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3t8p41 | Why don't car manufacturers make windshields coated with hydrophobic surfaces so that water rushes off and leaves it dry instead of windshield wipers? | To my knowledge, there are no optically clear hydrophobic coatings. additionally, they may not leave the windshield as clear as you might hope to. and it would likely wear off with the constant sandblasting of highway dust.
cant wipe away snow, cant use washer fluid.
all that aside, good luck convincing the regulators and buyers that they dont need windshield wipers. | de3e6084-07ae-46f5-a1fb-b94dd1c845a9 |
2kq2sh | Why do the Japanese, who are known for having a conservative culture, seem to have such outlandish media? | Living in a rather stiff culture often drives those who decide to break out do so with gusto. | 77bc4cc6-9dc2-48ea-bae9-61757888bdda |
1ni8jn | Why we need people to represent us in the government when we have technology to do otherwise? | Time.
QQ before I begin - without going to Google, who is your rep in the House? Your Senator? Your city commisoner? I'm going to guess you got at least 2 of those wrong.
Bills which are being considered for vote can be thousands of pages long. There are dozens of those bills being considered everyday in committees and the actual voting floor. Congressmen have staffs of people who's only job it is to help them write and understand the bills that are coming up for a vote.
Remembering my first question, do you believe that you have enough time to read thousands of pages a week in order to be well informed enough to vote on EVERYTHING? | 2acbe2f5-91b7-414b-9cc3-da3639ae7bd2 |
s7oxo | Value Engineering | Value engineering is a term that refers to changing something about a project (in your case, a building) in order to reduce construction cost. Value Engineering generally has the connotation of meaning "cheaper" in the sense of something being of lower quality, but the goal of value engineering is to maintain quality/performance while reducing the cost - increasing the value.
LY5: let's say you want to build a ladder so that you can get up to the cabinet and have some cookies before your mom comes home. Time spent making this ladder means less time for cookies later which means fewer cookies. You could spend an hour building a sturdy ladder our of your Lego and k'nex, but why do that when you can just stack some boxes on top of each other? One is much faster and you get the same results (reaching the cookie jar) at an increased value (more time for eating cookies) | 6a0f5ec0-6709-4e87-8844-b505d4b0a53f |
3275cx | Principle vs law vs theory vs theorem | **Law** - a statement based on experimental observations. Laws don't offer explanations. They just state what has been observed repeatedly. They often involve equations.
**Theory** - a theory offers an empirical explanation of the world. It is tested through repeated experiments and observations. A theory also offers predictions, which can be tested to falsify a theory.
**Theorem** - Theorems are found in math. They are statements that have been proved using math axioms or previously proved statements (theorems). Unlike theories, theorems are deductive.
**Principles** - Are similar to laws. They are often said in their non-equation form.
With that said, these definitions are often not followed, and there is a lot of overlap in the naming anyway. Often scientific ideas get historical names that don't follow the definitions, and these names stick. | 5e32cf08-eb25-42c5-b4a6-a85618404190 |
2pcfjj | How does a cut Christmas tree "drink" water if it's dead? | Because the tree isn't dead yet, it's in the process of dying | d0afc8e8-77a3-44b4-9bb7-97b83e130b2d |
363l0n | How can a US execution end up costing $3 million? | The injection itself isn't the issue, it's the perpetual legal battles which will happen in the three decades which will pass before the execution takes place.
Appeals filed by the criminals awaiting execution need to be processed and addressed. Lawyers and court systems will be tied up for years, and all of that costs money. | 8429e273-592d-4a51-a68f-f0a75311faef |
kiaj8 | Why can't I eat, or feel like vomiting when I'm in a stressful situation? | The stress and anxiety are part of your "fight or flight" mechanism. Basically, anything that does not help in your immediate survival is shut off and the parts of you body that help you either fight, or run away are sent into overdrive.
You are an impala. You see into the lions eyes. She is kneeling in the grass and then jumps into a dead sprint straight at you. Before you can even react, your body is running as fast as possible away from the threat. Inside, your blood courses with adrenaline, and blood is redirected to your muscles. You don't need your brain to tell your legs to move, so that starts to shut down as your body goes into overdrive with every ounce of strength put into your legs. Your stomach and intestines are useless at this moment because it takes so long to extract the food from your gut that it won't be able to help you in the next 20 seconds, so you vacate your bowels, and your stomach stops digesting food. You basically run until you can't run anymore, and the lion backs off as it loses endurance (and keep in mind, you're running for your life and it's just running for a meal, so it gives up much easier than you). You start to settle down, and your stomach is churning, your vomit, your are light headed, sick, and tired, but back with your buds and out of harms way.
In humans, we generally don't run into lions, or anything dangerous. We get anxious about work, school, and just life in general. Long term stress can mimic your fight or flight to an extent, and somewhat cause the stomach and intestinal issues, but not to the same extent as the running impala.
You basically don't need to digest food when your fight or flight response kicks in, and if you get really stressed, you might vomit. Luckily, we are not among the mammals that generally vacates it bowels when it's startled, but it does happen to some... be thankful it's just your stomach! | 9816c798-f3ca-456c-901c-375cbaf9f255 |
74h8xe | How does snoring work? | > Can i tell if i'm snoring?
For the most part, no. Even if it suddenly wakes you up, you're unlikely to initially realize that you were woken by the sound of your snoring.
> How does snoring work?
Snoring is the sound produced when air passes through your pharynx while it's not fully open. In other words the part of your nose/throat that leads to the lungs isn't totally clear, so as air passes through the airway, it's turbulent and causes vibration. It's similar to how a whoopee cushion produces sound as the air passes between two thin layers of rubber and makes them vibrate. | e03a244a-d2bb-4fff-a66a-a187d1be62c3 |
28pneb | In places on Earth where the Sun doesn't set for many months, do plants keep doing photosynthesis for the entire period the Sun is up? | Yes! This is why world record cabbages (and other vegetables) are often grown in Alaska with permanent or near-permanent sunlight. The combination of midnight sun and relatively mild temperatures allows for longer periods of photosynthesis and greater growth. When the temperature gets too high however, photosynthesis declines. Studies of trees of the same species in Alaska as compared with those at lower latitudes show that total annual growth is roughly the same annually, but the Alaskan trees to it far faster in the summer time. Interesting stuff! | c9e2e420-90fa-41ae-a58a-627e4f6aa5c2 |
khfvb | How does vertigo work and what do people that have it experience? | The human inner ear informs your brain (other senses) about your position in space. It is designed to help your eyes correct for changes in position for instance. It tells your bail what it needs to tell your muscles to do so you do not fall over but remain upright or in what ever position you are in. Vertigo is when the inner ear stops working right and the brain is sent confusing signals about your position. You may be standing straight upright but the inner ear is telling your body to lean over. Sometimes this makes you fall over. It can make it impossible to walk. It can make you throw up as sometimes it confuses your eyes and the room seems to spin.
You can simulate some of this by spinning around very fast on a merry-go-round at the park or turning in place with your eyes closed for 60 seconds and then trying to walk.
People with vertigo sometimes can not trust what they see because their inner ear my be lying to them about their actual situation. | d7546924-75d1-4168-b05d-a83a53242f4b |
1rl6rj | What happens to the body when we (men) get "blue balls", is there another scientific name for it, and why does it hurt so bad? | It's called vasocongestion and happens when blood is "pooled" up in vessels in your scrotum/testicles. When aroused blood rushes down there and if there is no release, the blood stays and swells the area. I get it very easily, sometimes just cuddling next to a pretty girl for a bit (unless I crank down before we hang out) will cause it. | 44c3ecf9-5fbd-4afd-b427-2c46469d1554 |
4w13ey | Why do some construction projects take so long? | Manpower is crazy expensive. It is by far the most expensive part of almost any construction project. If 100 guys can do in an hour what 10 guys can do in 9 hours, you hire the 10 guys. Every truck in that video has a driver in it who is spending most of his time sitting around waiting for the other trucks to get out of his way. That's a costly inefficiency.
So unless you absolutely need it done fast it's almost always cheaper to do it slow. | e929a688-c763-4f81-9342-63a7bee73b6b |
3cxjwv | If all fingerprints are unique and earth has 7 billion people. How is it possible that there are 7 billion unique fingerprints? Are the possibilities infinite? Before we are born, how does our DNA know our fingerprint isn't being used by another person? | First off, DNA doesn't directly affect fingerprints in the way you might think. Fingerprints are the result of chemical reactions in the womb; this is why identical twins have different fingerprints.
There are way, way more than 7 billion different combinations. Many estimates put it in the 10^20 range or higher.
Now, is it possible for two people to have the same fingerprint? Yes, it's possible -- but for law enforcement purposes, it's pretty much a slam dunk, because there will almost *always* be some other evidence or fact that connects them to the crime.
It would be hard enough to convince anyone of a one in a bajillion chance of someone with the same fingerprint robbing the bank. It's even harder when you were known to be at the bank the day before casing it out. | aed64310-db3b-4666-8351-3cf39613ecbb |
3nm68h | What is vevo, and why do all the music you tubers use it? | **TL;DR** In order to avoid legal troubles of posting music companies' content on their website (Youtube), Google set up VEVO so music companies could control their monetization.
[Link](_URL_0_) to a response by a YouTube software engineer who worked on the Vevo launch.
> Youtube/Google was in danger of being sued by Sony Music/UMG music. To prevent a potentially devastating lawsuit, Google's CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt made a deal with Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music, to build a parallel video platform based on YouTube tech where Sony could control the monetization settings and sell their own ads. Vevo V1 was basically a shell website that hosted an embedded YouTube player which in turn loaded Vevo's own ad module at runtime. This allowed YouTube to keep the music video content, provided a link was present to the 'official' Vevo page (effectively, a rebranded YouTube page.) The videos were still hosted on YouTube. | dcb265ee-7cf6-4bc0-a611-b9b5e98ced58 |
8grzlu | When you get married, does power of attorney automatically go to your spouse? | If you both die, your things would go to any kids you may have. If you don’t have kids, your property would go into probate and parents of both of you would have a chance to petition the court for your estate. A simple will prevents this. You can prepare a simple will very easily online and prevent that from happening. LawDepot, Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom... all of them can do that for you for a small fee. LawDepot is free for first seven days, it walks you thru all the pertinent questions and drafts a legally binding copy. | 933aa4b1-23ba-411d-b7d8-d8688ed3a80e |
41tfu3 | Why is Meth more pervasive in suburbs/rural communities and Heroin in more urban ones? | I do not know if that is true, but I do know making meth stinks up to high heavens, so areas with low population densities are easier for hiding its production.
Heroin needs to be shipped from more or less tropical areas, so if you're shipping it anyway, might as well bring to areas with high population density as then there are more customers nearby. | 879e1dfd-4f43-4896-9669-c3891fad76b2 |
4fup4v | How is it that Americans spend the most per student out of any other nation, yet there are constantly problems with school budgets? | infrastructure, teacher salaries, pensions, but probably mostly that there is vast differences in school budgets since they are tied to property taxes. affluent areas skew the average, while the districts with financial troubles are typically in the poorest areas. | dfa0818b-c0d5-421e-b302-967ed48956d3 |
1gmgue | Mineral Frakking | In a traditional oil/gas well, you are drilling into what is essentially a pocket of oil or gas. It is *relatively* easy to extract, as it is either under pressure and blows out like air from a balloon, or you can pump water or something similar into the void containing the oil or gas in order to displace it towards the surface.
With fracking, the oil or gas is trapped in the layers of rock and is not easily extracted just by drilling a hole. In order to get it out, you have to drill down to the rock layer containing the oil/gas, then drill horizontally along the layer. After that you pump a slurry of water, lubricating minerals and various chemicals into the rock layer at high pressure, which causes tiny cracks (FRACtures) to form in the rock, releasing the oil or gas so it can be pushed to the surface. | 44bd5628-9895-4a6d-950f-abf87c66086e |
1ygv7l | Why is Mozart considered the greatest ever musical genius? | Highly, highly subjective...
But much of it would be attributed to his exceptional gifts at an insanely young age. When you and I were learning how to tie our shoes he was transcribing hour long choral works in the back of a carriage ride home.
So a lot of Mozart's "hype" for lack of a better word (not that he *isn't* a great genius and *doesn't* deserve it) stems from his incredibly prodigious childhood. He was actually terrible with money later in life and a bit of a flake by many accounts:) | f1753460-46d7-4dae-a533-1c0bf2f1371c |
yaczu | Explain how "currently in the US whenever someone without insurance uses emergency medical services to save their life, how do the taxpayers end up paying for it"? | Let's say John Smith doesn't have health insurance. He runs into a medical emergency (maybe a car accident) and goes to the ER. He makes OK money, but he can't afford the $60,000 bill they slap him with. So, the hospital negotiates with him and waves all their fees. He just has to pay for the doctor, the medication, and the tests. The hospital still has to make money, but it waves or renegotiates fees with uninsured people all the time. So, they raise costs across the board for others.
Now, let's say Fred Johnson doesn't have health insurance, and he is very poor. He's had some health problems but hasn't gone to the doctor to get them looked at because he can't afford it. He keeps putting it off until it's an emergency. He goes to the ER, and they have to admit him. Bills end up running about $100,000. He has no hope of paying those off, so he doesn't pay any of it. Well, if he had gotten preventative care and had gone to a doctor when the problems first started, it might have cost a couple hundred bucks. Now, the debt is $100,000. He's not paying for it, so who eats those costs? Everyone else who goes to the ER. The hospital, the doctors, the drug companies, etc... none of htem get paid for what was done for the patient. So, prices are raised on everyone else who can pay.
The new health care mandate is going to make it so both John and Fred have insurance. John makes enough money to pay for health insurance. Now, he has to. Fred does not make enough money to pay for health insurance. Before, single men (even if they were very poor) could not get Medicaid for insurance. Now, if they make under a certain amount of money, single men can get health insurance. Fred might get Medicaid insurance now, or he can buy private insurance, and because he doesn't make much money, the government will give him a credit on his taxes every year to pay for most of the cost of his insurance. Tax payers are basically paying for Fred to get insurance, but now Fred can get medical care when his problems first arise, when they're not expensive, instead of waiting to go to the ER when it is an expensive medical emergency.
Before, John Smith wasn't paying for health insurance. Now, he is. By paying the premiums as a healthy man, he is now helping insurance companies to pay for the preventative care of people like Fred Johnson. Initially, expenses might go up as Fred and people like Fred all go in for doctors' visits for the first time in years. Before long, expenses are going to go way down because insurance companies will be paying less money for emergency care. Hospitals are not going to have to write off almost any hospital visits because almost everyone will ahve insurance. | 90cdfb23-233f-4ae9-b185-a32e40d8089d |
2vh7r9 | Restarting a computer | In a modern computer, the whole system is on the entire time during the reset. Telling the computer to reset makes it to go through the shut down process unmounting drives and the like, but at the end it doesn't tell the power supply to turn off as it would when pushing the power button. Instead, it orders the CPU and RAM to go back to a cold boot mode, essentially dumping whatever is in memory and reloading the BIOS/UEFI. | 08b598ac-36dd-4cf8-8b71-88ef30a6ae4b |
1y2mmv | How is there only one speed of sound? If I shout louder, why is there not more energy leading to a faster speed? | Think of throwing a rock in some water. The ripples made move outward at a given speed. Throw a much bigger rock (more energy) and the waves are much bigger but again propagate (move) outward at the same speed. Similar to sound. And light. A bigger light... Say a million candlepower spotlight, doesn't go any faster than the light from a birthday candle.
But also note that there IS more than one speed of sound. The speed of sound depends on the density of the air it passes through, and that is about 340 meters per second, 750 miles per hour at sea level. It is slower at higher altitudes where the air is thin and faster through things like water... 4 times faster. It travels 15 times faster in iron. So the speed of sound depends (partly) on the density of the medium - the stuff through which it passes, not how loud you yell.
_URL_0_ | e5c40b45-6f09-4c16-afed-a5faf9eba5b8 |
43wgky | Why do most big birds fly away when they see a human but small birds don't really care? | Big birds are, ironically, in more danger. The bigger the bird, the longer it takes them to get airborn, and the more likely they are to be on the menu. Small animals generally aren't worth the trouble to catch, especially because they're light and fast. The little birds aren't afraid of you because they know they're not worth your time to catch, and anyway you're too slow to catch them anyway. Larger birds know that they would make a decent meal and if you got close enough you might be fast enough to grab one. | 7349def2-471f-4fb4-84a9-8dd2f5be5386 |
3xvn2f | - movies getting awards before they even play in theatres | Critics get to see review showings of movies before they're released to general audiences in the theaters. | 82991d0e-f349-4dbb-9bfa-17f308a1a0a1 |
1t3bfz | as a non american - santa's race? what's up with that? | First, actual St. Nick was Anatolian, and was, apparently, most likely a [dark-skinned "Greek"](_URL_1_).
Now, for the recent news. An African-American reporter wrote [an article](_URL_0_), talking about how, as a child, it was tough to reconcile "white" Santa with her black father dressing up as Santa, and how as the U.S. gets less and less homogeneously white, we might want to make Santa more accessible to all the kids. Her not quite serious suggestion was that he should be a penguin, rather than a person of any color, though in the beginning of the article, she suggests that maybe a better thing to do would be to just say that one of Santa's magic powers, beyond the flying reindeer, is that he can look like any race. You already know about the Fox news thing that followed.
I don't think "black people" as a group, or "white people" are upset about this. It got a lot of news coverage because it's kind of a silly story that was easy to joke about, and let people talk about things they wanted to talk about anyway (republicans are racist; Liberals are too sensitive; fox news is evil; democrats don't understand reality; blah blah, blah). I will leave it to you whether you think the original author's point is reasonable or not, but that's the status of the question in the U.S. | 813897a7-4668-4a79-8ce0-994a8ab85406 |
2nvzl0 | What causes the "fingernails on a blackboard" sensation? Why does it feel so horrible? | The amygdala is to blame for the cringe. The amygdala associates emotions to memories and stores them in long term memory (hippocampus).
There's two theories, one evolutionary, and one physiological.
Evolutionary Theory: The sound resembles a cry of alarm at some point in the evolutionary lane.
Physiological Theory: Due to the shape of the ear canal, and the frequency of the sound-wave, it causes the frequency to resonate within the human ear canal, causing it to vibrate violently.
Both cause a rise in activity of the amygdala, leaving some to suggest that it's recognized as a form of distress signal.
On a related note: It has been suggested that the physiological theory possibly correlates to a dog's reaction with high-pitched 'dog' whistles. | 39009da0-2317-41d8-a748-f9349793432e |
2i70h2 | How does the WiFi in the new Chevy cars work? I mean they have to be using a wireless network right? | The car has a computer that connects to the cellular data network. This computer then acts as a router and shares the connection out over wifi. The wifi is locked down so only people you want to connect can connect. | 9d9b0dfe-d208-4552-8f6b-4ea4a1bd63fb |
2h6q81 | The gaming journalism fiasco known as #gamergate? | Zoe Quinn is a indie game developer. A ex-boyfriend of said developer (because he cannot possibly have any ulterior motives) says some shit about her sleeping around to get good ratings.
Many call Zoe Quinn a whore, slut, skank and justify there action under some high ideal about the corruption of game journalism.
First, the source of the accusation was a ex, which very likely means that the accusation is worthless.
Second, using Zoe Quinn as an example for the corruption in game journalism is like singling out a minor league player, and placing all the problems of the major leagues on there shoulders.
EDIT: readability | c63e30e1-25ef-4061-b60d-b9c439737340 |
8mecls | Why does lightning often occur in 'double strikes'? | Lightning first comes down in a flurry of haphazard lines trying to find the path of least resistance to the ground. This is called the lead.
When the lead finds the path to the ground, you can see a very quick flash move up the lead into the cloud. This return stoke is the full strength of the lightning strike transferring power to the ground, like traffic moving forward at a fresh green light.
Once that return stroke makes its trip up the lead, the cloud gives it more energy, making the second flash you see | 71c70153-bf15-4415-aa9a-b46b196a714e |
3dbi7g | Aside from illuminati (?). Why is there an all seeing eye, pyramid, and 'new world order' on US currency? | The "New World Order" was supposed to represent the rise of the United States as a global power. | 0acbefe5-3cec-416b-97ba-4d472e2c1d35 |
8e4sp0 | Why do some commercials play for a split second and then get skipped? Wouldn't the advertiser get upset? | Those flashes of commercials occur in situations where your local station is showing different commercials than the national broadcast that they're receiving. Sometimes the timing gets off, and you get a small snippet of the national broadcast commercial before your station overrides it with their local feed.
And no, the advertiser doesn't get upset, because you were never supposed to see their commercial in the first place. Often, it'll be for something like a chain store that doesn't even exist in your area. | 0be304a5-37e8-4302-8552-26efef2435bc |
l95sa | How do freckles form? | It's a mixture of genes and exposure to sunlight. For instance. you can normally not have freckles and get them when you go outside, or you can have freckles regardless of whether or not you go outside. Basically (for sun exposure) what happens is the sun gives off a certain kind of light (UV-B). Your skin cells get this light and they start ramping up production of melatonin (which is basically skin coloring). This increased concentration of melatonin shows up on your skin - as freckles. | 83587d8f-e46d-4c05-944d-0f5cb9d3ffdc |
7fjv4w | Why does it take a human being almost a year to learn how to walk, when most animals can learn to walk in a matter of hours/days? | Human babies are born really early in our development cycle and are pretty useless because of it. This is because our hips need to be narrow to allow for bipedal motion, and our heads are proportionally large to house our big brains. This means that humans evolved to give birth earlier to underdeveloped babies so the it doesnt kill the mother while still being intelligent and bipedal. | a387d37e-d3bd-4cd0-9440-6d1135c06de5 |
28sai9 | Why are all drugs "bad"? Why can't there be a drug that gives intense pleasure/euphoria (heroine, coke etc) but has 0 adverse effects? | Drugs create highs by manipulating chemicals our bodies produce normally. Frequent drug use can change the way our bodies produce and utilize these chemicals, causing our bodies to produce too much or too little. There is no perfect drug because any substance usage takes our bodies out of chemical equilibrium, causing adverse effects.
Edit: Wow! This blew up. Thanks for all the compliments and insightful responses, I know this is an oversimplification and you guys really helped flesh out my answer. Thanks for the gold! | 9faee291-cf51-47fb-a295-4ea3b124cd9b |
47h2tm | why does looking at the sun hurt your eyes but indirectly not so much? | Ask your best friend to place their mouth directly in front of your right ear hole and say your name loudly. Then, ask them to place their mouth at your left ear and do the same thing--only this time, instead of having their mouth facing directly at your ear hole, have their mouth face the tip of your nose.
Which one "hurt" more?
The first one, of course. The reason is simple: the pupil of your eye acts exactly like the hole in your ear. It is the tunnel through which the signal (in your ear's case, sound; in your eye's case, light) travels and stimulates your brain.
By staring at the sun directly, you are overwhelming your receptors with signal because light is streaming in directly through your pupil--in the same way that your friend's voice felt like it rammed into your right ear. When the light is indirect, you're getting a "sense" of the signal without overwhelming your sensory receptors. Or, in the case of your ear, you're hearing the sound without feeling like someone jammed a Q-tip into it. | 6507c1b9-91ec-4ea7-b977-d83260b3fae8 |
3p272c | With pets like dogs and cats, why can't their lifespan get longer with modern medicine and diet like us? | They have. When you consider 9 years - > 14 that's a massive increase in life expectancy. Do you expect humans to be able to double their life expectancy? Of course not, however a 20-30% increase over a few hundred years to maximize our potential? Reasonable - and this is what we've seen with pets. | dae811cf-2c9f-4ae0-8a38-dea392688ee3 |
36ooah | Does Queen Elizabeth have any power in regards to affecting any Canadian laws? | The UK government? No. The Queen? Yes, she's the Queen of Canada and her royal assent is required for any bill to pass into law and the government of Canada including the Prime-Minister serve at her pleasure.
Her appointed representative to which she 'chooses' to defer in all matters is the Governor General of Canada. The GG 'chooses' to be more of a figurehead that rubber-stamps what is required of him or her.
This 'choosing' comes from the fact that there's an established tradition nobody would put up with being broken; the GG and the soverign hold little in the way of real power. | 24f578b8-40e7-4473-8570-c3a964a88e2a |
21cnqe | Medical vs. Dental: Why is there a difference? If your teeth are part of the human body why is dentistry kept completely separate -- even requiring separate insurance? | First, remember that every field has tradition associated with it -- it's why we wear caps and gowns when we get degrees -- tradition.
Back in the day, dentistry wasn't a medical profession. Dentists weren't doctors with degrees who went to school for 6 years and then apprenticed for another 6. Dentists were your local barber or blacksmith. Basically anyone who had the tools to pull a tooth from your head.
Because of that 'tradition', dentistry is a completely separate medical profession from everything else. A dentist is a D.D.S -- a medical doctor (cardiologist, dermatologist, endocrinologist, GP) is an M.D.
All of that carries over to insurance.
Edit: Didn't think this would go anywhere. Sorry for those who don't like the history of the profession and why things are the way they are. It's pretty much impossible to wipe that sort of stuff away, especially in such a short period of time. 'Dental insurance' is a pretty recent thing (less than 50 years). There are plenty of "stupid" traditions we follow that are *way* older than that. | a076d0f3-f307-4fe2-a3f6-77067d35676f |
1rtalm | Why the Dalai Lama was exiled? | > [China] considers all pro-independence movements aimed at ending Chinese sovereignty in Tibet (including British attempts to establish control in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the CIA's backing of Tibetan insurgents during the 1950s and 1960s, and the Government of Tibet in Exile today) as one long campaign abetted by Western imperialism aimed at destroying Chinese territorial integrity and sovereignty, or destabilizing China.
- _URL_0_
Basically, China sees him as a threat to their rule over Tibet. They think his presence in Tibet will stir shit up. China doesn't want to have to deal with another armed rebellion in Tibet like the one that happened in 1959:
> Chinese authorities have interpreted the [Tibetan] uprising [of 1959] as a revolt of the Tibetan elite against Communist reforms that were improving the lot of Tibetan serfs. Tibetan and third party sources, on the other hand, have usually interpreted it as a popular uprising against the alien Chinese presence. Historian Tsering Shakya has argued that it was a popular revolt against both the Chinese and the Lhasa government, which was perceived as failing to protect the authority and safety of the Dalai Lama from the Chinese.
- _URL_1_
And that's why the Chinese won't let him back into Tibet. | 3dc225c3-c399-4c57-ab00-cfae193ad049 |
1z73ts | I dont know if this was asked already but could someone please explain the Bridgegate scandal and the big deal Chris Christie? | I'm going to use the word "allege" because the investigation is ongoing.
There is a town on the New Jersey side of the George Washington bridge called Fort Lee.
It is alleged that because the mayor of Fort Lee did not endorse Chris Christie in his campaign last year, Christie's staff arranged a fabricated "traffic study" that closed lanes on the bridge on the Fort Lee side, causing people to be stuck at the bridge for many hours.
There's a bit more to it, but I think that's a ELI5 description that covers 90% of it. | 65e29ce5-169c-402f-b2aa-03cf66a93dc8 |
21nldj | How does Palmer Lucky and the people who started Oculus make money after the acquisition from Facebook? Do they get a part of the profit of the rift? Do they get a salary? | The terms of their sale are probably confidential, however I'm certain they get to keep most of the money they made from FB (since they were privately owned and funded). I suspect they'll get paid in a combination of cash and FB stock, and they'll probably get a salary in more FB stock. | b18d2fd9-672e-495f-9a65-d697a72b2351 |
3q419y | Why is it that over the past decade or so, processor clock speeds havent gotten substantially faster, like 10ghz or anything. Still see mostly, 2ghz to 3.5ghz. We jam in more cores, but speeds seem to be more or less the same? | The faster the clock-rate, the more heat the processor generates and the harder it becomes to cool. Once you reach around 4-5 Ghz, it's just very inefficient and requires expensive heat-sinks and cooling fans to keep the core temperature down to a reasonable level that won't damage the computer hardware.
The obvious solution presented itself to engineers - instead of creating a single-core processor with really high clock-rates, instead create multi-core processors with much lower clock-rates that can effectively perform the same (or a higher) number of calculations per second than the single-core processors, and it can do this with lower heat generation and greater efficiency.
So that's where we are today. More cores (sometimes even 8 or higher), lower/same clock rates, lower/same heat generation, and greater efficiency.
Just to be clear, desktops today have far surpassed the processing speeds of 2005. All processors on the market today are multi-core (at least two cores, but often four or more cores). Each one of these cores is clocked at the specified rate (e.g. 2 Ghz) and is capable of performing a similar number of calculations per second as a traditional single-core processor clocked at the same rate.
So although a quad-core processor with a 2 Ghz processor (for example) is not the same as an 8 Ghz single-core processor, the 2 Ghz quad-core processor is capable of performing a similar number of operations per second as an 8 Ghz single-core processor, and the 2 Ghz quad-core will be objectively better at multi-tasking operations and provide performance enhancements for applications that are designed to take advantage of multi-core processing technology. | 0fb98307-546e-423b-9efe-eaf8cfd141fd |
4mtghr | Where does my local dealer get controlled narcotics like Xanax and Codeine? | I am sure he is not buying them by the case.
He is getting them from people who get fraudulent scripts from shady doctors, who then get the drugs from a shady pharmacy, and sell the drugs to him.
What's more, oftentimes these folks are on medicaid, so they get the drugs free, and sell them to the dealer at pennies on the dollar vs what you would have to actually pay the pharmacy for them.
That is why up in Harlem, you can buy xanax from a dealer for about 1/2 of pharmacy price, and the dealer is still making a huge profit.
in the 90's i had no insurance, and my wife had a xanax script. We filled it once, kept the bottle, and from then on just bought xanax on the street and kept them in the prescription bottle in case we ever got frisked. Street prices were a life saver. | c08ac5ca-efc9-440a-9ed8-cfbb4da976da |
1k5vmn | Why is it that restarting a computer fixes the problem most of the time? | A lot of problems are caused by errors with things stored in RAM. Restarting a computer wipes your RAM, and reloads all needed files from the hard drive. | 97cfaadb-4313-49f9-be17-f77176df7104 |
2avjwy | What makes a person laugh? | There is no one answer. But a common theme is that it is a release, that comes from a sudden build up of energy.
A few things can trigger it.
A sudden shift in status. aka A person falling down, Or the queen farting.
Or a good joke is generally when two separate ideas collide together quickly. Like...
Wife: Honey did you miss me?
Husband: With every bullet I have.
Another example is when you hear something that is so "true" it makes you laugh. That is because when you hear something that really resonates with you, and you have super fast mini aha moment, if it's fast enough, the release of energy, will bubble up as laughter. | 47f33f81-aeaa-47a0-8f69-0b6e647738c2 |
77jpfu | Who decides what country is allowed to do what on the moon/other planets, or is there one institution always having the final word in these decisions? | This is determined by the [Outer Space Treaty](_URL_0_), which was signed in 1967. In short, this treaty (signed by 107 countries currently) says that nobody will put nuclear weapons in orbit/space, and that nobody can claim moons/planets/etc for their own country. Space politics aren't explicitly policed by any one institution or country, but rather by mutual agreement to not be dicks in space.
Funny enough it doesn't say you can't have any weapons in space, just not weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure there's guidelines on space warfare in there, but there's nothing exactly stopping a country from putting X-Wings in orbit. | 98a344c3-ac36-4de1-9c73-6e1d3a2aa2f5 |
2xe877 | Why is everything spinning? | Electrons don't orbit nucleus. That's a simplified version of the atom taught in elementary (secondary?) school. (On a slightly unrelated note, electrons do have a property called 'spin', but that is just a name for it, and they aren't usually seen as spinning)
As for why do larger structure spin. When things like galaxies are forming, there are areas with more 'stuff' so things around them get pulled towards it. Since there isn't just one 'lump', different parts of the galaxy will be pulled in different directions. It is unlikely for the momentum of this to cancel out to be exactly 0, so the galaxy picks up a spin. | feca2751-6bc9-473f-a602-964d17fbbf60 |
2h3axw | How do scholars "resurrect" lost languages based on only unreadable writing? | In the case of the Rosetta stone, there were translations of the same text in 3 different languages. Scholars were able to use that to determine words if they are used multiple times. For example, if you have three sentences about bread, you can guess that one of the common words is bread. | 94ed1274-7543-42c4-883c-04066dcb4e8c |
261099 | Why are burn marks more distinct than regular scars and what is the difference? | This - _URL_0_ - is my 3rd degree burn. If I don't stretch it, the colour is pretty normal. I got it in Feb 2012 and it's taken until now to be back to a normal colour and not red. A lot of burns appear to affect a larger surface area, hence more scar tissue is formed to heal the wound. | 31d6d156-a919-4156-823e-67ad553ad79c |
3icawf | How does a dog know to breed with dogs and not with another species? | They don't... Have you ever seen a dog hump a couch, or someone's leg? | d993779e-1d0d-446b-bc42-614330304a40 |
2ywz07 | Why aren't electrical prongs hot when they're removed from an outlet? | Heating occurs when there's a significant amount of resistance.
Significant resistance can occur if the material you're using is a poor conductor, or if you're using a conductor that's physically too small.
In the case of the prongs of a plug, they're both made of metal (good conductor) and fairly large in size. Therefore, there's no major resistance, and they don't heat up noticably. | adcc5fcd-ecff-4d77-bfce-6ab4d285586f |
290jif | How do you restore old black and white photos to color? | It's not easy, and it takes a lot of skill and dedication and requires specialised software. Yes, Photoshop counts as specialised software (:
Extreme simplification: what you do is add layers to the b & w image, paint regions of the photo the colour you want them to be (for example, paint the eyes blue) and then blend the layer to the base image until you get the desired result.
I think this is a question best answered with a video, and youtube has [many many tutorials](_URL_0_) on the subject.
UPDATE: After watching some of those tutorials I decided to try it myself. I'll amend my comment to "It takes a lot of skill and dedication to do it well, but you can get fairly decent results by half-assing it". So thanks for asking this, it made me go learn a new skill (: | b59bfe5e-78d1-4c63-9944-22a202a3ac80 |
5elg5n | Why do children seem to be better at learning second languages than adults? | There is an area in the brain that is responsible for language processing. It is largely responsible for learning new languages when a person is still young, but becomes "set" after a certain age.
After that, we can still learn languages, but the part of the brain that most receptive to that is no longer as efficient. | 4391cfca-6279-45d0-97f2-fab6e5d34d61 |
7yzj3j | How does a clone differ from an identical twin? | Genetically, they don't. In practice, a twin is a birth defect that causes one fertilized egg to grow into two people, and a clone would be a person grown from an already-born person's DNA, probably not taken from their reproductive organs. | 1c4b1927-82f8-41bb-ad69-0b15f7abef0f |
3p7xi9 | why are adobe products so expensive? | There are many reasons why:
Adobe's softwares are the results of a long time of research and programing, they are to say the least, products of great quality and gives other businesses tools to create their activity and make profit for themselves.
Adobe's consumers are mainly businesses and they can afford a larger cost than individual people, the price is chosen in order to make adobe's products professional more than personal, the bigger your business is the most expensive it gets.
Adobe changed how they priced: before you bought photoshop for example but now you monthly subscribe and you get many of adobe's products with photoshop, like premiere, after effects, indesign, illustrator, etc... And adobe's cloud capabilities.
Adobe also gained a reputation, because their products are well known and give a certain level of quality, Adobe can easily rise their prices without risking a huge fall of their clients. | 67206d08-a9f0-4b4d-b58e-e7e7bf3c5a77 |
38je63 | How do we know how many troops ISIS (or other organizations) have? | It's like when you ask a guy how many sexual partners he's had- you divide by 3.
So when ISIS says they have 60,000 troops it's actually closer to 20,000.
Much different then when you ask a woman how many sexual partners she's had- in those cases you MULTIPLY by 3. | 3370e237-44fd-4b71-a93b-0c6be68704f0 |
1auehf | If everyone has a different set of tastebuds and we all have different levels of satisfaction/dissatisfaction towards different foods, then how do food critics have a job? Wouldn't their opinion be worthless? | this question could be applied to all forms of critics.......music, movies, tv
but trying to answer the question, I'd say think about like the Iron Chef judges, their critique is usually about tenderness, texture, freshness of ingredients, presentation, etc. Stuff that transcends just taste. They are food "experts" so they can take a step back and recognize a quality dish without it being their personal favorite.
also have never read one of these articles | ad4b323b-619c-460f-b49a-f617e1efb4ea |
386bj1 | How does one hack Gmail and Facebook accounts and how should one protect them to have maximum security? | Typically, it involves guessing the password. Or, if you've re-used the password on a site that isn't as good at security as Google or Facebook, some other site gets hacked and they try the same username/password combination elsewhere.
There are two things you can do to really protect yourself. First of all, use a strong, unique password, especially for sites that give access to important things, like your email or bank passwords (your password for some random forum probably doesn't need to be that strong if you aren't re-using it). Second, enable two-factor authorization. Two-factor authorization requires something you know (your password) and something you have (either a security key or your phone usually). For example, when I log into my Google account on a computer I've never used before, Google prompts me to enter a passcode that's generated by an app on my phone that changes every 30 seconds. Even if someone guesses my password, they can't get into my account without my phone. | 3c627833-ae3c-439f-af24-c7f28008520f |
52ayo0 | why do British people sound British while talking, but sound like they are from America when singing? | When people sing, they tend to enunciate more clearly. This could explain why British people sound more understandable to you when singing. However, there are many British singers who DO use their typical enunciation when singing, and their accent is more identifiable. Take for example the music of Lily Allen, The Clash, Frank Turner, and many other popular musicians. Also, many British rock bands tend to imitate the singing style of their favorite acts, who are often American.
As for Americans sounding sing-songy to Brits... I doubt it. | 85c9e60e-f846-4b63-b792-1063eaea3d4e |
4i161c | Why do all TV channels have the same commercial breaks? | I assume it's so the watcher is more likely to return to their channel if the other channels are on commercial breaks as well. | 9cea2d49-5a31-481e-ad6a-f0cdbddc3662 |
3b23jq | Why was cannabis ever made illegal in the first place? | There are lots and lots of urban legends and rumors surrounding this impetus of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, including pressure from pharmaceutical companies and the paper industry. Although these industries benefited from the act, there's no real evidence that these were the primary factors.
In reality, the association of pot with a particular ethnic group was to blame. In the case of pot, the drug was associated with Mexican immigrants, notoriously conveyed in the fact that marijuana, with the silent 'j', became prominent around this time in an effort to associate the drug with the Spanish language, when previously it was often spelled 'marihuana'.
Read some very interesting information [here](_URL_0_). | 36121749-9799-4383-a6b6-a3562a5f3e0f |
4734bt | How do weather sites predict weather 30+ days out? | They don't. Most only do five, some do ten, and ones that have 30+ just run on averages for those days from past years, factoring in any anomalies, like _URL_0_ does. Even the ten day forecasts are quite inaccurate most of the time if you actually pay attention and compare forecast to actual. | 7f6c52bb-2a44-474e-b2d1-74d01dd232e5 |
3ta4tz | Why is it more difficult to run for long periods of time when exercises like biking are just as strenuous? | It's all about practice. You use different muscle groups for different kinds of exercise.
Running is *really* hard on your body. You're obviously using your leg muscles, but you're using a whole bunch of other muscles that you may not be aware of. Abs, arms, back, neck, they all play into it with running.
Bicycling, you're sitting down, for one. You can also stop peddling for a bit. And you have different gears. Not to diminish from cycling, but it's not really as strenuous as running. | 839727c2-61ec-45dd-837d-aca2be052eba |
20yoqz | Why does Saturn's ring look so perfectly flat and circular? | From a distance, Saturns rings seem very flat, and thin, and mainly three rings, although some shading gradient is seen.
Up close, the rings are lumpy, icy bits and pieces, with a multitude of rings, and ~~two~~ **five** shepherd moons that orbit about them. These moons actually help keep the rings in line, and two of them also produce the two bands between the three 'main' ring systems.
All this keeps the material orbiting Saturn, the shepherd moons, and the free fall of all the little bits. However, the rings are destined over many millenia to be eaten as they're falling slowly into the planet. One day in the future, Saturn will be ringless.
Edit: I updated the middle a little bit, 'cause I had the number of moons wrong that are herdin' the rings. Sorry 'bout that. | d5f0e848-f7c0-46db-a79c-f153cd979612 |
3tot6e | Most everyone is aware of the alleged Saudi collusion regarding terrorism on the west; particularly on the USA. Though is there any actual irrefutable evidence behind this conspiracy? | Well, if you use a standard like "irrefutable", probably not, at least not in any unclassified documents. But high-level Western officials have basically acknowledged it happens, and would not make such politically risky statements if they weren't confident.
[In 2010, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton stated that it was an “ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist funds emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic concern.” The US government has also been highly critical of Saudi’s refusal to ban ‘charitable’ organizations that have continued to funnel money to known terrorist organizations. ](_URL_2_)
And even when they're not funding terrorist groups directly, they're funding "education" in Wahhabism, which is basically the ideological foundation of the Sunni terror groups.
[Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades.](_URL_1_)
[Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations](_URL_0_) | 03755a68-1954-44e2-a7ea-261ebefc06f7 |
2rckbv | Why does this picture of Mercury appear to wobble whilst I'm eating something and staring at it? | I have no idea what y'all are talking about. It doesn't wobble for me. I've tried eating something, shaking my phone, doing the thing with your jaw and bringing your teeth together, but I still got nothing. | e9f02f00-93f4-4101-b0e7-dcb0f7d8c3ef |
3e7yrf | What makes American cheese so much different than other types of cheese? | A processed cheese is made from cheese with emulsifiers, vegetable oils, salt, flavorings or colors added to it.
This makes a cheese that is incredibly cheap to produce, has a longer shelf life, and melts much more evenly (which is good for things like grilled cheeses and cheeseburgers) but usually tastes worse. | 793c237c-e02b-431c-8180-acd687026b5e |
27a2pq | How can Facebook use face recognition software to correctly name thousands of my friends, yet not one hacker can create a bot to decipher a captcha that has a mix of only 26 letters in it? | Not many photographs on Facebook are deliberately distorted and obfuscated to make the face just barely recognizable by a human, but that's what's done to the text in captchas. | 608dc1ce-2b63-4a49-926a-b1827c599406 |
2k32g2 | Trying to generate a balanced opinion on chicken factory farming. Are chickens intelligent enough to experience displeasure at how they are farmed? I.e. Do they experience any pain/unhappiness or are they too simple minded for these and "enjoy" convenient feeding followed by a swift death? | I had chickens growing up and now have a backyard flock for eggs and occasional eating. I try not to eat factory farmed chicken.
While they are just about the stupidest warm blooded creature on the planet - they can feel pain, fear and certainly react to stressful situations.
I kill and eat all kinds of animals - I'm not squeamish about the reality of the food pyramid - but there's no reason to torture what you're about to eat in order to keep prices down. It's really just wrong. It's bad for the animals, it's bad for the environment and in the end it's bad for our health.
My backyard chickens are "happy". They come running when I go outside, they get exercise, tasty food and seem to enjoy life as much as they can. Are they smart? Hell no, they're really really stupid. Do they deserve a good life? Yes. | 4d401cbb-407c-4958-8bd8-08e4a3fb0a7c |
66pjce | How can a small country with bad missiles be confident of fighting big countries if it doesn't have people who knows how to occupy and all that it has is its scary missiles? | The same way players with bad hands at poker battle against Big hands. By bluffing.
The problem is that in this game of poker, N.Korea already showed the cards. So bluffing + lying + courage.
Also it's not "a small country" it's more like a small person named Kim Jong-Un. 99% of the population there think that N. Korea is a World Power, they are just tricked | b248999f-3c9b-4d0c-8bbb-52b8eff05ac7 |
1cthnv | Why is the term "Caucasian" applied to all white people, regardless of whether they came from the Caucasus region? | In the early 1900s it was believed that white people originated in the Caucasus mountains. At the time, the three "scientific" classifications were Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. (Some people still use mongoloid or "mongo" as an insult to this day.)
There's no real scientific basis to this, and no way to draw a dividing line. If you were to divide races scientifically by amount of genetic variation, you'd find it looked something more like this:
* non-Bantu sub-Saharan people like the Bushmen and the Mbuti (four or five races)
* everybody else
Which shouldn't be surprising, since the non-Africans descended from a few waves of migrants who only carried a small amount of humanity's total genetic variation.
(edit: a word.) | 0ce1a085-3935-4727-9c58-27e29daa12dc |
64px9o | How can a flight be overbooked? | Some airlines will overbook (sell more tickets than seats available) a flight in the off chance that people do not arrive for the flight. That way, it ensures a fuller flight, even when not all the purchasers are there. | 204f03e1-ef0b-4a96-b9ef-2e2b570fb70e |
1abjql | Why do people in the moves and television in the 1940s-1960s have a nasally voice? | It's called [Mid-Atlantic English.](_URL_0_) It's what happens when rich Americans try and sound like rich English people.
There were some people who talked like this in real life, particularly super rich people in Boston/Connecticut/parts of Long Island in the early 20th century (when it's real life people, it's also known as "Connecticut lockjaw" or "Larchmont lockjaw.") [Katherine Hepburn](_URL_1_) and [George Plimpton](_URL_3_) are good examples of people who really did talk like that all the time, it was their natural accent.
But the reason it's all over movies and stuff from that time is that back then it was considered very important for an actor to try and lose any trace of regional or ethnic identity and learn to talk "proper," e.g., like rich people. Almost every actor with an Italian or Irish or Jewish last name would change it into something more WASPy and American-sounding ([example](_URL_4_)). The default "rich person" way of talking was the Mid Atlantic accent, so people would artificially adopt it.
It fell out of fashion, though, mostly in the 1960s, as people got more proud of their own origins and wanted to stick up for them and not be forced to lose their identity to fit in. When that started to happen, instead of the accent seeming like how everyone should try and sound it started to seem fake and unnatural, a joke. By 1963 you have like the dude on Gilligan's Island, [Thurston Howell III](_URL_2_), where him talking like that is part of what makes him ridiculous. | 0f53e0b0-acaf-4276-ae5f-51a85f8a1c67 |
1ubsn7 | Why is it bad if I quit without cause, but employers have the right to fire me without cause? | It looks bad to future employers. From their view, why would they want to hire someone who has a history of simply walking out without giving them time to find a replacement. Also, if you ever decide to go back to the job you quit without notice, they are going to think the same thing and probably won't rehire you. Keep in mind that when a new employer is checking your references and they call your previous employer, the one question they are almost guaranteed to ask them is if they would hire you again. If the answer is no then it is a big red flag and they probably wont hire you either. Always a good idea to avoid burning bridges if you can. | 457b4292-1a90-47ec-94e8-29ba6d5679e1 |
2g60ht | Why is the male scrotum always so itchy? | The sperm trying to escape cause this. Female scrotums have no sperms therefore no itch. | 938c0a86-4222-4397-a536-014769513a30 |
lf9rd | How people program "Angry Birds"-like physics and collision detection. | I'm going to make some mock-code here. This is not real code, this is just so you can understand basically what's happening.
object Bird
{
centerX = 50
centerY = 50
width = 20
height = 20
}
building.frontEdge = 100 (X coordinate)
while (inAir)
{
centerX = centerX + (whatever physics calculations here)
centerY = centerY + (same. Calculations to move the object in an arc)
bird.frontEdge = center + (width / 2)
if (bird.frontEdge > = building.frontEgde) (If the front edge of the bird is greater than or equal to the front edge of the building on an x-coordinate graph)
{
do whatever for a collision
}
In reality, it's much more complicated, as the objects aren't prefect squares, and the physics calculations are more defined, but that's basically what happens. The bird is kept track of, where its shape is defined as different coordinates. If any of the coordinates are the same as the coordinates of the object it's supposed to hit, then a collision has happened. | db4dbe0d-71ae-448b-a772-0e40066d9612 |
1yhzj2 | What is the purpose of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? | It addresses two issues.
First, it's a "good neighbor" policy. It's hard to fight graft and corruption when the funding for the graft and corruption is coming from another country. The US wants to be able to say "not our fault" when other countries bitch about how they can't control graft and corruption.
Second, it avoids all sorts of loopholes. Can't bribe someone in the US? Bribe their brother in Uzbeckibeckibeckistan instead. Not being able to bribe anyone anywhere means there's no loopholes. | e53232cc-dca8-4ee4-8e12-58a598b9e21b |
3ez2yy | - Why does it seem like the same WiFi network that quickly loads virtually any website on a desktop or laptop struggles to load Google in even a dozen seconds on a smartphone? | I have an iPhone and have this problem too, sometimes, my phone won't search using the url/search bar (as Google is the default search engine) or load _URL_0_. I don't know why this happens, but the only way I can get it to work again is to go on Bing or Yahoo and search for Google and click on it, after this, everything turns back to normal. | df800e43-f5d6-4ae9-8f57-ad644ab07089 |
4hhkk8 | Why do we love members of our family that aren't our parents? | Because, evolutionarily speaking, they share a good bit of your genetic material. Furthermore, we're a social species. We basically lived in extended family groups for a lot of our history. | b41007d4-8c0d-461f-9155-b91ebe34531a |
69dlx4 | What is the use of a birth certificate? | It proves you were born here and are a citizen. Without one, and without a record of one, they could try and deport you as an illegal immigrant.
It also, you know, proves your age. For age-related things like getting into public school and getting a drivers license. | ab582d31-f7b8-454c-a5ce-d94f176deb86 |
8pjgy3 | What exactly makes a 3-in-1 bodywash/shampoo/conditioner different from its individual counterparts (or even the 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner)? | The fact that it only works as one of those at best. Usually it’s just body wash with maybe some additives and fancy marketing.
If you want to treat your skin and hair well, use three separate products that actually do their job. Every persons skin and hair is different and the idea of a one-fits-all and all-in-one product is ridiculous.
Especially the shampoo-conditioner combo is nonsense since those two products literally do opposite things. Shampoo cleans your hair from the oils that accumulate on it and conditioner puts some amount of oil and moisture back on it. | d89cfbb8-5499-430d-8225-bbaf61cc75a6 |
l5pck | Bell Curves | If you have a sufficiently large sample of people taking a test, statistically they should begin to follow a bell curve. The mean value (average) will be at one point, and if graphed, the values of all the other tests should fan out from there in a roughly bell-shaped curve on either side of the mean.
Some professors grade 'on a curve'. This basically means that they assume the test will follow a standard bell curve. Essentially, grading on a curve means the professor will adjust results such that the class results follow a bell curve, even if they don't. | 2a4695e0-e918-414c-a3d7-dda5d369a70e |
6p5mny | why t-shirt companies place their tags that rip a hole in the t-shirt if you take it out and cause discomfort if you dont? | 1) So you can't remove the branding for the company
2) it's just how tags are for some people, they don't bother me, but they do some | 844686ef-6b40-4ff6-a68e-c35812b9fc9f |
5v7f4a | how does a ship with sails travel in a direction that opposes the wind, or the current of the water? | The keel (thing that sticks on the bottom of the boat) pushes against the water 90 degrees from the tipping axel of the boat kinda counteracting the force of the wind against the sail. Imagine this at around 130 or so degrees apart, the net force overall pushes the boat in the forwards direction.
_URL_0_
More in depth explication. | d7a2a02f-2686-46f5-8a2a-56500cc22236 |
66uxek | How do GPS satellites work and how does relativity effect them? | Each GPS satellite transmits a signal that includes pseudorandom code and the state vector of the satellite. The same signal is generated by the GPS receiver. When the two signals are compared, the one from the satellite will be found to lag behind the one of the receiver because of the time it took for the signal to travel from the satellite to the receiver.
This will indicate that the receiver is somewhere on the sphere that surrounds the satellite and is of a radius equal to the travel distance of the signal.
Repeat this process with another satellite and we will have narrowed down the location to the doughnut formed by the intersection of the two spheres. Repeat with a third satellite and we will have narrowed the location of the receiver to two possible points. Often one of these points will be illogical so the solution can be defined. Sometimes a fourth satellite is needed.
As for relativity it's pretty boring: the satellites are built to run at 10.22999999543 MHz on the ground so that when they're in orbit under the influence of velocity time dilation (special relativity) and a slightly larger amount of negative gravitational time dilation (general relativity), they will run at 10.23 MHz. | caa5df0b-3964-4777-bb8d-ffc713cc199f |
8w69wa | What would actually happen to your eyes if you stopped blinking completely? | Your eyes would dry out and crack, become infected, and eventually rot right out of your skull. If it didn't kill you then the open wound would eventually scar over. | 9f41edd9-a2eb-4d92-a8ad-af00d9b0a5c4 |
59vk2n | If we all have a voice inside our head, at what point does it become a sign of schizophrenia? | When the voice is not your voice. We all know our own inner voice. Imagine an uncontrollable foreign voice speaking in your head. That's schizophrenia. | 9cfb7c40-7d60-4054-ac70-d9df5708be38 |
2lxft4 | The concept of white privilege to someone like me who is not white | White privilege does not mean that ever single white person enjoys advantages over every single person of other ethnicities.
It's mostly referring to two things:
* White neighborhoods are, in general, better off economically than minority communities - and tend to receive better education/police services.
* Racism is subtle, but real. Little things like promotions at work, traffic stops, you name it - individually they're often in grey areas but in aggregate they show a clear preference towards whites.
Those sort of things are also somewhat regional. Some regions of the US are fairly integrated and more beyond that stuff, some *way* less so. A wealthy family immigrating into a well to do integrated neighborhood in SoCal or something probably won't see that, but that's not exactly the typical experience of immigrants from Latin America. | 588d0769-f3b6-4e18-a434-cd8ac0ed5b83 |
3rpdkj | Do words in tonal languages (Chinese, Thai, etc) lose their tones when sung? | For Chinese the answer is yes. Listeners infer the meaning of the words by their context, rather than their tone. I assume it is the same for other tonal languages.
The same sort of tone-loss can happen when people simply speak really fast, too. | 4a17024f-e6a1-4533-836f-48daf83c26cc |
1me20x | What happens at the molecular level when a paper is cut by a scissor? | I'm not sure how to word this given the limitation of a molecular level explanation, but you could say that the scissor's force is strong enough such that the electrons of the scissors repel the electrons of the paper enough to form a cut. | da36c2fb-bf25-4bc9-8f69-8c1c430411c4 |
302zxc | How are rock songs constructed? | > How exactly does the guitar interact with the bass, rhythm and vocals.
Generally speaking, one instrument (most often the guitar) plays a lead melody, while all other instrumentation and vocals play harmonically-compatible parts which *support* that melody. On their own these supportive instruments do not play parts that could be considered distinct melodies, as they're designed to accent the lead melody. More complex rock music, and a great deal of music from other genres (such as classical or technical death metal), will feature instruments playing completely *separate* but harmonically-compatible melodies, each of which could stand on its own as a distinct melody.
If you require more information than that, I don't think your question is really ELI5 appropriate. You'll need to start learning music theory thoroughly, and from the ground-up. And [this](_URL_0_) is as good as any place to start. | b1ea5d1c-115a-47b6-a34a-51704e77d8bb |
26kos2 | Creatures like hermit crabs and snails thay move from shell to shell through their lives | Snails don't change shells, they make their own.
Hermit crabs will find abandoned shells from other animals, shells of dead animals, or will often kill snails to take their shells. | 2d1268e4-c839-4d6b-8823-d5ba35efaac3 |
2gznxl | Why don't I notice myself falling asleep? | Your brain shuts down most functions while going into sleep mode. The function we're most interested in here is the long term memory. For example can you remember the dreams you had the last 7 days? How about last night? Probably not. You do however typically remember those dreams right as you wake up.
It kind of works the same way. The part of your brain that store's memories gets shut down. Thus you are not able to recollect the act of falling asleep. | 0bab2b52-86d4-4fda-979a-711f869d4967 |
1pv89b | Why are archers in movies instructed to fire all at once? | Well usually we see it in movies in the context of the first volley against a force moving towards the wall. In that case the commander can simply say 'on my mark' if they want the arrows to start only when the enemy forces are close enough to get a reasonable hit on with the arrows.
Also it's a lot more devastating to morale to have them all hit at once. The perception of a well-coordinated enemy is itself disheartening but also it means you're getting this rain of grievous injuries all hitting together so from the perspective on an enemy foot soldier there's just waves of death causing quite a few of the guys around him to start bleeding out all at once. Has a bigger sense of impact when you get all these injuries hitting together. | 1d89606e-8f64-4349-933d-a78bafda728b |
4a6nak | how do we determine currency conversions? | This was asked before: _URL_0_
See if that post answers your question. | 43fad943-b9fa-4f3a-b401-6f4dc0e122f9 |
3k5p9b | why, after years of civil war, is NOW the tipping point where so many Syrians are fleeing to Europe? | They aren't fleeing, really. They're looking for a higher standard of living. If they were simply looking for shelter from war, they would not go to Germany. [Look at this map.](_URL_0_) There are perhaps near a dozen countries, all of which are not at war, between Syria and Germany. Most go through Hungary, which is not as welcoming. However, the EU says they have to be registered in the country that they first arrive in. They don't stay in Hungary, they are going through Austria to Germany. That makes them immigrants, not refugees. Aside from the viral photos of dead children, which someone took the time to, instead of burying the child, take a high resolution photo, there are thousands of videos of them rioting on the streets and being generally cunts. A video was uploaded to youtube the other day of Syrian "refugees" throwing rocks at train station workers as they ran for Germany.
They are doing this because Germany is advertising it. They, as well as Sweden, are literally putting up billboards advertising their countries. Norway and Denmark on the other hand are literally advertising for them to go away. they don't listen to Norway or Denmark. Why would they, when they can get free housing, food, shelter, and schooling at the cost of tax paying Germans and Swedes? | 6e29f00f-0097-4a11-adc6-a7af16b8e146 |
196kvg | Internet Service Providers. | The internet isn't "one thing", it's actually a number of computer networks that has decided to work together. Each ISP runs their own part of the internet.
So if I send this message from Sweden to the reddit servers in the US it first goes to my local ISP but they only deal with local stuff so they hand it over to a large nordic telecommunications company that has a network that reaches as far as Denmark.
But the large telecommunications company doesn't have a transatlantic telecommunications cable so in my case they hand the message over to [Level 3 Communications](_URL_0_).
And after a few steps more it finally arrives to reddits servers and you can ask them to give it to you. So the internet is kind of an patchwork but so nicely done that you only see one thing. | 5a12aa78-7763-4518-8677-986a627a9d87 |
3qr0pj | Why is it not long after you wake up, it's very difficult to remember the more interesting dreams you had? | Memories created in dreams almost immediately gets mixed up. They are created when the part of your brain that handles common logic isn't operating. The moment you wake up and that part of your brain starts to work on all of last night's memories to make sense of it all. The thing is how do you know that what you think you dreamt isn't just your brain making up what it wants to think based on a random set of nonsense. | 10c910f9-5aa5-470b-822b-f4afb518111d |
47ly4l | Why did the concept of evil witches get introduced only since the middle ages and why did so many people suddenly believe they exist? | The belief in witches have always been found in cultures predating the middle ages. However to understand this sudden rise in burnings at the stake for witchcraft you need to understand the atmosphere of the time. During the middle ages much of the technological knowledge of the Roman/Greek era was lost to the European world (While it was preserved by many Arab nations). Intellectual thinking during this time was looked down upon by the church who had an immense increase of power from the collapse of the Roman Empire. In the power vacuum that ensued the future popes found a means of not only making themselves a religious head but a political one too. The persecution of intellectual thought by the church also left a vacuum gap which was filled by religion and thick superstition. Who do you blame when a disease kills your livestock or perhaps your crops? Who is causing the "unnatural dry season"? Why was this mysterious plague killing half of the population? When you put yourself into the mind of an uneducated individual of medieval Europe with strong christian(which contains pagan elements) beliefs its not hard see how this idea that witches were responsible for people's blights. Without science to give logical explanations the only ones that prevailed were those based in superstition.
TLDR - With lack of education and knowledge many people relied on their superstitious nature to explain plagues and terrible events at a time when religion(containing many superstitious aspects) was at its highest power. They wanted to point fingers and scapegoating an individual for being a servant of the devil made sense to them. | 557a5494-ca89-45bf-8bf2-b5be790b150b |
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