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70fowv | Why is it that plants comparatively much less diverse (only ~250,000 species) than other clades of life? | I don't know for certain, but think about it:
Plants are sedentary. They find a particular kind of environment that suits them well and, for the most part, stay in one place for their whole lives. They don't need to develop systems that allow for locomotion. They don't need to develop complex tissues and organs that make up that system, nor the vessels and oxygen transport mechanism to ensure the cells in the locomotion system stay energized. They don't require much energy since, again, they stay put; they make their own energy, and it's enough to get by on.
Much of the complexity of animal life revolves around how they tweak the basic mechanics of moving around. Where does it move? How does it move? What does it require in order to move? How much and what kind of energy does it need? Does it regulate its own internal temperature? | 3c009643-c7ed-47c8-92f5-f85103cd64ed |
2vmob5 | Why do we randomly get this weird/burning sensation in the nose when inhaling? | Always assumed it was a dry spot where there was no mucous. | 2acee6b5-2568-436f-b408-027b2cdd3bd9 |
4vwam3 | how do sinkholes happen | Have you ever been to the beach and made a sand bridge? You put your arm in a trench and build a tightly packed layer of sand over top. If you carefully remove your hand the sand stays and makes a tunnel/bridge. But if you touch it, it'll fall in on itself.
Well, deep underground there are pockets of water with lots of dirt piled and packed tightly on top of it. The water does a pretty good job of holding up the dirt, like your hand did with the sand. But , sometimes those pockets of water can be drained out over long periods of time or from movements in the earth leaving big bubbles of air. Air is not as good at holding up the dirt, and sometimes the dirt will collapse into the hole like the bridge.
The issue is very common in Florida because of our natural aquifers, big tunnels of water under the ground. The aquifers drain very easily and if the earth moves around too much, it collapses.
You'll often see sink holes filled with water but the principle is the same. It's a lot easier to make a water balloon pop if there is a little bit of air at the top. And once the sink hole pops, all the dirt sinks below and the water rushes up to the top.
edit: fixed fishy typo. | bbfafa1e-63df-4dd6-9367-f22ef330fd90 |
56gcrl | Are mobile ads intentionally the last thing to load while opening a page, so more people would accidentally click them? | No.
Ads are usually provided by a 3rd party company from their servers, not the same server that is delivering the rest of the content on the page, so they can often take longer to load compared to other stuff on the page.
They are often also image-heavy, which means they take longer to load than text.
They are also usually inserted into the page using javascript, so that they can load several different ads to different viewers on the same page, or target ads to different users, or track impressions, & c. The script that loads these ads often runs after other content in the page has loaded, so that the page doesn't have to wait on the ads & just display as blank while the ads load (this would lose you a ton of visitors, & make the ads worthless because there'd be no visitors to see them once they do load). | f907b415-bc86-43fa-b8c5-d8d8ebbb50cd |
43flls | why are we producing more aluminium than we recycle if it takes 95 percent less energy to recycle? | Yes, it would be, but then there would also be a finite amount of aluminum on earth and we would never be able to have more bottles and cans than we do right now. The world is growing and we still have a need for new aluminum. People like airplane manufacturers and NASA need lots of high quality aluminum so they are willing to pay for the good stuff, coke doesn't need anyhting other than tin cans so they likely wont pay a premium for new aluminum and jsut use the recycled stuff. | c70e09ae-219a-4ccc-8a24-ea0f0c409476 |
5z9wrh | why are there no comedy categories at the Oscars | Each awards show has their own thing. You're probably aware of the Oscars and the Emmy, but there are like a hundred others with their own style and categories.
However you're not alone in your thinking. Not having a separate comedy category has been a regular criticism of the Oscars.
They tried to assuage this a bit (and add some flair and promo to the show) by upping the best picture category from 5 films to up to 10, hopefully to allow more diverse films outside of dramas (such as animated, comedy's, and sci-fi films), but this is still pretty new. They changed the voting on it a bit too, but its unknown if this had any effect on the eventual winners.
In other words... this particular award show does its own thing, just like the others, and this does not seem like something they are particularly interested in. | 781ba0fd-db6b-453d-a9d7-54181cca7444 |
2dxo9z | Why is it when I love someone a lot, that sometimes I have to hug them tightly and it feels like I can't be close enough. | No answer, but that is fucking adorable. I hope you two have a long happy life of being this in love together. | 6f3be2fb-bfd4-4d50-9b88-8efdd8d75d50 |
4066oo | What benefits (if any) does lobbying provide to society? | In principle, 'lobbying' just means 'talking to congressmen'. If you have a good idea for how the nation's laws should be set up, or a stake in those laws, you sit down for lunch and talk to them, help them to understand where you're coming from. Others do the same, and then the politician takes a stance.
In principle, once a politician has taken a stance, people will choose their favorite champions to advocate for. They'll talk about them, put up a poster on their lawn, or, if they can afford it, a billboard on a highway, or a radio or television ad.
In practice, our ability to sell ideas through advertising is just way too good. The candidate with the most advertising usually wins the election, so they are forced to pick the ideas that will get them the most money. In part, this is because many of the candidates have the same opinions, and so you'll support the one that 'most famously' holds those opinions. As a result, successful candidates hold a mix of popular and profitable ideas.
It's hard to say how best we can go about fixing this. It's definitely our own fault - in an ideal world, we'd notice that most of the candidates lived up to our desires, and elect the one with the best education or the best combination of little ideas. In practice, though, no one can name what all of the individual policies of all twelve or so Republican presidential candidates are, let alone those of every politician they're meant to vote for.
Other options have included a cap on campaign spending, which would put more emphasis on the debates rather than fund raising. This is a troubling idea though, because it's not clear where that line should be exactly. Do we ban any billboard larger than 3 feet by 3 feet? Seems extreme. Radio ads? TV ads? They all seem like they should have a place in educating people about a candidate's ideas. A pure dollar spending cap? Does it count against the cap if I build my own sign for a candidate and place it on my property? What if I'm a tenant? Is it legal to put it in my front yard? If that's legal, why can't I rent a highwayside plot and put up a huge sign? If I ban radio ads, what constitutes an ad? Can the radio personality express an opinion? The station's opinion? The station owner's opinion? What if someone rents the station for a week? An hour? A 30 second ad spot?
Preventing people from spending money on political campaigns would require us to draw a lot of awfully specific lines, some which may violate the basic rights of free speech. Preventing people from meeting with congressmen to talk about their problems would be even more troubling. While the current state of lobbying is deeply flawed, there's no clear road to fix it. | 09acea3a-b7b4-4de3-9f05-13cc0d1f3fe1 |
7gl1ti | Why are the stairs of an escalator higher than the stairs of a staircase? | To give you better timing to get off the step at the end, and to somewhat discourage you from running up them while moving (primarily for children). | 097a3349-3058-4ac1-9cfc-896bc934d8ef |
5y57m5 | Why does half and half in containers not have to be refrigerated? How come it can be left out for days while milk has to always be kept cold? | Are you sure you're not referring to non-dairy creamers? Half and half most certainly needs to refrigerated. | 4e2e2217-6cd5-4422-89dd-ccf6b7f3a57d |
3xzow0 | Why are smoke shops allowed to sell bongs? | Next time you go there, look for a sign. There will be one saying "For Tobacco Use Only"
While bongs are commonly associated with marijuana, they are also used for tobacco and in that regard are perfectly legal. By saying they're only for tobacco it protects the stores from the drug laws you mention.
So in order for there to be any legal consequences, people would have to prove that the shop is knowingly selling them for use with marijuana and not tobacco. This is impossible to prove in almost every case. | 0383947b-80a1-4d1d-b44a-637ecd55f67f |
41rvjb | How does hot water work in hotels? | While all buildings are a little different, most use a single boiler and a recirculating hot water system. Hot water circulates in big loops on each floor, driven by small magnetic pumps. This means the water is "instant-on". The storage tank is kept warm by the boiler and inflowing water is warmed before it goes into the tank. This provides constant temperature hot water all day. | 6a21442f-27cf-4b63-8c89-21cd532a91d1 |
3ng9wk | How do pornography sites stay in business? | For the same reason Youtube is allowed to exist. The law determined that these sites cannot reasonably be expected to control uploaded content to such a degree, in other words they cannot be held accountable for copyright infringement *as long as* they comply with DMCA requests and delete videos on demand. This does happen even now, I remember a certain popular account on xvideos/xhamster that got banned multiple times for example. The problem of course is that videos get uploaded faster than they can be taken down.
Commercial porn sites probably have given up on that battle more or less and adapted. Instead, they release "sample clips" in order to advertise for their sites of full HD content. Those commonly 5-minute long vids are just small parts of hour long productions that you usually *don't* get to see. | f7b1b8a4-00ea-4239-9d42-3d58a0cbc873 |
35svbh | How am I a W-2 employee, yet do not qualify for any benefits, including unemployment? Details in comments. | It varies from state to state. One reason could be that you didn't earn enough in at least one of two consecutive quarters. Depending on exactly when your season ends, that could screw you. Or just simply not enough hours.
No matter what the reason, I think you're entitled to a hearing. I'm sure that varies as well, but it's worth looking in to.
EDIT: To clarify, I believe this hearing is like an appeal. If you've applied and been denied, it's an opportunity to meet with whomever it would be and plead your case. | 172c9757-571e-4c06-bbb5-2c3d3ef85e05 |
1hqexp | Brief history of Turkey with focus on the modern issues and culture | Perhaps start with this country profile, it has a pretty ELI5 approach and then ask a more specific question.
[Here's the CIA's Turkey in a nutshell](_URL_0_) | ba7f8697-3b46-4067-b69e-af76cc9cd72b |
3utvdv | How come Humans can't learn animal languages and communicate to them? | Because animals don't have language. They communicate emotions with sound like angry growls, panicked screams, horny rumbles, and affectionate purrs, but they can't communicate abstract thoughts, form sentences, assign arbitrary names to objects and events, combine terms to make new concepts, etc, which is what we consider language to be.
A Mandarin-speaker and a Finnish-speaker can communicate anger and fear and happiness and affection perfectly well without using language, right? Just by sounds, tones, movements, facial expressions? Well, that's the level on which animals communicate. | 4cdfa0c8-c5f7-44e8-b340-c12d1f0912b2 |
202xaz | How and Why exactly does encryption work? Dont you need to transfer the key, and couldnt (lets say the NSA) not simply obtain it by saving all your internet activity? | Nope, because of the magic of asymmetric cryptography. The short version is that the key used to *encrypt* the data is not the same as the one to *decrypt* it.
When Alice sends something to Bob, she encrypts it with his *public* key. This is a key that everyone has the right to see and access. Only Bob, who has the only copy of his *private* key, can then decrypt the message. He then sends a reply, encrypting with Alice's public key, and she decrypts with her private key.
The same sort of thing happens with an SSL transaction (HTTPS). When you connect to a secure site, you know you have the right site because they have a certificate proving they are who they say they are. That certificate is also the public key, so you send the data encrypted with that key, and only that site can decrypt it. The site sets up a special session key to encrypt the rest of the data, so you and the site can continue to talk encrypted without anybody else being able to view the contents of the traffic. | f2fc3bae-98a0-406d-bbf6-e322b88ce550 |
8kwlfj | What do degrees (temperature) actually measure? | At a basic level you can think of temperature as the average molecular energy of a system. Temperature can be measured in different ways, but they all come down to measuring changes in heat energy (molecular motion and jiggling).
In everyday thermometers, what is measured is how a liquid (originally mercury) expands with temperature, travelling up the bulb. The expansion is due to the atoms in the liquid moving faster and pushing on each other harder.
In devices called thermocouples, the temperature affects how well a piece of metal conducts electricity, which can be measured precisely.
There are also infrared thermometers, which measure the heat energy in the form of light that objects give off.
It's important to note that temperature isn't the same thing as energy, but the explanation requires delving into the wonders of thermodynamics, which is a bit too complicated for me to ELI5. | c39cab7a-7ee3-4c6b-9763-9bf7732293a0 |
8tum1b | why is seemingly every photo tagged with a “Getty Images” watermark? How big are they? And are they just an image host or do they also employ photographers? | Getty is huge. They buy images from existing photographers and then aggressively protect copyright. I don't believe they employ their own photographers, but prefer to buy images from others. | c3b684f0-c710-4f13-a7c4-8bf518e80ae0 |
2xkbyp | Why is it such a big deal that it costs more than 1 cent to make a penny? Shouldn't the cost and production of other coins and bills counteract the defecit of making pennies? | Just because you CAN make up a loss in one are with a gain in another doesn't justify that loss. You could say "sure, I throw away every other roll of toilet paper I buy without using it, but I buy toilet paper at half price." Well, it would be better still to buy that half-price toilet paper and NOT throw any away. There are a lot of other good reasons to get rid of pennies, but I won't bore you by going into them here. | 341ef4da-02a8-45cb-b355-37edc81c0aad |
yvgks | What is fascism and what is wrong with it? | Fascism is an ideology that has three fundamental tenets: Paternalism, Corporatism, and Nationalism. Each fascist movement was unique, but these three basic attributes are shared. One could also add anti-Marxism to it.
Paternalism refers to the hierarchical system of fascist politics. The state is the supreme authority, and this is in the people's interests. Liberty is a secondary concern. An apt analogy is the family: in fascism, the state plays the role of a father figure. Again, liberty is unimportant - much as the liberty of a child who wants to not eat his vegetables or do his homework is unimportant.
Corporatism is more complicated. It has nothing to do with corporations, as known in our society - the word comes from the Latin 'corpus'. It is the view that society can be divided into concrete groups, known as corporations. Another way to view them is as special interest groups. In a fascist society, people would be represented by these corporations. For example, in government, instead of a Congressman from Michigan, there might be a Congressman for Auto Workers. All Auto Workers would belong to a single union, and elect a representative (or have one appointed). In addition, fascism preaches tripartism. In it, society is divided into two sectors - labor and management - with a third sector, the state, reigning supreme, and being responsible for ensuring neither hurts the interests of the state. This is the most complicated aspect of fascism, and I have not come close to covering it here. If you want more detail, I'd be happy to provide it.
The final component is nationalism - the idea that a person's national identity is the most important aspect of their personal identity. The nation is supreme, and again, the individual is relatively unimportant. An analogy might be the human body. A kidney, or individual, by itself is meaningless - it is only when it exists in conjunction with the other organs that it becomes a body, or nation.
Fascism is neither good nor bad, like communism. Some leaders are not seen as positive - Hitler, or Mussolini. Others, more neutrally - Franco. Others still are still regarded positively today by their nations - Peron, or Vargas. | 83a4e8b6-5a0e-49a4-903d-ba4e27041640 |
po5s5 | The Argument of "Separation of Church and State" and "Under God" in the Pledge | Honestly it is primarily for historical reasons. There are two factors in play: First, while the US is not and never was a "Christian nation", at the time of it's founding religion in American was almost exclusively monotheistic. Even people who would probably be atheists today considered themselves deists: that is, they didn't deny there was a "god", they just didn't think it did anything out of the ordinary. So when the founding fathers talked about having free exercise of religion, they mostly meant what you thought about "god", not whether you actually believed there was one. So a statement like "under God" would have been fairly innocuous to them, since it doesn't actually say anything about what "God" is. It could simply mean what Einstein meant when he talked about God as, basically, the orderly force behind natural laws. Not necessarily a personal deity at all.
However, the real reason "under God" and such came into popularity was when the US started getting involved in a big way in foreign affairs, especially the Cold War. It turned out the US had more/more active Christians than most of the other big countries, especially the USSR which had basically declared itself atheist. So being Christian got identified in the popular culture with being American. So there was a big push to include this new-found "national religion" in popular elements of government propaganda like pledges and currency designs. They seized on the characteristic of the founding fathers I mentioned earlier as a justification that the US had always believed in God, without really paying attention to the changing definition and cultural makeup that had occurred since then.
And the reason we keep it around today is that it's easier to keep things the way they are than to change them, and there are enough people who still think America is a "Christian nation" and enough people who are sort of like the founding fathers in that they don't think the word "god" is a big deal that there's not enough popular support to get it changed. | e159310a-7e1d-439e-ab19-f00f0b9f2318 |
3s75eg | Why do ice cream taste testers use a gold spoon to taste test? | How do you define "common spoon?" At my house, I have metal spoons (likely of different metallic composition) and plastic spoons (again, there are all sorts of different plastics).
Using a gold spoon allows for standardized testing and, as you stated, to allow for the most neutral taste test possible. | 67cd3ad9-b2e6-446d-bb14-e0857c6184a2 |
3irj31 | Why does yellow mustard taste so different from Dijon mustard? | Because its a different kind of mustard. Full of different... stuff.
Different *mustard stuff*. | 6be883fa-2892-4f9b-bb75-41c2be6d9057 |
1rc0bs | Why aren't any famous people getting assassinated? | In terms of political figures like the president, the Secret Service has gotten really good at spotting that sort of behavior, and stopping potential threats long before it's a take a bullet type situation. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it's not usually something an average Joe would do out of the blue without warning, it's pretty much always radicals who are being watched.
In terms of celebs usually it's a crazy stalker who sends all sorts of e-mails and letters and tweets and whatever, so the private security of celebs know who they're looking for and they get tipped off if some nut job is driving across 12 states to where the celeb they're stalking is preforming a concert and they don't even have tickets. Still easier than the president but also less people care/are crazy enough to do it.
I mean you've got to be crazy to kill the president but at least you can make sense of it like with Booth killing Lincoln. He legitimately believed Lincoln was a tyrant and he was a patriot doing the noble and riotous thing. Compare that to that nutcase who killed John Lennon. I mean NOTHING makes scene about that other than he was just some crazy fuck. No real driving motivation like there is with politics.
We also have a lot more medications available for people and a much more effective system of spotting crazies in our society and getting them the necessary treatment. | 5687e6a2-f388-4e44-add1-c513f88746d9 |
1xj0x7 | Did fruit and vegetables evovle too? | Those are parts of plants and trees and trees and plants did evolve. | de7ccf7d-b318-4a27-a089-b7221f052636 |
2m12s6 | Why are denim jeans both stiflingly uncomfortable in hot weather and freezing in cold weather? | When its too hot you will be hot in jeans. When its too cold you will be too cold in jeans. | df46900a-3683-4dd5-aea9-b71c70cd1418 |
55zbti | Why are speed caps used by ISP's and how do they work? | CFAggie isn't really right, that was the case before fiber internet and massive technological feats. I was once studying to be a network engineer, and I picked a few things up.
They do it because they're greedy assholes. I know that's doom-and-gloom to the point of being laughable, but that's why. American and most European internet is very developed and chances are only a minuscule percentage of their servers are being used at any given time. Take a look at the places Google Fiber has rolled in, best example being right where I live. The same day Google Fiber was *announced* (not released, announced they were coming) our speeds went up from 5/1 for $50 a month to 300/200 for $50 a month. The internet here no longer goes out randomly, throttles, or has any other issue.
Internet companies (mostly in the USA) will "buy out" areas so other internet service providers can't lay down wire and the only ISP in that area can keep speeds and reliability in the shitter for sky-high prices.
It's just a regressive business practice. Paying more for the same technology. | 1762c631-8e1a-4704-8264-356ca9ef7a27 |
4bjg1p | the oligodynamic effect (i.e brass doorknobs disinfecting themselves after a period of time) | The effect is certainly pretty cool. Essentially what is described is that frequently touched materials can gather lots of microorganisms really easily, just because they're found literally everywhere at extremely high levels. When you touch a doorknob, you transfer the bacteria on your hand to the doorknob.
However, the nature of the brass (and other metals including silver, gold and copper) is such that it interferes with the functioning of the bacteria or fungus etc. resulting in the death of the microorganism. It is suspected that the metal interferes with the correct functioning of proteins needed for the survival of these bugs.
Also, an interesting thing to note is that you reference "disinfecting" in your initial question. There is a difference between disinfection and sterilisation; disinfection means that the most harmful microorganisms are killed, but not their spores. This means that there is potential for their survival, for example if they were transferred back to someone's hand from the doorknob. Sterilisation is complete removal of harmful and harmless bacteria and there spores, which is different.
Long winded explanation, I hope that this helps out a little! | a15aedbf-0d9a-44a4-9cdb-5bee69d3496d |
5fs37c | I am short-sighted. If I look in a mirror which is close to my face, objects in the distance (in the mirror) still look blurry. Why? | A mirror is not a picture. Put your camera in selfie mode and you will see the background in focus, because the camera in your phone is properly focused and the screen on your phone is a real image.
The image in a mirror, on the other hand, is a virtual image made by reflecting light from the real world to your eyes. The distance to the objects in the scene is unchanged (maybe a little longer by the distance to the mirror and back). | a23baed6-d7e5-44b4-8bce-d0953fa7e2ed |
vbq6j | How do hair transplants work? | Hair from the back and side of your own head is used. It's not affected by male pattern baldness. They take individual hairs or groups and place them on your bald areas.
To get more complex, this hair is unaffected by DHT which causes MPB hair loss. Older techniques would use awkward looking groups of hair (ie hair plugs) while more modern techniques take smaller follicle groups harvest from a removed strip of scalp or device that takes individual follicle groups directly from the scalp (called Follicular unit extraction, or FUE). [source](_URL_0_) | c562be42-c1e6-4661-8854-6d26b0d5a248 |
2dh262 | Do water filters (like those placed in Brita water pitchers) really make a substantial difference in the quality of the water? | Lots of people out there live outside of cities, they have water softeners, etc. But still the water is skanky and nasty. So, the britta filter comes to the rescue! It removes sulfer, iron, calcium, nitrates, and other nasty tasting stuff.
In 3rd world countries they have similar things with silver membranes to kill nasties. Such as the Tata Swach. _URL_0_
The also have micron filters, UV lamps, and various other gizmos. | abad9598-1c8c-4381-8736-03d5d7c1d1c4 |
37nebw | Why some people would rather help an animal than a human? | Speaking personally, animals seem more helpless and innocent. I feel like a human could help themselves in a way that a cat or dog couldn't, hence the animal is in greater need of help. | b6e742e0-c736-400f-8f5a-6e36bccb6662 |
2e3tp2 | Why are second (and if lucky) third orgasms in a sex session (with a partner or alone) less intense than the first? | That's funny, my second ones are always way more intense. | 1ffdcb99-0916-4fda-be4c-7b5349746bd9 |
2g2hw8 | The 'Hole Theory' of current flow | To start, holes are only applicable in semiconductors, you don't just apply them to any circuit you feel like.
In metals the outmost electrons are in the conduction band. They are free to move. When you apply an electric field (a voltage) they move due to it.
In semiconductors something different happens. At 0 K (absolute zero) all the electrons are in a valence band. In this band they are not free to move. If you apply an electric field (within reason), they will not budge. At higher temperature or when exposed to light, some of the electrons cross a band gap (or energy gap) to the condition band when they receive energy from heat or light. Once they've done this, they are free to move just like in metals. *But* they left an empty state in the valence band, one that another electron in the valence band could move into without the need for a large energy input. This space is called a hole.
When you apply an electric field to a semiconductor, the field moves the free electrons in the conduction band, and tries to move the stuck valence electrons the same direction. They can't move, *unless* they are near the missing spot or hole and move into it. The result is we have free electrons moving in the conduction band and stuck electrons moving from their bound spot to another open bound spot in the valence band. It's both electrons moving the same way, but one is a little slower.
The jumping from spot to spot of multiple electrons is a little hard to model. But if instead we just treat the missing spot as a single particle and pretend it's moving the opposite direction as the electrons, it's much easier. Hence we just treat it as a positive qausi-particle called a hole, and model it as something with the electron charge, but positive, moving with slightly less mobility in the opposite direction. This has nothing to do with a proton, we aren't treating it as one. It's a whole new particle and it's charge is the opposite of an electron, which happens to be the same magnitude as a proton but it has nothing to do with one. | 0158d810-25b5-4437-a827-26e9a346a1d7 |
4wtn8w | Air pressure in houses? Why do some doors hit a cushion of air when they close, some doors slam when they close, and some doors get sucked closed? | It's depends on how air tight the room is. You will notice this with doors that are tighter to the carpet and not under cut. Take a door that you can't slam because of this and open a window in that room the air will be forced out the window and the door will close easier. Opening or closing a door rapidly will generate lots of air movement. Without somewhere to go it will be more difficult to close. Undercut doors allow air underneath. Similar to Windows letting air outside. Also to note in commercial buildings many glasses enclosed rooms and others have what's called transfer air duct that as well as allowing air out functionally assist in the same way. Source union sheet metal worker. Duct work. | 9f1d7c72-49f9-4345-be14-da7b11d18cd8 |
3rhp9n | Why do such well-known companies as McDonald's and Coca-Cola pay tens of millions to be the lead sponsors of the World Cup/Olympics/etc.? Do people really not know these companies at this point? | A part of it is about securing future customers through positive association. If you are 5 y.o. and love football, and everytime you watch it on tv a big coca cola logo is burnt into your retinas, then you're more likely to prefer it once you're older and actually have some disposable income. Thats the idea, anyhow... | 5a64969b-7fb7-42a5-8fb1-f22db3df45eb |
3qa4er | Hospital Fetal Heart rate and Cervix Monitors | A belt with a sensor is placed around the stomach. The sensor can tell how hard something is being pressed against it. The tensing and relaxing of the uterus puts more or less pressure on the sensor, so it can tell what's going on. | 101ffb83-fccd-48c0-8d94-8f36a1ecde31 |
1sa2uk | The number system of Graphics Cards | There essentially isn't one. Within an individual product line from a given manufacturer the numbers may mean something, but mostly they are just the name the manufacturer gave to that video card. It's all about marketing.
The first number in most cards indicates the "generation" of video card they belong to, but this is still just marketing. A higher number doesn't necessarily mean more performance. A high-end GTX 6xx card might outperform a low-end GTX 7xx card, for instance.
Basically, you have to look at the charts. The numbers are made up to sell more video cards, not to be informative in any way. | 2c098159-a221-4c69-a41e-73f6f0a0f098 |
2huu20 | Why can I hear a TV from another room, even if the volume is off? | Although I can't understand what you're saying in the explanation, I think I know what your'e talking about. Old TVs emit a very high frequency noise that is constantly on, even with the volume muted. you might be hearing this from the other room. | 40c1552d-9466-42c1-8732-0308c2bc5010 |
34na5n | I just saw the Bruce Lee kid video, and now I'm curious how nunchaku work. It seems like an inefficient weapon. | Yeah, they're not exactly great weapons. They're not as difficult as you'd think to use them, but they're honestly kind of a pain, and certainly aren't as effective as many other weapons.
From what I recall of my Asian history though, the reason taht these kinds of weapons exist is because of limited resources. They started out as modified farm tools. A random farmer (especially in Japan) couldn't afford to buy a "real" weapon. The nunchaku is basically just a modified flail; not as good as say, an axe, but you can carry it around with you on a daily basis, and it works much better than just being unarmed. | 3572fc41-8474-4966-93ae-6d741349dcc2 |
5oe1nz | What does "single payer" mean in the american health care system ? | "Single Payer" means that there is a single entity that handles all of the insurance payments to medical providers. In this case, that payer would be the government. Instead of multiple private insurers that each cover a small portion of the population and each negotiate their own prices for procedures... we would have one big insurer that covers everyone and negotiates in behalf of everyone for lower prices on procedures. This would allow for lower and more fair pricing as well as universal coverage regardless of wealth or pre-existing conditions. | 573b04b3-3129-4a33-8177-52bb524bdc1e |
5km95b | How is mass extinction humans fault? | > Considering most people at that time and prior loved in mud huts
HA!
Humans had already been farming for 9,500 years, living in cities for most of that, China had been a sprawling empire for 4,500 years, Rome had risen and fallen.
Just because we hadn't built a steam engine yet didn't mean we weren't causing change to the environment on a massive scale, and had been for ages. And one of the biggest ways was with our stomachs - it's likely that human hunting played a major role in the disappearance of all the megafauna species in the new world, starting perhaps 10- to 20,000 years ago. | d6aa7a65-5d8c-435e-bb65-c4d78cdc7cb3 |
2hh6rz | How are branded drinks mass produced? (Gatorade, Monster) | There are huge companies out there that you have probably never heard of that make all different components of food and drinks. This includes flavor companies, food coloring companies, salt... pretty much every component on the back of the can was produced by someone else besides the one actually making the drink. So then gatorade has research facilities, pilot plants(kinda like a small scale plant to do trial runs, experiments on a bigger scale) and full scale industrial plants. The researchers figure out the exact formula they want for a product, it gets scaled up once for the pilot plant so they can figure out how to mass produce it and get the engineering kinks worked out and then it goes to full scale production.
At the plant, they have filtered water that mixes with either a concentrated syrup or powder and then its pumped into cans or bottles. Then CO2 can be added and it is sealed and labeled. | acc48aa5-4036-4330-a162-572e2eb79578 |
43f6a2 | what's an API? (computers) | It's an "application programming interface". It's a defined set of methods by which you interface with functions and data of a program from another programmer. E.G. google's API would allow me to submit (programmatically) a string as a search and get back a dataset of results that include descriptive text and url. | cefe5055-d763-4fd0-badf-9a335595a086 |
89ylwl | Why are Japanese fan content creators so much more strict about their activities in order to avoid copyright issues than Western fan creators? | Social responsibility. In general, Japanese culture has a bit more sense of morality in respect to the original creators. They don't want to hurt the creators. Theres also this sense in Japan of following the order of things just for the sake of the law. A lot of westerners will do things they know they aren't supposed to, if they think they can get away with it. Japanese I think are more likely to take the "safe" road.
Lots of generalizations here, but I think it mostly holds true. | bdd0ade8-b5c2-48ff-b9d7-d5b4942c2d59 |
1qd5oq | Why do my grey hairs pop when pulled? | Grey hairs happen because the stem cells which produce the colouring die, so that's probably related. | b8c7a6ec-f229-480e-8ab8-989375b6b35d |
1zmc1i | The difference between a parody and a satire | Parody is imitation. Satire is humorous, constructive, social criticism. | c2ebecc8-d3c5-4f1e-b3f0-90f6fb582e23 |
83spgl | How come—when looking at the light produced on earth VIA satellite imagery, they are always yellow, when in fact, there are lights of all different colors being produced? | It's not VIA, it's just via, a word. :-)
Anyhow, the answer is simple: most electric lights are actually yellow, so when you look at a lot of lights grouped together from far away, you see mostly yellow light. | 23ed8430-b607-4ab5-9a90-0e999a0bbc3f |
5hjya2 | Why is insurance handled by private, for-profit companies rather than by the government? | > and that's definitely not who I would want backing me if I get in an accident.
...except that, unless you were criminally stupid when signing a contract, in this particular case you get to sue them, i.e. get the government involved. Under capitalism, the government is the policeman, not the entire economy. | 5085d41b-beac-46c4-8528-61414e05181a |
3t4j2z | How do tunnel builders know where they are going? | i dont know anything about that specific project, but in general there is an engineer that surveys in the centerline of the tunnel using a theodolite (_URL_0_). you basically move a known point down the tunnel using the previous point along the centerline as a reference. you offset each point from the actual centerline so that you can mark the actual points with a nail along the tunnel wall, out of the way. | 3687fa08-5381-4865-b26e-70f449d1d02a |
1jzs1s | How exactly do Saline pools work? | Salt water pools still use chlorine, the difference is that the chlorine is produced through electrolysis using the salt as the base material. The advantage is that the salt electrolysis process creates free chlorine ions (the type of chlorine that kills bacteria) and burns off chloramines (the type of chlorine that burns your eyes and smells like strong bleach). As long as they are maintained they will work just as well at killing bacteria, and people tend to find them less irritating, especially if they have sensitive skin. The salt system also has the benefit of "softening" the water. They tend to have a higher initial setup cost though, and saltwater is more corrosive than freshwater so you have to keep an eye on the internals and plumbing of the filtration system. | 4bad95e1-987a-417c-96fd-2ccd58434caf |
5u0rc5 | Why did I just pay $250 for a passport with a 3-week turnaround, when a driver's license is $25 and take 30 minutes? | A driver's license is a state-issued document accepted by state governments certifying your identity and ability to drive.
A passport is a federally-issued document accepted by international governments certifying your identity and travel eligibility and history.
Whereas you can get away with a temporary driver's license printed on a DMV receipt printer, a passport has a LOT of liability tied to it and basically is your country insuring you as "This person is a Normal Person"
The cost comes from the legal backing, as well as whatever background checks they need to run on you | cd66b7eb-90ce-4dc7-9e38-947d62bdb7fb |
15k2ib | the upcoming "dairy crisis"...Is the Dept of Agriculture really "required" to purchase milk from farmers? And what will they do with it once they buy it? | It's not extortion... it's protectionist agricultural policy and the agricultural lobby (including [American Farmland Trust](_URL_4_)). Every five years Congress is expected to pass another temporary law regarding agricultural policy known as the [farm bill](_URL_5_). Our current bill, the [Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008](_URL_1_) was passed despite Bush's veto in 2008.
The pentannual farm bill basically allows short-term control over the policies implemented by previous agricultural legislation dating back to even the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. For the most part, these are aimed at maintaining "farm income stabilization" and maintaining stable cheap prices while helping farmers stay afloat, despite intense international competition (see "protectionism").
In particular, the Agricultural Act of 1949 (an example of *permanent* agricultural legislation) implemented something known as the [Milk (now Dairy Product) Price Support Program](_URL_0_), which put into place provisions for a a type of *price support* in which the government agrees to purchase enough milk to reach some set goal so that agricultural processors and vendors reach a target revenue, allowing them to pay comfortable wages for farmers.
The goal was to allow farmers to be able to make a high income and shield them from sources of volatility (like natural disasters). The original 1949 legislation agreed to keep the prices for milk products between 75-90% [parity](_URL_3_), so that farming would remain profitable and we could rely on our domestic agricultural sector in the future. The [idea behind parity](_URL_7_) in this context dates back to the era before World War I, thanks to the earlier statisticians who recorded data on the prices of agricultural goods and other commodities, and centers on the idea of "fair" exchange value:
> “Parity”, as ap-plied to income from any agricultural commodity for any year, shall be that gross income for such year as the average gross income from such commodity for the preceding 10 calendar years bears to the average gross income from agriculture for such 10 calendar years.
Now, in October 21, 1981, the farm bill known as the [Agricultural and Food Act of 1981](_URL_6_) switched to a system in which Congress began to target specific price levels or rely on expectations for surplus, instead, overriding provisions of the 1949 law. The 2008 Farm Bill was the first to explicitly implement price floors on dairy products rather than merely milk:
> * For cheddar cheese in blocks, not less than $1.13 per pound;
* For cheddar cheese in barrels, not less than $1.10 per pound;
* For butter, not less than $1.05 per pound and;
* For nonfat dry milk, not less than $0.80 per pound.
Now, the problem is that these price floors turn out to be much lower than those found using the 1949 parity provisions thanks to economic growth. Unfortunately, the 2008 farm bill expires in 3 days, on the 31st, and unless a 2012 farm bill emerges quickly, these price supports will revert and the government will find itself keeping milk at a very high cost, crowding-out consumers.
[This is not the only reason why the farm bill is needed, however.](_URL_2_) | c7a347c9-2318-4066-9ab2-9a940fbd1bf2 |
36if2f | What are the differences between major (competitive) Fighting Games and how they are played competitively? Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter etc. | It's kind of like the difference between Cricket and Baseball. There's some similarities, and skills in one will have some transfer-ability, but to really excel at one, it takes focusing on that one game. There are all the little nuances that one game has that others don't.
For not quite ELI5 level explanations: the current incarnation of Street Fighter focuses very heavily on extremely careful spacing. A major factor is also so-called "vortex" characters. Essentially, they attempt to find an attack that allows them to get a knockdown and then can make extremely ambiguous attack setups that lead into more knockdowns, quickly snowballing to a win. Mortal Kombat has many strings of attacks that are "safe". Essentially, if the series is blocked, the series is safe if you can block before your opponent can retaliate. As such, the goal is to space yourself so that your opponent will miss if they attempt to hit you with a "block string". It's pretty much universally easier to punish someone for missing an attack than for forcing you to block. Several characters with teleporting moves also means that traditional full-screen projectiles are significantly weaker.
The latest Killer Instinct is kinda like Mortal Kombat in that most characters have relatively safe block strings. However, the mechanics of the KI combo system and the counter system adds a nuance to the game that rewards players that study all the characters in the game carefully. While one player is in a combo, the player being hit has opportunities to "break" the combo by inputting an attack of the same strength as the attacker. If the defender guesses wrong, they're locked out from breaking combos for a certain length of time. The attacker can also fake an attack during a combo and, if the defender attempts to break the feint they are locked out as if they pressed the wrong attack. A defender can also perform a "shadow counter" at the expense of some of their super meter while blocking. Essentially, it allows the defender to immediately retaliate while blocking. However, you can be hit out of your counter attempt, so attempting to counter a fast hitting, multi hit move often results in getting hit in the face if you time your counter wrong.
I'm not a big fan of it, but Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a game where movement is everything. There are several unblockable setups in the game, and characters move and attack very quickly, so even blockable moves can be difficult to consistently defend against. Each player has 3 characters on his team, though only 1 is controlled at a time for each player. Other characters can be called in as an assist where they will attack with one predetermined move, then jump back off screen. You have various ways to exchange which character you're controlling during the match, and the game doesn't end till all characters on one team are defeated. The game is extraordinarily momentum heavy. For many teams, a single hit can lead to a combo that will KO a character.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is a 3d fighter. Characters can move on the X, Y, and Z axis. As such, the emphasis is on both proper spacing (like all fighting games) and on mixing up whether an attack hits high or low. While you have 2 characters on a team, you lose the round as soon as one of them is knocked out.
Dead or Alive 5 is a 1 on 1 3d fighter, but other than that, I can't tell you much. I've never really played the game, so can't give much more info.
Arc System Works games: I'm gonna lump these together. If you hear of a game as an "anime game", chances are it was made by Arc System Works. Their games tend to feature characters with extraordinary mobility and overly complicated motion requirements. Apologies to any fans, but quarter circle forward, half-circle back is absolutely stupid as a motion for one move. The games reward aggression and to some degree outright punish passiveness. Characters generally have lots of ways to move around: double jumps, dashing while airborne, etc. To be honest, the games can look kind of chaotic if you don't have someone to explain what's going on. The overall plan is to dart quickly in and out of attack ranges trying to either catch your opponent flat footed or to bait an attack that you can dodge and counter. The newest game and one you're most likely to see is Guilty Gear Xrd. If you're wondering about the name, the previous games were Guilty Gear X and Guilty Gear XX. They were smart enough not to release Guilty Gear XXX. Regardless, the marquee option to the GG series is the "roman cancel". At the expense of some of your super meter, you can cancel anything that your character is doing. The character stops whatever animation they're in and instead goes to the Roman Cancel animation which is very short. One of the more common uses you'll see is a character throwing a projectile attack of some sort, then performing a Roman Cancel after the projectile is on screen. This allows the attack to dash in behind the projectile and gain some cover as they approach to attack.
Smash Brothers: I'm going to be super generic here, as each version is pretty significantly different. The major thing to these games is that a character isn't knocked out simply by receiving damage. Instead, the goal is to knock the opposing character to a certain point beyond the edges of the screen. As a character receives more damage, they get knocked farther back by attacks. In general, the game plan is to build up damage on your opponent until you can send them flying with a single good hit.
If you watch Combo Breaker (a big fighting game tournament) over this Memorial day weekend, you may come across one other weird game: Skullgirls. Like the Arc Systems and Marvel vs Capcom series games, it generally features high mobility characters. However, unlike most other popular games now, the game rewards players for shorter combos with frequent resets. A reset is when an attacker intentionally stops a combo allowing the defender to "reset" to a neutral state, then immediately restarting their offense. This gives the defender new opportunities to defend themselves, but good resets are designed to be ambiguous as to how to properly defend against it.
If you watch Combo Breaker, you should totally watch this game, it's fun.
EDIT: Just as a last note, I just covered the games you're most likely to see when watching a tournament stream plus Skullgirls since 1) I like it and 2) it's featured at a major tournament this weekend. There are a ton of games, and many older games have held onto a following years after it's sequels have come out (I'm looking at you Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Street Fighter Third Strike). Fighting games are like wines. There are a million varieties. Some good, some bad, and everyone has different opinions on which are best. There's nothing wrong with someone liking a pinot grigio over a Bordeaux merlot. | 13bb5979-ec8d-4660-8f91-190214079a41 |
1t6uig | Why is financing a car through a bank cheaper than financing through the dealership, even though dealerships have lower interest rates? | Quite often, its not. Many times you can combine a rebate with incentivised financing and end up much cheaper than your bank.
For example, my wifes 2012 altima is currently financed at 0.5 percent and we bought it several thousand below invoice due to rebates/dealer incentives. No banks/credit unions were anywhere close at the time. The cheapest was around 4% at the time.
Where dealerships get you is with all of the add-ons like extended warranties, window etching, undercoats, etc and you will get offered those regardless of whose financing you use. | 763413c3-6bc5-42c8-b670-e5f1c07ae25e |
2m5hcb | how come we don't yet know the perfect diet for humans? | There isn't one. It would vary person to person and even to some degree day to day per person. | 466a6671-497b-4662-9ff6-b693364079e3 |
1kjk9z | What are the rules of Australian Rules Football | Well, I'm not an umpire but i do regularly watch the footy, so ill have a crack. The ball isn't really considered dead like in American football and generally the rules allow for the game to be a free flowing as possible with limited interruptions in play. It was based around and is relatively similar to Gaelic football and was invented over a hundred years ago. here a few of the main rules so you can better understand the game.
The basic premise is to kick the ball through the two large goal posts at your attacking end. getting it through the two big posts scores you 6 points, get it between either of the two smaller posts and one of the bigger ones only gets you one point. you have to kick the ball through for it to count.
there are two methods of disposing the ball within the rules, kicking or handballing. handballing is where they punch the ball out of one hand using the other. failing to properly handball is called a throw and loses you possession of the ball.
If you catch a ball that has been kicked more than fifteen metres (approx. 45 feet) by anyone from either side, then it is called a "mark" and that stops the play. taking a mark earns you a free kick, you cannot be tackled and you can kick the ball without being tackled so long as you don't advance beyond where you took the mark and you kick within the allowed time (not sure how long maybe 30 secs?). handballing, stepping beyond the mark or just running away from the mark continues play and you can be tackled. to run with the ball you need to bounce it at least once every (12?) steps.
you can tackle opposition players as a means of acquiring the ball. the tackled must not be a trip and must not be above the shoulders. any tackled that is not allowed should end up with the victim (lack of a better word) either getting a free get or they are allowed to advance the ball 50 metres (150ft). they don't get to choose by the way, its awarded contextually by an umpire (as i understand). if the player that is tackled fails to dispose of the ball as a result of a tackle (the ball is trapped under them or they are just not letting go) it is called holding the ball and the tackling player is awarded the ball. if you tackle someone who doesn't have the ball the it is holding the man and free kicks etc.
sometimes when an infringement occurs but the opposition is all ready on their way and the ball gone already, the umpire will call "advantage paid" meaning they will not punish the infringer as the infringement resulted in opposition advantage anyway and its not worth stopping play for it.
as i said, these are just a few of the basic rules and im not an umpire, just a fan ( i welcome any corrections btw, just chime in). i hope you understand the game a bit better now :) and ask if you need anything clarified.
hope you enjoy the game as much as we do down under!
^carn ^^the ^^^bombers! | 510a1e27-b4c0-4603-8d9d-bc468cc43f40 |
848n8s | Why do aeroplanes/airplanes have headlights? | > Why do aeroplanes/airplanes have headlights?
Aircraft commonly land at night when it is dark. Being able to see the ground when coming in for a landing is important because they need to touch down at a reasonable speed.
So not to put too fine a point on it, they are so the pilots can see when it is dark. You know, like with regular car headlights. | cba76b78-4ded-4ce0-bdd7-b67686e3b5be |
1zhw18 | Why do i sleep better when its cold? | The temperature that your body sleeps at is lower than the temperature your body maintains the rest of the day, this is for energy conservation and obviously to let your body rest. Simply put, keeping the temperature in your room lower may help your body to achieve this lower resting temperature. This makes falling asleep and staying asleep easier. | 15120f20-1c69-41be-92f6-e99b14f6a22f |
2ir9za | How if I have some software that requires a product key that you must pay for, that many people can use the same key? | There are two ways that a product key can be validated. The first way is that the program "phones home" to check that the key is valid, and is tied to your account. This type of validation means that the same key can (usually) only be used once.
But the other way that a key can be validated is if there is some algorithm that generates valid keys, and that can verify that a particular key is valid. For example, maybe keys are generated by taking your email address, appending some fixed string of letters to the end (known to the program, but not to you), and then feeding the resulting string through a hashing algorithm (which is a sort of one-way function that generates a unique-ish "fingerprint" of a bit of text or a file). The resulting hash is your product key.
In this case, it's super easy for the program to verify that a given email address + product key is valid, because it just takes the email, appends the secret string to it, and then hashes that to see if the resulting hash equals the product key you entered. This has the advantage of not requiring an Internet connection to activate the software, but does make it vulnerable to re-used keys. I've seen some companies that make the credit card number used to purchase the product part of this process to discourage sharing of product keys (since you'd also have to share your credit card number). | 60e48584-ca06-48d9-8b57-797ea2ffb386 |
7b6o9n | How does a contagion spread from contact with an open wound to the target organ in the body ? | Generally through the blood stream or the lymphatic vessels. When a contagion attacks a specific organ I.e. Hepatitis, it is because something about those cells allows that particular pathogen to attack/reproduce better than they do in other cells. They don’t move towards that organ specifically, they just keep getting pumped through the bloodstream until they find a good place to start reproducing, or they’re killed by the immune system | 31daf19d-f30b-4883-aea9-0317ce2b9696 |
25bbfn | Why can some people smoke and never get addicted, while other are addicted for life? | Not everyone is equally susceptible to addiction to cigarettes. I can chain smoke for a few weeks and then just stop for a few weeks without it being an issue. I'm not sure why that is true for me but its possible it may be because I was around second hand smoke a lot as a child. | bd4e065e-53a2-40f5-9cc9-8b6b903f625b |
1maris | How does a state minimum wage increase impact people? | Essentially minimum wage increases due to inflation, inflation is the concept that money isn't worth as much as it used to, and therefore you need more of it (imagine your grandpa saying "back in my day it cost a nickel for a loaf of bread" bonus points for reading it in an old man voice)
But what happens is that the cost of everything increases, but the amount of money people have stays the same, meaning that to maintain their standard of living, they need to increase their wage.
But of course, this means people now have more money, and people will be willing to raise their prices accordingly, causing inflation causing the circle to go round.
It's what happens when you have a currency that is arbitrary, in the sense that it isn't tied to anything solid, like a resource, ie Gold Standard. | 2c0a884d-95a2-43e1-90c0-44ad8f4a2d95 |
8bqhwa | Why do trained muscles get more volume rather than density? | Skeletal muscles are the muscles that you use for voluntary movement like your arms, legs, etc. They're made of myocytes, which have a limited ability to divide. Other cells in your body constantly divide, like your skin or the inside of your mouth (these are known as epithelial cells).
When a cell is stressed out, as in it receives stress from either hormones, exercise or something rubbing up against it, etc, it'll adapt in order to take more stress. Your muscles can't divide, so they undergo hypertrophy or get bigger. Your skin cells divide more to compensate (hyperplasia) but they also secrete more keratin.
Why do they have a limited ability to divide? It just comes down to the fact that they're highly specialised. Generally, the less specialised the cell is, the more it can divide. Stem cells, or pluripotent cells are not specialised at all, but they can divide endlessly and become any cell in the body. Myocytes, cardiomyocytes (heart muscle), and neurons are highly specialised cells and have very poor ability to divide. it's why heart attacks are so bad, and why spinal damage doesn't heal properly. | 370ccffe-1108-4b98-80ab-123d22220259 |
1nt8gg | Why was the European Union created? | Also, food-security. During the world wars food would be a scarce resource. The EU subsidizes farmers in the EU so they can compete with cheap food from outside the EU which was made with a lower wage for the workers. | 28d3ae8f-7ad1-4b90-9a19-6cbfc6924037 |
3nr8vz | In US, when a city is divided into two states, if a crime occurs in a part of city and the criminal is caught in different part of city, Is he also violated Federal Interstate laws? | Only if he committed the crime across the line.
For example, if I knock over a Quickie Mart in KS, and then flee to MO I've only committed a crime in KS. If a kidnap a guy in MO and take him to KS now I've committed a crime in both states as well as federally.
Its the cross-border nature of the crime that is important, not where the criminal is located.
If I knocked over the Quickie Mart in KS *from* MO that'd be federal too. I don't know how I'd manage that though :P | 16037727-e849-46e8-8543-008bda6840da |
154rih | what happened to the hole in the ozone? Did we fix it, is it still there, was it never that big of a threat? | We found replacements for chlorofluorocarbons and drastically cut down the rate at which we released them into the atmosphere. The holes are still there but have stopped growing and are on the path to recovery. | 342ac6a9-7763-451d-bdaa-7524c2c82114 |
23h63v | When I put pressure on my eyes for an extended period of time I see really cool patterns that alternate. What is that? | your eye is full of liquid called the vitreous humour. when you press on your eyes, you're increasing the pressure of that fluid inside the eye; that in turn causes pressure to be applied to the nerves in the back of your eye, on your retina. those nerves get confused and start sending out random signals that you see as cool-ass patterns. | 4c18bc8e-7fc2-44ef-b587-9e3eedde54cb |
1ogcct | Why is Saudi Arabia an ally of the USA? | Saudi Arabia has oil and wants money.
USA has money and wants oil.
It's pretty much as simple as that. | 6bb30667-c249-4cca-b245-ed0f6f892029 |
8p3838 | How can Brick and mortar retailers continue to exist with online competitors | Somethings need to be touched or experienced. They can also do onsite repair and warranty work for value add
Value add is the key. The appeal to niche markets or do something that email and returns isn't quite comfortable
Would you buy a house online? | 4d566ad5-0222-4a34-a1e1-176934d87c42 |
zpoif | Why does the shower water become hotter when someone flushes the toilet? | your water heater heats water to anywhere from 120 to 180 degrees F. So in order to keep you from burning yourself cold water is mixed with the hot water to make a comfortable temperature. when a toilet is flushed it pulls a few gallons of water. thus, limiting the amount of cold water available to cool the shower. | 8cb02a98-568f-4fcd-aa02-ab81a5e1b7bc |
3aswuf | Do uncontacted tribes know we're here, like we are aware of their presence? | My impression is that most of them are aware that some kind of big, huge, technologically advanced world exists, but they don't know shit about it.
Commonly they are uncontacted because they want to be: being contacted tends to screw them over. (They flee from contact, or hear rumors from neighboring contacted tribes.) Either they have few useful skills and end up in the bottom of the heap of capitalism, or they get massacred by brutal 3rd-world mining and logging companies.
OTOH, they likely have very little idea of the scale or workings of industrial civilization. | 59d309ee-732b-47db-891c-9cb2616cb73c |
436epl | Why things glow white when they got real hot | When anything is above 0 kelvin, it produces thermal radiation as its particles bump around and change energy levels etc. Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation. Light is electromagnetic radiation at a very specific range of wavelengths (see the electromagnetic spectrum for more detail). So thermal radiation can be seen IF it is being emitted at the right wavelength. The good news is that most bodies emit thermal radiation over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, roughly following this [graph:](_URL_0_)
As temperatures increase, The thermal radiation has more energy. This means a higher average frequency (or lower wavelength) for the thermal radiation. Eventually enough of the thermal radiation is in that specific wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum we call visible light to make it appear to glow (about 700 C, 1300 F). Colder than that and while it emits a small amount of visible light, it isn't enough to make it glow.
The lowest frequency part of that visible spectrum is red. The highest part of that spectrum is blue. So as it heats up, it changes from glowing red (and mostly a mix of radiation below the visibility), to a mix of red and blue (and some above and below the visibility), to eventually some blue and only a little red (and mostly above the visibility spectrum).
The mix of red all the way through to blue will eventually look more and more white as it heats up, because it will contain all of the colors of the visible spectrum (which together look white, think reverse prism). Once it gets even hotter, that white color will take on a blueish tinge, then get more and more blue.
Finally it will be almost completely completely blue. So blue - > white - > red - > invisible for how hot- > cold a body is.
This is also why you can "feel" hot things at a distance, because your hand is absorbing some of this thermal radiation and heating up, even if the surrounding air is cold.
The suns electromagnetic radiation is centered at about 500 nm wavelengths (smack dab in line with our "visible light"). It makes sense that our eyes developed to be sensitive to the largest concentration of electromagnetic radiation we received. If our sun had been a little colder, chances are our "visible light spectrum" would have developed in a higher wavelength, part of what we call infrared light. In case you were wondering why our eyes can only process a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum. | a7eac921-30be-47e5-932a-fba005b12e82 |
1upp85 | Why can't we just gargle an antiseptic to get rid of a sore throat? | Because the source of your sore throat is not lying around on the surface of your throat, but within the soft tissue surrounding it. Its like saying that washing your chest with a bar of soap should alleviate a chest cold. | 66caa1af-81db-48cb-9d2c-f3d531c69f4b |
1ecna8 | With the recent "Infinity Table" posts, can someone explain how they work? | First, let's explain what a "one-way mirror" is:
It is not a mirror that only reflects light going in one direction. It is a _partially reflective mirror_ that allows some light of either direction to go through, and reflect some light of either direction.
What this means in practice is that depending on relative lighting conditions, it may appear to be a window or a mirror. An example of this would be your house window - on a bright sunny day, you have no trouble looking out. Someone outside, however, may see a reflection. This is because the glass reflects some light, and transmits others. Since the outside is _so_ bright, a large amount of light is reflected back to the observer outside. This overwhelms any light that is transmitted from inside to outside. The indoor observer, on the other hand, as a lot of light transmitted _into_ the window, so any reflected light is drowned out by the transmitted light.
You will notice the reverse at night, when you have lights turned on and outside is dark. Now the indoor observer will see a lot of reflection, and the outside observer has no trouble peering in.
Alright, so knowing this now, how does the infinity table work? The bright lights within the table makes the inside bright. Some light gets leaked out to your eyes - that's what you see. Other light gets reflected to the bottom mirror, which gets reflected back. Some of _that_ light reaches your eye, but another fraction gets reflected back to the bottom mirror, and so forth. That's why you see many copies - and that's also the reason each reflection gets dimmer and dimmer - some light escapes, and other is absorbed. Only a fraction is reflected each time.
It has nothing to do with projected images. | d64b210c-b5d5-46e1-a9aa-074f30ca89f2 |
6dip7y | Why are PIN codes not needed for online transactions? | Credit cards and debit cards, historically, worked with different banking networks and were developed with different mindsets. Credit cards chose to focus on signatures in the early days, while debit cards chose to use PINs.
With that history, though debit and credit cards have sort of merged into a very similar style of transaction, they still hold onto some of the early designs for how those networks operated. There hasn't really been a need for changing the way credit cards worked, and introducing PINs for those cards would be a very big change that people probably wouldn't be happy with.
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There are some more details in an answer to a similar question here: _URL_0_ | c4a63ec3-8fda-4e60-8aeb-a32cfe7ac02a |
50cfzv | What is an orchestral conductor doing, and how can everyone follow what he's doing regardless of what instrument they have? | He's keeping time. Each swing of the arm is a "tic" in the temp of the piece which all musicians, regardless of instrument need to keep in synch. He can also make larger or smaller movements to indicate changes in volume. And he will cue sections or individuals for specific parts of the piece that highlight that musical voice. | fc6e1774-d178-429e-b7b3-9adaedd9c248 |
1vdjl1 | Why can't governments print "temporary" money to cover important expenses? | They do, and it causes inflation because the money doesn't have any material value behind it.
Money is just something we use to represent value. Without creating the value, the printed money isn't anything more than paper, which in turn, makes every piece of money less valuable. | 0aad772a-c2a7-4b55-bcb9-938b5ab9e003 |
4dk0cj | Why can humans eat almost anything, yet so many foods like chocolate, grapes, and xylitol are dangerous for dogs and other mammals? | The premise of your question is basically flawed. We can't eat almost anything. About half of the red berries in existence are poisonous to us but not to birds, for example. The same is true about mushrooms.
Also, not everything that is edible is food. Uncooked grains are edible, but you would eventually die if that's all you ate. OTOH, if you cook it into bread, you're pretty much good to go. | fa460f9e-3eac-46ad-a25e-68783638a8b8 |
33r246 | Why are Americans more or less complacent with the income inequality in their country? | > It seems like people are ready to bitch about how somebody is literally Hitler for collecting food stamps
This is, unfortunately, the most successful way to *get* the extreme calcification of economies. When you blame the poorest and least powerful people for all the economic problems ('welfare queens') and put the rich on a pedestal ('job creators'), you get people fighting each other and ignoring the big issues. And because people are emotional, they want an enemy that is readily available and will make them feel good after getting some hits in on, not an enemy that appears untouchable and is difficult to have victories against.
There are identity politics and self-worth issues at play here. | dfe7580f-6521-42a0-98b9-15ffa8c8f87a |
18dufv | How are those huge cranes that work on skyscrapers setup/made taller/moved to really high floors? | They're modular and self-assembling. The first structural piece under the rotation head, the lifter module, is more complex than the rest; it includes slides and jacks. The complete assembly process involves anchoring the base and setting up the horizontal arm. Once that's ready, the lifter module jacks up the head and the arm, and the crane lifts a structural segment off a truck and into place. Once the new segment is bolted in, the jacks retract and are bolted onto the new top structural segment. This process is repeated until the crane is as tall as it needs to be.
Disassembly is the same process in reverse, with a caveat. If there is more than one crane involved, they may build around a crane within the building, so long as at least one crane is outside to lift out the pieces. The last crane, however, always has to have enough clear space to disassemble itself in the same process in reverse that it assembled itself with. | 5b5f56c1-0aca-448c-9fb6-0e84f46a94d5 |
33iqtu | Why is cooking wine not regulated in stores like regular wine is? | Its not intended to be consumed as alcohol. Vanilla extract is well known way for minors to get alcohol. | 2e9baa45-8a31-4ed4-81e1-05cbc208a289 |
26t8mb | Making cocaine from the coca leaf. | this is about as simple as it gets
from: _URL_0_
How Cocaine Is Made
Cocaine
Cocaine is a highly addictive stimulative drug that is manufactured from the leaves of the coca plant. It is classified as a central nervous system stimulant, but pharmacologically it is considered an anesthetic. Cocaine is a drug that increases alertness, feelings of well-being, euphoria, energy and feelings of competence and sexuality. Anxiety, paranoia and restlessness are some of the side effects of the drug. It is the most abused major stimulant in America and the second most popular illicit drug used in the USA behind marijuana.
Cocaine and the Coca Plant
Cocaine is a naturally occurring alkaloid found in certain varieties of the Erythorxylum genus, or coca plant. Of the 200 species, only 2 contain significant levels of cocaine. The plant can grow in widely varied climates and soil conditions, though the highest cocaine content is found in plants that are grown in higher, cooler climates. Cocaine is harvested from the leaves of the plant which are continuously stripped from the plant. Once stripped, the leaves are typically dried until brittle or transported immediately to an illicit laboratory. If the leaves get wet and begin to rot, they will be unusable.
Cocaine is synthesized from the leaves of the coca plant to form a paste. This paste is further synthesized and cut with adulterant substances to make it into street-level cocaine that can be injected, snorted or smoked. To make the paste, there is a process of extracting the cocaine that includes the use of toxic chemicals. There are two main ways that the cocaine paste is made: solvent extraction and acid extraction.
Solvent Extraction of Cocaine Paste
The first stage is to finely chop the leaves and dust them with lime or carbonate salt along with a small amount of water. Some manufacturers will use a leaf mulcher to complete this process, others will do it by hand. Next kerosine or diesel fuel is then added to the coca leaf and lime/salt mixture and vigorously stirred for up to three days. This removes the cocaine from the leaf into the liquid. Occasionally this is done using a washing machine or cement mixer. Poorer manufacturers will do this by hand.
Once the cocaine has been extracted, the liquid is heated to remove any wax from the coca leaves, then filtered to separate it from the vegetable matter. There will typically be a large amount of liquid that is then mixed with sulfuric acid and mixed again. The acid converts the cocaine free base to cocaine sulfate. The mixture is allowed to sit to allow the separation of the cocaine sulfate which is then mixed with lime or caustic soda. The addition of these chemicals neutralizes the sulfuric acid and the filtered chemical is a gummy, yellow solid. This paste is dried, packaged and shipped to a further laboratory for further extraction and handling.
Acid Extraction of Cocaine Paste
The leaves of the coca plant are placed in a pit with diluted sulfuric acid. The leaf and acid mixture is vigorously macerated by workers who will typically stomp the mixture for up to 2 hours. The acid in the pit will convert the cocaine in the leaves to cocaine sulfate, which is removed and then heated to remove the waxy residue. It is then filtered to remove the remaining plant matter. The liquid then has lime or carbonate added to it, and is stirred vigorously, resulting in a curdled coca paste. The curdled mixture is mixed with kerosine and then re-filtered to isolate the paste and further processed with more sulfuric acid.
Coca Paste to Street Cocaine
Once the coca paste has been extracted and produce, it needs further processing to change it into the product that is ingestable. This is primarily a purification process. The coca paste is dissolved in a small amount of dilute sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate is added. This chemical is a powerful oxidizing agent that reacts with the impurities in the coca paste and changes the color of the coca paste from a yellow-brown color to a colorless or faint white color. The resulting colorless, acidic solution is filtered and treated with ammonia to neutralize the sulfuric acid.
The cocaine product is further dried to convert it into cocaine hydrochloride. Cocaine hydrochloride is the street product that is a white, crystalline powder with a bitter taste and numbing effect.. Cocaine loses its potency in other forms and it is also less soluble. Cocaine must be water soluble so that it can be injected, otherwise the drug can be in clumps when injected which can lead to cardiac arrest. As cocaine hydrochloride, which is a salt, the drug can be both injected and snorted and is absorbed into the blood-stream easily.
Typically, cocaine hydrochloride is cut with other products before it is sold on the street. Adulterant substances are used to increase the volume of the drug and increase profits for dealers. The substances that cocaine are cut with can include non-toxic items such as talc, bicarbonate soda or glucose to harmful chemicals such as amphetamines and levamisole.
Converting Cocaine to Crack Cocaine
Crack cocaine is the most potent form of cocaine. Crack cocaine produces a very intense high that is often associated with repeated use of the drug and intense energy, hyperactivity, aggression and paranoia.
Crack cocaine is made by converting cocaine hydrochloride into a solid form of freebase cocaine. This is done by cooking cocaine hydrochloride with sodium bicarbonate or ammonia. The result of the cooked cocaine is a jagged chunk of crack cocaine. In this form the drug is typically smoked by heating it in a glass pipe and inhaling the vapor. | e4fb54cd-dd50-48cb-bb64-ab4552e100b7 |
1iezao | Why are Dolphins considered to be smart/advanced? | They have communities, basic communication skills, they understand death, they have sex for fun and rescue creatures that are in danger. | 93948787-cccf-451c-bc16-305dc5c8259d |
3to8lt | During the Middle Ages, what would happen if a country invaded another, and the invaded country couldn't afford to fight so it surrendered, but the invading country kept on fighting? | That's not really how treaties work. Treaties aren't like "you get to keep all the land you've taken," they always specify very exact borders. If Country B truly had no will to fight, they would have given up all of their land (which is basically what an unconditional surrender is). If Country A didn't take advantage of the situation and got a treaty that wasn't as favorable as it could have been, tough shit; they should have thought of that before they signed the treaty.
Of course, they could just break the treaty. There weren't any real international institutions in place to enforce that sort of thing, but you don't really make any friends with a reputation for breaking promises. | 97e934e4-a718-4093-acf3-dd37bb1d5f66 |
3r6oge | How does the "brace" position in aircraft emergencies protect us? | The position places the body in a way where the damage to the body will be minimized.
_URL_0_
this is the result of not bracing. Bracing minimized the forces to the body | 423a79ce-3f16-46bd-b036-9a8483e1c222 |
5dfnje | How are brain aneurysms diagnosed and treated? | Brain aneurysms are usually asymptomatic. The only time that they can otherwise be diagnosed is if they grow large enough to start bleeding, which can cause severe headaches, a lot of uncontrolled vomiting, and in other cases, they can compress the surrounding structures and nerves in the brain and cause a dysfunction there.
Doctors can also suspect aneurysms in susceptible individuals. A family history of aneurysms, certain heart defects, connective tissue diseases such as Ehler-Danlos syndrome, or kidney diseases such as Polycystic Kidney Disease also are known to be associated with brain aneurysms.
In any case, the only way to know is through imaging, which can be done best by MRIs that allow you to see the blood vessels, or other forms of imaging such as a CT with a special dye that marks blood vessels clearly.
The idea of using platinum coils in an aneurysm is that they loop around several times inside the wall of the aneurysm, and trigger blood clotting in that area. Once the aneurysm clots over completely, there's very little chance of it bursting or bleeding out. | 7b6a9f18-4ed7-4f6f-947f-68ef82dad900 |
2s1to4 | Why can certain types of batteries be recharged when others cannot? | Non rechargeable batteries are based on an chemical reaction that is not reversible.
Edit: electrically reversible that is. | 50c886f9-025e-42cb-9142-4403737b573b |
1dwbro | The US has more youth playing soccer than any other nation in the world. Why don't we have our own Messi? | We have a lot of kids who play soccer, but the vast majority are in recreational leagues, not serious youth development programs like Messi went through. Those are growing along with the domestic league, though - the MLS Academy system just started four or five years ago. | ab189203-1f15-461e-8a88-7d950a82e719 |
2p8006 | Would increasing the minimum wage and setting a maximum wage strengthen the middle class? | Because this is entirely speculative and subjective it's been removed. Try /r/futurewhatif instead, or /r/askreddit instead. | d6f759b0-f3a9-4baf-ad39-4852b856eec4 |
1ixlrc | (As an American) Why is freedom of speech protected from the government, but not corporations? | The Freedom of Speech does not grant you the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, it merely prevents the GOVERNMENT from restricting your right to free speech. When it comes to private institutions, they are free to set their own rules regarding things like speech, because you always have the option to not use them.
You are still allowed to keep your right to free speech, Tumblr is simply denying your ability to use THEIR website to do so. | b5b77bd6-dd32-4ceb-807d-d9fbc7ff0d2c |
3edvi1 | Cosplay; is it just done for an event? Does one wear their outfit on multiple, random occasions? Is it just made for the photos? | It's usually for a convention, which will run for several days. Some people wear the same costume to multiple conventions, others make a new one for each one. | 212b5cc5-3e25-403b-9083-229f35a12f00 |
1x23tt | If there are concentration camps in North Korea that are similar to those found in Germany during WWII, why hasn't a military force such as NATO intervened? | This is asked a lot, but here it goes.
North Korea would react violently if any force tried to offer aid to those in the camps.
If North Korea acted violently, there would probably be a war.
If there were a war, China would be upset. China doesn't want millions of refugees and nuclear radiation at it's borders. | f5e2ab73-185e-4dae-8281-ff90c07f3170 |
1xnvc5 | Why is mercury the chosen substance for determining the temperature? | We actually don't use mercury anymore, we use alcohol. But the simple answer is because as a liquid metal it is conductive, and expands and contracts predictably (importantly, linearly) with temperature changes. Further, unlike water, it's freezing point is low enough there is little change of that happening, and even if it somehow occurred it wouldn't make the thermometer explode as water would. | 245fe7e2-3965-4b12-a362-bd729461aa9e |
4azdlw | How do women's menstrual synchronize if they spend a lot of time together? | They do not. It is a common misconception. They will occasionally *overlap*, in the same way as if you watch a bunch of cars with their blinkers on, but they don't synchronise. | a6172627-24fe-4a32-a6b0-ef2e340dab7a |
512m77 | Why do lights and stars sometimes appear to have points sticking out of them? | If you are thinking of photos then they are called [diffraction spikes](_URL_0_) and are caused by the wires that keep a mirror in place. | 2b7435f7-cfcd-476c-bd6d-6965c3573a4c |
8i5nbh | I am confused about how many KB are in 1 MB. Some sources seem to say 1000 and others say 1024. Which is it? | 1024, 1000 is rounded out, u don't say "hey that burger is 1,99" you say: "hey that burger is 2 dollars" | 2ec72dc1-c4fb-4ad0-97dd-851f09483c7a |
5nbh7c | What would happen if a male took female viagra? | The active component of Viagra is nitric oxide, it has the same hormonal effects on males and females which lead to the sex specific responses. So, an erection for men. | adb325fa-48e4-450c-8834-9d51ceb66efd |
6ht8kt | How has the sloth been able to survive natural selection for millions of years without predators wiping out the species. | Sloths tend to stay in the trees, The only real predators they could have in their environment tend to stick to the forest floor.
The biggest threat to their species are of course humans though, Several varieties of sloth all over the world have actually gone extinct mostly from human interference or hunting. | c400b055-c322-4ff5-b114-f491db61d6bf |