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7a7qux | Operation Gladio | "Gladio" was the code name for the NATO stay-behind operational plan in Italy during the Cold War. It involved intelligence, special forces, and regular army troops from Italy and other NATO members who, in the event of a successful Warsaw Pact invasion, would stay and fight an insurgent/resistance campaign. Other NATO and neutral countries had similar plans.
There is a lot of speculation about the involvement of various intelligence agencies (most notably the CIA) and the possible involvement of criminal groups. However as the details of the plan(s) are still secret, there is very little reliable information. | a9d6bde5-ac26-4a42-9b5f-3dc978bd616c |
1ljpyq | How does one fix their standing/sitting posture? | I assume you're talking about hunched shoulders--that's the main problem that people have. It's usually just a result of attitude and habit, not a medical problem.
I know that correcting your standing posture will help correct your sitting posture, so I'll target standing posture in particular.
A lot of it is confidence. When you walk, take up space. Be in charge. Swagger a little. When you swagger, you pick your head up, stand taller, and push your chest out (which forces your shoulders back).
Arch your back backward a little too. You'll feel it in your lower back.
Do this consciously for a while, and then it'll be come second nature.
You'll know you've succeeded when people tell you that you walk like you have a stick up your ass. Your friends will make fun a little (jesting), but people notice someone with good posture. It speaks volumes about their confidence.
Good luck! | daf02a8b-9534-427b-8503-8af5f34c7a04 |
33rl0s | How come going a certain speed on a roller coaster feels more intense than traveling in a car at the same speed? | While the speed of a roller-coaster may be the same, the quicker change in the direction of the speed (a.k.a. change in velocity due to the centripetal and centrifugal acceleration) cause more G-forces to be felt by the rider than while travelling in a car. | 94d89f7d-e940-4664-95f9-5bc42cbd1b21 |
3ws1ak | What is the biological reason to me feeling quite energetic after taking.a vitamin B complex plus iron supplement? Is this same through the entire vitamin supplement spectrum? | Placebo effect.
The vitamin B energy thing is a result of a basic misunderstanding of how the body works. It is true that your body uses vitamin B as a part of the process for extracting energy from foods. People look at this and assume that if vitamin B helps make energy, then more vitamin B means more energy! The problem is that's an incredibly simplistic and wrong way of looking at it.
Think of it like this. Energy extraction is a very long, complicated chemical reaction. At the end of the day, what you eat only has so much energy in it, and you only use so much energy. No amount of vitamin B can change these things. If your breakfast had 400 calories, your body uses exactly as much vitamin B as necessary to digest it. Pour on all the vitamin B you want, you're not getting more than 400 calories. At the same time, your body only uses a certain amount of energy to do anything. If you jog a mile and burn 150 calories, all the vitamin B in the world won't change that. To really dumb it down, think of the old baking soda and vinegar volcano. There's only so much baking soda in the volcano to react, you could dump and entire ocean's worth of vinegar on the thing, once there isn't anything left to react with it won't make a difference.
So taking vitamin B for energy, from a biological standpoint, does nothing unless you're suffering from a vitamin deficiency. If you eat a basic diet and don't have any medical problems, you aren't suffering from a vitamin B deficiency. Any energy boost your getting is a mental placebo effect, there is nothing biologically happening in your body to make you create, or burn more energy than you normally would. Unlike say caffeine, vitamin B is not a stimulant, and you won't see it advertised explicitly as such. There is no mechanism in which the B vitamins work that either creates more energy then you took in, or prevents drowsiness. | a53cf081-15c9-451e-b545-a08eaf78950b |
90ga55 | How do humans and other animals “feel” and predict changes in the weather? i.e rain. | The pressure changes with the weather, low pressure usually means rain. You know how you ears pop when you go up in a plane because of the high pressure. This is the same idea but with a change to low pressure. Some people who have achy joints can feel the pressure drop because there isn't as much pressure around their body from the air. Some people can "smell" rain if the wind is carrying it toward them. The same idea is for animals as well. | 5097d024-83ca-4346-a7cc-19da5bd17c80 |
3td0pu | Why moving air feels cold | The most energetic particles of water on your skin evaporate from liquid to gas, taking away their energy from your body and lowering the overall kinetic energy of the water on your skin. This is how heat transfers from skin to sweat, to water vapor. If the air is moving, it more effectively allows water to evaporate because it's constantly pushing the vapor away and replacing with new, dry air. It's easier to water to evaporate to dry than humid air. So a breeze in a super humid area won't feel so cold. | e52152be-16fb-4328-812f-ec51fba756ff |
5a2qtb | Why does shampoo made in the US have English and French translations as opposed to English and Spanish? | Canada has laws that products must be labeled in English and in French. Most US manufacturers also want to sell their items in Canada, so they just make one label for both countries. Most US manufacturers aren't trying to sell their products in Mexico, so they don't have a Spanish translation. | f79da25c-45de-4994-ae09-65bbc348de4c |
31nj1c | Why is my eyesight blurry when I first wake up in the morning? | Most likely they're very dry. Blinking a few times and creating tears should clear it up, if not, then artificial tears/saline should do the trick. | 90d30139-71bb-484d-8653-5e225e9dede5 |
271zo3 | Why do we touch our forehead when we did something stupid? | We don't all necessarily do that! Touching your forehead when you make a mistake is not universal, it is cultural! As a child, you may see your mother touch her forehead after an incident and you copy it! But for another child, say in a far off country, the child might observe his/her mother putting her hand on her waist, or stomping her feet, or a variety of different actions. That child will copy it and hold that as his/her cultural norm.
Where I am from, we virtually all say "achoo!" when we sneeze! However, as I traveled the globe, I have learned that this is not universal. How you sneeze is cultural! Different societies make different noises when they sneeze! | e45b1c97-d546-490b-a599-ece60cf6295f |
285iv6 | When the roof of your mouth and the inside of your ears get itchy from allergies, and you can never seem to reach the irritated area, what is it that is actually itchy? | Histamine release.
Your body produces histamines, which causes redness and itching when it triggers from thinking your body is being invaded. That allows your white blood cells to travel easier to remove the invaders. Histamines are produced all over your body.
It's like the redness you get from eating niacin on an empty stomach. It's why antihistamines prevent the issue, since they block the production.
I don't know why it especially affects certain body parts; perhaps someone else can answer that. But that's what causes it. | afd1b774-bfe5-4f68-bd3b-2feb0d4925f4 |
xh0x0 | The division between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett regarding "universal grammar." | Chompsky points to the fact that no one ever sits you down as a child and says "verbs work like this, sentences work like this..." the way we do with math and such, but all kids learn language perfectly. Because of this, Chompsky believes that out brain has a set of grammar which we are born with, like settings on a new computer. When we hear our native language, it changes the "original settings" to the rules of the language we hear. Like, your computer needs a default font setting, and you set it when you boot it up for the first time, hearing your language for the first time tells your brain "Hey verbs conjugate like this". Hope that helps with Chompsky's stuff. | 5f33609f-ac34-4bf9-a891-bebb7665789c |
56qtak | Legality of war | So, the first notion to dissuade yourself from is that there is international law on when a war is "legal" - there is not. Every country decides for itself whether a war is legal or not and imposes penalties if they feel it is "illegal." And there has not been a single case in the modern international system where such a decision has come down to anything other than international politics. For example, the League of Nations and UN Charter both forbid all offensive wars, but it only takes a quick glance at a history book to see how pointless both of those were/are.
In the US wars are governed by the Constitution, the War Powers Act, and the political reality of whats going on in the US. Under the constitution only Congress can declare a "war" but the President is free to commit troops to combat. Under the War Powers Act the President can only commit troops to combat for between 60-90 days without explicit Congressional approval.
The political reality of the situation is that the President can do whatever he wants, and then after 60 days Congress can exercise a sort of veto power over the President's actions, at which point he has an additional 30 days to remove the troops. But if the President commits troops and Congress takes no action then it is assumed that Congress has tacitly approved of the action and the troops stay. | b15e14f3-9722-4414-83b2-e23257deea33 |
1pse2m | Why is it that data is always unavailable for Greenland? | Greenland isn't an independent country, for starters. It's still part of Denmark. Considering that it has a population of 60,000 people, using the same data as for Denmark proper wouldn't be an accurate representation. | c5c03cfc-5ae7-4570-afbe-06fc01a85bbd |
4sv4wz | How do meteorologists predict temperatures? | They track past temperatures when conditions matched the current conditions and see what patterns emerge. They use those patterns to make educated guesses about what is going to happen in the future. Pretty much everything in weather forecasting works that way. | 1b53547a-9a55-49cb-9727-7a8a32b2e8e2 |
204bef | Why Are certain areas said to be not habitable for "centuries" due to a nuclear accident, but places like Hiroshima are habitable? | Different kinds of radiation. Bombs like Hiroshima generated a lot of quickly dissipating radiation, and very little long-lasting radiation. The Chernobyl reactor, on the other hand, put out lots of long-lasting radiation and very little short-lived radiation.
I don't know enough about the topic to be more specific, but that's my understanding of it. | f4bd68b4-7be0-4f89-a9ba-e7bdb07334c6 |
3yuxwd | what exactly is a rape kit ? | Its used to collect physical evidence from the victim, sometimes done by the victim themselves, more commonly by a nurse.
> Although a rape kit's contents may vary by location, it may include:
> Instructions
> Bags and sheets for evidence collection
> Swabs for collecting fluids from the lips, cheeks, thighs, vagina, anus, and buttocks
> Blood collection devices
> Comb used to collect hair and fiber from the victim’s body
> Clear glass slides
> Envelopes for preserving the victim’s clothes, head hair, pubic hair, and blood samples
> Nail pick for scraping debris from beneath the nails
> White sheets to catch physical evidence stripped from the body
> Documentation forms
> Labels | ee52b56c-2fcf-4db1-b090-72405efb41bd |
7borux | Gut bacteria and their relationship with depression. | 90% of serotonin is produced in your gut. Serotonin regulates mood. If your gut bacteria is off, this could cause depression and anxiety. Thus, sometimes a probiotic can help with this. | 3936a056-eeb8-4bae-a271-2381486b1710 |
8tf7mw | Where the term “late” to describe deceased came from | It's shorthand for "lately deceased". It's traditionally used to describe someone who has died recently, but as the abbreviated phrase eclipsed the full one in popular speech, it's come to describe anyone who is dead regardless of how recently they croaked. | aea5eb40-245d-4fb3-8540-f9ead26cd3c9 |
2smpd2 | How do people make high quality GIFs of live sporting events on TV only minutes after the action occurs? | The same way all gifs are made, just quickly. They probably have a capture card connected to their TV that they set to record the whole game, so after something "gifworthy" happens they just need to trim that part of the footage and convert it using any number of programs available online. | 75238f97-0189-474f-a6c9-ebbb15d51793 |
2b5mg1 | the evidence for and against global warming | The main evidence for global warming is simply that the average temperatures across the globe have been rising for decades. If you want to also include the evidence that humans are responsible and this isn't a natural cycle, the levels of CO2 in the air have skyrocketed to levels not seen in millions of years on Earth, this increase started around the time of the industrial revolution when fossil fuels started to be burned by humans, and the "accounting" that scientists have done to compare CO2 output from both human and natural factors seem to weigh heavily on the human factors.
As for evidence against it, there really isn't any. You'll hear some evidence cited by climate deniers, but as far as I know there isn't any evidence that doesn't have a peer-reviewed and published explanation for why it's either expected given the warming climate models, even if it's counter-intuitive, or why it's an erroneous interpretation of the data.
edit: I should add that you'll also hear people saying that there are climate scientists who have been caught fudging data to make their results look more alarming. This is true, but just because there's some dishonest scientists working in the field doesn't mean the entirety of climate science is a hoax or wrong. | 8c718337-9e17-479d-a9d3-08c0fdd32a6d |
1w1rec | Why are bodybuilders more ripped than powerlifters? | Lifters build up their body to lift. Bodybuilders build up their body to look ripped. | d344253a-d55b-445d-ae5e-c1e4e7b30596 |
4idxlg | What is the pump and dump method in stocks? | That's where you buy a bunch of worthless stocks at a very low price. This inflates their price a bit (pump) and gives the appearance of growth. Other people see the value increasing, and may buy more stocks, thinking the price will continue to rise. If enough suckers buy stock on top of yours, you can sell (dump) what you have for significantly more than you paid. This lowers the price of remaining stocks. You gain almost exactly what the other buyers lose.
Edit: Sometimes a financial institution or investment banker will take this a step further and advise clients to buy stocks they've (the banker) already invested in. Theft and fraud. | 90032e45-bf06-425c-b4ec-3b7841146844 |
jpa3z | Wave-Particle Duality | Sigh... I had a nice post going and my comp crashed, you have another explanation coming I just need to condense what I previously wrote.
To me it's easier to understand this if you know the history of the discoveries, and not just the abstract ideas. Here we go...
Up until the beginning of the 20th century, energy was considered to be in wave form. The equations for waves were well established and everyone was happy with it. Then Max Planck comes along.
Max is working on the problem of black body radiation. A black body in this case is a theoretical object which is 100% black. Now we know that black absorbs light more than white does. Wearing a black shirt on a hot day will tell you this. So this black body is absorbing 100% of the light being directed towards it.
If we take the example of metal, you can see that when we heat it up it begins to emit color. Color is just a perception of the strength of a wave. Red has the lowest amount of energy and blue is the highest. As the black body continues to absorb energy it will emit red light and continue on to blue as it gains more energy. According to the wave theory this should continue down the electromagnetic spectrum and the black body should start emitting UV light and so on. But the experiments did not match the theory.
Planck was attempting to describe the results of the experiment when he decided to take a new course of action. Now he had worked on this for a long time and was a diehard wave supporter. In almost a desperate effort to solve this problem he imagined that instead of waves, the energy being released from the black body was composed of individual units of energy, or quanta. When he attempted to solve the problem this way it worked.
This is the beginning of quantum physics, or physics of the quanta. That is how revolutionary this idea was. From now on I will say particle instead of quanta. Planck won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Now Planck didn't actually believe that the energy was in particle form. He thought it was just a mathematical trick to solve the problem and that it didn't actually reflect reality.
The thing is, he didn't disprove waves with this theory. The wave equations still worked in many applications and this was a problem. How could it be both?
A few years pass and a guy named Albert Einstein comes along. He discovers what we call the photoelectric effect. Einstein was looking at what happens when light interacts with a metal. It was known that shining light on objects could cause electrons to emit from the object, but there was one big problem. When you increased the intensity of the light, wave theory predicted that more electrons would be knocked away from the material. When I say intensity I mean the overall amount. The light stayed the same, let's say it was red, but there was just more red light.
So lets say you shine red light on the surface and no electrons get kicked out of the material. The idea was that shining more red light would eventually kick some electrons out. This didn't work, no matter how much red light they used.
If the light were interacting as waves, the additionally intensity should have produced some constructive interference at certain points, as well as destructive. So some areas of the material would receive little energy because that area happened to be located where destructive interference occured. The energy would be cancelled out, but on the other end there should be some spots where the energy increased due to the combination of the waves. This is why they thought increasing the amount of waves would produce areas which were struck with higher energies, but this didn't happen.
Einstein figured out that it was the size of the wavelength which mattered, not how much of it was used. Red light was not strong enough to kick electrons out. This makes sense when you think of the individual particles or photons. It's as if I had bullets made of paper. I can shoot a million of them at you and it's still not going to penetrate your skin. When Einstein increased the wavelength, or energy of the wave, he found that electrons started showing up.
His explanation came back to the particles that Planck had used to solve his black body problem. If instead of waves, light was composed of particles, then each unit, or photon, could only have so much energy. No matter how many photons you emitted, they would all have the same amount of energy because their wavelength was the same. If the photons didn't have enough energy, then not a single one of them was capable of pushing out the electron. By increasing the wavelength, the electrons were kicked out of the material because the photons struck the atoms with enough energy to dislodge the electron.
Einstein won the Nobel Prize for this.
Ok, so now everyone is really freaking out. Now we have an experiment which directly demonstrates the idea of the quanta or particle. Scientists began to question the previous wave and electromagnetic equations, namely Maxwell's equations. Maxwell basically unified electricity and magnetism, this was an enormous task and he won a Nobel Prize as well. The reason they received the initial attention was because they were pretty new, but testing confirmed that they were in fact correct.
Next comes a man named Louis deBroglie (de-broy). He was a rich Frenchmen who decided to build his own labs and study. As he researched Einsteins work he became convinced that light was literally both a wave and a particle. The people around him were not happy about this and it almost cost him his doctorate. Had Einstein not come to Paris to basically say "hey this is a pretty cool idea, he might have something here." who knows what would have happened to deBroglie.
(To be continued with the Double Slit and how deBroglie helped explain it. If there is something I did not make clear in the above let me know and I'll try to explain it a different way.)
EDIT: I keep feeling like I need to draw some of these explanations. I'm about to hook up my Wacom and try to condense this down to some figures. I can't stress enough how simple in principle some of these experiements are. Part of the initial difficulty was how counter-intuitive some of these concepts were at the time of their discoveries (and still today but more so then)
EDIT2: Doing some Sunday family stuff but I will post later, i drew up some of this and I think it makes more sense when you can see exactly what I mean by black body radiation and the photoelectric effect. Again, I talk about the history because it gives an understanding of why it looks like a particle or why it looks like a wave. | d9cae0c0-2eb3-43be-813a-46d99e5704ee |
4ll0ty | What makes a song more complex than another? | There are many determining factors in deeming a song complex. For instance, a simple C G A F chord progression with a guitar, bass and drums isn't quite as complex as a unique chord progression with an orchestra behind it. I'm not 100% sure what you're asking but I hope that helped answer your question. | 43150722-7619-47a2-8426-2737aa58c55d |
16kmwj | What happens to illegal drugs after they are seized by law enforcement? | They get stored in the police's evidence rooms and their files are put into archives. Then, they are sent to this big oven for incineration in a more central police station. My mom works with this stuff. | 6b1e62c0-0de3-42c9-b341-534f737d5ab9 |
4010he | why in some countries it is left lane drive and in some it is right? what are the advantages of right/left lane driving? | left side driving if more often than not a british thing, or a it happends in a country that used to be a british colony. when there still was knights on horses out on the road, the knights prefered to ride on the side of the road where they could use their sword arm(the right arm) without pullign the sword into bushes. it would also be possible to fight an oncomming attacker on horse. it also redused the risk of their scabbard hitting oncomming people.
when it comes to left side driving, it is a lot easier (for right handed people) to mount a horse from the left side. if they had right side riding, they would have to stay in the middle of the road to mount the horse. when riding with an wagon you would prefer sitting on the left back of the horse, to controll the wagon so it would not fall of the side of the road.
source: _URL_0_ | 9193c854-d590-4761-9833-727630e36701 |
6ys3yn | How were people able to make accurate depictions and maps of different continents in a time before satellites? | They would do it by surveying. That is going out with tools to look at and measure things directly. And using some math to estimate heights, distances, etc. | d8737f07-4717-4741-9e96-8980252e84fc |
3esbux | Why is it that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seem to be the leading presidential candidates when it seems that public opinion of both is very low? | First, this is how it always is this early in campaign season. Anyone with a little bit of name recognition immediately is at the forefront, regardless of their quality as a candidate or likelihood to do well long term.
But more to the point, it's because we don't cast negative votes.
If 20% of the people love you, but 80% hate you, you don't get a score of -60. You get a score of +20. Those 80% who hate you are going to be divided up among a bunch of other candidates, or will just be left undecided. +20 is enough to be the frontrunner early on in primary season.
Note that general elections are different. A negative opinion often converts into a vote for the other guy. So now, those 80% who hate you vote for the one leading opponent and you easily lose. | 9de03b68-a90d-478e-bc28-c0683c220e66 |
1ghhle | Why Australia has a notoriously bad internet connection? | There are a lot of things not working in Australia's favor when it comes to internet connections.
1. They don't have many people, this means, especially for those Australians who live outside cities, that companies would not make a profit installing the infrastructure to give them fast service. A small town in the middle of the continent? You're lucky if your phone line even works.
2. Australia is an island, that means if your data needs to come from off the island, you need a satellite or an undersea cable to communicate, this adds to the ping.
3. Australia is mostly a data consumer instead of a producer or a peer. English language movies, music, and so on are made elsewhere on other continents and have to pay the toll to the undersea cable operator to get *to* the island. Since not as many people want data *from* Australia, service providers can't make a good *peering* arrangement (I won't charge you for my data if you don't charge me for the data I want.) and the extra cost goes to the consumer.
4. Australian politicians were weak on market enforcement. There were a couple major service providers that had a near duopoly on internet service, and they did mean things like charging lots of money for service, letting you download so much a month (quotas,) and making data used during "peak" hours even more expensive, because nobody was competing with them.
Only within the last 3 years or so has Australia gotten the lawmakers to agree to invest in a [National Broadband Network](_URL_0_) for their citizens, and things are slowly improving. | 13a3d794-228d-4ec7-8649-361736661ffa |
2y5niw | why is my school so sensitive to religion amongst students, but also purposely doesn't serve meat on Fridays? | A lot of schools focus on creating an inclusive space for all students and staff.
This includes recognizing traditions and cultural practises, such as 'meatless Fridays' during Lent. | 9ccb2fbe-1aff-4ea7-b1a5-a19abba8da8d |
1ptvlm | Why is it so hard to text with cold hands? | When your body gets cold blood circulation to your extremeties (hands, fingers, feet, legs) is partially cut off in order to preserve the heat near the core of your body where the most vital organs are.
With less blood your fingers and hands become less sensitive and less mobile and thus it makes it harder to text.
Sort of related: Consumption of alcohol widens your blood vessels and should make it easier for you to text in cold weather. Although this effect may be kind of inhibited by getting drunk as well. | 986c60ab-b5ab-409a-88ac-02a943c2a3f7 |
3ihpkf | Where did smoking terms like "high" or "stoned" originate? | As far back as 1620, "high" meant "euphorically drunk" (i.e., on alcohol). It's that stage of drinking where you're still cheerful: your spirits are high. It didn't come to be used for other drugs until the 1930s.
"Stoned" also originally meant "drunk" and was later transferred to being intoxicated on cannabis. I can find references to it in the first meaning to the late 18th century (as "stone drunk"), but why "stone" I'm not sure. One possibility is that it's connected with phrases like "stone-deaf", which means "completely unable to hear". Maybe "stone drunk" originally meant that you were so drunk, you were totally out of it, perhaps even unconscious. | 878cbcba-98ea-4521-8cca-79b540461758 |
82p0da | Is there a difference between things that "glow" and things that only show up under UV light? What is the mechanism for each? | Glow in the dark = Phosphorescence
Show up under UV = Fluorescence
From Wiki "The most striking example of fluorescence occurs when the absorbed radiation is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, and thus invisible to the human eye, while the emitted light is in the visible region, which gives the fluorescent substance a distinct color that can only be seen when exposed to UV light."
So whats the mechanism? When the molecule absorbs the photon (light) it takes that light energy and gives it to an electron. The molecule then releases the energy by emitting a new photon. There is some energy loss through vibration relaxation so the 'new light' is longer in wavelength.
Fluorescence happens faster than you can blink, like in real time. Phosphorescence can take hours to for the molecule to emit the new photon. This is because in Phosphorescence the electron goes into what is called a 'forbidden state'. See this [wiki] page(_URL_0_) | e8ffe04d-d901-4d7d-86d3-3075a33af1ed |
7lt3lq | why do ludicrously over-priced listings exist on sites like Amazon, even for common, nondescript products? | The most common reason for this is that these items are have code/algorithms from their owners that continually adjust the price relative to some other items, and occasionally they mess up and end up at these crazy values.
In the past there were some funny situations that people found of algorithms selling the same or similar products fighting against each other with issues and prices get hilarious like multiple sellers selling the same thing from over $1M for some random book or food item that is otherwise like $20. | 56899c8f-08cd-4b84-bb9f-c4653adf5fbd |
7wsvd7 | Why does stretching when you wake up feel so good? | Your joints’ metabolism works through the liquid in the joints. When they are not moving and the fluid stays still, the process makes the liquid have the metabolites, which makes the cartilages somewhat sore. So when you stretch and the fluid gets stirred around, you feel the refreshment.
A similar thing happens during pregnancy when the child’s metabolites gather in the woman’s body overnight causing morning sickness | 0e94ac1e-1866-4e13-a1c0-308f683ddc90 |
51pu6y | How do big companies prevent petty theft from employees? | Registers are computerized and have a log of all the transactions. Each clerk starts with a fixed quantity of cash and it gets counted at the end of the shift. | 1fb6ff48-696b-4712-a8e6-deb023544a63 |
nan | nan | nan | 3cf846a7-e309-44a0-883c-0c23884ee370 |
3ze4ca | Why does the the human mind ignore the second "the"? | There's a phenomenon called [attentional blink](_URL_0_) where, when you're rapidly presented with stimuli, your brain will perceive two identical stimuli in a row as a single stimulus. Basically, your brain sees "the the" and assumes there was only one.
In nature, identical stimuli in rapid succession are vanishingly rare - if you see two crouching tigers from the same angle and in the same position in a quarter of a second, it's much more likely there was only one tiger and you just blinked; so your brain edits your perceptions with that in mind. | fb6f34ea-e11a-4ab9-b87f-69e9e8de2b9e |
3d7t9l | why do cats have to smell everything? Why can't they just look at the things? | The cat's response:
Why do humans have to look at everything? Why can't they just smell things?
Each of your senses gives you a wealth of information. Humans are very visually-based creatures, for a variety of reasons (leading evolutionary theories that I've heard have to do with brachiation - swinging through trees, which means we have to SEE the trees to grab them; and avoiding dangerous creatures, specifically being able to SEE snakes and spiders - because they're hard to smell or hear).
Cats, on the other hand, have evolved to fit a different niche. Humans, as relatives of apes, evolved to mostly eat plants and bugs, which don't require a lot of hunting, so we don't need a particularly great sense of smell, since we just kind of look for a plant to eat. Cats are obligate carnivores: they *must* eat meat (even dogs don't *have* to eat meat if you give them the right vegetarian diet). So they have to hunt, and that means tracking down small critters, which relies a lot on smell.
We also evolved a very complex society, and we use sound to communicate mostly. Cats do use sound, but they also use a lot of chemical signals, too. That also requires smell. Using sound was better for us, so again, our noses aren't quite so good.
All of that is to say that there's a lot of information available through smell that isn't available through sight, and vice versa. We don't need the smell information, so our noses aren't as good. But cats do, so they spend a lot of time sniffing around. | 8c12521c-1bf0-4e34-bc6f-62aa55776095 |
2klvnk | Which virus scanners to avoid, which to use, what should I look out for. | Let me fix your account with Webroot. PM me your e-mail address you used to register and I will see what I can do. | 6d5b7229-87cf-40fc-a369-e396327e3922 |
3tpmgu | Why isn't there a spending limit in US political campaigns like a salary cap in sports? | [There are.](_URL_0_) Problem is they have so many loopholes, candidates still amass over 500 million USD. | db23e4a1-63f7-4c2c-b795-0a70c31ab12e |
5nt308 | What is the logic behind AI in strategy games such as Starcraft or Xcom. | In starcraft, each unit has a "counter-unit". At the highest difficulty, an AI will likely have one of its workers or cheap units in your base, watching your build, while simultaneously building the counter to what you have. This is how it decides upon the macro side of the game. For the micro (individual skirmishes or fights), each unit has a given value to variables such as damage, range, and speed, and the AI can make a decision to fight, run, or a combination of the two based on the units it owns and the units you own in each respective fight.
If you think about it, starcraft isn't a hard game to learn from a "what-to-do" standpoint of what you should be building and which fights to pick and which ones to run from. The hard part of the game is getting your ideas from your head to the game while managing everything simultaneously, but an AI can do this all instantly, making it quite difficult to best the hardest AI's. All it has to do is simply separate the big picture (buildings and units) from the small stuff (fights and movement).
Source: High master rank in starcraft with lots of bot games played as well. | e667297e-9c0e-4a91-8442-d7341382be91 |
1tl3g9 | Why Gluten-Free diets are so popular now | Eating a gluten-free diet is both extremely strict and generally devoid of foods that the average American binge eats. Most of the success of the diet isn't specifically due to the absence of gluten, but due to the dieter's restricted calorie intake and avoidance of nutrient-deficient foods.
Basically, you aren't healthy being gluten free because of the gluten- you're healthy because you stopped eating so much crap. | ee3e4c1c-346f-4063-9b72-8b2ce55e4f92 |
3tlqyj | Why don't any animals have to wipe their ass, but humans do? | Animals don't need to *wipe* their ass, because they lick it or rub it to the ground. Some animals don't feel the need to clean anus at all, because their shit is dry enough to not make a mess.
If humananimal wants to clean their ass, and they don't want to rub it to ground, hand need to be used, because tongue can't reach the hole. | f3e2dae1-6f68-42d6-b961-16b2461c5e57 |
1tc6rz | What is a quantam entanglement? | Let's say you have two pieces of chocolate. You know that one of them has caramel inside and one has nougat inside, but they look the same and there's no way to tell the difference. You give one to your friend. Your friend takes it on a trip far away. Later you bite into your chocolate and find out that it has caramel inside. You instantly know, without needing to communicate, that your friend's chocolate has nougat inside.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is essentially what quantum entanglement is about. | 8fe8145e-4085-4507-8bb1-2c876f76e68b |
56xubt | Why is fiberglass so itchy? | Fiberglass is literally made of glass fibers. Like tiny threads.
Glass is sharp, especially if it's the size of thread. So if it pokes you, it penetrates the top layers of the skin a little, and this causes irritation.
The fibers aren't thick or heavy enough to press in deeper so there's not much risk of them getting completely embedded in your skin. However if you're exposed to fiberglass all the time, like you work with it, fibers ending up all over your body and face can eventually get rubbed down deep into tissue and interfere with where new cells are made and this can cause problems, such as cancer. It's why if you touch a piece of broken fiberglass it feels itchy, but people who work on fiberglass production lines cover themselves in full body suits and masks as if it's toxic. | c8f02378-0dd4-484f-9a2b-13105dfabdcc |
5pxmx5 | Why are the majority of the reddit population male? | Why are most subreddit populations comprised of men moreso than women?
Check out the history of reddit: [Here](_URL_2_)
It's a lot of good content to read through. For example, check out the growth and popularity of subreddits over the history of reddit: [Here](_URL_0_)
Or here, take a look at reddit in [2007](_URL_1_).
Now, if you look at the data, the earliest popular subreddits were programming, science, politics, and porn. I won't get into why men are more likely to be discussing these topics/professions, that's a whole different ELI5, but because that tends to be the case, it is not rocket science to figure out why Reddit tends to be populated my men.
It's been cool that reddit has grown SOOOO much and now has better representation of women, but to understand why things are the way they are, you have to appreciate the history of a thing. Reddit began as a place to talk about computers, science, and boobs. That drew in a predominately male population for obvious reasons. | a5ef8050-2c43-427e-93a5-1933b3db2dd7 |
7b9ets | How Tax Havens Work | Tax shelters aren't so much used for income as for capital gains - if I own a company in the Cayman's and it makes a lot of money day trading then I only have to pay taxes on what shares of the company I sell - which qualify for a lower tax rate.
Unfortunately regular income is treated completely differently - your work reports your income to the government and they also withhold from your paycheck to pay your taxes, usually too much. There's no way to avoid that tax.
Even if you have a small nest egg that might benefit from a tax shelter you could never afford to set it up - you're talking around a million dollars to get a decent tax attorney and all the processing fees. | e23052c5-0285-4d80-b9d6-6daaeb5460f5 |
5rzsy9 | How did something like the holocaust and nazi's happen without the law finding out? | The Nazi's happened through the law, then they were the law, then the holocaust happened when there was no law, but nazi law. | 221309de-96af-49d4-8019-1302d10d0057 |
20665a | Can anyone explain the court case of R.A.V. V. St. Paul in simple man's terms? | A white juvenile (R. A. V.) burned a cross on a black family's lawn (if you're not from the US, that's a very strong message of hate dating back at least a century). At his trial, V.'s attorney moved for dismissal on grounds that this law was content based and the law violated V's first amendment rights (free speech) which was granted, this means V was not guilty of violating a law because the law was invalid.
The dismissal was appealed (meaning one side or the other asked for a higher court to review the decision to dismiss the case). In the US, the US Supreme court is the ultimate authority for appeals and the case eventually made it to that court.
At the Supreme court the 9 justices voted 9-0 that the dismissal order was correct, the law did violate the first amendment (though there were different views as to the specifics of how the violation occured). The important parts are that under the first amendment, political speech, even rephrensible political speech cannot be made illegal, absent a direct threat to someone. | 11ea07d2-74a7-4b67-a5bd-34fb9f11c81f |
3qbnfx | Why does a computer screen look pixelated and wavy on a digital camera shot? | The PPI (Pixels Per Inch) of the camera's sensor is battling with the PPI of the computer's screen. This is known as [Moire](_URL_0_). | d0ccff7c-6d97-45b1-90b0-4dcbd367dafc |
8f81kd | How does money laundering work? | You stole $5 from Mom. Mom will definitely know if you buy something from it. You tell Mom you walk the neighbor's dog for the weekend. You walk the dog, earn $5. Tell Mom you earned $10 walking the dog. | 5b084934-99b7-45c7-9326-dc0c3756c1f3 |
8q4xc3 | Why do most bigger men, i.e. bodybuilders, have deeper voices? | They don't. There's no correlation between the size of a person and the size of their vocal chords, which is what determines vocal pitch and timbre. | f6c837a6-2dac-4fe6-adc2-25606dc98bd4 |
1mydsi | why when I fall asleep I wake up with "sleep" in my eyes | Spiders climb up to the ceiling and have competitions to see which one can shit in your mouth first. It's also why your breath is so bad when you first wake up. True story. | 1a89cf52-8c69-49cb-b9e5-132ef1bde81b |
1gpnk6 | Meditation and how you would go about learning to understand and practise it? | when you are just starting out, audio recordings of guided meditation can be fantastic. few people have the mindfulness to just up and do it alone. it's kind of like riding a bike. takes practice and trust with yourself.
there's a lot of options and [\(unlike this recommendation\)](_URL_0_), they don't have to cost much / anything as they are [readily available online](_URL_1_). the trick, i think, is to find the voice in the guided meditation to your liking. that alone can make or break the whole thing!
ps. it's totally okay to fall asleep at first. no big deal. | f2aae200-eb52-4334-a961-5f7d618c4679 |
1ktuwj | How almost every book in a bookstore is written by 'New York Times Best-Selling author' | Confirmation bias. When you see that, you go "Huh, another one." When you don't, you ignore it.
Most books are *not* written by authors who've had books on the New York Times best-seller list. | 9d8c470e-87c6-4e5a-9f37-6e6599df2317 |
1vlydz | Why Does Conservation of Angular Momentum Happen? | Conservation laws are ultimately due to symmetries.
Since physical situations do not depend on how a system is orientated, this *rotational invariance* gives rise to the conservation of angular momentum. | cbaca6bc-f07f-4998-b1dc-38089d7d7130 |
553ucq | How does the whiskey and water trick work? | Density.
The water is more dense than the whisky. So water will weigh more than the whisky. They switch places since they are the same volume. The heavier water fills up the entire bottom glass, leaving the lighter whisky nowhere to go except up into the top glass. | 655297ec-e5ac-497c-985f-61f3247d2174 |
7fkp0v | What it means when people say "You can't make up lost sleep"? | The idea is that sleep isn't totally a + - system. Sleep is meant for helping with memory and body recovery. No matter what you do, if you don't sleep that night (and on a regular schedule) the damage will already be done. You can't work on memorizing something that's been gone for a day, and if you have bodily damage rest later may help, but will not do the same as resting that same day.
Sleep's properties and such are pretty widely argued, so everyone may give a slightly different answer, but regardless of the answer your body works on a daily cycle. Everything normal must be done in that daily cycle, if it's not done, it will never be done, since your body is then on to the next cycle. Imagine each day you're working at a warehouse and each day you're told to organize a specific range of shelves. If you skip a shelf, the next day you'll have a wide range of other things to do, and even if you get done with everything else and manage to get back to what you missed, you'll never be able to organize everything correctly, and if you don't have the directions like the day prior, could never do it. | bf12845b-4ad9-4ff9-9dbd-d928811b9a4d |
7zk4t9 | How can glass get fogged up from steam and frost but our eyes can't? | Fogged up glass happens when humid air gets in contact with a cold surface and condensates there.
Our eyes have a. a layer of water in front of them, that's because you keep blinking, and b. are not cold enough to cause the humid air to condensate. | d2348679-9ce9-4697-be77-ef812a090eb6 |
2ux0wn | How do animators pair up the voice recording with the character's lips? | Voiceovers are almost always done BEFORE animation, especially the finer points of animation like lip sync.
Properly lip syncing is all about understanding the four basic shapes the mouth makes while speaking : Open, Closed, Wide, and Narrow. With a few special exceptions (f, v, etc.) all phonemes fit roughly into these categories.
Example: "Tambourine"
Tam-Bow-Reen.
Tam: Narrow, Open.
Bow: Narrow, Closed (with extruded lips)
Reen: Wide, closed.
So really only three different shapes are necessary for that word. A huge mistake of amateur or beginning animators is to try to be super accurate to every single nuance of movement in the mouth and tongue. Not only is it a wast eof time and energy, it often ends up looking odd. We don't really look at people's mouths that much when we're talking and over-animating those movements often looks a little bizarre and distracts from more important things in the scene like eye movement and gesture.
Source: Am an animator, have a degree and everything (well okay, WAS an animator). | a9d76d01-cc8c-428a-8785-b9d224a19864 |
jtzft | LDAP | Its a giant phonebook that provides information about you to anything linked to use that phonebook. You can hook up computers to use this phonebook to look up details about you or someone else. It can also store/look up your password to make sure you are who you say you are.
The giant phonebook also classifies "people's" listings into other little tiny phonebooks like the Yellow Pages. This can make things a lot easier to organize, but is optional. | d78e5b8c-5447-4ec7-93d6-8c1ffdd315dd |
2xz365 | How do GPS systems enter all their road data? | A lot of it is pre-existing database information from municipalities and private firms. You can buy most of it for yourself too if you know where. Some systems also integrate a user updated database that can quickly track changes based on individual reports and third party tracking. | 279edd59-c276-4053-a26c-0da9ae40fbb9 |
24ovz9 | Why is the percentage of kids diagnosed with ADHD so high in places like America, but almost 0 in places like France? | We view it as a medical disorder, they view it at a personality trait. | 19d6789e-0411-48bc-91a1-32c25576dcc2 |
56axac | Military Patents, how are they enforced and why bother to make a patent? | These things are often designed and manufactured by private companies, and then sold to government customers. The government manufactures almost nothing itself. So all those tanks and planes and weapons are made by businesses like Boeing, Chrysler, Colt, etc. For example, for many decades Colt held the exclusive rights to manufacture M16 and M4 rifles for the military. Other manufacturers could not make a duplicate weapon without violating patent laws and the military's licensing agreement.
However, you are correct that any hostile country that really wanted to could copy our equipment. China and Russia don't care about things like patents and copyright laws in the first place, so nothing is really stopping them. | e1eadc0d-b1cd-40fa-a253-e6f54d29b772 |
6vr41v | Why do the Alps have more glaciers than the Rocky mountains if the Rocky Mountains have a comparable number of peaks at or over 13,000 Feet/4,000 meters? | There's an enormous difference in rainfall between the Rocky Mountains and the Alps. While these maps are pretty general, the difference is enough to be obvious.
[The Rockies](_URL_0_) are almost entirely in the 200-400mm range with only the Northern part of the chain in the 400-800mm range.
[The Alps](_URL_1_) appear to fall mostly in the ranges from 1000mm to 2000mm.
That's several times more precipitation (on average 3-4x). Glaciers are formed from precipitation that remains through the year, so with less precipitation, there's less snow and as a result fewer glaciers forming. | e216e990-0d6c-445d-943a-fc7ebe59145a |
2k4sv7 | What in the world is Half Life 3? | Half-Life is a series of video games by Valve.
The first game came out in 1998, and was a huge success. The second game came out in 2004 (after being delayed for over a year) and was also a huge success.
After the seconds game, Valve decided to create new sequels as three "episodes" (which were more like expansion to the second game). The first episode, titled "Half-Life 2: Episode 1", came out in 2006, and the next episode came out in 2007. They were both also very successful. However, the third episode never saw the light of day, and fans are still expecting it or Half-Life 3. Since Valve are very hush-hush about this, fans try to look for anything that might hint on a new game being developed.
You can read more here: _URL_0_ | 64d74a06-e10e-4194-b74e-a27c3619e37b |
tf3jg | the basics of the Mac vs. Pc debate, as unbiased as possible | It generally depends on what you need the computer for.
A lot of people just want to browse the internet, email, maybe put a photo slide show together, or throw a movie together with videos from their phone or flip camera. A Mac is really good for this. Their main desktop computer comes with a monitor -- no messy wires, just a clean, aesthetically pleasing desktop computer.
However, many professionals in specific fields tend to use Macs for varying reasons -- sometimes the software is a lot better (e.g. video editing), or because they're writing code on non-Microsoft based platforms and maybe want a unix based system, or they simply are buying into the culture, etc.
They're not exploit free or anything, but the difference in malware versus PCs is dramatic -- night and day difference. This may be particularly good for folks who aren't computer savvy and may end up infecting a PC but would be much less prone to do so for a Mac.
The laptops are really the shining stars in my opinion. Their battery life and power management are rarely approached by PC laptops and are overall pretty "cool" in terms of features and design.
The biggest downside to Macs are the price. Physically there isn't much difference anymore -- there used to be but these days its nearly the same kind of physical parts in a Mac as a PC. However, cost is definitely going to be prohibitive and that's very understandable. The other downside is a lack of software, notably games, but one-off programs for business applications are usually not going to be written for nor ported to the Mac. The silver lining with the software bit is that the software available tends to work really well because they have so much control over the physical parts -- it means they have a lot less variables in terms of random computer parts to have to deal with.
People that tend to really like macs: Older folks that want a simplified computing experience. College students. Graphic designers. Programmers/developers. Movie makers. People concerned with aesthetics. Hipsters.
On the other hand, PCs have the much bigger range. From bargain piles of junk to the crazy fast overclocked rigs, there's a big disparity in the PCs out there.
PCs have the software. Sure Mac has the most common/important stuff like microsoft office, but beyond that is where the deep and vast pool of programs for PC takes over. Now, many of those programs could be complete garbage, but the variety is out there.
PCs have the games. If you are a gamer, you're going to want a PC, or run bootcamp+windows on your Mac. While some games have native Mac support, the vast majority of games are written for Windows and Windows only.
You can upgrade PCs. In a desktop you could replace pretty much any major component if you wanted to. In a Mac, the only real upgrade easy to do that's not from the factory is memory... *maaaaybe* the hard drive depending on the model. On a PC you can extend the life of it by upgrading and replacing parts.
PCs are relatively cheap. If you want something basic to surf the internet and watch youtube videos you won't have to shell out a lot. Even if you went a bit further it would still be substantially cheaper than a Mac with similar hardware. But you can also go crazy and do a lot of neat custom stuff. The world of PCs simply opens before you.
People that tend to really like PCs: Gamers. Cheap people. People on a budget. Linux folks. Microsoft diehards. Mac haters. | 26ade8da-7547-465d-b874-97ca2bc7369a |
3mu0wh | Why are Americans forced to purchase pharmaceutical prescription drugs from America? | American's go to Canada all the time to buy drugs. It's technically illegal but the FDA generally turns a blind eye and I've never had a border guard ask me about prescription drugs. You generally need a Canadian Doctor to write the script for you but that is easy enough to get especially if you already have a script from a US doctor.
_URL_0_ | e076d1a3-b06a-4535-a3d3-0cdc7c304baf |
17gy9y | how come most high schools don't teach you how to do taxes or buy a house or car? | Some view school as the place you go to be taught academic subjects. Life skills such as cooking, changing the oil, doing taxes, etc. are viewed as skills most adults have and should pass on to their children. This is not necessarily what happens in reality, but it is the reason schools put less emphasis on life skills.
As time goes on, it seems like fewer people actually have what used to be considered basic life skills (most of my friends have no idea how to cook, yet a generation ago most people cooked their own food). But, what is in the school curriculum is, to a great extent, a political battle controlled by people who want to maintain the current societal structure, so common sense is rarely part of the decision. | 6eb88870-70fc-46f7-958a-284d396ef410 |
8lkgvt | Why aren’t the parents of minors who take their guns and use them in crimes held criminally responsible? | Sometimes, they are.
* [Parents charged after Wisconsin boy accidentally shoots, kills 9-year-old sister](_URL_3_)
* [Kentucky parents charged when 11-year-old son shot sister in the head.](_URL_4_)
* [Ashland Sheriff: Mother charged after 8-year-old shoots his 4-year-old sister](_URL_0_)
* [Parents charged in accidental shooting of boy, 3, in Englewood (Chicago)](_URL_2_)
[Current reports](_URL_1_) estimate about half of deaths in which children under 12 shot themselves or other children led to criminal charges. | d69984da-ab36-4532-805f-570239ba6f00 |
18y3uj | Can someone ELI5 the political turmoil that is going on in Italy? | As you may already know, we just had an year of technical government, that's coming to an end after Mario Monti resigned (but he stays in charge until elections), nominated and chosen by our President after Berlusconi's cabinet *fell*.
You may have noticed, that in Italy we have as many political parties ad you can think of, but just a few have national *popularity*, you can see all of them [here](_URL_0_).
The most important ones in this election are:
* Movimento 5 stelle: It's the political party of ex comedian Beppe Grillo. Basically, he's completely nuts, doesn't have any idea of how to run a country but it's pretty damn popular because he says (actually he shouts) what people want to hear, in one word: demagogic.
* Popolo della Libertà: It's Berlusconi, yes, AGAIN. He's the one who got all of us in trouble in the first place, but people keep voting him, why? For the same reason people support Grillo, he says what people want to hear, so as above: demagogic.
* Con Monti per l'Italia: Monti got Italy in it's worst shape, and tried relieve our economy (destroyed after years of Belusconi's bullshit), but he did it using extreme budget cuts and raising taxes, so he's not very popular, but IMHO he did what had to be done, after years of politicians doing what's best for them, not thinking about long term consequences, there's not other way out.
* Partito Democratico: Basically it's our main left wing party (or what remained of it), that's been the opposition for as long as I can remember (excepted for a couple of cabinets that didn't last), it's leader is Pierluigi Bersani.
The Elections are this weekend, but I don't think anyone will get the majority, in the parliament, they need to govern. | 299bac7a-37b5-48a5-9d45-7698d68be683 |
5z3fyh | What are the circles under the eyes caused by? Is it actually from a lack of sleep? | Caused mostly by genetics. The skin under our eyes is very thin. The darkness comes from blood filling in the blood vessels under the skin. No way to naturally get rid of them but they can be covered by makeup. Can look worse from lack of sleep, but also from too much sleep. | 05d5399f-bb4c-45f3-8c9a-8f214f1d2747 |
3ql2fr | Where does the stereotype of Canadians being very polite come from? | It comes from reality.
Canadians really are very polite.
Source: I'm from Scotland, I moved to Canada a few years ago. | 8119e110-5026-49de-b5dc-340beff2f233 |
1xcvvo | Why do we sometimes wake up with curvy lines randomly pressed into our body? | They're imprints in your skin from wrinkles in your sheets, or the way your skin is pressed against your bed. | 575e7bc6-e887-4f21-9cc4-113f6a540244 |
6sdylu | Why is weatherstripping for doors/windows hollow? | Combination of reasons, it uses less product and therefore cheaper. A large hollow foam tube can be squished when the door closes and make a good seal. A smaller solid tube will leave gaps and won't squish as easily. | 7e9a6569-c945-40a1-8053-4f680e5b0515 |
1lxxaj | Why is chicken meat so different to pork and beef? Its still muscle right? | Muscles rely on two different processes for energy. Anaeorbic respiration doesn't require oxygen, but produces relatively little energy. Aeorbic respiration on the other hand produces a lot more energy, but requires oxygen.
Not all muscles are used for the same purpose. Some muscle needs more oxygen because they are used for sustained physical activity, such as marathon running. Other muscles don't need as much oxygen because they are used for short bursts, such as a 100 meter sprint.
Muscles that need more oxygen have more myoglobin, which is a protein in muscle that binds to iron and oxygen. Myoglobin is essentially dark in color.
Chickens generally do more short bursts than animals like pigs and cows, and hence their muscles generally have less myoglobin. However, this is not consistent within the animal. Legs and wings of the chicken tend to do more consistent work, so they have a bit more myoglobin than the breast; hence "dark meat" in chicken.
Interesting side note: myoglobin is related to hemeglobin, which performs the same function in blood. If you find myoglobin in the blood, that is a very relevent diagnostic finding and something is probably wrong. | d90ada01-99e0-4a9e-a9be-a6c1c2ddc9cf |
44sa97 | How can newspapers publicly endorse political candidates and remain an unbiased source of information? | Newspapers have had editorials and opinion pieces of various kinds for centuries. Separated as much as possible/practical from the news side | 310d114f-3194-4c9f-8247-9d5e2e821057 |
3ry4j3 | If a plane went above, then below, then above the speed of sound a bunch of times would it create a bunch of sonic booms? | An object travelling faster than the speed of sound is *continuously generating a shockwave* for as a long as it exceeds the speed of sound. It only sounds like a brief 'boom' to a distant listener because the plane has already flown past- to hear another one, it would have to turn around and fly past you again.
If you're having trouble visualizing it, imagine it like the [wake](_URL_0_) of a boat. Instead of waves of water, a plane makes waves of air. | 108ba333-3c7d-4476-989b-2c7c1d47e7ba |
1oi98c | Space elevator.. | In general terms, a space elevator usually works something like this:
1) Geostationary orbits (GSO) are roughly 22,000 miles above the Earth. An object in such an orbit is always directly above a single point on the Earth's surface.
2) The size of the satellite doesn't matter, so long as its center of gravity (CG) is on that orbital path.
3) So, if you could build a large space station in a GSO, you could in theory build a ladder or elevator cable all the way down to the Earth's surface - it would touch down at the spot directly beneath the satellite.
4) One way to build a large space station in a GSO would be to move a decent-sized asteroid into that orbit, then hollow it out for living space and also for raw materials.
5) But to maintain the CG of the satellite, you'd also have to add mass outside the GSO path. One way to do this would be to build another ladder or cable extending outward.
6) If you can get all this to work, getting to the space station would be as easy as riding up an elevator. Continuing past the space station on the far end of the cable gets you to a pretty easy way to launch spacecraft - just get to the end and disconnect your craft at just the right moment to go anywhere in the solar system.
7) Of course, all of the materials and processes needed for this are still in the realm of science-fiction. So far, we don't have 22,000-mile-long cables that can take the forces in question, nor do we have the capability to move planetoids around the solar system. | 279ed3f3-01b3-4f39-80ef-5739cc696da1 |
1sxr8x | Why do companies pay money to create stock photography that is extremely unlikely to be used? | People take photos of things they think are not already available. They upload them on stock photo sites, hoping some day someone wants to use that photo and buys it off them. The photographer gets paid and the site makes a commission.
This image may look very weird and make you wonder how someone thought of that and more importantly who the hell would buy it. Who knows, a company might someday want this as a background for "Confused by your career options? Let Devry help you decide" | dac3b6d9-216c-4ff8-b7cd-2b93c7d211f4 |
2q4snb | Why is it cheaper to fly to different countries in Europe as opposed to it being expensive to fly to other states in the US? | Europe has a well developed train system which competes with the airlines.
This drives down prices, and eliminates routes that are not profitable enough. The flights that do exist will be cheaper, but there will be fewer of them.
Also, some European countries have national airlines that are subsidized. | c70f5391-33b1-4cb8-8355-f1f28a793a82 |
xvcyr | I'm sorry, but what the heck is a VPN? | A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It's a private network (like a LAN) that's set up over a public network (the internet). It's called "virtual" because there is no real private connection, like a direct cable, or a leased line. Instead, it uses a public connection (internet) and encrypts it to make it private.
[Here](_URL_0_) is a good analogy of what is a VPN. The gist of it is:
Imagine computers or LANs are islands. They are separated by the ocean, which represents the internet. You can go from one island to the next by public ferry, but that's open to everybody. You can also build a bridge between two islands, which is similar to a leased line: it's private but costly. Or you can set a submarine route between the islands, which represents a VPN. It's private like a leased line, but it's cheaper, and it uses the internet (the ocean).
Note that a VPN is a private network. It can be very big but it's still private. You can only go to computers that are part of the network. You can't go directly to blocked websites via VPN, but you may use the VPN as a proxy: if chatroulette is blocked on your computer, you could connect via VPN to another computer and go to chatroulette from there. But you don't really need a VPN for that, any proxy will do the trick. | 812cc193-fd06-4fb1-b6a4-8b54c70ebdd8 |
7cy83a | How can people do voice impressions of other people when you don't know what your own voice sounds like? | Impressionists practice with a voice recorder. That way they can hear their impression as other people would hear them and try to adjust accordingly. Ideally they would also have a recording of who they are trying to copy as well so they can hear the two back-to-back to listen for differences. | ccfb1e57-0317-49eb-93cf-c96700531515 |
3avvid | Where does the heat in our body come from? | When you consume food, all that food gets broken down and absorbed by your body at a molecular level. You're turning a piece of food into it's molecules. Then your body breaks the bonds which releases heat. Breaking bonds is where that energy (heat) comes from. | 95aeac4b-ca6d-4981-8bf9-225f84e95774 |
4nw325 | Why do Christianity and Islam consider homosexuality a sin? | I'm not sure what the Muslim rationale is behind it as I am not Muslim nor have looked into why the Islamic faith has that belief. But from a Christian perspective, I think you might find [this article](_URL_0_) to be helpful. In short, in Christianity the most important thing (according to Jesus) is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. The second most important thing is to love your neighbor as yourself. From here you can see that the hierarchy of importance in the Christian faith should be God, others, self.
The author of the article links homosexuality as a way of man to idolize. It removes God as the most important object of your love and puts yourself in his place. It should be noted that over sexualizing your heterosexual marriage would be viewed in the same way. You end up idolizing sex and that supplants your love for God.
There is an unfortunate amount of focus on homosexuality as a sin within the American political arena. If a homosexual is not a part of the church then the church should remain silent on their conduct. Jesus came to save, not to condemn, and it is not the place of the church or its members to judge those outside of their faith. Furthermore, homosexuality is not greater a sin than idolizing anything else. But people tend to turn a blind eye to their spiritual neglect in the pursuit of their career or hobbies. I also think that the political left of America is quick to demonize Christianity even though it has become more and more accepting to homosexuals and more and more condemning of fringe groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. | 7908969d-bce4-434a-b961-dbb6b15de428 |
6ahb7x | If laser guns existed, would they be making the same stock sound that we hear in the movies? | Laser guns do exist, they've been around in various forms since at least the 70s from military projects. They don't make any noise when they shoot. There's no pew pew, and you can't even see the beam, its outside of the visible spectrum | 4f8b0906-a8e5-4cb9-a8d9-f0930c6d2548 |
5ux7rf | Beer in fridge vs Beer room temperature. | That would depend on several things, including the temperatures of each of the environments and the power of the fridge's compressor. | 6e957dfd-0f17-419e-b144-bb6614db4690 |
45gn5g | What is a URL and how does it work? | A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is generally just a fancy way of saying a web address. The various parts of the URL are used by all of the systems between you and what you're trying to access to figure out how to get you what you need. It gives you a protocol (how to access it) and the domain (where it is on the Internet) as well as the server address (where it is once you get to the right computer). | 17b4f951-f0f2-4e06-931c-a8b502f08655 |
1sodq2 | The plot of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad | Man's journey up the Congo (the darkness) as an allegory for men's journey into himself (actually the darkness). | 77dc2762-2056-4cd0-8903-0b6631b7f6b3 |
1t2qpx | Why do hotels skip seemingly random room numbers? | Could be for any number of reasons.
How does the layout of rooms on floor 2 and 3 compare to each other and floor 1/4? The hotel may opt to keep each floor's numbering as similar as possible vertically, even when one floor has more or less rooms
Room #233 could still be a room, just not a guest room. For consistency sake a lot of buildings that number rooms will assign a number to every room, including storage and utility areas.
Room #233 may have existed at one point but during a remodel was merged into an adjoining room or converted into something else.
It doesn't apply in your case but because 13 is considered unlucky by many people a lot of high-rise building don't have a "floor 13", and/or will only have rooms #1-12 and #14- on each floor.
Edit: Formatting | ade45fe8-88d4-43eb-a4d3-c1c2574ea6ef |
6oefqd | how underwater pressure works | There's water on top of you, that's what causes the pressure, just like normal pressure is caused by air on top of you, go up the mountain and there'll be less pressure. Water is much heavier than air though, so going just 10 meters deep will double the pressure compared to surface.
The extra pressure is dangerous because you start with air at regular pressure inside your lungs, nose, ear canals and so on. When you double this pressure air reduces in size so it feels like you're getting crushed.
If you increase the air pressure inside yourself you can dive without getting crushed, but you have to go down and up slowly to let body adjust to new air pressure. Also at much higher pressure transferring gases through blood starts working differently so trying to use regular air becomes toxic, that limits how deep you can go by equalizing pressures. | 79963846-b554-4859-ac60-b2a1d649897f |
32uyxs | Why do some doors open inward, and some open outward? | Different building codes for safety. Exterior doors have to open inwards do that in emergency if you need to get out, something places on the outside doesn't block the door from opening.
Its also a safety thing so that if you push open a door, it doesn't smash someone's face whose trying to get in. | 1c814e5c-f7c3-4417-ae16-6d91c40f1d11 |
4246r8 | Apache Hadoop | If you need to *store* a ton of data, it can break the data into little chunks and distribute them to a group of cheap computers to store. (HDFS)
If you need to *work on* a ton of data, then it can break the work into little chunks and distribute them to a group of cheap computers to work on. (MapReduce)
It breaks big problems into little chunks so a bunch of cheap computers can do it. | 4795fd4d-03d9-44d6-bdb4-a2f8583ceebc |
5grljv | Why do some companies make Solid State Drives (SSD) that are slightly different from one another in size (i.e. 480GB vs. 500GB vs. 512GB)? | They don't. They're using the same size chip, it's that ssds lose a fraction of a percent of their space every write cycle, and different manufacturers reserve a certain amount of space in the drive to make up for those losses, so your total value doesn't change over time, and so if you fill up the drive completely, there's still room to fit data as its storage gets destroyed, rather than your file getting corrupted, as would happen if it didn't have hidden room to fit it.
For example, two companies might be using the same say, 600 GB chip in their ssds, but one rates theirs at 500 GB while the other at 480 - the one with its storage rated at 480 is going to survive 20% more read/write cycles, as it has 120 GBS reserved to burn, whole the 500 GB one only has 100
. | d2ffbd14-9ea5-4621-b576-61aaecc7a9e2 |
5p42jj | If the president was of another religion, would they take oath over the book of their faith. (For example, if the president was Jewish, would they take oath over the Torah)? | The president has a choice of what they want to be sworn in on. The book doesn't even have to be a religious text. Some presidents were sworn in on copies of the constitution. | e735e1be-d21a-4e70-8ff9-6cb620694f22 |
3y8tbq | Why do people blame Republicans' success in Congressional races on district gerrymandering? Can't Democrats redistrict just the same? | They can and do. Illinois' 4th and Florida's 5th are prime examples of the dems gerrymandering. Unfortunately the only way our government tries to fix gerrymandering is with more gerrymandering.
Edit: got my districts mixed up | d80c43c8-a4c5-4d3b-aba9-ef89ab1b9e2a |
3vcaw1 | How does Nat Geo get so much great footage of rare, small, and dangerous animals? | They have the means to to put professional photographers "in the field" for long stretches at a time. | 77ca8b32-9fc3-4292-b35f-b25353b2713f |
40ddyf | Why aren't all currencies worth the same? | There's a fuck ton more yen (Japanese currency) than US dollars.
Supply and demand determines value. Higher supply means lower value. There's a much larger supply of yen than dollars while the demand for the two is roughly equal compared to the disparity in supply. So the value of the yen is lower. Much lower.
If you took dollars to Japan and found someone who would let you buy a car in US dollars, you would only need $20K (maybe + a fee for letting you pay in dollars which is inconvenient for the seller). | 25edd985-1dbe-40e5-a615-22ba7462c0a6 |
46fgdg | How is the porn industry still a multi-billion dollar industry, when in the internet age you can just stream it for free? | Ever noticed all of those ads on porn sites? Ads are what pay the bills.
This is how lots of media makes its money. | 7adf434a-527b-4686-8bf9-0d578a917546 |
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