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|---|---|---|---|
bnz9zb
|
Why did my friend always have to turn on channel 3 in order to play Nintendo 64?
|
I'm assuming you mean that your friend had an older style television and he would switch to Ch 3 to get the N64 to work. Not every TV came with composite inputs (think your red, white, yellow cable) and only had RF tuners (the port you plug your house antenna or rabbit ears into). You could buy a little box that converted the composite input to an RF signal which you could then manually tune into a channel on the TV.
|
4fc2f50f-870d-4770-9e63-2cece15bf555
|
bnzbr5
|
On why the hell memes managed to go from lasting months to now lasting barely even a week? Also why do some memes "stick" and never die like the Skyrim Trait meme or the Drake/Expanding Brain/Classy Pooh memes? Is it because they are more flexible with how they can be used?
|
**TL;DR:** Memes have become increasingly reliant on pop culture references. The more a meme makes sense out of context, the longer it will last.
"Advice Animals" and other memes that were "Impact font, text at top and bottom" were extraordinarily long-lived compared to most of the memes we have today because they're basically stock photos. There's no context behind most of them that cannot be gleaned from the meme itself, like how the initial "Advice Dog" was just a derpy-looking dog giving dumb advice.
That's why the more long-lasting ones like Expanding Brain, Drake, and Pooh have, well, longer lifespans. They don't need prior knowledge of pop culture, or the reference is already an older one that has stayed popular, like Skyrim leveling.
Now, memes are often reaction images used as punchlines to longer jokes, and aren't nearly as funny if you aren't familiar with the media that it was pulled from, like Game of Thrones or Avengers: Endgame, or... I don't know, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
|
1db8930e-3d66-4cfc-9341-5c00031187c9
|
bnzllj
|
why is it that even in pitch black darkness it’s near impossible to fall asleep with your eyes open?
|
Because:
1) keeping your eyes open requires muscles to be active - usualy muscles being relaxed is more conductive to sleeping.
2) having your eyes open dries them out, making it uncomfortable.
|
3de7f769-26e9-4cb3-ba70-f1c584ca8088
|
bnzq62
|
Why does "catching up on sleep" not work?
|
The same way starving yourself for a day wont immediately be fixed by over eating the next day.
You need balance in a cycle not balance numerically. Increasing the problem is that when people need to catch up on sleep it is usually because they expended energy for a longer than usual time and higher rate. (Studying, writing, gaming,working,caring for a child or anyone).
One usually doesn't sleep because they had to do more than usual and that alone would in itself require more sleep of a person for the added recuperation and another day to return to baseline.
Continuing this for extended periods of time may lead to mental breaks, lack of ability to focus, slower reaction time. Not healthy.
|
ff70909d-785c-417e-bcd2-0a705814bd45
|
bnzs7p
|
Why is prostate cancer so common when the prostate is a relatively small organ that is not directly exposed to carcinogens (e.g. UV light, cigarette smoke)?
|
Cancer ultimately happens when a cell replicates and through random mutation/damage the gene that limits its replication is defective, causing it and its spawn to go wild and replicate without limitation.
There is a chance of getting a cancerous cell with every replication. So 'high turnover' organs that replicate and replace cells frequently are more liable to cancer even without carcinogens present, which includes the prostate.
Carcinogens are just things that can damage DNA, making defects more likely to occur. They are not needed to cause cancer.
|
50605459-d580-40dd-9b10-1b596ee3f644
|
bnzzoo
|
Why does food from chain restaurants contain so much sodium?
|
Partially for flavor, partially because it’s an excellent preservative. You’ll find that, even in grocery store products, food that can be stored for extended periods of time (ie. Pre-made frozen foods, canned soup, etc.) have a very high level of sodium. As far as most chain restaurants go, like said before it *is* used for flavor, but a lot of the food is also frozen or pre-made and just heated up, so it needs to have a good amount of preservative in it to keep it from going bad.
|
64c5adb9-2551-46c7-8eb5-026e676c6581
|
bo00o7
|
Torrents. Could studios sabotage them if they actually wanted to?
|
They do try to overload a torrent with clients that you can't really connect to. I forget the term for it, flooding maybe, but essentially it stops people from downloading or reduces speed to a crawl.
They can also submit bad files to the major sites so that people searching for a torrent may end up picking a bad torrent instead of a real one. You wouldn't realize it was bad until it had finished downloading.
However these methods are pretty ineffective. Major sites have uploader rankings, torrent ratings and comments systems and probably also actively block bad content so it's fairly easy for the "legit" version to surface.
If flooding is severe then people end up resubmitting the file under different names to create paths that aren't being poisoned, and its difficult for the company orchestrating the attacks to adapt to cover them all.
|
3bae6f65-88a6-4672-9f5b-fd51f94af5c1
|
bo01o8
|
How does exposure allow a camera to see into space?
|
The reason we can't see stuff on the night sky as well as we would like to is not that they're invisible, it's just that there's so little of their light reaching us that they're indistinguishable from the backdrop.
Long exposure on camera sort of gathers up all that dim light and sums it up - with long enough exposure and stable enough camera, you end up with a much clearer view of the night sky (or other cool effects, like tracks of the paths the stars take in the sky for really, really, really long exposure).
Edit: I accidentally a word. I blame low blood caffeine content.
|
ca3071e0-722b-46ab-a7c9-e01cf06c6420
|
bo01wh
|
What is a hangover?
|
It's a few different things:
& #x200B;
1. Dehydration - other posts have mentioned it, so I won't go any further into it.
2. Lack of rest. Alcohol is a depressant. It causes you to "pass out" even at low doses and disrupts your sleep cycle - meaning you don't get proper REM sleep. To make matters worse, when the alcohol wears off, your system tends to over-correct, and you go into a kind of stimulus, which tends to wake you up or at least make you restless. You sleep like crap when you're drunk.
3. Poisoning. Alcohol is toxic. Your body has enzymes that will convert it into harmless acetic acid (vinegar, basically), but before it can, it has to convert it to an even more toxic chemical called acetaldehyde. Your body gets flooded with toxic crap before it fully burns off the alcohol.
4. Withdrawal. Alcohol messes with chemicals in your brain. When your body gets rid of the alcohol, you're left with fewer of these brain chemicals. That affects your brain's processing power.
|
061a4fbf-721b-4dcb-8c5c-b88a6496a06f
|
bo071b
|
What's the difference between donating plasma and platelets? Is there any?
|
From where you're gonna be sitting, it'll be the same. Blood goes out, big machine happens, blood goes back in, then your half hour saves someones life.
|
fa4daa95-213e-4740-bea9-82ea8c3876a1
|
bo0974
|
What is the ”storage cap” of the human brain, and what would happen if you could hypothetically reach it?
|
We don't know.
& #x200B;
We don't understand how the brain stores information well enough. It stores some information indefinitely and forgets others instantaneously. We have no idea how the brain differentiates these two things. It can recall seemingly forgotten information at a moment's notice.
& #x200B;
Which means the brain doesn't understand how the brain works. What the fuck.
|
eacb566d-0f9c-4bb0-805f-dc57d4364ba8
|
bo0c4a
|
How come when you open task manager to close a slow program, the program will sometimes suddenly start working again as if nothing is wrong?
|
I hope someone who knows some in depth details on this can chime in, but the short version is:
Opening the task manager by your standard ctrl+alt+delete is not like starting any other program. It's treated by Windows differently, and interrupts other functions for a moment - that's why it can work even when the OS is otherwise nonresponsive. Sometimes it's enough to give whatever was causing the hangup a push - it depends on a lot of variables and what was actually causing the application to stop responding.
|
e72006c0-2206-4cad-b886-e9d61b69d8f8
|
bo0i34
|
How do they restore old videos to 60 fps?
|
I would say that either they had an original of the record in 60 FPS, which was not uploaded back then or recreated the "missing" frames by "averaging" of the frames before/after of some sort.
|
52ddeade-da26-4be6-88a5-6235407cb9e1
|
bo0mpr
|
If there are so many natural fires in forests per year that are then contained by humans, how wasn´t earth burned before humans appeared?
|
When humans prevent a fire, it allows more undergrowth and deadfall to accumulate, which makes the next fire even worse.
When the fires occur naturally, without that accumulation, they are smaller and burn themselves out more quickly.
Trees don't burn easily, it takes very special conditions to create a forest fire. Even when there is a major fire, it only destroys a tiny percentage of the forest.
|
9c7b9e71-0e18-459c-93f0-e9804d49a965
|
bo0s3m
|
Why do aerosol cans get colder when you shake them?
|
They don't, it only appears that way.
When pressure decreases in a fixed volume, temperature also decreases. When pressure gets too low, spraying no longer works, you shake the can, only then do you notice how cold it has become.
|
e1421de1-bb90-44ec-9f11-a38f67efcbd1
|
bo0tdk
|
How does an electric guitar and a solid-state amp or a tube amp work?
|
When you strum a string on an electric guitar, the string moves through a magnetic field produced by the pickups. Because it is a conductor moving through a magnetic field, it distorts that field. This distortion of the magnetic field creates an electrical signal that the guitar then transmits to the amplifier.
The amplifier then uses that electrical signal to open and close a transistor/vacuum tube pathway, similar to a dimmer knob on lighting. That transistor/vacuum tube is attenuating a higher power electrical line in sync with that electrical signal from the pickups.
The result is an electrical signal that matches the vibration of the strings, amplified sufficiently to drive a speaker cone.
|
453d6bee-b43a-44fa-aee5-598132f60868
|
bo14c3
|
Why does the air look wavy when heated?
|
It's refraction. You're looking through a layer of cold air, hot air, and cold air again. When light travels through a different refractive medium its path will change depending on the medium's density.
Hot air is less dense than cold air and will thus bend light upwards a little bit. But since air isn't static, it's fluid, you end up with a wavy appearance.
A glass of water at rest however doesn't look wavy, but if you disturb the water it will create a similar wavy appearance.
|
2475678b-a4e6-4e09-b2a7-f407fae29340
|
bo16wz
|
What's the difference between writing a song and producing a song?
|
Writing is coming up with the music and lyrics.
Producing a song is getting the people into a recording studio, coaching the musicians how to sing and play the song, recording them playing the different instruments, mixing the recorded audio, and possibly helping to write the song.
|
9a63d463-d322-4d93-907f-6f4fed8da35b
|
bo1cpo
|
Why do iur bodies put us through unpleasant things when trting to deal with sickness, i.e. fever, puking, etc.
|
Your body is trying to rid itself of bad bacteria and whatever it was in your gut that your body has rejected
|
1c5a80fe-eb14-4302-a337-89911194c6be
|
bo1d18
|
When you exercise, does fat burn off in real-time or does your body start changing afterwards?
|
I don't think 5 year olds could be explained this, but I will try to explain like you're 10.
It is rare to burn actual fat during exercise. If you use all the quick energy you have in your body you can start using fat. By this time you will be very very tired.
The body then refill the quick energy storage spaces with some of the energy from your fat, and some of the energy from the foods that you eat. By this time you are very hungry, and it is easier to use fresh food to come back to the energy balance you body wants.
Exercising is a very good way to improve the functionality of your body, such as your muscles, heart, liver and the other organs. It also increases the speed that your body uses energy, called metabolism. But the body will seek to be in balance and here is where food comes in:
Those who are in need of loosing weight, controlling how much energy it is in their food and making sure that they get good food is the best way. This means that they need to avoid sugar and eat more vegetables, but most they need to be sure to eat different things so that the body has what it needs to function. It is better to focus on getting the right stuff, and only avoiding a few things.
|
45b747a2-6e35-4c22-a003-6b122a84eadd
|
bo1qxh
|
Why do the Uk and the USA have different dates for mothers day?
|
Mothers Day in the UK should actually (i.e. traditionally) be known as Mothering Sunday. It takes place on the fourth Sunday of Lent and was traditionally a day on which Christians were encouraged to visit their “mother church”. It has morphed into a day to celebrate mothers, but this was not the original purpose.
Other countries do not have this religious connotation. In the US, mothers day was formally established by President Wilson in 1914 after a campaign was launched by an American woman from West Virginia named Anna Jarvis, whose own mother died in May.
|
cf1e68b6-38bf-4ec9-98dd-a692c1f295c6
|
bo1tx0
|
Radiation Poisoning
|
Radiation poisoning happens when high energy electromagnetic waves enter the body. And a few things can happen at the molecular level. EM waves interact with the electrons in molecules. Electrons are very important because they both create bonds and they make atoms stable or not, depending on the number of electrons. Thankfully, you are generally really good at keeping your electrons on their rightful molecules. But radiation can energize those electrons. And like me, if those electrons get too amped up, they’re gonna get out of bed. That’s bad news cuz bed is cozy and my bed doesn’t have things like finals in 15 hours.
When radiation ejects an electron, a few things can happen: you lose an electron that an atom was hoarding all to itself (they do this, greedy fucks), which forms a strongly reactive ion (they want their electron back); it can eject an electron which is in a bond, breaking the bond and forming both an ion and a radical. Radicals are radical. Like terrorists, not like cool waves. But they’re misunderstood. They just wanna be accepted. Yes, they may be aggressive in their approach of literally throwing themselves at any goddamn molecule, but I daddy issues are common nowadays.
So you got reactive ions, broken bonds, and reactive radicals. So what? Well hat depends what is hit with the radiation. If it’s proteins, so what? Your body has way of disposing of damaged proteins, just like you have ways if disposing of damaged self esteem: alcohol. If it’s DNA, though, then you’re in trouble. That guy’s the boss, the only guy who knows what the fuck is going on. And if you scramble his brain like that, he ain’t gonna make any sense. He’s gonna start spitting out damaged proteins, which do all the jobs in the cells. The prisons (phagosomes!) shut down, the anti-hacker hackers get confused (p53!), and your painter starts painting weird shit (melanin! This is why jokes are darker! UV radiation!) and other bad things happen.
This is where you got chronic and acute poisoning to consider. Chronic effects are gonna be more cancers. That happens when one dna mutation makes you cells be a little more careless when replicating. Then another mutation happens where your cells copy itself a little faster. Then your cell gets more careless, and then Boom! You go liver cells in your bicep.
As for the acute case, Wasted proteins build up, some doing more arm than good. Eventually your cell can’t take it. It wants to die an honorable death. Harakiri it is. Your cell releases a combination of acid and proteins that just destroy everything. Your cell pops and leaks it’s guts all over its friends and neighbors. Now imagine this all over your body. This is why severe cases of acute radiation poisoning often present with bleeding or open sores. Just massive cell death. It’s intense and horrifying.
|
7677c5b8-8da9-405f-9328-d4e075ccf04a
|
bo1xix
|
Why there is no international standard for electric plugs?
|
Nobody wants to spend a shitton of money to retrofit every plug and appliance in a country. There would be absolutely no gain except for tourists not having to buy a $10 adapter.
|
a1a42610-ea52-4f48-9695-68b5684382ef
|
bo298t
|
When you swat a fly or step on a insect, why can it still move?
|
Depends on how badly the exoskeleton is damaged. It will die either way since insects don't heal.
Insects don't feel pain the way you and I do. The only know something is wrong, but will proceed to try and get away from you and try to live it's life, even though it's dying.
|
e8dd506f-c733-48d5-b8e9-989025e8acf0
|
bo2fo1
|
Why does cold water sound different than hot water?
|
Water, like most liquids, becomes less viscous (runnier) when it is heated.
This means that it will flow more easily altering the sound.
|
91446806-516b-4e39-9e8f-f12df6b01ada
|
bo2rh4
|
What is homeopathy and does it work? Also, is it the same as traditional chinese medicine?
|
Homeopathy operates on the following fallacious beliefs:
1. That you can cure a disease or ailment by ingesting material which produces in a healthy person the same symptoms as the disease or ailment. That is, if you have a disease which gives you a fever, you should ingest something that would give a normal persona fever.
2. That if you take some medicine and dilute it in water (and shake it), it becomes more potent. The more you dilute it, the more potent it becomes.
3. Water has "memory" and will remember the properties of chemicals it has been mixed with.
It doesn't work. Due to the extreme levels of dilution homeopathic remedies undergo, you are drinking essentially pure water.
"traditional Chinese medicine" is a vague term.
|
b06bd02d-e4e9-4caa-9752-66dcfaf606d8
|
bo2um0
|
It's wildly considered that soft drinks are bad for you because of the amount of sugar in them. Are zero sugar and diet versions of the same drinks harmful as well? If so, why?
|
Yes and no.
Diet sodas are *correlated* with obesity, but do not *cause* obesity.
Part of the reason sugars (and other simple carbohydrates) are bad is that they're extremely efficient at delivering calories. You digest them very quickly - and then you're hungry again. Artificial sweeteners cause the same response, causing you to be more hungry than you would otherwise be.
They can also cause your metabolism to seesaw back and forth (which is itself bad) because your body thinks it's getting a surge of easily processed energy.
If you keep to a rigorous diet, they're really not bad for you. However, if you're just eating when you're hungry, they'll almost inevitably lead to weight gain.
That being said, you need to keep in mind the notion of harm reduction. Drinking a diet soda is at best neutral - it has no more benefit than drinking water - but it's quite a bit better than drinking non-diet soda.
|
3311ceb6-ff88-4db8-b90e-b99752efa9d0
|
bo2v3i
|
Why can’t we feel our internal organs rubbing against each other ?
|
Our organs don't have feeling and pain receptors as our skin does. If we could feel everything they did we would constantly feel them digesting. When there is a problem with our organs, our body tells us about it by making something else hurt. This is called "deferred pain."
|
384a6bb8-af1d-4c6c-87af-985a39556c0c
|
bo2z0n
|
Why do PC's need fans or water cooling, and cell phones only need heat sinks?
|
A cellphone running a game is running the game at settings that keep it within a certain thermal range, so you don't get a burnt hand, battery going pop, thermal shutdown etc
& #x200B;
It's quite possible to thrash a pc up to the point that it'll "nope" out on you due to thermals, but the amount of heat you can pour into the 'system' is far, far more due to airflow, massive heat sinks etc As a result, you can run the hardware harder and hotter e.g. tons of cores at almost 5GHz well over 60fps, 4k etc
|
24c0a55e-6a46-4a58-be20-c8a615bfef3e
|
bo31ni
|
Why is it when you hang clothes over a rack to dry or use the dryer, they dry soft, but if they're dried in a ball they become stiff?
|
My clothes come out stiff if I hang-dry them. Tumble drying, even without dryer sheets or fabric softener, they come out much softer.
|
fd215597-1233-4c02-89f4-fd8e7b238cca
|
bo3871
|
what phonemes are and how the differ from syllables?
|
To make sentences so we can talk to each other we need words. To make words we need to make sounds in the proper order. All the different sounds we need to make for talking are called phonemes.
Letters by themselves can be one or a few phonemes like how “c” sound sound like “s” or “k”. Vowels sounds are different phonemes. And letters together are phonemes like “ch” and “st”.
Sometimes phonemes are a syllable. A syllable is the sounds we can make in just one beat of a song. “Cat” is one syllable but has 3 phonemes. “Octopus” has three syllables and even more phonemes.
|
cc999211-887b-4bff-92a6-8d1593a1ba17
|
bo3puc
|
Why do so many rappers have the name Lil on their artistic name?
|
There's always a reason, but it changes from rapper to rapper.
But we all suck at something before we're good at it. I imagine being "Big Balla 5000" would be tough to pull off when you can barely string together 3 bars and a rent payment.
"Lil Balla" does a better job setting expectations in the early days.
|
17086e64-f981-4a03-a1e7-975983342e81
|
bo3qcz
|
How do car engines function?
|
[Suck, squeeze, bang, blow.](_URL_0_)
You ingest air ("suck") that you need for combustion through the intake valve(s).
You compress that air ("squeeze") to a high pressure.
You add fuel somewhere in this process and ignite it ("bang"). The ensuing combustion raises the pressure to very high levels, which pushes the piston down. By connecting that piston to a rotating shaft, you harness the thermal energy within the cylinder and extract it as work.
You then open the exhaust valve(s) ("blow"), allowing the exhaust gas to expand out into the exhaust of the engine, essentially resetting the cylinder to where it was prior to the first step.
You then repeat cycle dozens to hundreds of times per second per engine cylinder.
|
912cfbbd-0ebf-4c0f-a10a-fa10e79be9ef
|
bo3s3w
|
What is a pyramid scheme and why is it bad?
|
Long story short, you pay in money in order to get a cut of future profits. For example, you pay in $15 now but you'll get $5 of every $15 from people you recruit directly. So you only need to get 4 people to start turning a profit. No one is really adding any value to anyone's lives. You're just passing the debt along. Eventually you end up with a ton of people who buy in but aren't able to sucker anyone else in. What you have essentially done is coerced the bottom of the pyramid to pay everyone above them in the pyramid for nothing but a false hope.
|
9451a925-7bf8-4089-8315-4709e760f6cd
|
bo3vnf
|
Why do your eyes need to adjust to darkness what stops you from always being able to see in the dark
|
When your rods are exposed to a lot of light, think of it like you drank 5 red bulls and can't sleep. They're stimulated by the light. They have to come down. There was a good Mythbusters episode about how pirates probably wore eyepatches, not because of a damaged eye, but because they wanted to have 1 eye ready for darkness if they need to fight below-deck during the daytime. They could switch the eye the eyepatch covers, and then they'd have low light vision.
|
30b3ec45-2280-4aeb-81cb-2ff2aa5f79fe
|
bo3wtn
|
Why does squinting help you see better?
|
It can also restrict the amount of area that the cornea is using to gather light, increasing the depth of field for near or farsighted people, allowing them to see slightly better at ranges the normally have trouble with.
Basically, the smaller the opening, the less focusing your eyes' lenses have to do. Less light gets in but it is better focused.
As an experiment, poke a hole in paper with a pin and look through it. Even if you are near or farsighted, the image will be more focused than normal. This is why old "pinhole" cameras did not need lenses.
|
b5bb8a00-de09-48c0-887d-01e30a31984f
|
bo3yet
|
How do phones know they are going to run out of battery in x seconds?
|
There’s two things going on here; the phone has memorized discharge profiles so if it recognizes the power dropping along a recognized curve, it can anticipate when that will drop below the operating level of the phone.
But besides that, phones always turn off before the battery is fully discharged in order to avoid stressing the chemicals in the battery. So the phone isn’t really running out of battery, it’s just approaching a threshold at which it is no longer safe to keep the phone on. So the phone can decide when to turn off.
Since the phone is deciding when to turn off, it can give you an estimated time, and stick to that estimate unless you do something to more rapidly drain it in the meantime.
|
5f3780be-48f9-4d38-9b53-ab6736aa6dae
|
bo41hl
|
Why sore throats only hurt when you swallow
|
Because the act of swallowing causes contraction as well as friction on the sore part of the throat. It's like touching a wound.
Also sore throats don't only hurt when swallowing but depending on the reason and severity of the pain.
|
a899823a-2926-448b-8ee0-8dc0422cca0d
|
bo44do
|
why are the stars in photographs taken by astronauts not visible?
|
Nvidia did an [amazing video](_URL_0_) where they modeled the scene of an iconic photograph taken on the moon in such detail that when it's rendered, you can't tell it from the actual original photo.
Then they played with the parameters in order to answer certain questions (typically posed by moon-landing deniers) such as how can you see objects in shadow, or what was that bright light source?
At [5:48 in the video](_URL_0_ & t=5m48s), they address the question of why can't you see the stars in the black sky?
The bottom line is that just because it's a *black* sky, that doesn't mean it's a *night* sky. This was still broad daylight and the camera exposure was set accordingly. At that exposure, the stars simply don't register on the film. They *could* have adjusted the exposure to capture the stars, but the rest of the scene would have been hopelessly washed out.
|
f16f70eb-5143-4485-811a-07ee56912836
|
bo4kcl
|
How does finding gold or diamonds affect the economy? Essentially you are adding value into the economy that is unaccounted for, right?
|
It's really not much different from any other sort of production. You're taking a large initial starting investment and using it to produce something of value.
In this case "production" means digging, but economically it's not functionally any different than running a magic factory where people made gold.
Every company tries to produce stuff worth more than it cost, mining companies just dig it up.
Now if you found $700 billion in gold that was just laying there for free, that would have economic ramifications since the marginal cost of production is zero. Gold would devalue and/or other prices would inflate.
|
01cba3cc-9e3d-453a-b606-1d1ef9f234ed
|
bo4qju
|
Could scientist be able to stop time in a single contained space?
|
Not with our current understanding of physics. For something to appear frozen in time from an outside perspective, that thing would need to be travelling at the speed of light. Since our current understanding of physics is that nothing with mass can reach the speed of light, we can't ever get anything other than light itself to "freeze" in time.
However, if we can get things moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, it would appear from an outside perspective to be moving slower in time. However, making a box in which the contents are moving at relativistic speed but the box itself is not would be a significant technological challenge if it is even possible.
|
26df684d-19ba-42d5-bfae-2978d6f0a341
|
bo50du
|
Why when you go to court most of the judges are flat out rude and nasty?
|
You have to understand that judges on the types of court that you’re most likely to go to are the kinds like traffic court which are filled with angry people talking about the same things and trying the same excuses, dozens or hundreds of times a day. It’s boring and frustrating for most judges, who had to work very hard to get their judgeship. I know a lot tend to let it show a little more than they should, but it isn’t a fun job. If you ever go to a civil court or (hopefully to watch) a criminal court, the judges are more focused on more interesting situations that actually require their legal training, so they tend to be a little bit less annoyed and a little more at ease
|
c6e4189f-09a3-4f52-81d8-c00962860806
|
bo57vs
|
Holding Batteries
|
You do complete the circuit, and you do get a "zap." It's just that the voltage is so low (1.5 volts) and your skin has high enough resistance that there is very little current, a zap too small to notice.
|
84505e35-090e-4161-9f8e-882643840493
|
bo5bp7
|
Why is diesel so bad?
|
diesels are more efficient, they
in fact emit less carbon dioxide than gasoline engines. Diesel fuel contains about 12 percent more energy per gallon than ordinary gasoline, and about 16 percent more energy than gasoline that contains ethanol.
|
24eb8869-2a5f-4a26-bf72-d84e87b00323
|
bo5jqm
|
Why is it than when you shine a light through your fingers the light can be seen to be clearly shining through but you can't see your bone or veins? There appears to be nothing inside your finger. Why?
|
The light doesn't actually shine through. It just goes in at a superficial level and then bounces around like crazy. The bounces ultimately do get around to the other side of your finger to some degree, but because of a series of reflections that are mostly in the surface, and not because of the light penetrating "straight through" the finger. You can think of your skin as a sort of light diffuser I suppose.
|
c0a8c85e-a435-43c1-9c9d-ee548c7da549
|
bo5kg9
|
Why do birds only chirp/sing in the morning but not in the evening?
|
As the early morning songs are most used by males to tell other males where their territory is, and to attract females, the songs are most common and loud right before sunrise in order to be energy efficient. The bird would be much better off spending daylight foraging and doing other tasks, but since they do not need light to sing, then can begin as early as they can.
|
f744a6b7-2fd5-4a7a-bc8c-1bca7b06219c
|
bo5mvk
|
why do people not forget their language when they get amnesia?
|
There are forms of loss of function that do uniquely impact language ability and that also hints at the reason one can get amnesia and remember language. The brain develops to have specialized areas for certain functions and while it's capable of "remapping" in some circumstances, language is largely controlled by what are known as the Broca area and the Wernicke's area. Long term memory is much more distributed in how it's controlled.
& #x200B;
Additionally, amnesia is a non-specific diagnosis - it's not a "cause" it is a symptom of many possible causes that range from emotion to physical. Generally when people talk about temporary amnesia it's physical (e.g. the television version) and when that happens it suggest damage to the memory centers of the brain but not the language centers. It's also common for lots and lots of capabilities to be retained in amnesia - e.g. you remember how to walk, you retain general motor skills and even highly developed coordination and so on - all subject to some element of what we crudely call "memory".
|
e1dc6146-1de6-416a-a03e-a7798d10876e
|
bo5stk
|
Why does it seem like corn tastes better on the cob?
|
Probably because a lot of the time when people have corn "off the cob" it's either canned or frozen, while corn on the cob is almost always fresh.
Of course if you can still tell a big difference between fresh corn off the cob and corn on the cob, then it's more than likely all in your head.
|
d6e34345-0a41-4676-afb6-dd80f883097b
|
bo5uqg
|
How is it that you are able to see/perceieve light or flashes of light when you're eyes are closed in a completely dark room ?
|
Those flashes are called phosphenes. They're often induced by pressure or other stimulus applied to the eyes, including magnetic, electrical, and radiological. The colors you see in the dark or with closed eyes are often referred to as "Prisoner's Cinema." Its got a very well written wikipedia article if you'd like to read about it in depth.
|
ffdb7d93-5316-4b0d-95c9-6e8959d2758b
|
bo62wu
|
How does a telescope capture light that is many years away? And if it zooms in on that object, is it skipping some of the time, or light, that it takes to reach the telescope?
|
> How does a telescope capture light that is many years away?
It doesn’t. It captures light that is arriving at Earth right now, emitted a long time ago by a faraway object. The telescope is the end of the light’s long journey.
If a telescope zooms in, it’s changing its optics so that light from a specific direction gets spread over a larger area of the photosensor, making the image bigger.
|
94021dd1-5949-4174-b389-7f918d5d5642
|
bo6apa
|
Why is chewing on ice thought to be a symptom of iron deficiency or anemia?
|
Its thought that chewing ice in anemics sends blood rushing to the brain, making them more alert. Pica (craving/chewing things that aren't food or otherwise have no nutritional value) is linked to an iron deficiency - its not totally clear why for some substances.
|
7dff9abf-68b0-4da7-89eb-0f6bd140ad12
|
bo6dqa
|
NDN vs IP? What are both? What is the difference and why does it matter?
|
Don't know enough about NDN yet, but start here - > _URL_0_
And their [FAQ](_URL_1_) has the following:
What are the basic differences between IP and NDN?
They use a different name space: IP address vs name.
NDN includes a security primitive directly at the narrow waist (every Data packet is signed).
IP sends packets to destination addresses; NDN uses Interest packets to fetch Data packets.
IP (by definition) has a stateless data plane. NDN has a stateful data plane.
Together with the forwarding strategy, this stateful data plane offers NDN networks a variety of
desired functions (see “A Case for Stateful Forwarding Plane“).
|
0206e971-10d3-484d-8619-863c6990bb7e
|
bo6hdu
|
Why isn't the regrowth of nerves and other key cells using stem cells not more popular or more researched if it works so well?
|
The ethics of Stem Cells are a little fuzzy.
The best Stem Cells for use in Humans come from Human Fetuses. That means harvesting cells from freshly dead babies.
Any situation that leads to a researcher extracting fresh stem cells is going to stumble afoul some dark decisions by one party or the other.
|
1180d495-c41b-4eff-a364-bc551de96f84
|
bo73od
|
Before the 2008 recession, Diesel fuel was always cheaper than regular unleaded(87 octane)per gallon. After/during the recession, Diesel appears to climb and average a little below Premium unleaded(97 octane), why?
|
_URL_0_
* demand for diesel fuel in other countries remains high.
* ULSD is a clean-burning diesel fuel that was gradually phased into the market between 2006 and 2010, replacing on-highway diesel fuel, known as Low Sulfur Diesel. The environmental benefits of ULSD are huge but they bring extra costs.
They mentioned taxes being 6¢ higher than for gas, but also said it hadn't changed since the 1990s, so that can't be a reason.
|
52bda6d0-2b8c-42f0-8612-33203bc9fdca
|
bo75oo
|
CO2 level hit 415PPM for the first time in 3 millions years? What does this mean exactly?
|
PPM means parts per million, so if you were for example to have a million cups 415 of those cups would be filled with CO2 (carbon dioxide) the remaining cups would be filled with other things.
It a measure to show how much of the air is made of CO2 and that the amount is increasing to the most it’s ever been
|
23ea68c7-5fa1-4daa-8555-38aa2b088bf7
|
bo79q8
|
Why does adrenaline (epinephrine) reverse severe allergic reactions?
|
One of the biggest dangers of anaphylaxis is extremely low blood pressure and heart rate - it starves your brain of oxygen. Adrenaline is your fight-or-flight hormone, which does precisely the opposite: increasing heart rate and blood pressure in order to deliver more oxygen faster. It also works to open the airways, which again, is a good thing when in fight-or-flight mode or when your throat is swelling shut.
|
81c41c10-6fe3-4036-8664-9810d88a0638
|
bo7hg3
|
what causes the achy joints when you have a high fever?
|
Complement cascade resulting in loads of other stuff going on in the body. It’s not the high fever that causes the achy joints...it’s the responses that infection provoked in your body to try and get rid of it
|
f117f23b-5020-498d-a1b2-30f56b56dc13
|
bo7ls7
|
Why does the USA want a trade war with China?
|
Good question. I'd like to know the answer to that myself, but at this point I don't think anybody really knows. T_T
|
235e353b-00f9-4517-8ed9-d1f83aca705c
|
bo7vt2
|
Why does UV from the sun cause skin to 'burn'?
|
Your skin is formed of multiple layers of cells, with perhaps one or more layers of dead cells on top. The cells grow, and then die, and then fall off, outwards.
Light from the sun has energy, you can feel the heat when you sunbathe. UV can penetrate beyond the top layer of dead cells, and deliver this energy to the live cells beneath it. X-rays can penetrate even deeper, you can see bones if you take an x-ray.
Anyway, photons of light usually interact with the electrons in atoms, that's where they deliver their energy. So in the case of UV light, atoms in the live cells beneath your skin surface suddenly have different electron energies, which means they suddenly react chemically in unexpected ways.
Your cells are a delicate balance of chemical reactions. Sudden reactions damage them. They die.
Your immune system then detects that your skin cells are dying, and inflames the area, making it red and feel "hot" and sensitive. This is to deliver more blood and nutrients to help repair the cells.
If you stay in the sun too long, the damage is more than the blood / nutrients can repair, so you get a sunburn, which is the cells are dead and now you have to wait for the cells UNDER them to mature and grow and replace them, rebuilding your skin.
Part of that process is also a defensive reaction of melanin production. Melanin is a dark pigment that helps block UV; your skin cells produce it and your skin darkens (tans).
|
8e42ae23-58ea-4937-9bbf-62524c80e100
|
bo85lx
|
What causes blocked noses and blocked ears?
|
When you are sick, the walls in your nose and sinuses get inflamed and swell up. Thus blocking your nose.
|
7ea2081e-ad56-4405-aab1-b1c8e7d31f27
|
bo8ckw
|
Why is there a helium shortage?
|
Its not that we're "running out" of helium - proven helium reserves are sufficient to last for hundreds of years and there's no reason to believe that there isn't substantially more helium in unproven reserves. And even once those reserves run out, helium is about as plentiful in the air as neon, and can be produced in the same way that we currently produce that - fractional distillation of the air.
What's going on with helium right now is that Qatar produces 30% of the world's helium supply. Late last year the gulf states began blocking Qatari helium shipments as part of their broader blockade on the country.
The thing is, no one wants to build new helium harvesting infrastructure because the shortage is almost certainly going to be very temporary, the equipment needed to do that is extremely expensive, and helium is usually a very low profit commodity so once the blockade is over anyone who invested in helium now will go bankrupt.
|
bbed25ed-207b-48db-8da7-cbdd22138602
|
bo8cm4
|
How does bailing people out of jail work?
|
Bail is only for *before* your trial. You can sit in jail or you can give the court a sum of money to hold. If you show up to your trial you get your money back. If you try to run the court keeps your money and orders you to be arrested again.
|
97b5ae70-7ee9-47be-aa64-03fd6b9ef018
|
bo8gux
|
what causes thunder to have a sound?
|
It's basically a miniature explosion in the air where the lightning bolt passes. The lightning rapidly heats up air, which causes it to rapidly expand and that is what you hear.
|
885bfea5-ddb2-465b-b33c-5510a333b5f5
|
bo8o56
|
why does hot water sound different than cold water?
|
I am assuming that you are asking about different sounds when you open a faucet, not pouring water from one cup to another.
& #x200B;
The sound you hear when you turn on a faucet is caused by vibrations made in the water and the pipes carrying it. The human ear is very good at detecting different frequencies of sound and this is how we can tell the difference between music notes, etc. Everything has a natural frequency, like a tuning fork. Different size tuning forks make different notes.
& #x200B;
You can consider the hot and cold water piping systems like they are two different tuning forks, because the piping is not exactly the same and they are also at different temperatures. So, the hot and cold water piping vibrates at different frequencies, making different sounds, similar to two separate tuning forks making different sounds.
|
91446806-516b-4e39-9e8f-f12df6b01ada
|
bo8q86
|
How can Coffee be Caffeine Free?
|
70% of all decaffeinated coffee is done so with solvents, either methylene chloride, ethyl acetate, or carbon dioxide. There are 4 methods used today, one without solvent. All are done to unroasted "green" beans. All processes use water, which itself is a solvent, is not selective, and will dissolve and remove flavorful compounds.
& #x200B;
The most common method is to soak the beans in water, then put them under 1k psi of carbon dioxide, which acts as a solvent that selectively binds to and removes the caffeine. The carbonated water is pumped to another vessel where the pressure is released, dropping the caffeine from suspension.
& #x200B;
Another method \*nearly\* boils the beans for hours, which extracts the caffeine from the oils. The beans are then transferred over to a wash for 10 hours using either of the other chemicals mentioned above, which selectively bonds with the caffeine molecule. The beans are removed and heated to evaporate the solvents along with the caffeine. The beans are then reintroduced to the original soaking liquid to get most of the oils and flavor compounds back.
& #x200B;
Yet another method, the beans are steamed for 30 minutes to open their pours, washed for 10 hours in the solvents, and then steamed again to evaporate them off.
& #x200B;
The final method is the Swiss Water Process. In this process, boil water from a previous batch are used to boil green beans from the current batch. The water is already saturated with flavor compounds, so they can't dissolve from the beans. But since there's no caffeine in the solution, it can dissolve. The water is passed through a charcoal filter that captures the large caffeine molecules but lets smaller flavor compounds and oils to pass.
& #x200B;
The Swiss Water Process is the only method that is certified both organic and kosher, there is only one facility in Canada that uses it, and the decaffeinated coffee will be labeled SWISS WATER. If the coffee is labeled as "naturally decaffeinated", it was decaffeinated using ethyl acetate, since this compound happens to appear in minute traces in ripened fruit, though make no mistake: this chemical was synthesized in bulk for industrial purposes, there's nothing natural about it.
& #x200B;
The liquid chemical solvents evaporate at temperatures around 104F, so considering roasting occurs at about 400F, there is effectively no chance any of it makes it into your cup.
& #x200B;
At least the more expensive processes do try to preserve the flavorful compounds by either reintroducing them or preventing their extraction in the first place. The most common, the CO2 method, makes no such effort. This is mostly why decaf tastes so bad. Decaffeinated coffee is also notoriously difficult to roast, since it behaves unpredictably, and is already browned due to the previous processes.
|
e0dcff79-55f7-4b8b-ac86-5037b01f5d7b
|
bo94z3
|
How does the US political power structure interact with itself during conflict?
|
There are a number of factors including formal and informal structures and powers. Congress holds the budget, all legislative power, and technically the ability to arrest and jail individuals that won’t submit to inquiry.
The Executive has a lot of influence publicly and can control or at least administer most of the civil servant bureaucracy.
The Judiciary is able to overturn legislation based on Constitutionality and try federal criminal proceedings.
In truth the system has some answers but there are two major problems with forcing the issue:
1. Anything done will escalate the already divisive nature of politics and probably result in a continued pattern of both sides constantly investing and trying the other.
2. American Political Parties have become full on political machines and they benefit greatly from the current status quo so doing anything other than making noise to appease their constituency isn’t in their interests.
If you’re asking what can be done to Trump:
The President has some legal immunity while in office. Congress could start impeachment proceedings but that doesn’t force the President from office. Really you could only charge him after he left office and given the way the statute of limitations works you might not actually be able to do anything to him.
In reality the various branches of government don’t have a lot of power over each other. This is part of the reason any information of them can only do so much and there is a lot of arguing. Each needs one or both of the others to cooperate with it to do anything.
In not directly attacking each other, Congress has a lot of power to check the President. The President has no legislative power. He needs Congress to pass laws to enact his policies and promises. He also needs Congress for war declarations and authorization for military activities that last longer than 90 days. The President has the power to veto any law Congress passes and is able to change some domestic policies on his own. So mostly what happens is nothing. They both refuse to work together on anything so nothing gets done.
The real unsung “hero” in all this is that the American bureaucracy and institutions(formal and otherwise) have blocked and resisted a lot of orders that were both technically illegal and just normative wrong. That said, this means the only thing checking the situation are the collective moral consciences of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. An while somewhat effective, in cases like the FCC or EPA the political appointees have done a lot of lasting damage.
Basically what happens now is we ride it out. Either the system can weather this or it cannot. So far it seems like it can, which is honestly impressive and more than I expected. Hopefully this whole thing is motivating and gets people more interested in politics as an aspect of their lives because America’s public and governmental institutions have been in disarray for awhile. Involvement and education are the only way to fix that.
|
5c929ae9-38b0-4bb0-b6d4-b24b9670659d
|
bo97e1
|
Why does a healthy cell sometimes produce a cancer cell
|
So every time your cells divide, they need to make a copy of the DNA in the cell. This process isn’t full-proof though, and errors can happen. These errors usually don’t cause problems, since small errors might not make any difference to how the cell operates. The problem comes when too many errors start to occur and the cell completely malfunctions. Your body can sometimes recognize this malfunctioning cells and get rid of them, but sometimes these cells multiply too fast or are able to hide themselves from being destroyed.
Radiation, smoking, chemicals, and a lot of other things can cause more errors to happen in your DNA.
|
7466f7f7-466b-4ca5-8f20-5d17114a765a
|
bo9dbs
|
Why are micro-plastics such a big deal in the seas and oceans?
|
Two ways they are harmful is by screwing up the food chain and by mimicking natural chemicals. If the plastics are the right size, they will by eaten by filter feeding animals. Since this isn's food, it can eventually kill those organisms. Since they are at the bottom of the food chain, everything from there up is affected. Also, they can sometimes mimic natural molecules such as hormones, which can screw up lots of organisms in often horrible ways
|
1986926b-3424-43fc-b7b4-3bb4d143696d
|
bo9htu
|
What is NGNIX?
|
NGINX is a http web and proxy server. Basically, it allows you to host websites on a computer hooked up to a network. It also serves as a _reverse_ proxy server, allowing you to redirect all incoming HTTP(S) traffic to different servers based on rules or conditions (like subdomain headings).
|
3cf846a7-e309-44a0-883c-0c23884ee370
|
bo9mck
|
What are Dead Sea Minerals and why do products advertise having them?
|
Products will advertise any darn thing if it will entice some folks to buy the product. In the case of [Dead Sea products](_URL_0_ ), you're looking at salt, mud, and potash. These are common things used in many cosmetics, so if you need a new marketing angle, and your country is adjacent to the Dead Sea, then there you go.
|
69613075-3757-47ea-b429-8d611f45a0a5
|
bo9oqv
|
When something is loading, why does it get stuck at 99%, instead of any other part of the loading process?
|
The programmer was lazy. Take the size of the file and divide by how much you've collected = > progress bar. However, when you get the last block, you have to do a bunch of extra things, like copy your temporary file into the real file location, add the last block, and then delete the temp file and clean up all those disk directories. Those things take time, but it's mostly operating system time. Updating the progress bar would only take more time, and the user is grumpy already about how long it's taking.
|
08f9caee-17a1-4584-888f-c4b3ba5436ab
|
boa0dg
|
How does our body seperate visceral fat and subcutaneous fat?
|
Different layers of fat, and especially organs, are usually separated by fascia, which are membranes of connective tissue.
Fascia pretty much helps to separate all the insides of the body.
|
0aac6be0-fe32-4f91-9403-eadc53291fd4
|
boa2ul
|
What's the origin of the word fixing/fixin' when used in a statement such as "I'm fixin' to go to the store"?
|
From [EtymOnline](_URL_0_):
& #x200B;
> fix (v.) late 14c., "set (one's eyes or mind) on something," probably from _URL_1_. \*fixer, from fixe "fixed," from L. fixus "fixed, fast, immovable, established, settled," pp. of figere "to fix, fasten," from PIE base \*dhigw- "to stick, to fix." Sense of "fasten, attach" is c.1400; that of "settle, assign" is pre-1500 and evolved into "adjust, arrange" (1660s), then "repair" (1737). Sense of "tamper with" (a fight, a jury, etc.) is 1790. As euphemism for "castrate a pet" it dates from 1930. Related: Fixed; fixedly (1590s); fixing.
Overall, it seems like a southern term that evolved from: *arranging oneself's affairs before doing* something. It could also come from the idea of "*fixating"* on something.
|
34ec39a1-a896-45c4-a72d-c2c86024d5c7
|
boa4m4
|
Why do antidepressants have an impact on sexual appetite, performance, and sensations?
|
Antidepressants cause side affects much like other medications can. Think of your body working because of a series of signals. One thing will trigger one signal to work, which will trigger another, which will trigger another. Even very simple processes while have a lot of signals being triggered to make things happen. Medicines can make some of these signals turn on and off. Maybe they turn off the first signal or the last signal in a pathway, either way they have stopped the process from happening.
There are a few problems with this, sometimes one signal will trigger more than one thing, so turning on that signal may turn on others as well. Also some drugs can turn on the right signaled pathway and another unrelated pathway. Designing drugs can be extremely different since we don’t know all of these pathways and what all of them do. It’s also very hard to predict how many of these paydays a drug can affect.
TLDR: your body is complicated. A lot of things are connected. Designing drugs is hard.
|
1ade94f7-fa19-4f74-8b14-8e73d1dcc9d3
|
boa711
|
How does the brain develop personality?
|
Your life is an endless set of ongoing probabilities and outcomes. This experience, channelled through a brain with a number of particular derivations established through genetics, combine to give you a unique means of interacting with the world, hence, a personality.
|
869dbcc8-e365-46a9-9170-e1e3d7b0198e
|
boa962
|
Which evidence made us believe that dinosaurs were extinguished by a meteor?
|
Couple of things...
1) There's a significant layer of iridium in the rock layers between the two time periods between dinosaurs and non-dinosaurs. Iridium is not common on earth but is common in meteors.
2) There's a huge meteor crater off the Yucatan Penninsula that dates to the same time as the layer of iridium.
|
06c07554-e9a1-4f12-aca6-95e1ebdb3ed8
|
boac9c
|
What are wisdom teeth, and why do they typically get removed?
|
Extra teeth we no longer need as we have evolved since being cavemen. They don’t need removed unless they are growing in awkward and pushing the other teeth or coming in sideways or you’re unable to keep them clean due to where they are. Our ancestors had bigger jaws than us.
|
d6a65475-863c-4dc9-8526-726d6b8738fd
|
boaip4
|
What actually is energy?
|
I don't think you're gonna get a good answer with such a broad question. That's like asking "what is matter?" Energy is heat, cold, light, sound, radiation, etc. But there's waaaay more to it.
|
b9d7b3c9-1ce0-4a0d-94a5-d303d103287d
|
boaj5c
|
how do major data centers generate enough heat to take up 3-4% of the worlds energy in cooling costs?
|
Computers are very good at turning electricity into heat. In a data center, there's generally no way to exhaust hot air and replace it with cool air, so you need to have some sort of cooling plant/air conditioning. Computers get very pissed off if they get hot. The data center where my company has its gear had an issue with the cooling system a few months ago and the temperature went from normal operating temperatures to servers getting pissed off and shutting down from overheating in 5 minutes.
|
0bc549e2-6f45-4615-94f2-400532aa5e8e
|
boajz5
|
How do transition glasses work?
|
There's a material (like silver chloride) in the lens which can be in two different states. In the ground state, the material is transparent, in the energized state it's opaque. Exposing the material to the very bright light from the sun provides enough energy to transition the material from the ground state to the energized state, becoming opaque. When no longer exposed, the material favors the lower energy state and eventually loses energy becoming transparent again.
|
db943c3e-d5d1-4945-81b0-26f71cdf6265
|
boakko
|
Why does hot liquid cool down when you stir it?
|
The bigger the difference in temperature between two bodies, the fasture heat moves between them. Just like the bigger the difference in height between the top and bottom of a hill, the faster you slide down it.
When a hot liquid sits, the difference in temperature between the top of the liquid and the air around it is really high so energy moves from the liquid to the air really fast.
Over time, as heat moves from the top of the liquid to the air, the air above the liquid gets warmer, and the top of the liquid gets cooler. The lower part of the liquid is hotter, but since the liquid isn't moving, the heat doesn't move around much either in the liquid.
So you stir it up to mix that hot deeper part of the liquid with the cooler top part, so now the top part is hot again, so it starts moving heat to the air quickly again.
|
3f53d93a-9db0-4a01-8606-b2fff2c8da69
|
boam44
|
Why is Circumcision Performed So widely around the world by medical Professionals?
|
Because a guy by the name of John Kellogg (yes, the guy that invented Corn Flakes) thought that performing circumcisions would reduce the likelihood that boys would want to masturbate, an activity seen as a sin and impure. Also, corn flakes were created as a bland food thought to discourage such sinful desires.
This is absolutely not a joke. He popularized the idea in the United States, it became widespread, and has remained so for the most part because that's what "normal penises" looked like to people. If you yourself were circumcised and your father was circumcised, chances are you'd follow suit if that's more or less what everyone did.
|
4d71bb5c-a212-461e-aac0-5fd74524b558
|
boavry
|
why is it so hard to move your ring finger independently?
|
There are muscles that control the movement of your fingers. Your pointer, pinky, and thumb all have independent muscles. However, both your middle and ring finger share muscles with other fingers.
|
2211bb9f-4667-43c7-b76e-160eb748fde1
|
bob4gg
|
What really are proteins?
|
Proteins are made up of amino acids. Our bodies can make some amino acids, but not all of them, and therefore we must get some through diet. These are dubbed "essential amino acids."
We can't digest all proteins in the world, you need special little biological contraptions called enzymes to break down proteins, and other biological material. Not all species have the same enzymes, which is why some animals can eat things other animals can't, or why some things are poisonous to some animals, and not others (example, we all eat chocolate, but dogs can't/shouldn't).
My point is don't go eating fingernails for protein
Proteins, in combination with fats, sugars, minerals, etc. make up all the small parts of the cells.
Our cells need them to communicate, to build structures, to allow the passage of other small things through channels, and all around they are used to build stuff the cell needs to do work, which can be inside or outside the cell itself.
|
602a4958-0100-4e2a-9a89-e3bc5d451985
|
bobzrz
|
How does monopolistic competition differ from a regular monopoly / oligopoly?
|
Here's the various environments in roughly the order you can/should learn them
**Perfect Competition:** In this environment, several producers make *the exact same good*. Because the output from any firm is a perfect substitute for the output from any other firm, no producer has any leeway to charge a price above exactly what it cost to produce the good.
**Monopoly:** In this environment, only one firm produces the good. Because they don't face any competition, they are free to set a price above cost and will typically do so. An industry dominated by a monopoly will have higher prices and less output than if that industry were competitive.
**Oligopoly:** In this environment, a very small number of producers make *the exact same good*. The consequences of this can vary depending on how exactly you model the "game" the companies play (see for example Cournot competition vs. Bertrand competition).
**Monopolistic Competition:** In this environment, several producers make *slightly different goods*. This is a departure from all of the models above. In anything above, we're thinking about a good like concrete. All concrete is basically the same, and the different firms that make concrete don't offer special "flavors" of it. Monopolistic competition applies more to the market for sodas. Some people just don't consider Coke and Pepsi to be perfect substitutes, so their producers can charge those people a bit more than it cost to make the sodas. The term "monopolistic competition" comes from the idea that each firm is a monopoly in its extremely specific market sector, but the markets are related enough that their choices are constrained by some competitive forces. Coke can charge *a bit more* than cost, but it can't charge a crazy high price and still expect to sell soda.
|
35d4ba65-29f8-4d93-976d-ef973e2beac5
|
boc15l
|
If atoms are mostly empty space, why can't light shine through and instead reflect off an opaque surface?
|
Oversimplification: The wavelength of light is wider than the atoms.
More detail: (still a simplification... this ignores quantum effects and stuff in non-metallic crystals)
Light behaves differently based on what the electrons in the material are doing. The electrons in molecules act like tiny antennas for light and and radio waves and absorb and emit them. Very small molecules tend to absorb high frequencies, and larger ones lower frequencies. This is why air is clear in the frequencies we see.
Metals are special. In metals, some of the electrons flow freely through the material so they absorb a great many frequencies. They act both like small or large molecules. Because the electrons flow freely, the electron wiggles just right to counter the electric field of the light and bounce it back. This is how you get metallic reflection. (Reflection in non-metallic objects is different).
Reflection in clear-ish things happens because of the antenna-like electrons. They wiggle which causes light to slow more in certain things and faster in others (the fastest is in empty space). Because of the different speeds, light bends when it reaches a boundary between two different materials, at an angle. Now light has some rules about how it moves, it has to conserve its momentum as it moves. This means that how hard it is moving in a direction has to stay the same. Because it’s slowed and bent, the new momentum is changed. To conserve momentum some light has to get reflected out so it all adds up to the original amount.
|
3a83e42a-92a5-4b5b-85e0-a9298ec5fa0c
|
bodfxl
|
How does oxygen reach the brain?
|
The red cells in your blood pick up oxygen in your lungs, then the heart pumps the blood around your body, including to the brain.
|
ae3a0a72-ebdc-4f8b-8e43-e0798f7e0959
|
bodmrm
|
Why can a 20 minute video take 5 minutes to upload onto YouTube and then the same video, take 40 minutes uploading to Google Drive?
|
This is a good question, considering Youtube is a subsidiary of Google and all. I can't believe it has anything to do with server speeds, Google probably has the fastest servers in the whole world. I don't upload to Youtube often, but I have noticed uploading to GDrive can take quite a while for larger files.
|
7e3a9ede-b2f6-457e-9058-31d9f8636bae
|
bodsse
|
why do volcanos cause lightning
|
Lightning is really just static electricity. Volcanoes throw a lot of dust and particles into the atmosphere that rub and bump into eachother and. Get enough of that at one time and they can build up a lot of static, just like rubbing your socks on the carpet, which discharges as lightning when it get to be too much.
|
40df5673-721d-42a5-a73a-8c37bcbb13b3
|
boe3rk
|
How do smartphones without hardware (home) buttons ensure that a swipe (or other appropriate gesture) actually works in an instance when an app is frozen or unresponsive?
|
Having a physical button wouldnt really solve that problem. After all, software needs to tell the phone what to do when a button is pressed. Which is really no different than interacting with your screen as far software in concerned. That's because most (all?) Physical buttons on a phone arent hard wired in like a light switch but are like your keyboard, where software can make lots of things different happen.
You press a button some electrical signals get sent.
You swipe on your screen some electrical signals get sent.
That said there's a lot of way to make sure only parts of your software freeze and other stuff still works, again doesnt really matter if it's a physical button or not. No idea what specifically they do.
|
0f7806f8-5b4c-4ba4-a8f1-f1eeda55140a
|
boe7fy
|
Do fish and insects feel pain differently? How do we know this scientifically?
|
Feeling pain differently than humans is a tricky claim to make because pain is an element of your being. We can index it by the physical phenomena accompanying pain, but the phenomena isnt the complex emotional state itself. This leads to issues, because ultimately we don't know any way to scientifically measure the way that human A and human B experience pain differently.
Pain is a complex temperamental state with emotional properties that we have limited conscious access to. You could make the claim that fish or insects experience pain differently, but it's as shallow of a claim as is that those species experience every aspect of reality differently than humans
|
cad30fc7-8b7f-473a-8e6d-fa66759b8421
|
boe8n1
|
Why sloths move so slowly, can they not move faster?
|
Sloths have evolved to conserve energy. They simply don't have the energy reserves for sustained high speed movement.
|
e89eafaf-7ff0-487c-93fa-95456042c605
|
boeevc
|
let’s say I wake up before my alarm 10 minutes early, and I decide to sneak in extra sleep. I either go back to sleep which feels like an hour when in reality only 5 minutes has passed or I sleep which feels like 5 mins when actually an hour has passed. Why does this occur?
|
There are different stages of sleep: stage 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM. If you wake up during REM (the dreaming stage basically), your body releases a chemical that prevents you from moving, and it might not have been fully removed yet.
If you don’t fully wake up i.e. hit snooze and immediately close your eyes again, you can jump back to REM and even resume your dream.
My guess is that if you woke up feeling like crap, and tried to sneak in extra sleep, you’ll probably still feel like crap because you’ll still be waking up from REM. If you woke up feeling meh, and snuck in extra sleep, you’ll wake up from a lighter stage of sleep and not feel like crap.
From experience though, your state of mind before going to sleep is a big factor, even bigger than that REM stuff, and I don’t know how it works, but it kinda makes sense evolutionarily that if you’re on alert for something, your body is more prepared to spring into action.
Edit: I’ve been informed that REM isn’t considered deep sleep
|
65c6d2d6-8cf6-48a1-a872-879786c1e77d
|
boef62
|
In the movie Intersetllar they said how one hour on the water planet was a year on Earth, so how does that actually work? I have never been able to figure it out.
|
Time moves more slowly around immensely massive objects. If I remember correctly, the water planet was orbiting a huge star or something.
|
5f5de555-d764-4a78-a5dc-72528b203174
|
boeobr
|
When gas becomes plasma, what is happening to the molecules?
|
The electrons become so energetic that they strip themselves away from the nuclei, essentially breaking first molecules and then atoms apart and becoming a soup of atomic nuclei and loose electrons.
|
a59f5afa-3b33-409f-9900-70ddbce04681
|
boesr1
|
Why when cooked in baked goods, eggs can last months at room temp without spoiling.
|
Well, getting something to 300 or 400 degrees has a very distinct effect of sterilizing things.
Things that will last a long time without spoiling usually have a couple of atributes, either they have no oxygen available, or no water available. Things like crackers and some cookies have a very low moisture content, too low to support mold and other toxins like that. Things like beef jerky also have very low moisture content and are packed with a little oxygen absorber in there. No oxygen means no mold.
Other things are packed by a machine where they inject nitrogen into the package, displacing all the air.
|
81b2a24b-5111-4079-b5e5-5649e4600f05
|
bof7lc
|
How do we see pictures in our minds?
|
The reality is everything is constructed in out mind. Outside stimuli are processed through our senses and rendered and processed to a 'reality' by our brain.
|
3d818e89-42c8-4d6f-883d-2399fbe01235
|
bofgot
|
Why does Nietzsche think that morality arises as a symptom of a decadent society? What should we strive for instead?
|
The time and energy required to develop and participate in the practice of morality only arises because resources are plentiful and we have the luxury for such things.
Starvation, for instance can make a normally honest person a theif. In times of intense need, morality becomes flexible.
|
d6c84d8c-310d-46a2-a699-768b005c721b
|
bofgsd
|
Why does having a higher aperture result in lower depth of field and vice versa?
|
Consider our eye, as a camera is essentially the same thing (just replace the pupil with the aperture and the retina with the film/sensor). [Here's a diagram](_URL_1_) of how the eyes focuses light. Without the lens, the light coming from a single point on the object (such as point A or point B) will be spread all over the retina, making the image blurry. The lens focuses the light so all the light emanating from a single point on the object will reach a single point on the retina (so all the light from points A & B on the object reach point a & b on the retina).
The problem with this is that the lens can only focus light at a certain distance - see the top part of [this diagram](_URL_0_). The light coming from objects at distance 2 is focused properly, but objects at other distances (1 & 3) are too close or too far away, resulting in a blur, like a lesser effect of not using a lens at all. However, with a smaller aperture (see bottom part of the diagram), even distances that aren't perfectly focused are still somewhat focused. The smaller the aperture, the less the blur effect is noticeable, so objects that are farther from the focus distance can still be in focus.
|
fe269e11-a0d8-4671-afda-b5935894cec5
|
bofjeb
|
Why does the body crave sugary/fatty/unhealthy food when it is clearly bad for you but not healthy stuff?
|
So the trick is that our bodies need some sugars, fats, and salts to survive. And until relatively recently, those were rare and hard to get! So, our bodies evolved over thousands of years to find salt, sugar and fat VERY tasty, so that we'd be incentivized to seek them out, to put in the effort to get those rare nutrients.
The problem is that ALL OF A SUDDEN, we've gone from salt, sugar and fat being rare and hard to get, to being so easy to get that we can overindulge on them! Our bodies are still in "Gotta get enough fat so we can survive the ice age" mode, and it'll take thousands more years for evolution to occur that would reverse that. So now we find these things tasty, but can get so much of them that we become unhealthy, something that was never a possibility for most of human history.
|
f2de8c15-3c1d-4d7d-b9b3-dd74bfe3198a
|
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