of Lovecraft's most devoted historians, biographers, and, it mu... |
Are there any mammals with the same or similar vocal range/abilities as humans? | Dogs actually have pretty similar ranges as humans, from a deep bark to a high pitched wimper.
More interesting is vocal ability question... Both birds and (some) whales are known to be able to imitate human speech. |
"At near-light speed, we could travel to other star systems within a human lifetime, but when we arrived, everyone on earth would be long dead." At what speed does this scenario start to be a problem? How fast can we travel through space before years in the ship start to look like decades on earth? | It follow the formula for the Lorentz factor, which is 1/sqrt(1-v^(2)/c^(2)). At 86% the speed of light, you age one year for every two years on Earth, at 99% the speed of light you age one year for every seven years on Earth.
edit: I have to go now so stop asking me about warp drives! |
why do so many games have a "start" screen where you have to push a button before they decide to start a several minute loading process? (i'm looking at you, battlefield 4) | The primary reason is going to be player input. Let's say you omit that start screen, and just begin loading. All of a sudden, the player is sitting there, as you say, for minutes at a time, before anything happens. Is the game working right? did I do something wrong? is it frozen?
By forcing a player to hit start, it... |
How did some species (i.e, humans) come to require proteins that they could not produce themselves? | I think what you meant to ask is why some species have come to lose the ability to synthesize certain amino acids - not proteins. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. In the process of digestion, any protein that you consume are actually decomposed into the amino acid building blocks, which are then absorbe... |
how did humans develop such that a well balanced human diet consist of a wide variety of foods when throughout most of human history we only had access to a few foods? | Eating sub optimally does not mean a swift certain death. It means a slightly lower quality of life (think of how you feel from a week of eating fast food vs a week of eating healthy), deteriorating more quickly (your brain may slow down faster as you age), a slightly higher risk of developing disease, etc.
Good nutri... |
What happened to the French Foreign Legion during WWII? Was the legion divided, or did most of the legion go to either side? Were there ever any attempts by Petain's government to establish a foreign legion from Axis Powers? | I think this is a question that I can actually answer. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the French Foreign Legion's demographics from 1914 to 2014.
The French Foreign Legion was very fractured during the Second World War. There was no central command that organized all of the different garrisons and formations of t... |
why do cultures who rely heavily on rice in their diet typically use white rice which has less nutritional value than other types of rice? | One of the reasons why Asians have used mainly white rice over the years is that white rice lasts longer in storage than brown rice. The essential fatty acids found in brown rice usually begin to go bad after approximately 6 to 12 months of storage, the exact amount of time depending on how much oxygen is available. Wh... |
If Christianity came from the Middle East, why are there no Middle Eastern countries with a Christian majority? | Christians in the Middle East largely converted to Islam over the centuries. However, there are still substantial Christian minorities in some Middle-Eastern countries.
Lebanon has a large Christian population, currently making up 40% of the population. Christians were, in fact, the majority religious group in Lebanon... |
If heat is the jiggling of particles which can't exceed the speed of light, does this mean there's an "Absolute Hot" similar to absolute zero? | "There is no agreed-upon value, among physicists, for a maximum possible temperature. Under our current best-guess of a complete theory of physics, the maximum possible temperature is the Planck temperature, or 1.41679 x 10^32 Kelvins" - [Source](_URL_0_).
That's 141,679,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 K. |
How come so many contemporary English words about spycraft are French words? (espionage, sabotage, reconnaissance, coup, rogue, etc...) | For a few hundred years, the English court all spoke French. Because of this, the English language absorbed thousands of French terms through this period. So, words that would have been the concern of those in power are often going to be French. For example, a Cow is an animal, Beef is food. The nobility used the Frenc... |
when i'm on a cell phone, and i can hear the other person crystal clear, but they say the quality is so bad on their end that they can hardly understand me, what's going on? | Cell towers have more power than a phone, so "tower to phone" is more reliable than "phone to tower". For example, if you are close to your tower and the other person is far away from their tower, they can hear you fine, but their return signal may have trouble reaching the tower. |
What was Mexico and Canada's reaction to the American civil war? Were there any foreign volunteers or mercanaires? | Mexico was busy fighting France. The Cinco de Mayo holiday originated around the same time, after the Battle of Puebla, and even spread to camps in the states.
Canada was still British. The South begged Britain to join their cause, and they thought that the British would want to break the blockade for access to Amer... |
Why did camels never catch on as transport animals in the American West, as they did in almost every other desert/plains on earth? | Interestingly, both camelids and equines are native to North America - after having colonised Eurasia, both vanished from North America, most probably having been hunted to extinction after humans colonised the continent, roughly 8-10 000 years ago.
HORSES:
Horses returned in 1494, with the second expedition of Colum... |
how do humans taste things like smoke and metallic flavors if there are only five tastes (salty,sweet, sour, bitter, umami)? | While the tongue only detects 5 ‘tastes’, smell is also a compnent, and it is this that creates ‘flavour’. Without any sense of smell an apple and onion would taste VERY similar. Food is ‘smelt’ through olfactory glands in the nose, via the internal nasal cavity.
EDIT: Corrected location of glands per several commente... |
In space, can magnetic material orbit a magnet using magnetism the same way mass orbits each other using gravity? | No it can't, for ways that are difficult to explain without math. Basically, there are only two types of forces that lead to stable orbits: Coulomb/Newton forces that obey an inverse square law, and harmonic/elastic/spring forces that obey a linear force law. This is proven as [Bertrand's theorem](_URL_1_)
Forces betw... |
what is the difference between dna and rna, and how do the work in biology? | DNA is like a book in the reserve section of the library. It’s the full complete section of your entire genetic information that can’t leave the nucleus.
RNA are the photocopies/notes of the book. You can take those anywhere and use them to study, and they are only going to be the pages that you actually need at that... |
why do we wake up to alarms even if we seem oblivious to background noise while asleep? | There are two forces in play:
The sound of an alarm is annoying. While the radio or TV can be annoying, it's not annoying enough. For example, I often fall asleep during a radio program, but I get woken up at the hourly beeps before the news.
Training: Your brain learns to recognize the alarm sound and the requested ... |
How much do we really know about the Roman Kingdom (and the founding of the city)? | EDIT: [Much more detailed response](_URL_0_).
This is very much an open question. Twenty years ago, at least in English language scholarship, the answer would have been practically nothing, or at least nothing worth mentioning. However, my understanding is that in the past decades scholars such as TJ Cornell in his *B... |
After divorcing or beheading 80% of his wives at that point, what did Henry VIII's last wife expect to happen to her? | I understand where you are coming from, but the question far oversimplifies the politics and reality facing Henry VIII during the early sixteenth century. Let's take a look at this one wife at a time.
Katherine of Aragon - This is obviously the most contentious, and is often oversimplified as Henry desiring to get rid... |
What was the woman's role in Viking society, particularly but not limited to when men were out on conquest? | Jenny Jochens wrote the definitive treatise on women in Old Norse society in her creatively named, *Women in Old Norse Society*, where she examined what could be gleaned about approximately half of the human population in Scandinavia (though she focuses almost entirely on Iceland), from a few select texts including sag... |
There has been some claim that the Dalai Lama presided over a feudalistic/slave Tibet until Chinese Communism abolished the system. How accurate is this? | Using the term 'feudalistic' and 'slavery' as a comparative isn't a very appropriate way to view either system. Feudalism implies an aristocracy who owns land by inherited right, but also have a duty to the bonded serfs who work the land and recognition of a greater authority. Slavery implies the use of people as liqui... |
Is there any meaning to the phrase "twice as hot" or "twice as cold" as 0 degrees? | **tl;dr: Yes you can double or half the temperature of something, but not in the way you're probably thinking.**
The confusing part of this topic for most people is that the temperature scales that we use in day-to-day life are kind of...arbitrary. The "zero" on the Fahrenheit scale was based on [the temperature of a ... |
How can TSA/Airport security workers stand next to X and T ray machines all day everyday without any ill effects? | Like any radiation worker, they apply ALARA. That means that you should take steps to make your radiation exposure "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". The ways to do this are the maximize distance from the source, minimize time near it, and use shielding when possible.
If you pay close attention when passing through se... |
can we really clean pesticide off fruit by just rinsing them off? wouldn't that mean rain would rinse it off all the time? | You're not cleaning off the pesticide. You're cleaning off dirt and other toxins that may have stuck to the wax they put on the fruit to make it shiny.
Pesticides stick to the fruit, but they are also absorbed by the plant and end up within the flesh of the fruit. |
what is at stake in the us senate filibuster by ted cruz that has been going on all evening? | He is attempting to make a point about how serious he feels it is to oppose the Affordable Care Act, and holding up the business of the Senate, but other work can proceeded elsewhere and he is not preventing any votes from being held. This can not effect the Affordable Care Act itself, as that is already law. It is pu... |
How did Spain transition from fascist dictatorship to its current democratic, constitutional monarchy? Is it true that Franco bequeathed the country to King Juan-Carlos and it was he that instituted democracy? | Modern Spanish history is one of the most interesting topics I have found. Anyway, onto an answer:
Franco approved a law of succession in 1947, saying that Spain was kingdom and would remain a kingdom. Of course, Spain would have no king while Franco was alive as he was acting head of state. The law also said he could... |
Is there any validity to the claim that Epsom salts "Increase the relaxing effects of a warm bath after strenuous exertion"? If so, what is the Underlying mechanism for this effect? | First I would ask what exactly are "relaxing effects" and how do you measure them. If they are talking about muscle pain or soreness, there is very little research and not much info on the purported mechanism.
This is a nice overview:
_URL_0_ |
what is germany doing differently then america where america is trillions of dollars in debt while germany has a several billion dollar surplus? | In the EU, there is a rule that requires every country to either keep it's debt below 60% of gdp, or actively on decreasing it.
Now, enforcement here has been generally lax, but it tightened up with the financial crisis. Since Germany is above the debt limit (a result of the reunification), they're working on reducing... |
What were the religious beliefs of the Varangian Guard and how did they interact with the religion of the Byzantine Empire? | The Varangian Guard originated as settlers and emigres from Northern Europe who traveled southwards and sold their services as mercenaries to the wealthy nobles around the Volga River, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea.
Throughout the history of the later Byzantine Empire the emperor became more and more dependent o... |
why is it called "latin" america when spain/portugal are the biggest european influences to the region? | Spain, Portugal, France and Italy(and a few other minor countries) make up Latin Europe. The all speak romance languages which evolved from Latin after the fall of the Roman Empire. Since as you mentioned Spain and Portugal had the biggest influence on them they are subsequently known as the Latin America similar to th... |
Is 'staying up late' a new habit since the advent of the electric light, or have humans always been night owls? | The evidence from medieval Latin Europe is mixed. While we can trace adaptations to the shorter winter days even at the institutional, official level, it's clear there was plenty going on in the dark.
I'd like to direct your attention to the wonderful discussions in this thread by me, /u/mikedash, /u/Limond, and /u/al... |
Marco Polo is quoted to have said on his deathbed, "I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed." What things may he not have described to the public and why? | Jacopo da Acqui's report of Marco Polo's last testament should be put in its proper context. His family members were trying to get him to repent and disown all the lies he'd written, to which Polo sneered that he had not told even *half* of what he'd seen.
Assuming the anecdote is true (or even if it's an invention by... |
I keep hearing about outbreaks of measles and whatnot due to people not vaccinating their children. Aren't the only ones at danger of catching a disease like measles the ones who do not get vaccinated? | Sadly, no. Unvaccinated people are indeed at the highest risk, however, while vaccines are very effective, no vaccine is 100% effective. Most childhood vaccines protect between 85 and 99 percent of the population. For some reason, [a small percentage of folks who are vaccinated do not develop immunity](_URL_2_). This ... |
Vikings are famous for raping and pillaging, and undoubtedly more than one woman must have given birth to a half-Viking child who was a product of rape. How did societies treat these children? | Rape was the fear, expectation, the weapon, the reward for soldiers, and the terrible reality of medieval (ancient, early modern, *modern*) warfare. And by warfare, we're talking about short raids, longer "campout" raids that could last a week or a month, the stereotypical protracted siege culminating with "taking the ... |
how do batteries (aa, aaa, b, c, d, etc.) get their names? what do they mean? | Every time you step up a letter, the batteries get bigger. Because we don’t have a letter smaller than A, we repeat the letter.
AAAA < AAA < AA < A < B < C < D
Edit:
Yes, there’s an A battery. Yes, there’s a B battery. No, they didn’t name them after bra sizes. No, that joke you stole from another post abo... |
Why is meat, specifically bacon described as lasting days or up to a week without refrigeration in older books, but these days it’s recommended to throw out bacon left at room temp for more than two hours? | Keeping food over long periods of time was a great challenge in the pre-industrial world, before refrigeration. Even things like ice boxes ( and icemen to fill them) didn't become a common thing until the later 19th c. , after ice was developed as a commodity. The methods were few: but most still exist. Some things co... |
Is there a reason all the planets orbit the sun in approximately the same plane and direction? | Yes. Conservation of angular momentum. Our solar system started out as a rotating gas cloud. Over time, this cloud collapsed and denser regions formed the sun and the planets. But due to conservation of angular momentum, the rotation had to remain, which means that the solar system as a whole rotates around the same ax... |
How did the sections of US states become known as "counties" even though they have never been ruled by counts? | Point of order: The British counties have never been ruled by counts (or viscounts): it stems from the Normans, who simply took over the Saxon shires (that's why it's all "Hampshire", "Cheshire", "Renfrewshire" etc.), but brought their Norman French with them (counts actually being a thing on the continent).
Historica... |
why does your neck get tense when you’re stressed and how does a massage fix it? | When you are stressed, you experience fight-or-flight, even if the stressor is emotional/psychological in nature. When this response occurs, it causes you to produce more adrenaline. Adrenaline causes muscle tension (muscle tension being a sign of stress). If you massage a muscle, you can cause that muscle to relax.... |
how did humans in asia evolve to have narrower eyes, why did africans skin stay black while arabic and european peoples became lighter? | If you live in the tropics, dark skin is a helpful adaptation, because it protects your skin from sunlight (fewer sun burns and cancers).
If you live in the northern latitudes where there is significantly less sun certain times of the year, light skin is a helpful adaptation, because it allows more sunlight to penetra... |
How were teen pop idols such as Elvis Presley or The Beatles perceived among male teens? | Apparently the French boys loved the Beatles even more than the girls did.
> Ringo recalled, “These boys chased us all over Paris. Before, we'd been more used to girls. The audience was a roar instead of a scream; it was a bit like when we played Stowe boys' school.”
[George wasn't very enthused about that though,... |
Can satellites be in geostationary orbit at places other than the equator? Assuming it was feasible, could you have a space elevator hovering above NYC? | Geostationary orbits can only occur along the equator. Any orbit occurs on a two dimensional plane that passes through the center of mass for the object it is orbiting. For a satellite orbiting earth anywhere north or south of the equator the position directly below the satellite would have to move north and south wi... |
what is the big deal with stradivarius violins, can't the just make an exact clone of it by analyzing it? | They're made of denser wood due to the "little ice age" which took place during their construction, and this supposedly gives them an unique sound.
In reality, the effect comes from their name. In double-blind tests they perform just as well (or worse) as your average violin. |
When groups of animals that use echolocation do so, how are they able to differentiate which sound was theirs? Can a dolphin that’s in the middle of a group pick up on the sound of another dolphin that’s on the outer edge of said group and know exactly what the other dolphin is seeing? | I actually can answer this specifically for moustached bats. I’m not sure if a similar mechanism exists for other animals that echolocate, so I can’t speak to dolphins or anything.
So as you probably know, bats hunt in huge swarms, so it’s important for a bat to be able to distinguish his own echolocation call from t... |
why cant we just stop media outlets from covering terrorism? wouldn't that effectively make it pointless? | Freedom of the press.
If you prevent the media from reporting something, that opens room for abuse.
Police beating that man to death? Fits most definitions of terrorism.
That government crackdown on dissidents? Terrorism.
Invading another country? Terrorism. |
Without hindsight was Stalin's reasoning for believing Hitler wouldn't invade reasonable? | In the books I've read I've never seen any opinion that Stalin's belief was in any way the result of a rational examination of the available evidence. From Mein Kampf, Stalin knew that Hitler intended to attack the Soviet Union. He also knew that Hitler had abrogated peace treaties in the past, indeed had helped Hitler... |
What makes paper fresh from the copier hot? Why don't inkjet printers produce the same amount of heat as copiers do? | Laser printers and photocopiers don't work under the same principle as an inkjet printer. When you make a photocopy, the first step is to give an electrostatic charge to a special cylinder. That cylinder is coated with a material that becomes conductive when exposed to light. When the document is being scanned, a stron... |
if it takes lawyers 3 years to learn the law, how can we trust a cop to learn it in 6 months? | Cops don't need to know the bankruptcy code, or contract law, or probate law, etc. The part of the law they're generally concerned with is much smaller. And they don't need to be experts - anything they do is generally useless in the long term if the DA (a "real" lawyer) isn't willing to prosecute you.
There is a pr... |
why does depression sometimes cause cognitive dysfunction issues, such as reduced attention span, memory, concentration, information processing capability and executive functioning, that sometimes persist after a depressive episode is over? | Depression still exists in a depressed person's brain even after an "episode". Depression is more than just in your mind, it is like a mental disorder that actually causes physical changes in your brain's structure and neural network, and it is those changes that can cause the other symptoms you mentioned. |
Do more physically attractive people tend to have more pleasant (or even sexy) voices? What role does voice play in human mate selection? | Not so much. The markers identified for physical attraction (facial symmetry) and voice preferences (vocal tract size) do not correlate in either direction. Furthermore, the studies that have discovered these preferences lack cross-cultural validation.
**Voice:** Even within a population, these preferences appear to s... |
Why do we steer vehicles from the front, but aircraft (elevators/rudder) from the rear? | That's a good question, but in short the way vehicles and aircraft are controlled aren't really related. I can explain why standard aircraft have the control surfaces at the back on the tail (the rudder/vertical stabilizer/elevator/horizontal stabilizer assembly being called the *empennage*).
Also note, some ground ve... |
It's a common trope in 19th century fiction for a character to descend into insanity. What would 19th century "insanity" mean in modern medical terms? | Edit: Thanks for your patience, everyone. I hope you will enjoy my answer: please scroll further down the page to find what became many hours of research for your amusement and edification.
Could you please give some examples of the texts you mean? For example, a lot of research has been done on the trope of the "madw... |
If I went to 1st century Rome with 100 pounds of salt, how rich would I be? | Are you sure you didn't mean to write pepper or some other (for that age) luxury spice? At that time the Mediterranean cultures already knew how to extract salt from the sea and salt mines were abundant. 100 pounds of salt wouldn't get you very far. |
During the 18th and 19th centuries, most armies had a standardised coat colour - red for Britain, green for Russia, white for Austria. How were the colours determined and was consideration given to not using the same as a likely opponent? | So, generally during this time period, the color of the uniform would vary. While Britain became famous for their red coats, up until the Napoleonic era and afterward, the regimental uniforms would be up to the decision of the regimental officer, and the same for foreign regiments in the French service (such as the Swi... |
when countries like north korea spend money on war supplies like missiles, nukes, guns, planes etc. who sells it to them? | The North Koreans have purchased weapons largely from the Soviets/Russians and Chinese over the decades as well as having left overs going back as far as WWII from American and Western manufacturers. They have their own arms manufacturing industry which produces two Main Battle Tanks based on Russian/Chinese designs as... |
Why don't I feel a shock when touching both ends of a household battery? Or even a car battery? | Humans are not that good of a conductor. They are better conductors than plastic but not better than for instance metal. When you measure the resistance between your left and right hand you might find something like 1MOhm. With a car battery of 12 volt there will only flow 12 microampere(12x10^-6) between your fingers.... |
I’m trying to better understand Marcus Crassus’ portfolio. What does it mean to be an ancient billionaire? How did he spend his money, and where did his wealth go when he died? | Two authors estimate Crassus' wealth. According to Plutarch, he assessed his own property at 7,200 talents of gold. Pliny the Elder tells us that he possessed the equivalent of 200,000,000 sesterces. Attempts to calculate the modern equivalents of these amounts are [usually based on bullion value](_URL_0_), and so fail... |
My teacher says that the 1800 election was the first time in world history that power was peacefully transferred between parties. It seems too general to be true. Is he right? | This seems to me like the kind of claim that can only be supported with a ton of goalpost moving on the terms of "peace," "transfer," and "party" against counter-examples.
EG 1 In 1714 the Throne of England was transferred from the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover. I would call this a peaceful transfer, but a... |
if dna contains informations about our whole body, why can we not regenerate certain body parts if they gets removed? | IKEA instructions do not equal a finished IKEA cabinet :) similarly, if you build the cabinet you no longer have the materials to build another one, even though you still have the instructions. You need more materials (which, for humans, basically boils down to stem cells).
This isn’t perfectly 1 to 1, though. Most o... |
How do denatured proteins in cooked food get absorbed and "used" in the body? | You already solved it - proteins are made from amino acids. Denaturing a protein just changes the conformation (shape) irreversibly. Your body would do that when you eat it. You need 22(?) essential amino acids in your diet that your body can't produce. Your body breaks down those amino acid chains and reconfigures the... |
Humans seem to have a universally visceral reaction of disgust when seeing most insects and spiders. Do other animal species have this same reaction? | Actually, elephants avoid bees. Whether or not it’s disgust in particular would be difficult to decipher, but it has been useful in creating natural barriers for the animals to keep them away from crops while giving the farmers another valuable crop.
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Floating Feature: STEM the Tide of Ignorance by Sharing the History of Science and Technology | So I get that the Soviet propaganda poster is sort of a joke, but there is an interesting Soviet tie-in to the modern study of the history of science.
One of the most impactful papers given in the 20th century study of the history of science was that given by Boris Hessen, a Soviet physicist, at the Second Internatio... |
Does a multi-decade concentration of Radon gas lead to an accumulation of lead particles in an enclosed environment (basement)? | We're talking about concentrations that would be nearly undetectable if the substances weren't radioactive. Let's run some numbers.
The highest recorded residential levels of radiation from radon and its decay products have been on the order of 100,000 becquerels of activity per cubic meter of air, where 1 Bq is defin... |
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