query_id
stringlengths 3
6
| question
stringlengths 1
299
| goldenAnswer
stringlengths 3
35k
| doc_id
stringlengths 36
36
|
|---|---|---|---|
z3ypd | National Conventions | A long time ago, before modern communications, parties still needed to figure out who among them would be the one person from that party running for President that year. Generally it was decided by a few powerful people in a "smoke filled room" that had almost no input from the outside world.
So eventually, in the 1840s, some people came up with a better way to do this as the country got large. Instead of just letting a few party bosses chose, a few thousand would come together and have a vote for who it should be. That thousand represented mayors, governors, senators etc from all the states, so that it was more "democratic" than just a hand full of people making the decision.
But in the early 1900s, people started to think a few thousand people wasn't enough representation for average people. At the 1912 convention Roosevelt lost to Taft at the convention even thought most Republicans wanted Roosevelt. Taft got to choose who came to the convention so he stacked the convention with his supporters. After that convention the practice of "primaries" (local elections) and "caucuses" (local small-sized conventions) to decide who goes to the convention began to spread quickly. These didn't end conventions, they got implemented state by state slowly and only was meant to tell delegate who to vote for in the first vote at the convention.
Now every state has either a primary or a caucus so it is known long before the convention who the president will be. They are still used to agree on a "plank" (official statement of the party's beliefs for that election) but their main point, to nominate a president, is ceremony only. | 0f4d2e43-c5c6-44d8-bbf6-1d5e0ef78287 |
54r74f | What would happen if we were more transparent with our national security plans? | If we say, "Russia can have the Ukraine and one of the little Baltic countries before we're mad enough to send over an army" that's an invitation to an adversary to commit mischief.
It's like going to a negotiation and saying "I'll pay $12.32", you disclose your position without probing to find your adversary's position. What if he'd have sold it for $9.73? You left a lot of money on the table. | c27c47ea-be78-4aa0-8702-784aa7becf02 |
2epph3 | Why don't animals pull their muscles when exerting themselves? | IamA veterinarian. Animals over exert themselves all the time. My favorite example is the guy who came to see me for lameness in his 10yr old dog. He was a college student visiting home for the holidays and, the day before I saw him, decided to take the elderly, homebody Huskie for a 10 mile run. He's lucky she was only sore. | 35b31d49-2b3d-4c32-b2f5-83a4d2a00f58 |
1io7nw | Do we sleep for only psychological reasons? | [There are more reasons for it. See Fatal Familial Insomnia - a rare disease in which the patient eventually dies because they can't sleep.](_URL_0_)
It seems that the exact reason we need to sleep isn't fully understood, but it's pretty clear that there are serious consequences of sleep deprivation - like weight gain and a decrease in white blood cells. If we don't sleep at all - we'll die.
Many of the theories about why we sleep involve metabolism - how our bodies take in fuel like food, and make energy that we need to move, eat, etc. When we're most active, during the day, we need a lot more energy - so there's a lot more activity going on as far as converting things like food in to energy. The thing is, these processes give us not only energy, but by-products called free radicals. It's almost like how if you burn something - you'll have a flame (energy produced) - but you'll also have smoke (free radicals.)
Free radicals can damage the cells of the body. Sleeping may give the body an opportunity to essentially catch up and repair the damaged cells. So in our analogy - lets say you have a controlled campfire but it's in your house. The smoke is damaging your stuff, so you try to start removing the smoke by opening a window, operating a fan, whatever, but the campfire is still putting off a lot of smoke. So you put some water on the fire and it dies down a bit. Now you have a chance to get rid of more of the smoke.
Sleep is basically allowing us to turn down the "flames" (energy production) so we have more of an opportunity to clean up the smoke (free radicals) and the damage that comes from it. Again, there really is no true consensus on why we sleep - but this is a prominent theory. | 68a1b36a-01cf-4899-b1f8-9288c9591720 |
53rsuk | Why does an e-reader screen flicker so badly on each refresh? | There are two reasons for this. The pixels of an e-reader is based on the physical movement of the pigments to the back or the front of the screen. These pigments can get stuck just like an old etch & sketch. To prevent this the e-reader will flicker the screen to get the pigments unstuck.
The other reason is that to keep the cost and the power drain down it is fitted with a slow CPU and memory. Typesetting and display processing is rather expensive processes that requires some processing power to do. The slow CPU may take some time to render the next page for you. | 36cc4a1b-3ed7-486a-8f0d-1ae6a5957498 |
5mwxp8 | Why some drugs make us feel drowsy/sleepy and why some don't? | Think of your nervous system as a light with a dimmer switch, Certain drugs are capable of increasing the brightness. Some drugs turn it down.
In the case of the nervous system glutamate is a chemical in our bodies that turns up the brightness making nerves more "excitable" while GABA is a chemical in our bodies that turns down the brightness making nerves less "excitable".
And certain drugs can enhance or stimulate one or the other systems.
GABA and glutamate aren't the only systems involved there are others, but the principle is similar. | e5842889-e1b0-48a1-8c24-188519505f6d |
4s5g21 | Does your stomach stop telling you that you are hungry based on the weight of food you have eaten, the volume of it or something else? | The cue to stop eating is a combination of several factors.
1) Blood sugar reaching a certain level. Your blood sugar starts going up fairly quickly when you start to eat. Once you get to some minimal levels that is one signal that you have eaten enough.
2) Volume. Your stomach knows how full it is and it will signal that you are done eating when it reaches a "full" volume. This is somewhat variable though and you can train your stomach to think different volumes are full. People with anorexia or who just eat small meals will get full faster because they have trained their stomachs to not stretch much before sending full signals. Meanwhile professional contest eaters will train their stomachs to not send full signals till they have eaten an absurd amount of food. A trick to lose weight is to drink an extra glass of water at the beginning of a meal to up stomach volume so you eat less. | 632f2b02-25ff-4b4d-ae35-2b46f191a1c2 |
1pgtev | Why do we need surround sound, when we only have 2 ears? Alternatively: how do I know a sound is coming from the front or back from me? | You seem to understand that the ears can localize sounds based on the slight delay it takes to get to the near ear and the far ear. In cases where there is no delay - something in front or behind you - there are other mechanisms. The shape of your ear filters out different frequencies of sound differently, and it also filters sound in front and behind differently as well. Not only that, other ambient factors - such as sound reflecting off walls, can give clues that your brain can pick up on.
This is one of the reasons it's sometimes hard to localize sounds with earbuds - you've bypassed the filtering effect your outer ear has. | e69fbcbc-e660-4c79-9fd1-ce286e833c62 |
psjid | How does the Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) work? | Works in the same way as greasemonkey scripts; RES is javascript that alters the html returned from the server. | c4d2b704-4aa0-46f5-80dc-83fa234c3ac3 |
52kp7o | Why USA cant seem to adopt the model of national health service present in every other western country? | The main thing is that Americans tend to have a fundamentally different relationship with our government than most other western nations. Most other nations tend to view their governments as positive forces that are there to help take care of society. Americans tend to view government as something inherently inefficient and intrusive into our lives. Recall the old Ronald Reagan quote, ""The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" A great number of people believe that.
So, the result is that while most other nations debate and argue about how the government should manage health care, Americans are debating and arguing about whether it's even the government's job to manage health care at all. | ae8cc6f8-db3c-454f-a0d2-9a5848d9d390 |
169wh0 | Just saw this and can't get my head around it: "When you are moving away from a person, their perception of time's effect on you is slower." Anyone care to explain? | It's like what happens when you hear a car pass by. You know the sound that it makes, it goes a bit like "heeeeeeee-yooooooou" the "he" part being when it's coming at you, and the "you" part when it's moving away from you? The sound you hear is speeded up when it's coming at you, resulting in the "he" (higher pitched) sound. And when it's moving away from you the sound is slowed down, resulting in the (lower pitched) "you" sound.
The same thing that happens here with sound, also happens with light. So when something is moving away from you, the *image* is slowed down, and when it's moving toward you, the *image* is speeded up. Because light moves a lot faster than sound, though, you'd have to go *really* fast to notice this effect on the image.
*edit: I like how I'm being downvoted, yet no one has improved my answer. | 8d358dbe-a90d-4a6f-a975-bb31307b2490 |
2oflfs | Why don't women catcall men? | Women are not encouraged to express their sexuality in the same way as men in our culture. Women actually having lots of sex or otherwise finding too many men attractive is frowned upon (the term "slut shaming" is used to describe this). | 084e4c5b-73cf-4b19-8479-c1fbb812cdeb |
35d1c9 | I have O-Negative blood, I can donate to anyone in the world, but only another O-Negative can donate to me in emergency. Why? | Your blood is special because it lacks any of the common markers which would make a body unused to them react with force from the immune system. The downside is that your body is accustomed to blood without any of these markers, and will identify blood with any of them as foreign and react accordingly. | a4253253-672f-4c77-926b-4e563b986b07 |
8lyr9r | How do they determine the suggested speed for curves on roads? | There’s a lot of physics involved but the boiled down way is that when you’re moving around a circle your car wants to get pushed out. The friction of the road stops some of this, and the bank of the road stops some more. Engineers determine how fast you can go without losing traction, the. Have a safety factor (this allows for some people who will naturally go faster than they want) and that speed is the limit | 0efbda52-6053-4f5a-8f73-e6eca6b045df |
j3ick | Bitcoin mining? | **Like. You. Are. Five.**
There are lots of different kinds of money, but pretty much all of them have somebody in charge. Maybe it's a bank or a government or a company, but there's somebody that everyone else has to go to if they want to use the money.
Some guy in Japan was thinking "I wonder if you could have a money without having one big guy in charge?" That would be nice, because then you wouldn't have to worry about the guy in charge being a jerk. So, he came up with a way to make a money where instead of having one big guy in charge, zillions of people all watch each other and they all vote to make sure they all agree on how much money everyone has.
Everyone knows how much money everyone else has and every time someone gives someone else some money, they both tell the whole world and it goes into the Bitcoin Public Permanent Record. That way, if someone tries to lie about what happened later, the whole world can check the Permanent Record and prove that they're lying.
So, the guy in Japan had a problem: He needed to make adding something to the Bitcoin Public Permanent Record super-duper hard to do so that it would be super-duper hard to fake and trick everyone, but how could he get anyone to actually do all that hard work?
He came up with the idea that every entry in the Permanent Record would record a bunch of people's trades, but it would also have one, extra special trade of 50 coins that can go to anybody. The rule was that whoever did the work that set up the entry to be good enough for the Permanent Record could give mark those 50 coins as going to anyone he wants --even himself!
A lot of people liked this idea and they started trading bitcoins for fun. Eventually, it got popular enough that some people started trading stuff for bitcoins and even dollars for bitcoins! How many dollars for a coin? Well, that depends on how much the guy with dollars wants a coin. There's no law stopping you from trading stuff for dollars and as far as the government is concerned, bitcoins are some weird kind of stuff --like gold or maybe more like pogs... | 7d0ce030-5185-4508-b9ef-918858439e8c |
195ol6 | What are the differences in different types of RAM? | RAM has two qualities you should look for, clock speed and size. The size is given as some GB. You should go for 4 or 8 now, mainly because it cheap. More is never worse, but to much won't help you. The other is clock speed, it's given in Hz and 1333 or 1600 are common ones (often they won't write the Hz). This tells you how many operations the ram can do each second. Once again more is better.
Now, if you have more than 4 GB of 1333 RAM you probably can't really tell the difference if you get more or faster. Unless you are doing some really heavy video edition or something. | e20dcc91-1721-4d5e-bcbd-9083a15ae25b |
6cmt0r | Why do people invest in gold and silver? | Personally, I do it to diversify. Gold and silver have held value throughout time, but who knows what will happen to various markets?
& nbsp;
I know that in the past, people flocked to it to hedge against inflation. So if inflation is at 10% that means your money is losing value every year, so you bought gold to prevent your cash from losing value.
EDIT: clarifying the point | ef8e018f-0195-477f-82cc-26ab988c4a2d |
4ivavy | Finite and non-finite clauses and verbs. | **Clause**
Basically the smallest grammatical unit. If it can stand alone as a sentence, it is an independent clause. If it cannot stand alone as a sentence, it is a dependent clause.
*The kid shut the door.* Is an independent clause and sentence.
*After he entered the house* Is a dependent clause.
We can combine clauses together to form complex sentences like this:
*After he entered the house, the kid shut the door.*
Clauses typically will have a verb or verb phrase in it.
**Infinitives**
Verbs have different forms depending on how they are used. Most commonly verbs change form depending on the tense (e.g. run vs. ran). The infinitive form of the verb, in English is usually seen with the word "to" preceding the verb. (e.g. "to run")
A notable thing about infinitives is they cannot exist alone in an independent clause.
**Putting it together.**
So, simply put, a finite clause is a clause with a finite verb, and a non-finite clause is a clause with a non-finite (infinitive) verb.
Example of non-finite clause: *To get a drink.*
We should note that non-finite clauses are necessarily dependent; we have to add additional clauses to make a complete sentence:
*The kid entered the house to get a drink.* | 43d07309-aefb-4ea0-89d3-4ecd5b5d673e |
7fzjyx | why do new airplanes still have ashtrays in the bathroom? | If someone violates the no smoking rule you want to ensure they have a good place to put out the cigarette. If they put it in the trash can and a fire starts at 38,000 feet then everyone is dead
[CNN did an article about this earlier this year(warning autoplay)](_URL_0_) and it is required by law that US airplanes have ashtrays in the bathroom
title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, chapter I, subchapter C, part 25, subpart D, section 25.853, paragraph g
> Regardless of whether smoking is allowed in any other part of the airplane, lavatories must have self-contained, removable ashtrays located conspicuously on or near the entry side of each lavatory door
Plus, smoking isn't banned on airlines in all countries, there are still airlines buying new planes on which smoking is permitted. Boeing and Airbus like to ship some standard interiors to reduce engineering costs | 8c3fbb63-a262-451a-a63e-45464d24dc2b |
250kf3 | What is anxiety? Is there actually something going on in the brain or body during high levels of anxiety or is just some fabricated excuse for people to be wimps? | > Is it actually a real thing?
Yup.
> Is the mind and body having something happen to it during an "anxiety attack"?
If you've seen someone having a panic attack, you would notice them sweating, shaking, out of breath, and they can feel their heart beating as well as struggling to breath and choking. Psychologically, they feel fear, anxiety and even a sense of detachment from the world.
In the more serious cases, too much anxiety is a medical condition and is treated with talk therapy and medication. | 8e0febf1-c737-4315-b36a-cb8ca4b32e8e |
4g6f6r | How come solid state drives (SSDs) are mostly only available at storage spaces of 64, 128, 256gb and hard drives are available at more "rounded" spaces like 150, 500, 600gb, etc.? | Let's say you have a swimming pool and you want to fill it with candy. How many pieces of candy fit? Maybe it's 1,000,000 pieces.
You decide that you want to fit as many pieces of candy into the pool as possible without making the pool bigger, so you make the candy smaller (to your five-year-old self a piece of candy is a piece of candy, no matter what size it is). You start finding ways to make the candy smaller and smaller until you can fit 1,500,000 pieces of candy in your swimming pool. You tell all your friends about that feat, then you go back and try making smaller and smaller pieces of candy.
That's an analogy for the manufacture of hard drives: there's a certain physical space that they have and they're trying to fit as many bits on a platter as possible. When they hit certain milestones they push that design into production. There's no preference for numbers that are nice and round in binary, so they stick to numbers that are nice and round to humans.
*******
Now imagine you go into the candy production business. You release a pack of candy that has 8 pieces of candy in it. It's popular, but all the kids on the block want more pieces of candy. To satisfy that demand you release a package that just has two of the previous packages in it, wrapped together. This new 16-piece package sells great, so you fix up your machines to make the 16- piece packages the standard.
Over time the demand for candy increases so you do just what you did before: you tie two packages together and sell that as a new product. Now you're selling 32-piece packages (which we know are just two 16-piece packages tied together, each of which are two 8-piece packages).
Repeat this cycle several times. As you move to larger and larger packages you streamline the packaging for the smaller packages ("this unit not marked for individual sale"). Eventually you're selling 64-billion-piece packages and 128-billion-piece packages (where "billion" here is actually 1024\*1024\*1024).
This is the analogy for flash memory (SSD) as well as things like RAM. You have a design for a single bit of data storage, then you copy/paste that and add a bit of control logic and you have a two-bit memory cell. Then you copy/paste that and add a bit of control logic and you have a 4-bit memory cell. Repeat that process a few dozen times and you may arrive at an 8 GB memory chip. Put a few of those on a board with some control logic and you have a 64 GB drive.
******
The real key difference between these two setups is that with hard drives you have a blank slate on which you try to write as much as will fit, while with flash memory you're constructing the memory cells individually using a repeating pattern. | 72d6495b-75b3-4bf4-8047-02a38ecef8b3 |
1tcd0l | How do smartphones that run multi-core cpus stay cool with such a compact design and zero airflow? | Most smartphone CPUs are ARM based, which are designed to run cool and use a small amount of energy.
Per Mhz, those ARM cpus will provide less computational than an x86 CPU of the same speed. But the power consumption and heat generation will be much lower. | 209b7cc4-b58a-4cf0-ade7-19a77bb2dc29 |
2ox4i5 | How are EULAs legal in the United States if you can't return the software after you've "purchased" it? | I'm gonna answer this in a way that you don't want to hear, but its really the correct answer as of now:
EULAs are problematic for the courts. There have not really been enough cases or strong decisions in either way to make it clear what the precedent or legality of them are and what is and isn't legal.
Courts know they are written by a team of lawyers and no one, even other lawyers can fully understand them. Yet they are written in a legal manner. They also know that no one reads them, and even if you did, you wouldn't understand it, because it is written so you can't. Also there are tons of clauses and issues which are legal because you agree to them, but are crazy, restrictive and may go against various laws.
Courts have ruled vary narrowly, and on only specific cases so far, so there really isn't a general rule yet. Until then, they will continue to be enforced because there really isn't anything saying otherwise. It's a tough situation for everyone.
tl;dr: Courts haven't made them illegal yet, they are confused too, but its an issue that will need to be addressed and everyone knows it. | c2d81bf3-7697-4ca7-b2f5-b317aeef5cd4 |
89qj4h | Once a cyst or abcess is removed from the body, if left alone do they continue to grow? | If put in the appropriate solution. Otherwise no, it doesn't have the access to energy necessary for the cells to do anything, the cells making it up will die. | eec2a6f0-5d58-4eeb-91bc-077eddaf737a |
6828i5 | Why does pain linger? | Depends on your pain tolerance as well. Somebody with a higher pain tolerance doesn't mean they feel less pain, it means they need more pain before it starts to affect them. If you have a low pain tolerance you will feel an injury a lot longer cause it will affect you. Higher pain tolerance will feel it less because like others has said your body will get used to it faster.
I'm no scientist but as somebody with a high pain tolerance, this is just what I notice. I'll get an injury that others people say if it was them they would e crying, I'm just like "it's just a flesh wound" (Monty python pun). But for real, unless it something serious like a broken bone (which I have many), something like a deep cut ill feel for the first minute but after that my brain just locks it out. I still "feel it", but it doesn't bother me, unless I hit it on something then it will hurt again for a minute. Which you could look at as your nerves telling you to stop damaging that part of the body cause it needs time to heal.
So I'm guessing it depends on how your pain tolerance is, is how long pain will linger | f67aa1cf-1f49-40c5-99bb-f4bcc59f9427 |
4q4jxj | Why are some people more prone to get motion sickness compared to others? | I can answer why this happens, but not severity.
So motion sickness happens when a particular set of circumstances arise. Lets first say that it requires mixed signals going to your brain to interpret. These signals happen when your brain is trying to understand what is happening. So for example, your on a boat and you see the horizon is more or less not moving. Your body, however, sends a signal from the inner ear that says: We're moving! The brain gets both of these signals and compares. When two signals disagree with each other, the brain then says: Something is wrong! Abort!
This creates a body reaction. This reaction, some say, came about during human evolution in response to eating spoiled foods. Why you ask? Well, if we eat spoiled or poisoned foods, the first thing those foods usually did to us was distort the signals our brain got from our senses ( hence why it happens now with distorted signals ). At first people died from this cause they did not know something was wrong. Over time, we developed a response to take care of it, causing sickness. Sickness was the easiest way for our body to react to a poison or foul substance, just evict it.
Again, I can't answer why some people get it, or even why some people get sea sick, but not car sick. The only thing I can theorize is that it's like pain tolerance. The nerves that sense signals might be more sensitive in people who get motion sickness more often. Or the circumstances of one situation are not as bad as another situation. It's also all in your head, and depends a bit on what the internal organs are feeling with their nerves during these situations.
Home cures can work and have different successes with different people. There was a good Mythbusters episode on what cures motion sickness and goes over a little on how it is caused.
Edit: Mythbusters Season 3: Episode 24: Seasickness kill or cure. You'll have to do some homework to find it though!
Edit #2: Asap Science on youtube on this as well: _URL_0_ | 61b8c906-f4df-4385-9f31-ba4c4056dc86 |
2y9p7x | how & what happened to the Lehman Brothers? | OK. So Lehman's was overly leveraged, meaning that when people gave them money, they could use that money as collateral on a loan to borrow more money. That borrowed money would then be invested. They are able to earn more profits doing this even after paying the interest on the loan. The problem is that you need to keep a good ratio of actual money to borrowed money in order to be able to ride out a downturn.
Lehman was heavily invested in real estate and mortgages, the very assets that started the collapse. They had borrowed $30 (or so) for every $1 they had on deposit. That meant that a drop of 5% or so was enough to wipe them out entirely. And that's what happened.
It never should have gone down that way. In the past there were laws preventing them from borrowing so much compared to what they had in assets. But those laws were removed during deregulation, so this problem was allowed to exist.
Basically, they owed way more money than they had any hope of being able to pay back, so they went bankrupt. | 8f9bd991-5984-42bc-b5c5-596c6835ed80 |
ksypf | how Empire building nations historically justified what they were doing and why they were right or wrong? | It's all about the money. Colonies are where the money is, and money is all the justification anyone has ever needed to exploit untapped resources and perhaps exploit a few locals too.
American schools still teach a version of American history that depicts early American colonists as fleeing the tyrannies of Europe to start a new life of enlightened freedom in America. In fact most American colonies were European startup companies: the colonies had investors in Europe, they had a business plan, they had trade goods, they sold raw materials back to Europe, and they enticed people to join their colony for financial gains, "own your land, be your own boss" and all that, a very attractive proposition to lower income serf who couldn't afford to rent a farm from a feudal lord.
Behind every empire expansion there is financial gain. Sure the foot soldiers that fight the natives are told "You are doing God's work." and all that, but really it's about getting the gold, oil, and soil under the native's feet, and the natives either cooperate with the business plan or killing them is added to the cost of doing business.
So it's all about providing a stable environment in which to do business. | 606e47b3-ac4e-4aac-935a-7c6ca1976024 |
37zvuy | What caused the switch from doctors doing home visits to the modern doctors office? | If you keep the doctor in one place, he can spend more of his valuable time actually seeing patients rather than driving between potentially distant patient houses. Having patients drive to the doctor means the doctor gets to see more patients.
Some countries (like France) still do paid doctor housecalls, but that isn't what most of their citizens do. | fae92107-1ceb-4d9c-995f-461a2882207d |
3bbmz0 | why won't YouTube fix the issue of saving the video quality even though it's the number one complaint they get? | You mean when you start a new video? It's becomes HD every time I enter full screen. | f8f7692a-6876-418a-9d2c-f308c6839bf3 |
7ysm19 | Why do movies look like soap operas on my MIL’s giant HD TV? | There is an adjustment for reducing judder, varies by brand name, that causes what you describe. Needs to be turned off. | f8655e36-6f46-4c88-b401-88610dfc6964 |
6jiooe | Polynesian people look very different from East Asian people, yet are hypothesized to have expanded out of East Asia only a few thousand years ago. How have the come to look so strikingly different, so quickly? | Polynesians are thought to be descended from Taiwanese aborigines or Formosan people of Taiwan, which are a different ethnic group from the Han Chinese which mostly populate Taiwan today. | c4d3359b-fe42-481d-9405-0ac9fbcb3707 |
3duypq | Is there a limit to the largest nuclear bomb mankind can create? If so, why? | The only limits we know of are cost and that a bomb will blow itself up before all the nuclear material can be used. | d38b9c21-4baa-4806-a975-417669128572 |
1tb2ex | What is the historical significane of coal in your stocking? | Its a Sicilian tradition.
It began with the legend of La Befana. Two of the Wise Men stopped at the home of La Befana to ask for directions on the night of Jesus' birth. They invited her to join them in going to see baby Jesus, but she refused. A while later, one of the shepherds asked for directions, and again invited La Befana to join him, but again she refused. Looking up into the sky, La Befana saw the bright star, and thought that she should go to find the stable. She gathered toys to give to baby Jesus. (The toys belonged to her own little one who had died.) Unfortunately, La Befana was unable to find the stable. Tradition says that even today, she continues to try to find baby Jesus. Every January 5th and the morning of January 6th (the feast of the Epiphany) La Befana tries to find the Christ child. Throughout her journey, she leaves toys along the way to the good children and she leaves coal for the naughty children. | 70d8aa5f-4030-4d8b-922c-29f992365257 |
332913 | Why sometimes when I lie on my bed and breathe in I feel sharp pain at my left lung preventing me from breathing in fully? | That is a very good question. I have the same problem | 3dbdad3d-3edb-454b-a251-2acb3294acd0 |
8h5yk4 | What does it mean if a person has a low centre of gravity? | Ok, so your mass is spread all over your body, pretty unevenly because of your limbs and different body parts. But from a physics standpoint, you still have a center of mass (like the middle of a balanced scale, or the middle of a horizontal seesaw). Center of gravity is the same thing since gravity is pulling on your center of mass. When you're standing up, your center of gravity has to be between your feet. Gravity is pulling down, put it's pulling down somewhere between your feet, and your feet can push back, keeping you up. If your center of gravity moves outside your feet, your feet can no longer cancel out the pull of gravity and you tip over.
Now, as for a *low* center of gravity, it's harder to tip over because your center of gravity is less likely to move outside your feet. If you start to tip over, your center of gravity will be outside your feet sooner if it's higher up your body. If you know some math, it's probably something like:
Tip over if: feet radius < sin(tip angle) * center of mass height
Now looking at this, or just thinking through center of mass, you can keep yourself from tipping over by spreading your feet out and increasing your feet radius, or by lowering your center of mass by crouching down. | 31f6f29b-3901-4e55-b00e-4e147e23c952 |
3wjv7e | How do (online) scalpers get their tickets before everyone else, when everyone else seems to be struggling? | There are computer programs that will automatically buy the tickets quicker than any human can. The scalpers use these. | 1e48ced5-e9bc-4b2c-833a-8bba15148422 |
1f2gf5 | What can high-profile law firms do to win cases that smaller law firms can't? | Larger top-tier/Magic Circle law firms pay their employed solicitors very well, and they're very large organisations. This gives it three main advantages.
First, they have more people that they can put on the project (which achieves certain economies of scale/cost).
Second, the people they have are likely the best lawyers around, because they are given more money for working with the big firms than the little firms.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the size of the firms allows the lawyers within to become more specialised. Many big legal matters are complicated, and your local attorney will have to know about things like contracts for goods or services or land, conveyancing, family law, basic criminal law, etc. That means your local attorney will necessarily have less experience and knowledge than a specialist in any one technical area because they won't have the time to devote to other things, like corporate insolvency, or intellectual property. They'll only know the basics well, where a lawyer from a big firm can have specialist knowledge of the area of law that's relevant. | 503a8c23-58dd-4638-ad5a-b285b4e118df |
7rv2zx | How do mutual fund fees work? | Your broker might charge you a fee to put money in or take it out of the fund, although a lot of the major brokers that offer their own funds (e.g. Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard) offer many free funds. Then the fund has an "expense ratio"--you pay this percentage of your total investment every year. Think of it as going straight off the profit or loss for that year: if the fund's value went up 6%, but your expense ratio is 1%, your net gain is 5%. If the value went down 6%, you still have to pay the fee, so your loss is 7%. This means that expense ratios can make a big difference to your returns, and many people recommend finding mutual funds with low fees.
Some mutual funds have artificially low expense ratios because some of its expenses are subsidized by the parent company. They should disclose this. As an investor, that usually doesn't concern you. | 2ba4ff01-4983-490b-9c7b-3da8e8c193fb |
1m4cjh | How do we know if Syria has handed over ALL their chemical weapons? | It's likely that any agreement that is made that requires them to give up their weapons would require them to allow very thorough investigations, and it's not easy to hide chemical weapons facilities like that, especially with satellites that could be tracking things. | 6da291bf-da2d-4f83-85bc-d01c0ead3dda |
6j5och | Why would IS want to blow up Mecca's Grand Mosque? | From discussions with friends and reading random things about the situation, what I gather is that they are intending to bring about the apocalypse. Basically, and this is from my limited understanding of the situation, there are prophecies that say that the temple will fall before the end of days and a new one built in its place. This is one event in a chain of things that are supposed to happen when the world ends. I hope my assumptions and facts aren't too off base. | 6d6b8ebb-7379-482c-a540-638ea4bbd4e7 |
23t4xt | Why do we as humans always have trouble lying without giving it away in some form of body language? | I'm not sure that it's true the people *always* give away their lies with some sort of bodily signal, but you're right that there are often signs. There are a few reasons for this.
One is simply that lying is cognitively more difficult than telling the truth. Think about it this way, which is easier: reading from a script or improvising a scene? Furthermore, lying is sometimes not just fabrication, but often requires knowing the truth and purposefully saying something that is not the truth. This coupling of knowing the truth and speaking a lie forms cognitive dissonance and it requires significant brain power to do it quickly and well. This is why, contrary to common belief, people who are being interrogated are often *less* fidgity when they're lying because their brains are busy coming up with the lie.
Another reason it's hard to not give away a lie is because we are social creatures, and lying is antisocial. Even if they're lying for a good reason, most people have an emotional aversion to it. On top of that, there's almost always the fear of getting caught while you're doing it, and that makes it emotionally stressful. Of course signs of emotion aversion and stress and not always signs of lying, as people can be stressed by interrogation (generally speaking, not just by govt officials) even when they're telling the truth.
Edit: grammar | 3f0b5366-2a6d-475b-8497-7e5314e51ef9 |
1nfvfc | Does the body absorb every calorie? If I overeat like crazy will some of it just 'flow through' me or will it all be stored? | Some calories remain in partially digested food that exits your body in stool. But not enough to counterbalance the energy equation. If you overeat a lot, *most* of it will be stored in adipose tissue. The human body is very good at banking up energy reserves for a rainy day. | a9dd0872-416d-4c59-b79a-2a5d7ae9441b |
1n12y5 | Why do I feel bad after masturbating? | It's a shift in chemicals, and I think it is heavily dependent on what kind of stimuli you were using as an aid. During an orgasm, a lot of different hormones and neurotransmitters get released into the brain such as serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline, etc. Many of these chemicals actually do a really efficient job of suppressing your inhibitions.
What follows after the climax is a refractory, or normalisation, period. Think of it like either getting high or engaging in intensive exercise and then coming down. Those feelings of shame and disgust are an overcompensation of your brain re-adjusting itself.
The difference between the feeling after sex, and after masturbation, isn't so much cultural pressure which results in shame, as /u/geektrix suggests, but rather it's the presence of a partner(s). Engaging in such an intimate act with another person, keeps the 'love chemicals' firing, and so when you're coming down from the climax, it doesn't hit you as hard.
Whereas when you're masturbating, the only soft landing you really have, is a close up of someone's ass hole, or a guy with a 12 inch schlong slapping his bell end on the person's forehead.
That isn't the only reason, but it's the most common and simplest one. | 4d2da793-93eb-4e07-802a-d73e7b0aa75b |
3lkazn | Can someone explain what FEMA camps are, and why people are so afraid of them? | Many people are afraid that FEMA may eventually lock up people just for disagreeing with the government, ala political prisoners or dissidents. | a4181942-6b68-4e7c-8b2e-3504db3e1dc6 |
7dkxf4 | Auditing the Federal Reserve | > Don't we already get transcripts 5 years later?
More than that. The fed is audited: internally, by the GAO, and by an outside firm, usually ~annually.
On top of that, the head of the Fed reports directly to Congress bi-annually.
You can access those here:
_URL_0_
The transcripts are just things like FOMC meetings. The audits include all of their financial assets etc.
> Is it just for conspiracy theorists?
There's 3 people who want to "audit the Fed": conspiracy theorists, regular people who don't understand how the Fed works (unfortunately, the way it's set up makes it look shady to the average person), and people in Congress who want more direct control.
> Would the Federal Reserve be politicized by congress?
Yes, almost definitely, which is why it was created (mostly) independent in the first place, to avoid those pressures. The current audit the fed movement is by people who want more politicization (currently, it tends to be people who disliked/distrusted the Fed's "easymoney" response to the 2008 crisis) | f89739d0-77a0-43ab-9ace-dfc95e16767f |
29lf60 | What's the whole issue with Hobby Lobby? | The Justices held that under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that certain for-profit corporations were able to hold religious beliefs and could apply to be exempt from providing select contraceptive coverage mandated in the ACA (Obamacare). The Democrats/Left have built a narrative around the decision that it is another example of the right-wing's "war on women" and that the decision is essentially allowing bosses to impose their personal beliefs on their workers. People seem to be responding to that narrative and its obviously upsetting some people. | 65e3ee32-9805-44a1-b1a5-49ee0f59d381 |
15vq7o | Why is gambling illegal? (in america) | The reason its not legal in most states is the assumption that it attracts crime and other undesirable elements to the area. While casinos and other forms of gambling are very profitable for those running it, and the state that taxes it, all that money is coming out of the pockets of average people, increasing the possibility that people will gamble themselves into debt and turn to loan sharks and the like, some of which have ties to criminal organizations. The feeling of most lawmakers and voters tends to be that its just not worth it, since there are other ways increase revenue that don't come with these potential side effects. | f9e8c98a-83e3-45f8-a8bc-544d6e6d1537 |
2l0d7b | How is masochism possible when pain isn't supposed to be pleasing, but warning us? | Hi there.
To put it simply, we cant control pain itself but we *can* control how we respond to it. Thats a physical reason.
Psychologically, you cant really make many broad generalizations about masochists, or anyone really. Some masochists endure because it reminds them they are alive and helps them to focus on being content with being alive, some genuinely enjoy pain itself and actively force themselves to regard it as pleasure through small incremental steps, some enjoy the state of numbness one can achieve when so much pain is inflicted that the area just doesnt get stimulated by anything afterwards. | 0065a8fd-ef73-4435-8b8e-6c7cbe602025 |
2yz61p | Why do I feel like I have to have my brain and mind be constantly stimulated throughout the day, from when I wake up until I go to bed? | ELI5: If you feel the quest for knowledge so bad. Why don't you work it out for yourself? | a8e031d8-6e1b-4ccf-8084-5148a49a11bf |
7ib4iy | How do pathologists tolerate the odor of decomposition? | People can get used to pretty much anything. I'm a medic and smell decomposition frequently. It stinks, but I'll take that over C.diff any day. | 8764ebd6-b034-45c0-97b7-bfe98f24e260 |
71676a | Why are people allowed to be racist towards their own race? | Most people are not self-hating, so when you say something about your own race, it's much more likely to be construed either as a joke, or as a constructive criticism. Saying something about another race will sound much less like constructive criticism.
"We Chinese have a bad reputation for being boorish tourists, and we need to examine our own behavior in order to treat foreign destinations with the proper respect they deserve."
"Those Chinese have a bad reputation for being boorish tourists, and they need to examine their behavior in order to treat our tourist destinations with the proper respect they deserve."
See how each sentence sounds? | d4487237-d185-4395-86c0-3a09454d4208 |
27ylst | Why do we sweat, even when not being physically active, at 30ºC? | your body temp is 37° because it's permanently cooled down. you're burning sugar in your cells continuously, increasing your body temperature.
unfortunately your organs are very sensitive to overheating, so your body must make sure that your temp doesn't raise (except for fever).
imagine a running engine in a standing car. it produces heat all the time, and if you don't cool the engine actively it will overheat very fast. | 9d589026-eb45-409b-bd6c-11774fc28efc |
1klzoo | Why are eggs/biscuits/pancakes considered to be breakfast food, and not normally eaten during other meals? | All of those things are eaten at any time of the day.
Eggs are present in damn near everything. It's true that in western cultures a fried or scrambled egg is traditionally reserved for the first meal of the day, but in other cuisines eggs are featured players in all sorts of meals. Poached eggs, for example, are common ingredients in salads in the French tradition, and in the United States where people are generally less inclined to eat runny eggs, hard-boiled eggs are substituted.
A fried egg is a very common ingredient in bánh mì, a type of Vietnamese sandwich. The Aussies use them as hamburger toppings.
As for biscuits, you're clearly not from the American south! Biscuits are a common addition to every meal. In general, in the American south quick breads — breads leavened by chemistry — are preferred over yeast breads, and the biscuit plays the same part that the traditional yeast dinner roll does in other parts of the United States. (The reason for the difference comes down to agriculture. Wheat grown in the northern United States is "harder," containing more protein than wheat grown in the warmer southern states. Hard wheat is better for glutenous, chewy breads, while soft wheat is better for quick breads.)
And as for pancakes, consider the Chinese moo shu pancake or the French crêpe … or hell, the *tortilla* for that matter. In many cultures, unleavened pancakes are staple foods, or at least not relegated to breakfast. Leavened pancakes not that different from American ones are common in England, where they're eaten as dessert foods. In Scotland, they're eaten for tea, in basically the same way scones are.
So really, it's more a question of why *you* only eat those foods for breakfast. You're missing out on a whole world of deliciousness. | 12ed5425-24d5-4109-a67f-50579c7cfcbb |
1xwytw | What happens when the US government proves a monopoly or oligopoly exists? How is the law enforced? | Contrary to popular belief, monopolies and oligopolies are not illegal.
What is illegal is using monopoly powers in specifically described ways to stifle competition. For example, selling goods at less than cost to drive a competitor out of business is illegal, as is colluding with other companies to fix prices or territory.
If a company is caught doing one of those things, it can face legal action. | 8094ea96-a515-4e4f-a21a-d12088182135 |
1vayt6 | Like most people, I do not suffer from OCD. So why do I experience compulsions? | One of my best friends has very severe OCD and I asked him once what the difference is. He says that everybody has obsessions and everybody has compulsions, but most people's obsessions and compulsions are separate. You have a preferred light switch and you are compelled to use it, but you do not obsess over the switch when you are not interacting with it. Or, you might obsess and have rules for people in your space about which switch to use, but you do not feel compelled to interfere when something goes wrong. He says that in his brain he is compelled to obsess' and 'obsessed with his compulsions.' In other words, the two are connected circularly in his mind and he cannot disengage from the object even when the interaction is complete.
As to why we have these obsessions and compulsions, evolution has a strong preference for keeping things the same or changing very slowly. If you know that 'on' is 'up' and 'off' is 'down' then your brain seeks to apply this principle universally even once you have learned of a particular exception. This tendency towards sameness is very practical - your body is a finely tuned piece of equipment. If you were to randomly introduce a single genetic mutation it has a much greater change of doing harm then good. Thus, we benefit from all changes being very minor so that even if the change is bad it is not overwhelmingly bad. | 9c669aac-2fdc-4233-b0e2-9271a82ae6ac |
4tugbx | What are the historical reasons for which english cuisine is usually regarded as "bad" whereas french cuisine is usually regarded as "good"? (at least i think this is how we see it in the US... | They were culturally different. Also under Napoleonic rule, France controlled almost all of continental Europe (but obviously not Britain) which allowed French chefs to experiment with ingredients from all around the continent.
The short answer is simply that French chefs had the ingredients available and the cultural passion to elevate cuisine to higher levels than Britain had. It's not about skill it's about generations of tradition and availability of ingredients and culture.
Brits love their curry though! Can find much better curry and Asian food in general in Britain than in France.
Unrelated side note: Was in London last summer. Went past a noodle bar called "Phat Phuc" | 4899fc21-918c-4ab6-a5d7-445f81efb3eb |
4oa5c9 | How do third party vendors on Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, etc get their inventory? | They typically buy direct from the manufacturer. Most products will provide discounts if purchased in bulk. And if you don't have a storefront you have much lower operational expenses and can reduce prices even lower.
With their size they can reduce their margins to make their profits on volume. | 7e38662f-af2c-4a75-9151-48470ba6b036 |
40p1pv | Why do different languages have different names for different countries? | The main sources are:
1. Language change: in year N, I call Country X "X" and you also call Country X "X", but 1000 years later our descendants speak languages that have moved in different directions. A simple example is how "Roma", spelled with an *e* in English but pronounced the same way, became a one-syllable word when the English stopped pronouncing the final *-e* on all English words.
2. Playing Telephone: every time a word gets passed from one language to another it gets trampled a little, since the sounds in different languages aren't 1:1. So you go from "Qin" (Chinese) to "Śina" (Sanskrit) to "Sina" (Latin). As the branches go in different directions you get weirder and weirder variations.
3. Different kinds of name: Countries can be named after the geographic location, after the ethnic group that inhabits the region, a descriptive feature, or after some political regime. So that already gives you at least four options; but then, you might have a region inhabited by a group of related tribes, where each neighbor calls the whole population by the name of the closest tribe; or a region ruled by several dynasties, where each neighbor calls the region by the name of a different dynasty. The classic example: the Allemanni, the Teutones, the Germanii, who each gave their names to the whole region whence they came.
Anyway, "Nippon" is the Wu pronunciation of "Land of the Rising Sun", which the Japanese adopted as their own; but the Min pronunciation is basically "Jaypon", and the Southern Chinese merchants who operated all over Southeast Asia were the ones who gave us a lot of Asian words. (Also "tea", from Min "de" rather than Mandarin "cha")
The Latin form of "Scotland" is *Scotia* (or more properly, Scotland is the English form of Scotia, since our word "Scot" is also from Latin); in French, initial clusters of *sc-* were always replaced with *esc-* and then *éc-*, while the -tio- or -tia- usually softened to and S. | 26843251-1187-4641-9c75-7e30a0966a9c |
6m9gfo | Why are humans "human-sized"? | Evolution isn't conscious, intelligent design. It doesn't strive to make the perfect organism that just the right height and size - whatever species manage to have viable offspring is an evolutionary success, and some end up better than others, thrive in their enviroment and breed more. The average human is the size of the average human because those are the genes that have been passed along for hundreds of thousands of years.
We've grown taller and taller as of late due to a vast improvement of diet - more people can eat their fill and thus reach their maximum potential height, whereas malnourishment previously stunted many people's growth.
So, why the 5-6 foot range then? It's a good enough size, really. Small enough to stay energy efficient in times in hunger, big enough to chase after prey and kill them. | 976bdf0c-d61d-41a0-b3ea-35310aa69776 |
5a4l2c | Why does the word for 'mum/mother' sound so similar across nearly all languages? | Äiti, haha, nënë, walida, unitsi, pia, hooyo...
Your premise ("nearly all languages") is obviously false.
Related languages, however, are likely to share some words - especially words that would be very old. English is related to a *lot* of languages through the Proto-Indo-European root language, from which *mother* derives, and from which Latin, Germanic, and Slavic languages get the word (and those three families cover the vast majority of modern Europe). | 02f37d2c-1d2f-4cf6-b735-f7f6cc875d1e |
wyli3 | How do fruit flies "magically" appear? | Fun fact: "Back in the day" people used to think that animals "magically appeared"; this concept was known as [spontaneous generation](_URL_0_). It was commonly thought that if a pile of dirty clothes was left laying around for too long it would spawn rats. | 69491d72-dcf8-4b24-a340-95fa0aab3c11 |
1y6ytk | what are the silica gels they put in new clothes and why are they telling me not to put it in my mouth? | It dries stuff out. It is apparently an irritant but I don't see anything super dangerous in the [Material Safety Data Sheet](_URL_0_). It will not be pleasant though. | f82d4bfa-56aa-43d8-b98d-5778ad70b885 |
61gvbm | Why does eating a lemon make your teeth hurt? | Lemon juice is moderately acidic, and if your teeth have metal fillings that can set up an electric circuit. Biting aluminum foil does the same thing, but I don't advise doing either of those things. | a1b69c92-f269-495c-ad31-275111d40339 |
2tqoio | How come the third rail on subway systems doesn't short circuit when it gets wet? | 1. Water on the rail itself doesn't short circuit, as the rail is more conductive than the water.
2. The water doesn't bridge between the third rail and a suitable ground. It might drip off, but it won't form a continuous path like a wire very easily.
3. Water is an awful conductor, so outside of very high voltages such as lightning strikes, it doesn't tend to carry a charge very far. | 57cdef7b-f401-45ce-91b4-8273fc93e284 |
2vwqoh | How exactly does a transformator transform energy to a lower voltage? | Do you mean a transformer? The EMF induced in the secondary coil is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux through the coil. More loops means a higher magnetic field (and therefore flux) inside the secondary coil. Less coils means less flux and therefore less induced EMF.
So in a step-down transformer, the primary coil has more loops than the secondary coil. | c85ed2d3-7db4-402a-b87c-f4da6ce7395c |
1z8dst | Why is it legal for a police officer to lie to me about the law ? | An example would be a police officer telling a person that filming them is illegal. | bc85f707-89fa-4c83-b11d-af026182cd52 |
wwv6e | Seriously, how do cell phones work?! | First of all it's not instant. It's something like one twentieth of a second from the time you speak until the other person hears you, and it depends on how far away you are from each other. It takes time to transmit information, so no kind of communication is instantaneous.
Step by step here is a basic overview. If there's any specific part of this you are curious about I can explain more.
The sound of your voice goes into the microphone.
The microphone converts these sounds into electrical signals.
A part in the phone called a ADC converts these signals into a stream of numbers.
A tiny but very fast computer in the phone does lots of math with the numbers to process the signal, compress the information so there's not too much to transmit, and package it into a format that the phone company can understand.
A radio in the phone transmits these numbers onto the airwaves.
The nearest cell tower receives the radio signal.
A computer at the cell tower then retransmits the numbers, in the form of light waves, into cables that run all over the country. Lots of fancy equipment in big air conditioned facilities all over the world pass this information along to its destination.
At the other end, the reverse process occurs until the sound you made finally exits the other person's phone through its speaker. | 68ae1e3d-28ed-4b14-8147-f31e4fe30e91 |
3uiach | Why is it sometimes a popular connotation to assume that attractive people are less intelligent than others? | 2 Primary reasons:
Anecdotal evidence, people thinking instances of it and generalizing.
Compensation thinking... people seem to have an unfounded belief that strengths come with weaknesses. If someone's attractive, they must be stupid...or the opposite, if someone is smart they must be socially inept. The idea that some people are good without major drawbacks is uncomfortable to some people, it makes them feel better to assume the rich guy is unhappy or cruel or the pretty girl is an idiot. | b3d9cb13-ccba-47d6-a8bd-657b9b7162bb |
1ymlks | Why are American movies called by their literal names in other countries? | Maybe the word "Anchorman" doesn't exist in those languages? That would be the only reason I can think of | 8f51ef13-026f-4228-8712-823b9f7e10a4 |
3yx217 | why, if at all, is Putin a bad guy? | Vladimir Putin has made Russia less democratic--he and his party intimidate political opponents and are suspected of several assassinations, and he has skirted around the term limits set by the Russian constitution by exchanging positions with Medvedev.
On the international scene, he has behaved very aggressively, using military force to conquer parts of Georgia and Ukraine. These actions have not been good for Russia, which is reeling from the international sanctions that have been imposed on the country. So he's not even very good at being an autocrat. | 38536499-fa60-4db1-8347-6dc6d86fa1a0 |
1rb061 | Should ELI5 temporarily hide comment scores? We want your feedback. | I would be in favour of not implementing this.
For the most part, I see posts upvoted when they are correct and give interesting additional information, and downvoted when they are spam or wrong. There are a few cases where this doesn't happen, but I would say that it is more advantageous for a poster to be able to look at the sole answer on their question, see that it is at -1 and conclude that it is likely wrong or not fully answering their question.
I don't know the figures on how long the majority of threads stay active, but the ones that I normally answer are on the new page and don't stay alive after dropping of that first screen. An hour delay on seeing comment voting would be too long for this in my opinion. | bfff58d3-4105-429e-9b62-6da307ea7463 |
jntts | the Ohm rating on guitar amplifiers and why it's important... | Imagine two bicycles, side by side. The first bike has the brakes stuck on. You can pedal it and move it, but it takes a lot of effort to do so.
Then you hop onto the second bike. You expect it to be the same as the first bike, so you put a lot of power into pedalling. However, because this bike's resistance is so much lower, you get startled at how fast you zoom off, and lose control of the bike.
Ohms are a unit for measuring electrical resistance, kind of like friction in the physical world. The first bike had a lot of resistance, so I could analogously say it had a high Ohm value. | a1264a4c-6a84-4844-b513-ddcdd8be767a |
5kiifl | why do some people's abs appear bloated or rounded? | Growth hormone.
Bodybuilders take them to get bigger but it doesn't just make muscles bigger. Organs grow too so their guts is basically pushing outwards behind the abs. Some will eventually need surgery because their insides tries to come out from their belly button. | 778cf5db-e0fa-4cfc-a375-5099ebef5e53 |
pkijh | How traffic lights work? | In most cases they use a metal sensor in the ground that's under your car when you stop at a red light, that is connected to the streetlights to let them know there is a car there. At four way intersections as soon as you get on top of this sensor it tells the light that your way of traffic is the next to receive a green light. In this way it prioritizes the directions that have heavy traffic flow.
Other types of traffic lights can be ones that are just set on a timer and switches at a set interval regardless of traffic flow.
Edit: Im fairly certain i messed the uses of "there" in my response. | da041a1f-0e9e-4e47-9e8a-2de8c28e0b7b |
2zcoxw | why we sometimes yell or make obnoxious noises when we stretch | Everyone else in this thread is being mean, the reason we do it I would imagine is the same reason people moan during sex. That stretch feels fucking awesome | 6ee429d3-4a4c-4c0b-88bc-3003c8671be5 |
289z8o | How do microtomes work? How can a blade be physicslly manipulated to cut a slide a few micrometres or nanometres thick? | The below freezing temperatures and frozen substrate that the tissue is embedded in helps considerably to keep things together. The problem arises when you have tissue that contains a high amount of fat. The fat doesn't freeze at the same temperature, and makes cutting thin slices more difficult. | 60bdbaa4-12b7-47e7-ac05-4d32ad19df46 |
2x438w | What is a random walk? | Industrial Engineer here:
I'm going to be talking about measurements of say the length of a part. You know your part should be 12 inches long. We IEs have tools to measure that this number remains, on average, 12 inches. One of our most powerful tools is the [Estimate Weight Moving Average(EWMA)](_URL_0_) control chart. In this plot, we look for non random walks. Let's say that your 12 inch average all of a sudden becomes 12.1 inches. Most normal tests of quality will say that each part measurement is still acceptable due to this small shift; we won't conclude that these individual observations are out of control. The EWMA, however, takes into account previous measurements, so non random walks can be detected.
[This figure](_URL_1_) is a great example of a non random walk. At observation 15, our average probably shifted to 12.1, so each new measurement adds a fraction to the old measurement which was adding a fraction, so on and so on until we hit the upper or lower control line (dashed line in this figure) and we then conclude that our average is incorrect.
EDIT: just realized I never ELI5'd. A non random walk is any upward or downward trend with some non random process behind it. In my example, the non random reason for the walk was the shift of the average from 12 to 12.1. It could really be anything, but this movement should be caused by an underlying reason, not random chance
Hopefully this helps! | cca1b9a1-43b4-44bc-9e38-2e2b279a21c7 |
2wbvj2 | How does the pump at the gas station know when to turn off when your gas tank is full? | If you look down the nozzle of a gas pump, you'd find there is a smaller tube, about the size of a straw, within the main tube. Gasoline goes through the main tube, the smaller one allows air to escape from the tank as it's displaced by the gasoline being pumped in. When liquid reaches this tube, it triggers the shut-off, as the level of gasoline must have reached the nozzle, which sticks a safe amount into the fuel filler tube.
In certain conditions, similar to when you swallow and choke because it "went down the wrong tube", this may falsely trigger the shutoff even when the tank isn't full. Better to false stop than overfill, so no big deal.
If it shuts off, and you keep pumping the handle to try and get a few more drops in, all you're doing is pumping gas back into that return tube. You're returning the gas to them and paying for it. Stop doing that. | e57f9e6f-bbff-4ce8-a465-c163b10546bc |
4em55n | If boiling water kills all the bacteria, where do the dead bacteria go? | Nowhere. They stay in the water. The only difference is that if they're dead they pass right through you, whereas if they're alive, they're more inclined to infect you with whatever. | 216e5099-3bd2-4109-bad8-87d8bf7e725e |
2suune | How can water from the Gulf of Mexico keep Norway from being covered in ice and snow? | The warm water from the gulf of mexico gets carried up towards Norway and pulls the temperature up. The air gets heated by the ground and water. When the water is warm enough to keep ice from forming then you get that effect. One thing you'd immediately think is how doesn't the water cool by then? Its due to the sheer scale of water. Its extremely difficult to cool that much water and it makes it up there cooler, but still warm enough to keep Norway thawed. | 5631fb9c-c969-4557-8954-690ab51549a9 |
3zto8z | Why is the history of math so separated from math itself in education? Wouldn't it be more interesting if this weren't the case? | Because it doesn't teach you math.
Flip it around. Imagine you are studying literature but before you can get to the actual writing you have to spend 20 percent of the class on linguistics. Imagine you are studying medicine but spend part of the class learning the mechancs about how an mri works. Imagine taking a mechanics class and learning about the life and times of Henry ford.
It's not relevant. It might inspire you but it doesn't teach you.
But if it interests you, the Internet is available. _URL_0_
Edit: OP originally was talking about differential equations (college/university math). My answer would be different in the context of elementary or pre-calculus high school math. | 4dd57db4-48c3-4440-b354-1282509a49dd |
7awflq | How the illegal 'Hawala System' works for laundering money? | Hawala as Underground Banking
The very features that make hawala an attractive avenue for legitimate patrons, also make it attractive for illegitimate uses. Thus, hawala is frequently referred to as underground banking. This is because money launderers and terrorists also take advantage of this system to transfer funds from one location to another. Hawala provides anonymity in its transactions as official records are not kept, and the source of money that is transferred cannot be traced. In addition, corrupt politicians and the wealthy who would prefer to evade taxes use hawala to anonymize their wealth and activities.
[Since hawala transfers are not routed through banks and, hence, not regulated by governmental and financial bodies, many countries have been le](_URL_0_)d to re-examine their regulatory policies in regard to hawala. Some countries have made hawala illegal due to the absence of bureaucracy in the system. For example, in India, the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) are the two major legislative systems that deter the use of hawala in the country. | fe552a67-0450-4b53-ab64-8659a9ba5136 |
6xktuf | What actually happens after a single use of LSD? I've heard some of the details but I'm looking for more unbiased answers. I want to try it but not sure if it's worth it in the long run. | LSD alters your reality. Hence, you will "see" sounds, such as music. You will "smell" sights, such as the blue of a rock. This doesn't sound realistic outside of tripping, but it is your reality on the drug.
I used LSD in my youth, probably around a dozen times. It is essential that you not do it alone, and that you have a sober, non-tripping person there to guide the trip. Usually, this is to keep you safe, and to help you if you are having a bad trip.
You have very little control over your tripping. You do not know if you are going to have a good one, or a bad one. A bad one can be very bad, worse than a nightmare, and you are living it in real time. Some folks are permanently affected by a bad trip, but that is not that common. But it does happen.
Let me combine a couple of factors of good trips I've had, then I will explain the bad trip that ended my LSD experiments. Keep in mind the average trip lasts three to four hours, sometimes longer. You have little to no control. Once you are in, you are IN until it's over. There is nothing that can stop your trip that I know of. Perhaps they can sedate you until it's over, but I do not know anyone who has done that.
The first time I had a good guide. I wanted to be outside so we walked. Two of us were tripping, one was clean/sober. As we walked, I could "see" music floating out of houses into the street and turning into exquisite little flowers on the telephone lines. As we walked there were dozens of these impossibly perfect little flowers floating about and landing everywhere. They were so beautiful I couldn't stop staring at them. (In reality, there is nothing there, this is your trip).
Another time I was camping, it was nighttime. After a very long time of being hypnotized by the campfire and it's utter perfection, and the song it was singing to just me, I reached out to touch it. My safe person immediately stopped this and redirected me away from the fire. We walked down to the river edge and I wanted to be in the river, to feel its silky coolness, to talk to fish (this is a trip, remember) and to know a river god. (It sounds silly outside of a trip). My safe person kept me in the shallow water and away from rocks and deeper water. I wanted to float in the water and feel the stars, so my safe person lay me in very shallow water and held my head while I communicated with stars.
The bad trip: I was at a party and took the acid. First,my safe person left and left me in the hands of someone I didn't know, just as the trip was starting, so I had anxiety. I'm in until the end of the trip, and now I have to trust a person I never met to keep me safe. Then the person started drinking and kind of abandoned me. I was left in the bathroom where I became enthralled with swirling toilet water (you never know what you will find fascinating) and watched the toilet flush endlessly (yes I was alone). Then someone started pounding on the door, wanting the restroom, and I got very anxious. Not wanting to see the person at the door, I wanted to unlock it and then climb out the window. Except the window was on the fifth floor. The person who came into the restroom stopped me from climbing out the window (see why a safe person is necessary?). They were kind and helped me to another person, a stranger who promised to help. The party was very loud and had a live band that had a very loud drummer. All of a sudden it was overload and the music became a hell of demon types and the voices of the party goers felt like shrieks of demons. Everything felt very dark and ugly. The cloth of the clothes I was wearing felt like gooey fire (makes no sense, but tripping does that) and I started tearing off my clothes. Yet another person help me get into a bathrobe and feel better. But by then I was scared. The room I was changing in felt like a prison and I felt I was never going to be released and it was a terrifying feeling (no logic, but tripping). I cried and cried. The person passed me again to someone who wanted to walk with me, but someone else stopped them from taking me outside in a bathrobe and not having a good trip. I tried to drink a cold drink (7up I think) and I couldn't figure out how to swallow and choked on it, causing me to vomit. I felt I was dying and started crying for help. No one is going to call 911 for a bad trip in the middle of a party. The voices kept screaming in demon tones, the music was excruciating and dark and thunderous, the smells were frying my brain, I couldn't find a safe person, I was vomiting and terribly thirsty, I was not dressed in my clothes and I had no idea (on my trip) where the hell I was. I did not have the ability to call for help any other way than to pathetically sit on the floor and grabbing people walking by and pleading. Occassionally someone would sit with me and try and talk me to a better space. Somewhere in there someone tried to kiss me and I felt like I was being eaten by a snake. It was a really awful couple of hours, tortuous.
Eventually I started to come down. Around dawn, the trip was completely over. I showered (in a strangers home, but I'm covered in vomit and sweat and spilled 7up), dressed in my own clothes and went home.
Never again.
I hope that answered some questions. I know there are others that can share their experiences. I hope they share the good AND the bad, because it can be really bad, even worse than what I described. If you are an anxious type person, that can affect your trip. The changes in your body from anxiety more easily send you towards a bad experience. You really need to be feeling pretty easy. You should not be drinking or mixing other drugs, even weed. Your safe person should have experience with tripping, so they recognize where you are in your trip.
Be safe.
tl;dr...there are good trips, there are bad trips. The good are very good, the bad are very bad. Be safe. | 20784b87-6168-4b6d-b52b-9bd33a95114d |
khrps | Why does smoking a cigarette feel so much better after sex or a big meal than it does normally? | Troll answer: You are 5. You shouldn't be smoking. | b2cdca1a-afd7-48ec-a436-b5c8ea3e9351 |
1n1e36 | Why are some foods like eggs or pancakes considered breakfast foods in the US? | You can feed your family whatever you want whenever you want. When I was a kid we did "breakfast for dinner" about once a week. Usually bacon, eggs, and biscuits. | 75e50899-0b4c-4e0e-8c1c-d5d862ac1508 |
8rygyr | Why are nerdiness and eyeglasses synonymous with one another? Is there a tangible link between intelligence and bad eyesight? | The connection is the other way around, glasses, especially very thick framed one, tend to make you the target of bullying, as they are an easy target to ridicule and you are very helpless without them, making them ideal to steal and mock you with.
(They also symbolise a flaw in your, your non-perfect eyesight, which is exploited in the same vein)
Being ridiculed can make for a recluse and that can make people turn towards things that doesn't involve other people, like learning or video games. | f2d46b3b-d355-4347-a6fd-d533a80a93bc |
3wb26d | How did the moon get there? | The favored explanation for the formation of the moon is the "giant impact hypothesis", which posits that during the early formation of the solar system (about 4-4.5 billion years ago), a Mars-sized object called Theia formed at earth's L4/L5 lagrange points (same distance as Earth from the sun, but located 60 degrees in front of and behind the earth, in the same orbital plane). Gravitational tugs from Venus/Jupiter eventually sent Theia crashing into the young Earth at an oblique angle (a head-on glance would have destroyed earth), ejecting a huge amount of material into space that relatively quickly (less than a century) coalesced into the moon. | 59845372-9719-4d35-b1aa-e8f46a7fd460 |
5pwcsq | What does a virus or bacteria gain from making its host sick? | Bacteria and viruses don't necessarily want their host sick, or even dead. Complications happen when the virus is in an organism it's not supposed to be in, and that organism isn't equipped to handle the virus. Rats carried the plague and were doing just fine, but when they jumped shipped and infected humans, they wiped out millions in the 14th century. It's the same with the influenza virus, and other viruses. Their goal is to multiply within their host for a while and then spread. Sometimes though, killing your host and exposing its fluids to other organisms is the best way to migrate. | 97e3a39a-7812-48b8-8d5d-6ed01f116044 |
1e39uo | Nearly every time you're going to download something, you're told your download will start in a few seconds, or alternately you can click a link to start it instantly. What's the purpose of this? | It is convenient to have one computer drive the website, and another be just for downloading files, so it isn't unusual for the web server to hand off control to the file server.
However, a lot of older browsers, and browsers with certain security settings are unable to execute the handoff properly, so a link is provided as a backup. | 1fa47fc2-1bf2-40f0-90a2-ebc2f4ad1c0e |
3q133c | How is it safe and/or Legal for cops to drive while using the laptop in their patrol car but texting and driving is illegal? | Few laws are absolute & many of them have specific exemptions. On duty police officers are allowed to ignore many traffic laws in the line of duty - speeding, running red lights, etc. - this is just another one.
It's assumed that police are professional drivers & have received proper training as to when it's safe & appropriate to use electronic devices. | 65ed8533-6b20-459d-8d83-7985f4815a53 |
21bz0u | What happens when my memory is jogged? | The brain is a pattern-matching computer. You see letters and words, for example, and your brain turns them into sounds and ideas. You see faces, and your brain turns them into identities. Every pattern you recognize connects to some memory, and encountering the pattern causes you to recall that memory.
The memories you jogged were stored in your long term memory the whole time, but you hadn't encountered the patterns that would unlock them. When you went back and read them, the words and ideas acted as the pattern (in the same way as a face or a symbol) that triggered the release of the long-term memory associated with the pattern.
The easiest way to recall a memory is to poke your brain with an electrode. This triggers any memory regardless of the pattern associated with it. The hard part here is triggering a *specific* memory.
As to whether you could remember *anything*, yes, and no. All the memories in your long-term storage are connected to *some* impulse, so you could theoretically remember anything stored in there. But on the other hand, there are many things you have seen or encountered which are *not* stored in your long-term memory. The human brain has only limited storage, and more importantly you only have limited focus, which means you only take in a fraction of the details that you could potentially perceive at any one time. These details are lost forever because they never make it into long-term memory. | b9ab9b73-04b4-430c-81df-7c8d945584ab |
42xovc | NAT and Port Forwarding | They are two different things, but they are related. When you use NAT, all devices behind the NAT device will appear as a single IP address. The outside world sees it as one thing.
So, for someone outside trying to communicate with something behind the NAT device, it has no way of communicating specifically with that device. All it knows is that one public IP address.
To fix this, you have port forwarding. What port forwarding does is tells the NAT device that all inbound communication on a specific port is meant for a specific device behind the NAT. So when it sees an inbound communication on that port, it will automatically forward that traffic to the private IP address you specified. | 5e188ae7-be50-4b74-a4d1-d1cb485af5a5 |
21hi3q | How does my brain start paying attention to someone moments *before* they say something unusual? | you have sorta short term memory for words, have you ever ran into situation where somebody asks HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING! and you werent, yet can say what they said. | 4a152c72-01d2-448d-bd44-05a18c73fbc3 |
7izhy3 | Why does a hot shower make my skin dry? | Moisture evaporates very readily from the skin, but a certain amount of moisture is retained by skin oils (technically called sebum) and a hot shower can wash away these oils. Skin moisturizer can replace them. I personally use Vaseline skin lotion, but only for the palms of my hands, the rest of my skin does OK on its own. | 51da522a-041f-4fe6-8e30-8e2ab1c32a83 |
2gbi8g | Why is "bury" pronounced as if theres an "a" in in it? Like "berry". | Regional dialects.
In my region the U is pronounced and we say "Burr-ee" I've also heard "Be-urr-ee" | 41b59502-e70e-4e67-b19c-aed2427ad75f |
7c5s96 | Why is the sound of someone snoring so annoying when we're trying to sleep? | I imagine it's at least partly because the sound is irregular. Traffic, air conditioners, and rain are very rhythmic. Predictable sensory input is input that our brain ignores, which is why you only smell things for a short period of time. Snoring is jerky and hard to predict so you never adjust.
I could also be wrong. | 5fdad40b-743d-40f2-aee4-2023c1ddf623 |
6lvuqj | G20 Hamburg summit, what it is, and why are people protesting it? | The G20 is an organization of the 20 most powerful world leaders. They get together to talk about the issues that face the globe, touching on things from trade, to military action, to global climate change.
Protestors are protesting for various reasons.
- Some are angry that the US backed out of the Paris Climate Accord.
- Some are angry that the world leaders aren't doing enough to tackle climate change.
- Some are angry about specific trade policies.
- Some are angry about capitalism in general.
- Some are protesting human rights violations by certain G20 leaders.
I could probably list 1,000 more reasons why people are protesting, but I think you get the point. The reasons for protesting span nearly all areas of the political climate, and there isn't necessarily a specific reason. | 19019862-9a5d-43d0-b5d8-9fb91c6867bc |
1xncl3 | Why is it that some parents children look extremley alike, and other parents children don't even look related? | recessive genes my friend. My dad is 5'9", white, green eyes and brown hair, my mom is 5'5", black, hazel eyes and "burgundy" hair. I am 6'1" white blonde hair blue eyes. My D-grandma had a bunch of brothers over 6 foot and my M-grandma has blonde hair and blue eyes. Family portraits look hilarious, white guy and black lady had a porteguese boy, aryan boy, and mexican girl. | 12947e29-b523-44a0-be80-f6ab3be8cf66 |
55rofo | why does the site of a shot, such as flu or TDAP, hurt for hours after? It's not even a large needle. | The needle isn't the issue, the liquid injected into your muscle capsule is. It can be a matter of some pressure or discomfort, bruising and the like, or it can be a localized reaction to the substances being injected, sometimes an immune response.
If someone stuck you with a needle and injected nothing, it would literally just be a pinprick. | b00a1539-818c-427b-ad7c-d145e2cb2b37 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.