question
stringlengths 19
300
| answer
stringlengths 31
1.02k
| negative_1
stringlengths 31
1.02k
|
|---|---|---|
Can someone please explain exactly what a 'Realist' person is? | A realist is best seen as an opposite to an 'idealist' (someone who is focused on ideals rather than the practicalities of life). A realist therefore views the world "as it is" and doesn't see it in idealised or romanticised way. Hope that helps! | “Real” means “actually existing,” “true or actual,” and “relating to something.” It is someone’s real property, and it relates to them. |
Why do some suicides attempts by gun fail? Specially shotgun in mouth. | Because if you imagine your brain like the tree, the most important stuff is the trunk or in this case your brain stem and going outwards. Most people put a shotgun in their mouth or against their face and pull the trigger however the gun isn't designed to be fired like this and it leaps around, the barrel moving a few centimeters can be the difference of you painting your brain on the wall or you ripping your face off entirely. tl;dr - gun likes to boogie down | Why do you think so many popular methods for suicide are ones that once you start them are difficult, if not impossible, for a single person to stop? Our instinct of self preservation is not foolproof, and you can get around it, it isn't 'trained' to notice lots of modern dangers or unobvious ones, like say swallowing pills. If I jump off a bridge, it wont matter much if that instinct kicks in. |
You have a two bladed fan. One Blade is inverted to push inwards, while the other blade stays normal and just pushes outwards. What Happens? | If by two-bladed, you mean that there are two blades attached to a central hub, and they are (for simplicity's sake) 180 degrees apart, and they push air in opposite directions... Then that's kindof interesting. There would be some weird torque on the shaft, but I think it depends on the the force exerted on the blades as they spin (which is used to calculate the torque), and the frequency of the blades. This question gets easier if we perform the experiment in a vacuum. | The simplest way to explain it is it's two fans facing each other. Power is applied to one fan, that blows fluid by the other fan and it spins. In real life they are very close and tightly located next to each other so the fluid can only flow through the fan blades. |
What is a choke hold? | Respiratory and vascular chokeholds restrict blood flow to the brain, depriving it of oxygen. In turn, somebody being "choked out" loses consciousness. If the brain is deprived of oxygen for prolonged periods, serious brain damage can occur. Chokeholds are used in a variety of martial arts. Either as a self-defence mechanism, or used in competitive sports to win a match. | Here is a link to help. They basically have a tube that is separate from their throat, so they do not choke [click here](_URL_0_) |
Why doesn't Wikileaks simply start a new site to avoid D.O.S. attacks? | [WikiLeaks Press](_URL_3_) is an endorsed WikiLeaks support project, and we host several mirrors: [_URL_7_](_URL_1_), [_URL_2_](http://_URL_2_), [_URL_9_](_URL_4_). While [cabledrum](_URL_5_) project is down (US State Department cables search engine), you can also use [_URL_0_](http://_URL_0_). We've also got the most up-to-date TrapWire docs up. You can follow us on [twitter](_URL_10_) for announcements of most recent mirror updates. | As many hacker groups put it, they usually do it "for the lulz". In other words, they get a kick out of (pleasure/enjoyment from) causing destruction, chaos, and/or inconvenience to many people. It satisfies their need for attention and to feel important -- as though they have accomplished something great (not great as in good, but rather great in the sense that it has a significant impact on people). It's a similar reason why some people develop viruses that provide no monetary benefit to the developer (ones which merely cause significant annoyance or inconvenience for users that have been infected). Sometimes these attacks are targeted though in the sense that they are motivated by certain ideologies or political beliefs (e.g. maybe the hacker/group views Microsoft or Sony as the enemy because they are doing something [or have done something] the hacker/group doesn't agree with). |
Why are humans faces and characteristics so different from each other, while almost every other animal look all the same? | They aren't. The individual members of almost every species of animal are just as unique as every human face. We just can't tell because our brains aren't wired to pick up those subtle differences. | All animals have variety in how they look, it's just more apparent in humans because you're used to looking for certain features to distinguish between them. That's also why some folks say everyone of a certain race looks the same, or they can't tell them apart: because they're not used to looking for the specific features that distinguish people from one another. |
Why do all radio station frequencies end in an odd number? | If two frequencies are too close together, you're going to get significant overlap and both will be pretty much unintelligible. By only assigning odd frequencies, they can ensure that there's at least a 0.2 MHz gap between each station (and even that isn't always enough). | Radio stations use a tiny chunk of the available frequencies, in order to reduce unnecessary noise in other frequencies used for other things. This [chart](_URL_0_) shows just how many things have to fit into the RF spectrum. |
Why "time flies when you're having fun" | Your brain can only concentrate on a handful of things at a time. When you are having fun your brain is focused on the fun and not the passage of time. Once the fun is over your brain is free to think about other things again such as the time. | Your sense of time is already imperfect (time flies when you're having fun for example). Throw in unconsciousness and your concept of time goes right out the window |
What Uniform is This? | Can confirm what you have here is most certainly not a British military uniform, a short google led me to the [Independent Order of Odd Fellows](_URL_0_). | Hurry up and wait. Pick that up. Polish this. Straighten that uniform. You need 8 copies of that form. That has never, ever, ever, ever, changed. Narrow your question some. |
What processes happen when someone dies from "natural death" or "old age"? What processes cause the death in the first place? | Died from 'old age' isn't a real medical reason, it's just what you say when someone died because their body was simply unable to continue functioning, and the reasons for that were due to degenerative oldness rather than drugs or something. Real causes of 'old age' death would usually be that an internal organ or two just crapped out and stopped working. What exactly happens to kill you depends on the failure in question. The processes that cause the death? As we age we lose our ability to heal to a good degree. Healing is much harder and takes much longer when you're 70 than when you're 30. As you get older and older, at some point, the body can't even keep up with just replacing cells that die during normal operation never-mind from injury, and at that point your health will inevitably decline until eventually the body can't even muster the strength to fix a vital organ. It will then fail. | Doctor here. Couldn't compete with /u/Kegnaught's response, but more simply: death from "old age" is a layman's term. When we sign death certificates we try to put in a cause of death that is more specifically proximate: in my experience, most often kidney failure. When you get very weak and frail you typically lose the drive to eat and drink, and the kidneys fail without water. This causes a buildup of toxins which lead to respiratory depression and eventually failure of your brain and heart. |
What is Material Science? | The science of determinig the properties of a material such as: Melting Point, Boiling Point, viscocity, solubility, reactivity, hardness, elasticity, and I'm sure a bunch of other qualities that I don't even know to ask about. It includes inventing new materials that have qualities usefull to varrious applications, like ceramics, alloys, polymers, and composites. | This is what [materials science](_URL_0_) and [statics](_URL_1_) is all about. |
What did dinosaur genitals look like? | The truth is we don’t really know, unfortunately soft tissues are not usually well preserved during fossilization. Having no direct evidence we are left more to the imagination of how it would look like by analyzing other similar related modern species like crocodiles and some type of birds. The Smithsonian has a very comprehensive series about dinosaurs and their gonads check it out it’s an interesting read. | Its happened with a very, very popular dino, the “brontosaurus”, who has been found to be a skull of a specimen put on the neck of another. |
If I drink huge amounts of green tea everyday will I be protected from cancer? | As a normal part of our immune systems, our inflammation cells produce Reactive Oxidative Species which aid in killing foreign antigens. These ROS are what causes damages when they are not contained inside these cells. Antioxidants help to control these ROS and results in less damage. However, there are many things that cause cancer that antioxidants do not help with so on that note, no you will not be protected from cancer. Also, nothing protects you 100% from cancer. You merely decrease your chance of getting cancer but if we want to get into this we'll have to talk about statistics which is for another topic. | Things that are said to cause cancer, with the exception of stuff that gives off radiation, does not actually cause cancer directly. Instead what it does is increase your risk of developing cancer. Cancer is a mutation in the cells that causes them to grow out of control in various ways. You can develop this mutation if you have never smoked a day in your life and live in a non-polluted mountain cabin, and you can be luck and never develop it smoking multiple packs a day in the most polluted city. Because we are dealing with odds there are some who will win and some who will be on one end of the spectrum, some on the other, and most somewhere in the middle. |
Why do some people find it easier to study and remember things very late at night? | Remembering, no. People find it easier to study because there are fewer distractions and also the deadline they are studying for is getting closer. | You pay much more attention to the time when you're studying, probably something like "only 10 minutes left" or whatever, you probably don't do that when you procrastinate. |
How do 3D movies work? | Seeing "3d" works by the brain taking two slightly offset images, one in each eye, and combining them to understand depth. A 3d movie will shoot the movie with a camera with two sensors at a slight distance apart like the eyes, effectively giving a "left" version of the movie and a "right". Then you have a special projector that can give the right sided image to the right eye. Currently, this is done often by polarizing the one image differently than the other, and have the viewer wear glasses that block the image you don't want in each eye. | > I don't find it disorienting and the picture looks (mostly) clear through the glasses, but nothing seems to have an added dimension. I can detect when they are trying to do something 3-D, but it looks flat, **albeit a bit more overtly layered than a standard movie.** (emphasis added) That's about it for 3D movies. They look like flat layers - like [Paper Mario](_URL_0_). More so than conventional movies, you have to have suspension of disbelief and forget that you're watching a movie in order for that to sink in easier. |
The difference between a course offered at a university vs a course offered at a community college. | Honestly? Not much. It's just that once you hit classes above a "sophomore" level, you need to go to a university. The lower level classes are pretty much the same though, and by pretty much I mean the variation between a university and a CC is about the same variance that you would get from professor to professor anyway. Hell, some professors teach at a CC some days and the university the others. It's also why you can transfer your credits from a CC to a four year university. Source: Went to a community college, learned the exact same things in basic classes as university friends, paid less. | Universities are a collection of colleges. For example, I go to the university of central florida but I am enrolled in the college of sciences because my major is political science. |
Why does YouTube stop the view count at ~300 views on popular videos and then updates it later? | This question has been asked many times before, but not recently so I'll help ya out. It stops at 301+ because YouTube automatically audits the views on a video at 301. The view counter is still ticking up, but they are confirming that the views are coming from legitimate sources and not botfarms. Likes are not audited so they keep ticking up. | Videos are stuck at 301 because YouTube starts to change the way they count views and they check the video starting after 300, so videos will often get stuck at 301 because it's the first number after 300, then youtube had to process it on their end before they start to count those views |
If scientists made an absolute 100% black material that absorbed all light what would our eyes see? | We would see perfect blackness in the shape of the object. | If you reverse the question the answer presents itself. If an object absorbed most light that hit it, how would it look? It would be darker than its surroundings, and consistent with what the human eye considers to be "black." What if an object reflected most light that hit it (but in a disorganized way, not like a mirror)? It would appear lighter than its surroundings, and would not have a color consistent with a specific wavelength of light, because it reflects each wavelength mostly-the-same. That looks white to us. Keep in mind that this applies to infrared as well, even though we can't see it. |
Why does cold air make us sick? | Cold air does not make us sick. Being cold for long periods can cause some health issues, but cold air isn't bad for you. | What tends to actually happen is that people in cold weather will have their heaters turned on. Heaters dry out the air, and in turn dry out your respiratory system's mucous membranes. The mucous secretions in your mouth/throat/respiratory system have immunoglobulins (primarily IgA) that help fight off bacteria. The mucous also helps "catch" particles in the air to prevent them from ever getting deep into your body where it can do harm. So it isn't the "cold weather" that gets you sick, but rather the environment you are in to stay comfortable that will hamper your immune system. |
How long after birth do eyeballs grow, if at all? | > The vertical measure, generally less than the horizontal distance, is about 24 mm among adults, at birth about 16–17 millimeters (about 0.65 inch). The eyeball grows rapidly, increasing to 22.5–23 mm (approx. 0.89 in) by three years of age. By age 13, the eye attains its full size. The typical adult eye has an anterior to posterior diameter of 24 millimeters, a volume of six cubic centimeters (0.4 cu. in.),[3] and a mass of 7.5 grams (weight of 0.25 oz.). Quoted off of Wikipedia: _URL_0_ tl;dr: Our eyes are generally 16-17 mm at birth, rapidly grow to about 22.5-23mm by age 3, and finish growing at about 24mm at age 13. | Eyelashes don't grow in the eyeball itself - they occasionally curve around and touch the surface of the eye, which is extremely annoying, but they grow from above and below. |
Why does the word "hour" get get an "an" in front of it instead of an "a" . I thought "an" was used before a vowel? | Whether or not you say “an” or “a” is determined by the sound of the first letter not the letter itself. In “hour” it makes an “o” sound so the correct thing to say would be “an”. | You use an when the beginning *sounds* like a vowel regardless of if it is one. European starts with a "y" sound which in this case counts as a consonant. Edit: another example you would say "an hour" because the h is silent. |
Why does an AI / Skynet mean war between robots and humanity ? | this trope exists only in fictional stories where without it there would be no conflict an thus no story to tell. there are plenty of AI in fiction where they do not go to war with humanity. | Because we don't know what it will be capable of or what it's intentions will be. If an AI becomes capable of improving itself it could become out of control and escalate it's abilities, and without morals it could go on as rampage destroying financial systems, traffic systems, power grid infrastructure, all kinds of things. We can understand the motives of a hacker or a terrorist but what an AI want to do could be beyond comprehension. |
What is the method and way of computational and visual detection of subatomic particles as seen in the CMS? | Do you mean the [Compact Muon Soleniod](_URL_0_)? If so I did quite a bit of computational work from ~2011-2015 as a collaborator on reconstruction of charged particles from the detector inputs in certain types of collisions, and would be happy to try to describe the process. | It really depends on what you mean by "see." Transmission electron microscopes can resolve single atoms, but scanning electron microscopes cannot. This article summarizes a few of the different techniques: _URL_0_ |
No shoes no service? Why not? | If you cut your foot walking barefooted down the street, you can't sue anyone. If you do the same thing in a restaurant or shop, you can sue them. That's the differences. Also, you know, other people in said shop don't always want to be subjected to your bare feet. | There isn't really any reason for them. Answer these questions for me: How long do you spend tying your shoes each day? How much money would you pay to spend a half that time tying your shoes? How much more money would you spend to spend half the time but still get shoes that were tied and not slip on? How long between charging your shoes would be enough for you to accept that you had to charge your shoes? The reason there aren't self-tying shoes is that tying shoes isn't a major problem that people have. It is a small inconvenience at most and to design and manufacture a shoe at a cost close enough to regular shoes that people would buy them is hard. Hard enough that the amount of work and time isn't worth the profit you might get selling the shoes. |
Russian Historians, any idea as to the context of this picture? | > Its a photograph entitled "Viktor Bulla's Pioneers in Defense Drill, Leningrad (1937)" > It appears on page 79 of a book of photographs called "Propaganda and Dreams" by Leah Bendavid-Val. Found [here](_URL_0_). | The standing collar, the double row button unfirom and the cap points to an Imperial Russian naval unform. However, most Russian uniforms of the era includes rank insignia on the shoulder, which his uniform does not. The beard indicates a post-Crimean war and pre-ww1 era, which fits with the cap. The Bulgarians and Germans wore similar caps. Do you have any knowledge of his nationality and the decade when the picture was taken? It would ease identifyin the photo a lot. |
Why does water turn to snow instead of ice? | Snow is ice, it's just a different shape. Instead of a continuous solid piece, it's many small crystals piled up. It's the difference between a piece of solid steel and a pile of ball bearings. | Most things get smaller when they get colder- it's a principle called "thermal contraction." Most things get bigger when they get hotter- "thermal expansion." Solids are denser than liquids. Water is weird in that it doesn't work this way. When water becomes ice, it actually because slightly larger because of its molecular structure. Ice forms in a "lattice" of water molecules. When you step on ice, it physically breaks some of this lattice, compressing it down into water. The water that you just made sort of lubricates the surface of the ice. |
What happened in Libya? Why is everybody protesting against the USA? | An anti-Islamic film was posted to youtube a few days ago. This sparked protests in Cairo and Benghazi Libya. An al Qaeda related group used the protests as a cover to launch an attack. That attack killed four people including the US ambassador. There have been protests since, but many people have carried signs in apology and sympathy to the victims of the attack. Since that attack, protests have continued and expanded. Showing that the embassies were vulnerable have meant many other protests have crossed into US embassies but so far no other attacks on staff. They are continuing in large part because there is a belief that because the US government has not taken down the video that they support its message. | Matthew Vandyke isn't exactly an unbiased source. Quick Google search shows he believed in the rebels so much so that he flew over there and enlisted to fight along side them. Now that the nation is in civil war he is defending his actions of going to war and working to overthrow the government to improve conditions. The fact of Libya is that there is currently far less peace. Perhaps in the future things will turn out better, but currently the situation is that the nation is in a state of anarchy and violence. |
ADA requires that there be elevators in public buildings with multiple stories. People are not supposed to use elevators in the event of a fire. Are disabled people just supposed to be left to die if there is a fire in a tall building? | have you never been in a fire safety course in one of these buildings? 1) the doors to the stairwells are fireproof/fire resistant for x number of minutes 2) if you notice each floor has a landing that will seem larger than it should be. 3) the stairways are separate from the rest of the building, Different ventilation system, etc. with fire proofing between the rest of the building and the stairwells. So what does a person in a wheel chair go? same place as everybody else, Stairwell, and wait for the firefighters to get to them. Unless the fire was started in the stair well (which in that case everybody is fucked), or the doors are not closed properly (most are on heavy springs that close them automatically), the person waiting there will be pretty safe from the fire. the thing that will kill you the quickest is the smoke, hence the separate ventilation. Source: I've had a number of jobs in very tall buildings, and this has been part of the safety training more times than I can count. | Our building just had a supervisor come up and demand a few people meet in the hallway at the elevators. He described how to use the emergency stairs and phones, what not to do, how the elevators wouldn't be working, and that was it. We are on the 15th floor of an 18 floor building. I don't know if thats universal, but I think in general they just test alarms, remind everyone of the basics steps for evacuation, and thats it. |
We're always told that we're warm blooded creatures but what actually warms our bodies and our blood? | The terms warm and cold blooded are misnomers. What these things really refer to is the type of heat regulation that type of animal uses. Reptiles and amphibians are 'cold blooded' or, much more accurately, ectothermic. Eco means outside, therm means heat. Reptiles can't make their own heat so they must rely on their environment for it. This is why you see lizards basking on rocks in the sun: they need to literally warm up their bodies for everything to work. Mammals and birds are endothermic or 'warm blooded'. Endo means inside (and again therm means heat). We make our own heat through our metabolism, and we also can regulate our temperatures by sweating (cool off), shivering (warm up) and/or having insulating fur or feathers. Our metabolism runs a lot 'faster' than a reptiles' does: they make heat too, but not nearly enough to warm their bodies with it. | The chemical reactions that power our cells are exothermic--they release heat. These reactions, combined, look like a big combustion reaction (read "fire"). So, roughly, the food you eat is burned *while dissolved in water* all throughout your body, and that's where your body heat comes from. |
What happens in your eye when you focus from close objects to far away objects? | You have a lens in your eye, which is a sort of lens-shaped sac of fluid - little muscles pull on it to stretch it to the appropriate curvature so that the image from objects at the distance you focus on falls on your retina. As you move from close to far, these muscles contract, making the lens wider and thinner; going from far to close, they relax, allowing the lens to pull back closer to a spherical shape. _URL_0_ | MythBusters actually tested this. I am at work so I do not have access to the source but here you go: [Eyeblack](_URL_0_ out-glare.html) |
Why do sour foods make faces move involuntarily? | Many sour foods are poisonous, we are programmed to reject sour foods with "disgust", same as when you see other unhealthy things like feces and Kanye West. There was a good BBC Horizon show on Disgust years back. I found this article. _URL_0_ | You have a [Vestibulo-ocular reflex](_URL_0_) which automatically corrects your gaze to accommodate any self-initiated head movement. To demonstrate this reflex, nod your head. Your eyes will automatically move counter to the direction of your head in order to keep these words fixed on your retina. Jaw movements during eating usually create some movement of the head, but the vestibulo-ocular reflex compensates for it by moving the eyes as well, so the world appears stable. Crunchy foods, however, may move or shift the jaw in unpredicted ways due to resistance of the hard material--the vestibulo-ocular reflex may not be able to compensate 100% for these unpredicted vibrations of the head, and so you get a slight "jiggle" on your retina. Arguably, as H1deki says, this effect is most noticeable with digital displays or other objects with crisp, high-contrast edges. Hope this helps :) |
Why does surface tension cast a shadow? | It’s not the surface tension itself, more that the water bulges due to surface tension in such a way that it refracts the light round the centre of the bulge. Do you see how there are bright fringes around said ‘shadows’? | This might not happen so prominently if you had a light source that was a *perfect, ideal single point* from which all light comes. But you don't, it comes from an area the size of a lightbulb or so. So since it's coming at different angles, while the center of the shadow is pretty solid, around the edges, there are portions of the ground only shaded from PART of the light source. Thus the edge of the shadow as a whole is not totally crisp. Now, take two such shadows and make them touch, and this gradient area at the edge merges with the one next to it to create what looks like a bending effect. |
how do paraphilias that don't relate to childbearing etc. develop? | There is mounting evidence that brain development before birth plays a role in how likely one is to develop a paraphilia, but the way they actually are acquired is simply by conditioning during childhood and puberty. If you are exposed to a certain stimulus and unrelated sexual arousal, you will begin to associate them, which in turn causes a self reinforcing cycle of stimulation and sexual activity so that you become conditioned to feel sexual arousal at the sight of the stimulus | Some researchers think that it links to early childhood development. Something makes a strong impact on a child at just the right stage of development. Many people with particularly strong fetishes can even tell you when they began feeling attraction to their particular Paraphilia. I myself have done stories and research into BDSM and many women who are submissive recount tales of early child abuse. In England there was a particular kink for gas masks after the second world war. A child in a particularly heightened emotional state can take an object or an experience and sexualize it. It gives the child control over something scary and unfamiliar. Like the submissive women, who now get to feel out of control of their bodies on their own terms. |
I thought the internet was a series of interconnected routers and computers that communicate however they want. How does one institution in one state control this communication even for people in other parts of the world? | The internet is mostly run by companies who own infrastructure (like wires and shit). The institution you're talking about (assuming the FCC) gets to decide what these types of companies are allowed to do. Right now they are FORCED by the FCC to treat all traffic equally. We are worried that the FCC will change their mind and no longer force these companies to do this and thus the big greedy companies will do more greedy stuff. The reason it effects the world is because the US is big and rich and important so stuff that happens here has consequences elsewhere. That doesn't mean that this decision changes how the law works for everyone. Some countries already have service providers that do exactly what people in the US are worried will happen. | There's no point. The moment the second internet connected, in any way shape or form, to the original internet, they'd become one internet. The internet is just a collection of connected servers and computers. |
The strong nuclear force works only for very small distances. How is this energy harnessed to make huge nuclear explosions? | Nuclear explosions are many exothermic nuclear reactions happening at the same time. The reactions happen when the incoming particle get close enough for the residual strong force to act between them. | Conventional weapons exploit kinetic and chemical energy. Nuclear weapons *convert* matter into energy, which yields many orders of magnitude more energy per gram of material via a chain reaction. |
Is there a material so dense that smells can't get through? | That's not a hard requirement. Depending on the size of the molecule just a thin sheet of plastic wrap could stop smells. The steel of a gas bottle certainly stops the diffusion of gas. | Since its shaped the way it is, in a circle, sweat, dirt, and anything else gets in there and isn't always washed out completely, leaving a strange smell |
on what principles the Romans and other early civilisations based their structural engineering without any sort of Newtonian physics and what are the basic mathematical tools / thinking methods used which allow you to build basilicas, bridges, temples, aqueducts? | Custom and practice. If you build it and it falls down, you do it again differently. When it works, you keep it like that. That, and people weren't stupid or uneducated - the Greeks were fairly capable mathematicians, as were the Egyptians | You'll want to take a look at Casson's *Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World* and *Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times*, if you're looking for material. In point of fact the Romans very much had drydocks, in which larger ships might be built. But the vast majority of ships were built on land and then lowered into the water by ramps and slipways. Ships were not necessarily even built near the water, but sometimes just near whatever the source of their timber was--the New Pauly says that the Nemi ships were probably built way up in Misenum and were transported overland to the lake. Ships in the ancient world were not necessarily that large--at least warships weren't, although merchant ships could be pretty gigantic |
If Linux is free and easy to install and use, why isn't it more widely used? | Look, I love Linux as much as anyone else, and it's how I make my living. But Linux is not as easy to use as either Windows or MacOS for casual, everyday users. There have been great strides at closing the gap, but there's still a learning curve involved. Also, many people won't have an interest in it because many of the programs that like and use won't be available on Linux. Linux makes a good desktop, and an excellent server. So, we're likely to continue to see Linux dominate the server market. But there's going to have to be a pretty substantial change for everyday folks to move away from Windows. | 1.) It's free and will always be free. 2.) Anybody can see the source code. This makes it difficult for the developer to fuck with your computer in a secret way, and it allows for bugs to be solved much more rapidly than in Windows. 3.) The software is written by people who want useful software more than they want to squeeze as many dollars from the users as possible. This means there are no licenses and activation codes and vendor lock-in and DRM and all that shit. 4.) Once you get used to how it works, you realize that it makes a lot of plain sense and eliminates 80% of the headache bullshit nonsense that Windows confronts you with. There are big drawbacks to Linux, too, but that's not what you asked about so I'll leave it out. More ELI5 questions about Linux here: _URL_0_ |
How are radio waves still understandable by devices after being reflected off of surfaces? Is the signal not affected by being 'inverted'? | Radio waves aren't 'inverted' because their wavelength isn't dependent on direction. They might experience some drop in amplitude because they lose energy while being reflected, but their wavelengths are identical before and after a reflection. Think of it like this: light acts as a wave, but the colour of the light doesn't invert when it reflects of a window or mirror | Radio signal is affected by many environmental factors. Weather tends to be a big one - how much moisture is in the air (moisture attenuates signals), how low is the cloud ceiling (may cause reflection or refraction of the signal), how warm is the air (affects the gaps between atmospheric levels, possibly projecting your signal farther away). |
So, what's the deal with Hitler not having blond hair and blue eyes but wanted others to have that? | I can't believe nobody has answered the obvious yet. Everyone is pointing out the inconsistencies when the OP asked abut Hitler. Hitler *DID* have blue eyes. He was a blue eyed man. Maybe black and white photography has skued people's view of that but he had bright blue eyes. His hair was fair that like most blonds, darken with age. It was not an idea unique to the nazis but Hitler obvious clung to it as it described himself. It was also just thier idea of purity. Obviously most nazis did not look like this. | The idea that blonde hair and blue eyes were the epitome of Aryan purity is actually a major oversimplification of Nazi propaganda. It's true that the blonde haired blue eyed type was often featured in propaganda posters (although even then, not exclusively), but it was not promoted as literally the most perfect physical type. |
How does a muscle attach to a tendon and how does a tendon attach to a bone? | Tendons are something in between pure fibrous tissue and bone tissue. So they kinda stick to the respective bone as a very adhesive tissue that is interwoven with the bone cortex. As you follow the tendon to the where it connects with muscle, it is more fibrous is origin and resembles muscle itself in structure. Follow it towards bone, it becomes sturdier and more bone-like in quality. So tendons are a kind of bridge between mucle and bone where in the outskirts the tissue flows in each other. | It connects the upper arm bone to the collarbone. Many muscles attach to it. The "why" for its existence stems from our long evolutionary past. |
why the moon is visible during the day sometimes | Because the orbit of the Moon around the Earth (which determines when we can see the Moon) has nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth around its axis (which determines when it's day and night). Earth rotates around its axis once every 24 hours, while the Moon revolves around the Earth at a much slower rate - once every 29.5 days. So sometimes the moon is on the side of Earth's that's away from the Sun (so it is visible at night), while at other times it's on the side of Earth that's closer to the Sun (so it is visible during the day). | The moon is bright enough to be visible during the day, unlike the stars. As far as why it is up sometimes along with the sun, they do not orbit opposite one another. When we are seeing a full moon, the earth is mostly (not precisely) between the sun and the moon. Thus for us it is night time, and looking up, we see the full face of the moon illuminated by the sunlight coming over "the planet's shoulder" if you will. During a new moon, the moon is essentially between us and the sun (and therefore up during the day), thus it is dark or invisible to us, because the sun is shining upon the far side, the back of the moon with respect to earth. Thus the waxing and waning faces of the moon which you see in between are when, relative to our viewing angle, the sun is shining on the 'side' of the moon. This page has a picture that might help explain it better _URL_0_ |
[Physics] What happens to kinetic energy when car stops? | almost none of the energy goes into rotational energy of the Earth. I'll use linear momentum instead of angular momentum (because you also do expect the car to give the earth linear momentum), but the conclusion is the same. From conservation of linear momentum: M v_E = m v_C where v_C is the original speed of the car and v_E is the final speed of the Earth. So the final kinetic energy of the Earth is E_E = 1/2 M v_E^2 = ( 1/2 m v_C^2) * (m/M) = (m/M) E_C so the kinetic energy given to the Earth is suppressed by a factor of m/M. | Potential energy is lost and kinetic energy is gained. |
What's the difference between an Artifact and a Relic? | In Christianity, a relic is a bone or other body part of a saint, sometimes extended to include related items like pieces of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Other ancient objects are referred to as "relics" by analogy, but the word tends to imply religious significance. Any man-made item from history can be an archeological artifact. | Stone artifacts aren't dated directly (for exactly the reason you suspected), though their age can often be inferred by dating materials associated with them. One could date the layers above and below the artifact, giving a date range in which it is likely to have been discarded. One can date other archaeological artifacts associated with it (bones of slaughtered animals, fire pits, wood or bone implements, etc). There are a lot of options, and the specific ones used will vary from site to site. |
Why do we not see widespread outbreaks of the flu and colds during the summer? | Diseases such as flu and colds spread best if susceptible persons are regularly in close contact. One group that is particularly susceptible to flu and colds are children. We have created institutions called "schools" that put children into close daily contact. These institutions are closed during the summer months. And, yes, little mister. You still have to go to school. | Mercola's analysis seems [a little premature:](_URL_0_) > But in the meantime, Ms. Skowronski insisted the findings should not deter people from getting seasonal flu shots. > “I do think it’s important to clarify that our findings are unique to the pandemic,” she insisted. > “Pandemics are infrequent occurrences, but seasonal influenza recurs on an annual basis. It’s a substantial cause of morbidity and mortality,” — science’s term for illness and death — “and the seasonal vaccine substantially protects against that severe outcome due to seasonal influenza.” |
If there is so much bacteria in poo why doesn't it squirm around the bowl? | 1. Feces contains a lot of **dead** bacteria, and not that much living bacteria. 2. Living bacteria are much too small to visibly move. You'd need a microscope to see one moving at all, and from our perspective, a bunch of living bacteria just looks like a non-moving "goop". | Why when you open the spigot on a water tank does the water rush out fastest at the beginning and then slower and slower? Same reason. Your intestines are a long bendy pipe that moves things along through muscle contractions. So it pushes the poop all the way to the exit and piles up more behind it. When you go to the bathroom all the stuff near the exit slides on out and your intestines begin the process of pushing all the rest of the poo along the path. |
We can create exotic matter like Bose–Einstein condensates, can we create tiny amounts of the super dense material inside a Neutron star? | We haven't been able to make neutron degenerate matter, and it may be impossible to reasonably do on earth. Fortunately, the earth is full of tiny little neutron stars we like to call "the lead nucleus." [(This paper comes to mind, though I can't seem to find the full text.)](_URL_0_) Basically, since the lead nucleus has so many extra neutrons, some theorists thought, "well they probably clump at the surface, and this would at least give us a glimpse of what the crust of a neutron star might look like." | The mass density of a neutron star is comparable to the mass density of the nucleus of an atom. In ordinary matter, the density is much less, because the mass of an atom is almost all in the nucleus, but the nucleus takes up only a tiny fraction of the volume of an atom, so the density of ordinary matter is vastly less than the density of the nucleus. In a neutron star, you basically have density comparable to what you'd get if you piled a bunch of nuclei as close to each other as you could. |
How do cameras capture nuclear tests so vividly without succumbing to damage from the blast? | The camera sits in a bunker and is aimed at a periscope type setup with mirrors to film the test. [Special high speed cameras](_URL_0_) use a fast moving mirror to capture incredibly high frame rate footage of the blasts. | As to what it would look like: When they were doing some of the original nuclear tests back in the 50's, they developed a rapatronic camera specifically built for taking pictures of nuclear explosions 10 nanoseconds after detonations. [This](_URL_0_) is an example of one of the photos taken, although you can find more just by googling "rapatronic photographs" |
Through which organic structures does actual electric current flow through the parts of our brains? | For signalling purposes (what we might call "information processing") it is primarily the movement of charge across the cell membrane that is important. This comes in two forms (1) ohmic and (2) capacitive. The former includes the movement of ions (mostly sodium, potassium, chloride, and calcium) though membrane pores (i.e., ligand-gated or voltage-sensitive "channels") and the latter is charge redistribution with the lipid bilayer acting as a literal capacitor. Additionally, neural activity generates (micro) current flow in all of the extracellular spaces in the body; this is what generates the EEG. However, except for some pathological conditions (such as ephaptic recruitment during, say, a seizure) this current is not thought to contribute to information processing because it does not influence neural activity.. | > Is it just a one-to-one nerve connection direct to that part of the brain like wires, so nerves get thicker and thicker and thicker as it gets closer to the brain? Yes, basically this is the structure. If you look at a diagram you can see this depiction of gradually thicker fibers. |
Why do some black people have such unusual names ie. Daekwon, D'shandra? Where do they come from? Or do their parents just make them up? | During the civil right movement there was a tendency amongst african americans to change their names away from the mostly european names and more towards either Muslim names or African names, as a way to celebrate their distinct culture. The next generation tended instead to invent new names or new spellings on existing names for the same purpose. So yes, some of those names are completely unique, while others have become a fairly standard "African American name". Edit: See /u/AScaryHomelessGuy9 's [comment](_URL_0_) for more of the cause and effect of these names. | I'm guessing you mean in the U. S. If so ... "After emancipation, many freedmen and women took the surnames of their former owners as their own. Some blacks in the U.S. took on the surname Freeman, while others adopted the names of popular historical or contemporary figures of social importance, such as former presidents Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson." From the [wiki page.](_URL_0_) |
If we all have a voice inside our head, at what point does it become a sign of schizophrenia? | When the voice is not your voice. We all know our own inner voice. Imagine an uncontrollable foreign voice speaking in your head. That's schizophrenia. | Also, I've heard that the auditory hallucinations characteristic of schizophrenia sounds like other people's voices, not the kind of internal brain voice we use when we're thinking or reading, etc. |
Did the Sasanian Empire experience an influx of pagan refugees, after christianity got declared the roman state religion? If so, where they well received? Did their religious communities survive there? | I know of no such event and I would be very surprised if there was one, not least since the Sasanian Empire [wasn't as tolerant as many assume](_URL_0_), nor were pagans as persecuted in Rome as some popular culture mythology would have it. Even in the 6th century Codex Justinian, which was heavily theocratic, Paganism wasn't outright outlawed, rather certain pagan practices were. Indeed it appears that the church was more concerned with heterodox Christian practice, and in this case, while I can't think of any specific event of Christians _fleeing_ to the Sasanian empire, various Jewish-Christian Gnostic sects flourished in Mesopotamia. Syriac Christians were organized under a single leader in Ctesiphon in the early 5th century at the request of the Great King, and soon broke off with the "Western" church. But no, I don't know of any attestation of "pagan refugees". | There's actually a Roman legend that explores a very similar scenario; Brown's *The Making of Late Antiquity* describes seven young Christians who, fleeing the persecutions of Emperor Decius in the third century CE, flee into a cave near the city of Ephesus and fall asleep for two hundred years, waking in the reign of Theodosius II. Returning to the city, they find themselves accepted and welcome. Like Rip Van Winkle, the story isn't about technological change but rather social change; in this case, an oppressed religious minority is now the backbone of Mediterranean politics. This is despite the fact that, by this time, the empire had already split in two and Rome itself had just been raided by Germanic troops. |
What is the difference between Unix, Windows, and Linux in terms of how they are programmed? | Unix and Linux (and also Mac OS X) are all pretty similar to each other -- they all comply with a standard called POSIX that outlines things such as file structure, the way programs interact, etc. Also, the graphical user interface isn't directly built into Linux or Unix -- they both started out as command line OSs and now have things such as X11 that layer graphics on top. Unix/Linux is very much based around a client-server model, even for things where that doesn't actually make sense. Windows is not POSIX compliant except as a compatibility layer, and has its GUI built into it at a deep level. | Unix isn't one singular operating system produced and sold by a company. It was developed by AT & T originally, but it was not intended as a normal commercial product. 'Unix' is basically a standard format and set of functions for an operating system. A number of companies produce an operating system that meets all of the requirements to be Unix. Unix itself isn't strictly open source, but it is an open idea. Linux isn't really a clone of Unix either. It takes a lot of the ideas, but it is still fundamentally different. |
- Why can't snowflakes be any bigger than they are? Why aren't there hand-sized snowflakes? | Here’s a straight forward explanation of how snowflakes are formed. _URL_0_ In part, I think snowflakes are size limited by the distance they fall from the clouds. Snowflakes start out as a tiny crystal built around a dust particle. As they fall additional tiny crystals are formed at the edges. There’s a limit for how long the flakes are falling and forming. | This is a great question. I asked this in a crystallography class, and the answer my prof gave was that the crystallization is deterministic but extremely dependent on the local thermodynamic conditions (temperature, humidity) so the arms of the same snowflake are likely to be identical compared to the arms of different snow flakes. Of course not all snowflakes grow with nice symmetry like this. However in this video, the arms grow at different rates which would seem to refute this hypothesis because the changes in growth rate would change the local temperature and humidity conditions significantly. Hopefully someone with another explanation comes along. |
Is there new specific information on the origins of “The Sea People”? | Not to forestall further (in-depth comprehensive) answers, but there's [a section of our Frequently Asked Questions page about the Sea People](_URL_3_) featuring not only a great explanation of [where the term 'Sea Peoples' comes from, and why it isn't that mysterious by /u/bentresh](_URL_0_) and [a good summary of what we know about the phenomenon by /u/kookingpot](_URL_1_), but also [an AMA with the author of *1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed*](_URL_2_). | There is a lot of scholarship going on in this field right now. We refer to it as **Maritime Cultural Landscapes Studies**. It's not really my specialty, but that is the term that you would plug into google scholar. I don't have any specific sources at hand right now, but a few major points include the following. (as regards ancient mariners, more recent sailors held their own sets of myths and beliefs) * Many did not see the sea as a barrier. They saw it as path of travel. * Some early peoples do not appear to have held a fine distinction between land and sea. * There was a strong spiritual/religious element to early boats. Some cultures even believed that boats stayed stationary and the world moved around them. * Remember that most people today view the sea from a Land-Centric viewpoint, many sea faring peoples did not share this same conception. |
Why do miniscule water drops avoid boiling when you sprinkle water on a red hot stove? | It's because something called The Leidenfrost effect. Basically the heat of the plate cause the underside of the drop to evaporate so quickly that it creates a small cushion of steam on which is floats. This stops the heat of the stove to reach the water effectively, so it doesn't boil but instead skip around like a miniature hovercraft. | From the top comment on youtube: The pan is so hot that the water doesn't even touch it. The lower surface of the drop of water is evaporating so fast that it rests on a permanent high pressure cushion of water vapour between it and the pan, and this cushion of vapour also acts as an insulator which means that the pan can't physically touch the water and so the heat-conducting qualities of the metal pan which would usually boil the water are circumvented. The vapour cushion escapes, of course, but is constantly replenished. |
Why will NASA's space launch system be the most powerful rocket ever built, but be able to carry less into Space than the Saturn V? | _URL_0_ _URL_1_ Looks like it'll have 20% greater payload capacity than the Saturn V. | Getting [this](_URL_2_) into space took [this](_URL_1_). If you think it's not that bad consider [this](_URL_0_) perspective on it. The CSM/LEM combo had barely enough fuel for a quick jaunt to the moon and back. Rocket technology hasn't advanced all that much in the intervening 40 years honestly. To this day that Saturn V is the most capable rocket ever made in terms of payload capacity. |
How do they manage to find precise recordings to make those composite/mash-up videos, of hundreds of clips of a person speaking certain words, to make them sing a song, etc? | I've actually also wondered the same thing and I think I have an answer. I don't know this for certain but I imagine that what the people do is find several speeches by the figure they are using and then find the transcripts of the speeches. This is not normally very difficult particularly for public figures such as the president. They then just need to ctrl-f the speech to find the words they want and then go to that location of the video. They can then cut that part of the video out and rinse and repeat. It's still time-consuming but it's much faster than just blindly watching hundreds of videos. | You record a sound. Then you put it into sound editing software. It is then altered to the correct pitch, speed, rhythm or whatever that is needed for a particular shot or scene. It would not be uncommon to have a dozen layers of sounds layered together. |
How can Dark Energy both be gravitationally repulsive and make up 70% of our Universe's mass? | Dark energy also has a very large negative pressure. In particular, the pressure is opposite and equal to the energy density: P = - ρ. Moreover pressure has a repulsive gravitational effect in general relativity. This effect is 3 times stronger than the attractive effect from the energy density (the 3 is from the 3 spatial dimensions). So 1-3 = -2 and the overall effect is repulsive. Why is P = - ρ? Well, take the first law of thermodynamics, with no heat transfer: dU = - PdV But the energy of dark energy is just the constant density times the volume: U = ρ V. So dU = ρdV = -PdV So that P = - ρ. | Well, since all mass has energy, and there is energy which is *not* mass (such as radiation and dark energy), there must necessarily be more energy. If you're asking whether more of the universe's energy budget is in the form of matter or of dark energy + radiation, the answer is the latter. The universe's energy density is, (using the results from Planck): * 68% dark energy * 27% dark matter * 5% baryonic matter * about 0.006% radiation |
Why does YouTube give me ads about alcohol when they know I'm in the U.S. and under 21? | Because you’re gonna turn 21. And you’re gonna party. And JackAndCoke™️ is your thing. Unless you’re the most interesting man in the world. Or you’re thinking SoCo and Lime is gonna get you close to the honeys. Bacardi! Because you’re on a beach. Or you will be, once your SoundCloud takes off. All liquor marketing will agree is YOUR DRINK DEFINES YOU AS A HUMAN SO MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE PICK BRAND LOYALTY NOW GODDAMN IT CROWN ROYAL FOREVER /s | Don't quote me on this, but I believe that during the administration of Ronald Reagan, the federal government of the US made it the policy that, if the states did not adopt 21 as the age for alcohol, then the states would lose some important federal funding (I believe for their freeways) I have no idea when exactly such products began to be restricted to minors, but I believe that it goes all the way back to ye olde times in the US. While it was not uncommon for children to be given a small amount of alcohol or "near beer," it was seen as a rite of passage for a young man to go to the tavern with his father. |
flash video to mp3 online converter | Video is just visual + audio data. Strip away the visual, you're left with the audio. | I assume it's because on went through compression software and one didn't. Did you attempt to compress your file at all? Your video might also have a lot of useless information that is left over from using basic software. |
What are the possible seating arrangements for 100 guests at 10 tables? | Their answer is [(100!)/((10!)^(11))](_URL_1_). This means they assumed that only the groupings of the people at each table were important. That is, Luke and Leia at table 1 while Ahsoka and Plo at table 2 is the same as Ahsoka and Plo at 1 with Luka and Leia at 2. If table number did matter, it would be your second answer. Specifically, [2.357...e92.](_URL_0_)) This is a [multinomial](_URL_2_) problem. It is 100 chose 10 (10 times). To go from the multinomial to the actual answer you divide again by 10! since that would be the number of times the exact arrangement of people appeared but at different tables. But, I think they are actually wrong still. If we assume that the newly weds are at the same table, then it is 6.45e84. Which is an order of magnitude less than what they said. | They don't adjust the number of items based on the people at the table. Why are you taking even numbers of guests to odd-appetizer restaurants? |
Does the moon or other planets have magnetic poles? | Moon does have a magnetic field but compared to Earth it's very very weak and also it isn't a 'dipolar' magnetic field like Earth's (Magnetic field generated by a [geodynamo](_URL_0_) in planet's core). Magnetization that is present on Moon is crustal in origin. As for Planets, some do and some don't. Recent probe founding indicates that Mars and Venus don't have any significant magnetic field whereas Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have magnetic fields that are far stronger than Eath's. EDIT: Added links for additional information | Planets have magnetic fields because of their hot iron cores. As this molten iron rotates around the inner core due to pressure, density differences, and convection, a dynamo effect creates the magnetic field. In essence, flowing metal creates electric fields which create the magnetic field. As for why it's oriented like a bar magnet, every magnet has a North and South pole, because magnetic fields are dipoles. If you could find a magnetic monopole you'd be a very rich man. If you mean why do the magnetic poles roughly line up with the Earth's geographic poles, it's because the rotation of the Earth has a large impact on the rotation of the core, which means the magnetic field produced lines up with Earth's rotation (roughly speaking anyway) |
Why is there sometimes a slightly enjoyable "shiver" after urinating? | Well, I don't know if I'm doing this right, but since I've wondered myself, here's what I found so far: > According to Sheth, our parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for “rest-and-digest” functions) lowers the body’s blood pressure “to initiate urination.” One leading theory behind the shudder is that peeing can unleash a reactive response from the body’s sympathetic nervous system (which handles “fight or flight” actions). > On the cellular level, the body is theoretically flushed with catecholamines (which you know better as chemicals like dopamine or hormones like adrenaline). Those are dispatched to help restore or maintain blood pressure, Sheth says. But the microscopic energy bullets “may also trigger the shiver reflect.” I know this isn't the 5y-old explanation, but it's the best I can find. Maybe someone else can put this into laymen's terms :) Source is [NBC News](_URL_0_), I have no idea how reliable they are. | That shiver you feel is actually a release of dopamine (the feel good hormone) transferred throughout the body. |
Mohammedan v. Muslim? | It was a relatively common term in the early 20th century, both popularly and in academia (e.g. Schacht's *On the Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence*). It has fallen into disfavor on the grounds that: 1. It is misleading (as it suggests a falsely analogous role of Muhammad in "Muhammadanism" as Christ in Christianity) 2. It is not what practitioners of this religion call themselves 3. Combining 1 and 2 it is both patronizing (an example of orientalism) as well potentially offensive, and needlessly so. Moreover, outside of a historical reference or quotation I can't really think of any useful reason to use Muhammadan rather than Muslim. This is in contrast to other terms that might trip all three issues I raised above but that nonetheless continue to serve some descriptive or other purpose. | Not to discourage any further answers but you'll enjoy these older posts: [How did Mohammed know so much about Judaism and Christianity?](_URL_2_) by /u/shlin28 [What was Mohammed's religion before Islam?](_URL_0_) and [What were the religions of pre-Islamic Arabia?](_URL_3_) by /u/frogbrooks [What was the culture and religion of Arabia like before Islam?](_URL_1_) by /u/Daeres |
At what point does a business screw up so badly that it appears in front of the US senate? (USA) | > So I was just curious, what qualifies a companies mistake as large enough for that? There is no qualification. The Senate can demand a hearing for any reason so they can grandstand in front of the cameras. > If I work for a small bank of 250 people and we did something similar to Wells Fargo, who would intervene? The same people who are bringing Wells Fargo to task, which isn't the Senate. | They made a very risky investment, which they thought they would gain a lot of money from, and instead it lost them a lot of money. The... Senate, I believe? is now working on creating laws that say banks are not allowed to make such risky investments, because that puts the money of their customers in danger. |
How are the Sami people of Finland "indigenous" compared to the rest of the Finnish people? What makes them so different? | Most European peoples are truly indigenous, at least going back as far as anyone cares to remember. After all, go back far enough and we're all Ethiopian. What makes groups like the Sami special is that they are indigenous but are a minority in all the states they inhabit, and/or have been marginalized by a non-indigenous group (as is the case in the Americas and Australia). The Basques and the Bretons are also often included as "indigenous" minorities of Europe. This is in contrast to minorities who aren't indigenous, like say North Africans in France. | An excellent source on this topic is Louise Bächman and Åke Hultkrantz, Studies in Lapp Shamanism (1978). Sami shamanistic traditions were extremely influential on Finnish and Scandinavian paganism; because of the fluidity of beliefs in a period when things were not pinned down by text and dogma, diffusion of ideas was a natural process. I'm not an authority on Sami religion, so I am not prepared to take it further, but I believe you would find this text worth looking at. |
Did Romans add, subtract, multiply, and divide with roman numerals or did they use a different system all together to solve mathematical equations? | I found some previous answers to similar questions: * [How did Romans do math without a decimal based number system?](_URL_1_) - /u/cespinar discusses multiplication. * [What mathematical symbols (ie + and -) were used in the Roman Republic and Empire? Did they change?](_URL_0_) - /u/kohatsootsich discusses computation by engineers. | Follow up question: How did romans do math using their numerals? Dividing 3356 by 5 is relatively easy using just a pencil and paper. How do you divide MMMCCLVI by V? |
Why airline frequent flyer programs have been made so difficult? | Because the airlines benefit from the impression that they have the program, but do not benefit from people using it. | Because the airlines have spent absurd amounts of money on consultants who have spent absurd amounts of time and expertise to determine the ideal way to maximize their ticket prices in a complex, competitive market. & #x200B; Beyond that, I have no idea. |
Why do you need to finish a whole course of antibiotics, when you feel much better after taking around 1/2 of them? | Because the mass majority of the bacteria are killed off in the first day and the survivors have a less chance of surviving the longer you pelt them with the drug. If you only take half the dose of the recommended amount, you are taking the chance that some of the bacteria will survive and will pass along its ability to survive that antibiotic. That's how superbugs are formed. It is war inside your body. You don't just drop a few bombs on your enemy. You blast the shit outta them until all the motherfuckers are dead! Not the best example though because I've not seen superhumans come out of war. Correct me if I'm wrong :) Hope this helps! Source: Nurse trying my best to play my part in fighting superbugs! | Different antibiotics work in different ways to target different bacteria. For instance, one major family (I forget which, but I want to say beta-lactams) interrupts the formation of new cell walls; so basically when a bacteria tries to reproduce and divide, it falls apart. As for how to improve your immune system; depending on how specific your antibiotics are there might be some damage to the natural bacteria in your guts. Really, the best thing to do is a nice healthy diet, lots of fibre and liquid, and lay off the alcohol until you feel better. |
How did enemy ship commanders testify in a court martial? | > How did they get a testimony from Mochitsura Hashimoto Well, November 1945 was two months after the end of the war. By that time Mochitsura Hashimoto was in Allied custody. > was this common to get a statement from the enemy after ships were sunk? Captain Charles B. McVay III was the only USN ship commander to be court-martialed for the loss of his ship during the Second World War. I don't think you could say it was common. Occasionally members of armed forces have testified for former enemies. Famously, Admiral Nimitz testified for Admiral Doenitz at the latter's trial for conducting unrestricted submarine warfare. | Strictly speaking, Lieutenant William Bligh and several of his crew were obliged to face a court martial inquiry into the loss of his ship, HMS Bounty. i.e. He wasn't on trial for the mutiny of his crew, although that was the cause of the loss. & #x200B; The court martial was held aboard HMS Royal William, moored at Spithead, on 22 October 1790 with Admiral Samuel Barrington presiding. This was a trial, in that Lieutenant Bligh and those of his crew who were present were found to be not responsible for the loss, although the ship's carpenter, William Purcell, was reprimanded for his behaviour during the boat trip afterwards. & #x200B; Yes, under naval law (Royal Navy) any ship's master who lost a vessel was required to face a court martial. & #x200B; Ref: BLIGH Master Mariner, by Rob Mundle |
How can LexisNexis only provide full details of your personal file to you (i.e., you can't order someone else's) after filling out lengthy paperwork to prove who you are, but happily sell your information to a company without your consent? | From what I know they aren't exactly selling your information, they're making more readily available what's called 'Publically Identifiable Information'. This kind of information is technically accessible to basically anyone, but truly should only be identifiable by the individual- such as old phone numbers, vehicles owned, old addresses, relatives, etc. Most of those are identifiable by Google, social media, Whitepages, even deep digs into the internet but there are so few people out there trying to actively seek 100% of all of that information fraudulently. But where LexisNexis comes into play is more of the in-the-moment quizzes that companies are utilizing. You can only err once during these questions, and the odds that someone fraudulent could correctly guess all of the 3-5 questions about you is very, very slim | It's hard to maintain your anonymity when a company has already identified you and had their lawyers write to you personally. |
Why are non-driver car seats faced forward? Doesn't it make more sense for them to be faced backward, since the back of the seat would cushion you better in the event of a crash than a seatbelt? | Not all crashes happen from the front, sometimes people are hit from the rear as well. More to the point though the vast majority of the time people are not going to be in crashes and having people facing forward is a far more comfortable riding position. A car which is slightly safer in a collision but makes all the passengers violently ill while riding isn't going to sell very well. | It's better to be facing backwards (this applies in planes as well). Either way, you're basically going to be decelerating instantaneously. The difference is where the force is applied. When facing backwards, the force is distributed across your entire back and it keeps all of your body parts held in stable positions. When facing forwards, assuming you aren't strapped in in any way, it's much more likely that your initial impact would be on a very small area, such as your face, the top of your head, or a limb. Even if you were to be strapped in, the force is being distributed over a much smaller area than if you're facing backwards, and your head would also snap forward (and likely back again), causing whiplash, a concussion, or worse. Edit: The primary reason that plane seats are oriented towards the front is just because passengers prefer that. Plane accidents are rare enough that this sort of thing isn't a big enough issue to attract public attention, but perceived discomfort is. |
Why is it illegal to sell body parts? | Because someone will inevitably create a business chopping up living people without their consent and lying. Or coerce you into "consenting". And the poor, especially single parents with literally starving kids, and drug addicts, will sell them even if they aren't healthy. It's a business that necessitates bodily harm so the attitude is to keep it as safe and pure as possible because the alternatives are simply too gruesome to tolerate the risk. | It's legal because, well, there's no law against it. Congress gets to make their own rules about how they operate. |
What is outer space made of? | There are a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, but otherwise, outer space isn't made of anything; it's just empty. This is hard to imagine, because we live our lives constantly surrounded by something and indeed cannot survive without a certain amount of air pressure. But it's true. That's why astronauts need space suits. If you wanted, you can simulate it on earth with a vacuum chamber, which is just a sealed room with a strong pump that pulls all the air out. As for it "making sense"... well, now you're getting into philosophy and religion. Mankind has been trying to "make sense" of the universe for millennia. I don't claim to have any answers, and plus I suspect this thread would get pretty ugly pretty quickly if we started debating that subject. | Ceramic. Same stuff they use on the space shuttle to keep it from burning up on re-entry. _URL_0_ |
Why can updating a phone's operating system be done with a simple click but downgrading takes much more time and multiple resources/programs? | Because phone companies want you to upgrade, so they give you a way to do it and make it easy. They either don't want you to downgrade, or just don't care. Either way they don't have an incentive to give you any way to downgrade. | Generally these large updates are essentially new versions of the OS, with one big exception. When you first installed the OS the computer was blank, so it was rather easy for the computer to just plop everything down and be done. Now since this is an update the computer also has to worry about making sure your setting stay the same, your files aren’t deleted, etc. which slows things down and makes it take extra time. |
How do we approximately know how many species of living things are on Earth if most of them aren't even discovered? | We make a statistical prediction of how many species are in an environment based on the rate of discovery in that environment. If, for example, every time you go into some environment and take samples, and 80% of every sample is previously un-described, then you can derive from that a rough upper limit of undiscovered life is going to be extremely high. If you go into an environment and take samples, and among a sufficient sample set you don't find anything new, the chances of finding something new will be very nearly zero. Finding a new species in Iowa, for example, has been extremely rare, as of late... Take samples all around the world, extrapolate some more due to the fact that we haven't even explored > 80% of the Earth's oceans, and you can come up with some very rough numbers. The more we sample, the more accurate the prediction is going to be, but also, coincidentally, the smaller. | You're going to have to be more specific. In astronomy we can know we are missing a planet because the orbit of the planets aren't lining up with the math of gravity and so something else must be out there. In evolutionary biology we can know there's a missing link between fish and land animals, so we can go search in swampy areas for a fish with flipperish feet because we have animals with flippers and animals with feet. Usually we can use math or logical inference to hypothesize that something exists, then we go out and try to prove it. |
why can costco provide benefits and a living wage to employees but Walmart claims not to be able to? | This is all accounting bullshit. Walmart's profits minus COGS was $118B minus SG & A was $27B. Walmart is hiding $11B in bullshit. Bottom line, they sold their goods for $118B more than what they paid for them and then spent $91B operating their stores and logistics. That SG & A includes $62M in compensation for the top 5 guys alone. But we're not talking about salary redistribution, just profit hiding. Now $27B raises everyone's wages by just shy of $7 per hour assuming a 40 hour 50 week work schedule, which is probably wrong. And if you just raise the wages of the store associates and office workers and not the middle management, it would be more than that. Don't base these types of bullshit assumptions on accounting. They have $16B to spread around after they depreciate their capital (that is, charge the government for it) and do bullshit like sell their trucks to a shadow company and lease them back. | I never really got it either. Wal-Mart has some unsavory business practices when it comes to buying in volume and they don't pay very well, but the whole economy is kinda FUBAR and I don 't think you can blame any one business for it. Anecdotal, but when I worked there, they paid 50c more than any other similar job in town, actually gave me hours, and the work wasn't that bad. Just kinda sucks if that's your only way to make a living indefinitely, and that problem is a lot more complicated. |
If the it's a ban on people from certain areas entering the United States. Why is it being called Muslim ban? | He's talked for over a year about how his plan is to ban muslims from entering the country. Since that's unconstitutional, he's accomplishing his goal by saying, "I'm banning people from x countries" when they're majority muslim countries. Like when businesses have dress codes that prohibit "do rags, sagging pants, baseball caps that aren't on straight forward, and muscle shirts" and then claim that the dress code isn't racist. The motivations are transparent. | The biggest problem with Sharia Law is when Muslims want to impose it on non-muslim populations. This isn't necessarily a problem on the Arabian Peninsula, where those countries have developed around Islam (much in the same way that Italy developed around Roman Catholicism). The issue at hand is when Muslims want to impose Sharia Law somewhere like the UK, which is Christian (more or less, in the same way the US is "Christian"), but then wants non-muslims to have to follow the Muslim rules too |
If a cloud weighs over a million pounds how does it stay afloat? | A hot air balloon can weigh over two tons and they stay afloat too. Why? Because the air inside the balloon is light enough to counter the weight. The weight is irrelevant, if the average density is low enough anything will float. | Have to displace (move) more weight in water than an object weighs for it to float. So if a 10 tonne ship displaces more than 10 tonne of water it floats. If it displaces less it sinks. Is the most simple way to put it :) |
Why has no-one set foot on the moon since 1972? | Because manned moon missions are very expensive and risky and theres not much, scientifically, to be gained thats worth the expense. Wouldnt be surprised if china sprang for a manned moon mission, though. | The Soviets landed an unmanned probe on the moon 10 years before we landed a human. So, we knew that we wouldn't sink in or burn up. |
Home experiment demonstrating particle nature of light? | [here](_URL_0_)'s a good example of how you can demonstrate the photoelectric effect at home. | Crawford's book *Waves* (volume 3 of the Berkeley Series), while a college text, has a whole collection of "home experiments" throughout it. I can't recall how much they depend on your having gone through the material in his book, and how much they'd just be interesting to do anyway, but it's definitely worth a look. |
why there is a delay in the rush of air you feel when something like a semi-truck passes you. | The term to describe this effect is called slipstream. Behind a car/truck there's a low pressure area, which space eventually gets filled up by air again, this is the wind you feel. It's actually a kind of suction though. Hence why on train stations you're not supposed to step too close to the edge of the station, a passing train can literally pull you on the tracks. | It's largely because you're exposed to the outside, and especially the wind. You're not experiencing the speed with more than one sense, rather than just your sight. |
The difference between the Old and New testament? | The old testament is a primarily Jewish collection of documents, detailing the history of the Jewish people and their respective mythologies, laws, and military conquests. Many sections are extremely old, and it is highly valued for its insight into ancient near-eastern religion and culture. The new testament, however, is a much newer product of individuals in the first century AD, after the death of Jesus. They are primarily letters written by followers of Jesus Christ and his disciples, to churches and communities that they set up as the traveled the region spreading the news of this very young religion (Christianity). These letters are almost entirely focused on the message of Jesus, converting people into this new religion, and explaining how adherents should act in accordance with the philosophies of Jesus. | I don't remember the source but there was a really great analogy I once read comparing the Abrahamic religions. Paraphrased: The Old Testament is like the first book in a series. The New Testament is it's more popular sequel by the same author that focused on one of the plot points (The Messiah) from the original. The Quran is an authorized sequel but by a different author who decided to retcon a lot of what happened in the first two books but it's still in canon. And finally, Mormonism is new, unauthorized fanfiction. EDIT: Still couldn't find the original post but here's a screen cap for anyone interested. _URL_0_ |
Why do some animal species end up being strictly carnivores or herbivores? | You need special teeth, bodyplan, and digestive adaptations for what you eat. If an animal finds itself in a situation where it is only eating one food (for example, polar bears not having access to plants, or grazing animals having such abundant grass that they don't eat anything else), natural selection will push it towards the adaptations that make it better at eating that. *T. rex* had omnivorous ancestors, but once you're a *T. rex* you don't really need those adaptations for eating plants. And part of it is the different body plans required for plants and meat somewhat cancelling each other out. Large herbivores tend to be potbellied, because plants are difficult to digest and require large digestive tracts. Predators tend to need to be swift and sleek. So a predator or an herbivore can specialize more than an omnivore. As for why you would be one or the other, herbivores have a steady supply of food that can't run away or fight back, while carnivores get easier-to-digest, high-protein meals. | Most carnivores aren't really easy to domesticate, and feeding them is extremely expensive compared to herds of herbivores. We tend to eat those animals that we can grow in large numbers, at least among terrestrial animals. |
How the heck does someone check in a gun onto a domestic flight in America? | Anyone can check in a gun to a domestic flight, providing it's in checked baggage. The gun has to be unloaded, ammunition stored separately and in original box, and the gun locked into a hard-sided container. It also has to be declared at check-in. | They still check you out, in most airports I see its a quicker check and only uses a metal detector instead of a back-scatter scanner. These are also normally people that fly often and are considered low risk. |
Why didn't Europeans also get sick and die in massive numbers when they met new natives? | They actually did! Kind of haha... In North America the disease that devastated the natives was small pox. The Europeans had developed a certain level of immunity to it of thousands of years.. But! This is where we see the reverse, when the British were colonizing the south of Africa they were happy because South Africa is about as far below the equator as Europe is above it. But as they moved north they began to get into the tropics. When the Europeans moved into this area they ran into a very big problem.. Malaria .. The local tribes knew how to avoid malaria as well as having a low level immunity to the disease! Hope this answers the question Tl;Dr Europeans had immunity to small pox. When colonizing Africa they found no such luck with malaria | There's a theory about this in the book "Guns, Germs & Steel" by Jared Diamond. Large populations living in close proximity in cities with lots of animals and poor sanitation were a breeding ground for diseases which could cause epidemics. These conditions existed in Europe but not in America. CGP Grey summarizes it much better than I could: _URL_0_ |
How do silencers work? | One of the main sources of sound from a firearm being fired is muzzle blast - the propellant gases that actually move the bullet itself shooting out of the end of the barrel after the bullet and displacing air, creating noise. A suppressor consists of a hollow cylinder containing a series of baffles inside that allow the bullet to pass through a central hole, while capturing and slowing down the muzzle blast, thus reducing the noise it makes. | They generate something called destructive waves. _URL_0_ They have a microphone on the outside of the headphones, which listen to sounds around you. They then generate the "opposite" sound, which cancels out the ambient noise, leaving only silence. |
what exactly is being “improved” when we see games graphically improving with time? | Generally speaking - increases in texture resolution, Instead of using a 100x100 pixel texture you use one thats 500x500 now your model is less blurry, has more detail - Increases in polygon count, more polygons allows more detailed features. go back to N64/PS1 and most characters didn't have distinct fingers due to keeping poly count lower. now you might have a few dozen polys just for a buckle on their uniform. - New lighting techniques, dynamic shadows, HDR bloom effects etc - New shaders and rendering techniques, from Depth of field to bump mapping, reflections etc. Sometimes it's new tech that's more effective at rendering more realistic effects other times it's old tech it just takes more processing power to run. with improvements on the same platform it might be the latter but there's optimization other places to make up for it. | My guess is as time goes on, they're perfecting the graphics, but also running out of ideas for the show. |
Why don't we have absolute control over our body? ( Stopping your own heart, growing limbs, shitting on command,,) | If you had absolute control you'd probably kill yourself before long. There's so many complex systems going on inside you that need to operate like clockwork to keep you going that it would be too much for you to consciously handle. You forget to beat you heart one day and you could die stuff like that. | Evolutionarily, there were advantages for us to be able to control our breathing (hide from predators in silence, swim under water without downing, avoid noxious odors etc.). I can't think of any beneficial reason to stop your heart from beating, which almost immediately impairs our brain, which is our biggest evolutionary advantage. |
The German (Economic) Model | The model is called "Soziale Marktwirtschaft". It's something like social market economy. The idea is that there is more to the free market. The social part of it. The german constitution states that "Eigentum verpflichtet" (something like ownership obliges). That means that if you own something you should use it to the benefit of everyone. And we have of course a quit strong social system, strong unions and all that. But now this system is changing to the worse (my opinion). We have many workers who can not live from their wages and need get a bonus from the government. But the overall idea is that the economy should benefit all people and that for example high wages not just help the worker but also the economy itself because people can buy more stuff. | Basically German domestic consumption is really, really low because they save so much. Consumption is what drives economic activity and the Eurozone in particular has suffered from a dearth of consumer spending. The fact that Germany has tons of money but squirrels it away in corporate and government savings accounts rather than spending it or passing it on to workers to spend while Europe's economic growth is anemic is bad policy, in the magazine's opinion. |
Why are there unnecessary and poisonous chemicals like tar in cigarettes? | The whole "unnecessary and poisonous chemicals" in cigarettes is a big distortion. Any time you burn plant matter, you are going to release a bunch of toxic chemicals in small amounts, whether it is tobacco or a camp fire. That is an unavoidable part of smoking. | Most of the chemicals aren't actually added by humans they are present in tobacco plant. Some chemicals are added to preserve freshness and whatnot. The word chemical has gotten a bad rap because of the organic/green movement. Not al chemicals are bad. There are thousands of chemicals in an apple, but nobody complains about that. I'm not saying cigarettes are harmless by any means, but you have to understand that when they say there are 4000 chemicals in a cigarette it is a form of propaganda. The main culprit in cigarettes is a class of chemicals called polycyclic hydrocarbons. These aren't actually present in the cigarette they are produced when it burns. Any organic material (i.e. food, wood, oil, etc.) will produce polycyclic hydrocarbons when burned. Most polycyclic hydrocarbons are carcinogens. |
If sourness is from acids and bitterness is from bases, why don't they neutralize each other? | Bitterness has nothing to do with pH. Denatonium benzoate has a pKa of 4 - it's acidic, and it's the most bitter compound known. | The sour flavor is an acid. Acids dissolve tissue. Enough of an acid, even if it is very weak, is going to dissolve enough tissue to cause bleeding. |
Why are major sports organizations that operate like monopolies, such as the NFL or MLB, exempt from competition law? | MLB has an exemption written into the Sherman Anti Trust Act. The rest of them aren't immune from competition. The NFL "competed with the UFL around 2010. Before that it was XFL in 2001. Before that it was the USFL in the 80's. Before that it was the AFL in the 60's who they merged with. Before that it was the AAFL in the 40's who they took two franchises from. | There's a couple big reasons. First, the NFL has more players on the roster than MLB. The NBA has even fewer players, and on average, they make more than MLB players. Second, the NFL has taken a more egalitarian approach between its teams than the MLB. The NFL shares profits across teams to a greater degree than MLB, and the NFL has a strict salary cap, while MLB just has a luxury tax for teams going over a certain threshold. That means popular, big-city teams can splash huge amounts of money on certain players, and create a market that drives salaries upward. |
How could a cup of hot cocoa and an iceberg have the same thermal energy? | Thermal energy is dependent not just on how high the temperature is, but also how much stuff there is. A bathtub full of water will have more thermal energy than a teacup full of water at the same temperature. An iceberg is not very hot (and keep in mind that thermal energy can't be negative. Something that's below freezing is still above absolute zero.), but it is very, very big. Even though it has less thermal energy per unit mass than a cup of hot cocoa, it has so much more mass to make up for it. | The temperature at which chocolate becomes an easy to work with liquid is close to the temperature at which it burns. The slow, even heat from a double boiler makes it much easier to control the temperature of the chocolate and avoid burning it. |
What's a liberal Republican? What's a conservative Democrat? | The Republican and Democratic Parties have platforms - these are a single set of viewpoints that define the party. But many people will disagree with a part of the platform. They might agree with a Republican or middle-of-the-road viewpoint for one issue, but otherwise hold the Democratic viewpoint. A "liberal Republican" and a "conservative Democrat" both hold viewpoints closer to the center than to the party's platforms. | Traditional liberalism is a political philosophy. It is generally (contrary to its inexplicable and ridiculous usage in the United States) seen as favouring the free market, personal liberties and religious freedom (as opposed to secularism, though that can be a component of liberalism too). Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is mainly an economic philosophy. It is mostly concerned with strong support for and emphasis on expanding the free-market. Domestically, this means supporting things like privatization, deregulation, market-based solutions to policy problems, lowering taxes across the board and shifting those remaining taxes from corporations towards other sources (like onto people through their income taxes). Internationally, Neoliberalism generally means supporting free-trade agreements and some international organizations that help facilitate neoliberalism such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank. |
Why does hold music always have terrible quality when you can hear the person at the other end of the phone perfectly fine? | Phone systems are optimised for voice communication and clip frequencies that are higher or lower than usually occur in the human voice. Music often has harmonic frequencies that get lost. Add to this that hold music is often over-compressed to save memory space in the system. | There's actually an optimization in use to keep the data usage down. Audio encoding methods we normally use for music can handle a wide range of frequencies. However, because the human voice only has a limited range (and we usually speak in only a small slice of that) the audio encoding system used on phone lines doesn't bother to properly encode highs and lows, making songs sound like ass but saving data. If we switched to a better encoding system, it'd mean more data traveling over the same phone network, which'd put more strain on the network and probably lead to the phone companies charging everyone more to carry it. So we decided to just deal. It's not like the hold music is **good** music even when you can hear it properly, right? |
Why is there an enzyme in the human body that breaks down methanol into formaldehyde? How does this enzyme exist in the first place? | I would assume that you are talking about Alcohol deydrogenase. enzymes can be specific for certain molecules up to a point in their active site(where the molecule of interest attaches), they just kinda look for certain parts on a molecule, like groups like alcohol groups and their sizes, that sort of thing. So imagine an enzyme sort of like a puzzle that is complete except for one piece that is in the middle, now imagine that you have several pieces that are around the same size as the hole in the puzzle, all with at least one connecting piece that can connect to a slot in the hole. Not all of the pieces are necessarily what you are looking for, but they can to some degree fit into the puzzle. the same thing is true with Alcohol dehydrogenase, it "looks" for small alcohols, so although we would may want it to react with only ethanol, if we were to put it into the presence of methanol it would help carry out the reaction as the methanol fits well enough into its active site that it can react. | The compound causing the blindness is actually not methanol, but formic acid, created from methanol in a metabolic process called toxication. Formic acid is a nerve toxin that acts through damaging mitochondria, and the optic nerve seems to be particularly vulnerable to its toxicity. Though, with doses only a little above the dose that can lead to blindness (that is, about 15 ml), toxicity extends to the whole organism with potentially lethal outcome. Fun fact: the antidote to methanol poisoning actually is ethanol. Poisoned individuals are being kept at about 1 per mille, for about a week, by means of infusion. |
When subjected to heat, why do some objects melt while other objects burn? | Burning is a chemical reaction, so only certain things can burn. Melting, on the other hand, is a change of state, when you melt water it maintains the same chemical formula, but the bonds between the molecules are broken. If enough heat is applied pretty much anything will melt, but most things that burn do so because of their carbon content; carbon has a melting point of 3500 ^o C, so a chunk of wood would eventually melt, it would just burn to ash first. | Wood oxidizes before it can melt. The heat causes the break down of various components of the wood into stuff like charcoal, carbon dioxide and water, which destroys the physical form of the wood well before it could melt. |
If I were to accelerate a pebble to 99% the speed of light aimed at the center of the earth....what would happen? | A 10g pebble moving at 99% of the speed of light, hitting a solid surface, would release about 5.5*10^15 J of energy. This is similar to the energy of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb (by comparison, the Little Boy was about 1.5% as much and the Tsar Bomba 5000% as much). | The ball would actually perform a harmonic oscillation between the two sides of the earth. The ball would constantly accelerate moving to the earth's centre and because of the balance of powers in the center it would keep moving to the other side of the earth, but now the ball gets decelerated until its velocity reaches 0, which happens exactly when it comes to the surface on the other side. Then this procedure would replicate until the ball reaches the point where he was originally dropped. This would (ignoring any kind of friction) keep happening every 84 minutes. The reasoning for all of this (and some nice illustrations) can be found here: _URL_0_ (sorry for my really bad non-native english) |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.