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7jwytc | Why is Disney allowed to purchase Fox Entertainment? | It has not been approved yet. It was just announced today. You can always announce it, it does not mean it will get approved. Actual approval (and if approved, and under what conditions the approval requires) likely wont be settled for 1-2 years from now
AT & T-Time Warner is currently not approved either, and may not be resolved until March - July depending on specifics. | 0783b3a7-bc0f-4876-9a25-5d01dd37cf86 |
2s3b9s | [America] Why Do Medical Fundraisers Still Ask For Full Cost Of Treatment Instead Of Insurance Premiums? | I've not seen these things you are talking about, but anyway...
Buying insurance does not pay for the costs of treatment already incurred. If you get hit by a bus, it unlikely the Elks Lodge is going to buy you insurance during the ambulance ride. And buying insurance is generally restricted to "open enrollment periods" that happen once a year, and don't become effective for a month or two after that. | e6968519-65d2-42db-8e8b-b7b77f3dd852 |
1r4eyl | Why do puppies smell funny? | Dogs produce an oil naturally that has a slightly yeasty smell, (the so-called dog smell). This oil is produced to protect the dog's skin and hair. Most often, dogs end up picking up bacteria on their skin when they are outdoors. The combination of the oil and bacteria produce what many call the "wet dog smell". Dogs don't sweat over much of their bodies, however they do sweat on their nose and paws. That, combined with any bacteria they run in to, most likely explains the smell.
Source: My girlfriend's mother, a vet tech for 15 years. | 78627569-5609-4df1-b22e-8c3524ce9db6 |
1lrstm | Landing on Jupiter? Possible? | There is no conclusive evidence about Jupiter having or not having a solid core. The scientific consensus is that it PROBABLY does a solid core, surrounded a liquid metal layer and then finally a gas layer.
Your spacecraft would probably be crushed fairly early on, or attacked by the nasty gaseous atmosphere, or be destroyed by the magnetic field, etc etc.
Failing all that, you'd hit the liquid metal layer and you'd be getting to the point that it is too dense to go any further. | c90bb902-e852-4031-bac5-4e418a09ee78 |
6ivudk | How is the Michelson-Morley experiment evidence for the constancy of the speed of light? | First you need to know about what was called aether. In the past, people thought light were waves through something called aether, that sourrounds us all similar to air, but only that it exists everywhere.
Now since the Earth is rotating around the sun(and our solar system is moving, too), we must be moving through the aether somehow. That means that, when we send out light waves in the right direction(with or against or movement inside the aether), the light waves would be stretched or compressed(similar to the doppler-effect with sound).
The Michelson-Morley experiment measured it, by having two light beams from the same source travel in a 90° shifted path, then go back and merge again. Then the merged beam was checked for it's interference pattern, which is based on how long the two beams traveled independently. That whole experiment was made on a rotating table, so the "direction" of the beams could be changed.
The core message is, if there would be an aether that the light traveled through, rotating the table would result in the interference changing, since we change the way the light beams travel relative to the aether. But it didn't, which means there can't be aether.
That means that lightspeed is not spreading in a medium(aether), but is spreading through empty space itself, always with constant light speed(= c) to whoever is measuring it.
What is curious about this is, that if you travel with say 0.5 times lightspeed(= 0.5c), and turn on the headlight, you would guess that your headlight's lightbeam would travel with 0.5c away from you, but in truth it would do so with lightspeed(atleast for your point of view,for more detail see general realitivity) .
Edit: Typos | fba4e48c-3c45-4d63-b9dc-d20211b07e81 |
1wihnw | How could I successfully argue with co workers when they observe near record low temperatures and declare, "global warming doesn't exist." | The correct term is climate change- it is not about just warming but a shift toward more extreme weather patterns. | 8e49dbb7-7e98-4a21-b7c7-56597f6ef7bb |
735lbz | Why is the synaptic vesicle not connected to one another? | > Would it make any difference if they were connected to each other?
It is useful for a nerve signal to sometimes be triggered and sometimes not. If they were directly connected then you wouldn't really have an action potential to build up and "jump the gap", it would just be always on which sort of defeats the purpose. | f4ea7fa0-6064-485a-abd5-9853cba55b68 |
7k5pjk | How are few companies able to own majority of the brands I use? | this is end game capitalism. lets say you have 100 companies all in one area. some do well, some don't. the ones that do well might buy out the smaller ones or the smaller ones go out of business. eventually once they become big enough, they start buying other smaller companies that retain their brand, since customers have brand loyalty. eventually after a while, you'll get what you described. | 21f4b512-4b00-41f0-a8ee-fc8766834a33 |
50unvk | Why do large companies sign a 10-20 year building lease when that comes close or exceeds the building value? | Often it's a cash-flow decision. Purchasing the building outright costs a lot of upfront money (which either has to come from assets or from a loan... which is basically like a lease but with more terms and conditions) and adds uncertainty to the end of the 10-20 year time frame if the company wants to move somewhere else. They would either be stuck with a building they didn't want, or have to sell at a price they can't predict.
Signing a lease for the building locks in a yearly rate for their office space that they can count on and plan their long-term books around without worrying about risks associated with the property. | c50339aa-7ead-4de7-885e-e99a4bdd1fa6 |
8lzc45 | What exactly do courtroom artists do, and why are they a part of some trials? | Especially in high profile cases people want to know what's going on. Nowadays if become more common to televise events. But before this was the case Judges often banned media like pictures and video in thier courts. So courtroom artists would sketch parts of the precedings for newspapers to use. | 4d3683b5-0141-48bd-81a2-31027c30f6ac |
47qzms | Why Aren't Third Party Candidates Allowed to Debate? | Right now, the debates are only for candidates of a certain party. When the parties have nominated their candidates, third party candidates would be able to debate if they polled high enough. | 7cae3872-dc76-4bb2-b4ee-cbb1cf53f94c |
2xy8fa | How do floors get mopped, garbage cans get emptied, plumbing get repaired etc. in top secret areas? Are there janitors with high level security clearance? | Areas like that have "clean desk" policies where everything has to be secured in locked drawers when you are not at your desk. If it is somewhere with constant activities then the people there take their trash to somewhere outside the room where it gets collected. | 0ad32681-8bc9-49f4-9e24-2ed6f02d419c |
3jqyob | Why do objects at a distance look so much further away in photos? | You used a relative wide angle lens. It has a wider field of view than your eyes so things appear farther away. You could use a more "normal" focal length (~50mm) to make things appear as you see them, or a longer lens to make things appear closer. | 3f191bbc-43c3-4dff-84f9-7cd183bc23bd |
5isxop | what does it mean to label China as a "currency manipulator"? | There currency exchange rate is set by the government. They set it so you can buy a lot of yuan for your dollar. This makes their exports cheap since when you buy their exports you pay in yuan and if you have dollars you have to exchange dollars for yuan and you'll get a lot of yuan for the exchange and so you can buy a lot of chinese crap that will end up in alandfill. | e7962875-6bc4-41ec-8e18-dffcfd56ac2f |
2cspei | Separate Facebook Message App - Why the mandatory breakout separation? | It solves the problem of having to deal with a large amount of code. Something the size of the Facebook app requires a large number of programmers to maintain, and programming gets harder the more people you have to add to a project (there's a book called The Mythical Man-Month that goes into this in depth). Having multiple smaller projects allows them to improve both products faster. | af42c787-3a26-400f-838f-5bf3932ea4fd |
v8alu | What is a Fibonacci Sequence? | A sequence of numbers, starting with 0, 1 where every subsequent number is the sum of the two previous numbers.
0
1
0+1=1
1+1=2
2+1=3
3+2=5
5+3=8
8+5=13
and so on.
Hence, the Fibonacci sequence starts 1,1,2,3,5,8,13...
Edit: realised 5+8 != 11. I'm an idiot. | 620b303c-6bc4-4853-b370-ccc73f15b0fb |
j49sh | Computer data storage. | The sort of storage that stays valid after losing electrical power is called "non-volatile storage". That means things like hard drives, CD-ROMs and flash drives. Storage that requires electricity to maintain data is called "volatile storage" and is computer memory, or RAM.
Hard drives maintain data because a hard drive is like a series of little magnets. Magnetic polarity can either be "north" or "south" and this polarity is maintained without the need for electrical current.
CD-ROMs maintain data by writing a series of dark and light coloured areas that can be read by a laser.
Flash drives work by having individual cells that are left with an electrical charge by depositing extra electrons (and thus negative charge) that is maintained even after power is removed. It's almost like a tiny series of microscopic batteries that is either set positive/negative or negative/positive.
This is obviously a gross oversimplification. For some of the gory details as to why hard drive encoding isn't just as simple as "north = 1, south = 0", _URL_0_ is pretty interesting. It's very technical and fairly heady stuff. | 86b856a6-89dc-4da7-8389-dccf4f969dc6 |
2a24ff | What is a modal auxiliary verb? (explain for a foreigner) | This isn't technically correct, but think of them as modifying the subject with a potential action. | e7c921a1-739a-4122-8029-cc7548341a16 |
4aa2s0 | How do investors pick franchises and are they preferable to starting a business on your own? | Investors pick franchises based on what they think will be the best fit for where they want to operate their business. Several things come into play, such as the cost of the franchise, the amount of support they get for that money, the appeal of the product in that market, and how much competition there is for that product in that market.
And buying a franchise *is* starting your own business. But the difference is that you get a brand name that's (at least somewhat) established, a product line, training and other manuals, and often regional and national advertising. | 9a6acedb-fcb5-493d-8eec-acb1780363fc |
5u8vpk | Why is it that some people can learn equations and concepts when examples are involved ie: physics/chemistry but struggle with similar ideas when examples aren't involved ie: trig/calc/algebra? | There have been many theories of learning which categorise people into different groups depending how they learn.
Pretty much all of these theories have been disproven.
However, one thing that *is* known is that, however hard it is to categorise people, we *do* all learn differently! Some people like to see things written down, others like pictures or prefer to listen to the material they're supposed to learn. Some people can learn abstract things more easily, others can learn better by seeing and understanding examples.
**BUT** - a good teacher knows this, and uses a variety of different techniques during a lesson, to ensure that learners of all types are able to learn the material.
Trigonometry, calculus and algebra are all subjects that can, and should, be taught using examples (although, like all subjects, they shouldn't be taught *only* with examples). If you've been taught these subjects without seeing a single example of a real-life problem where they would be used then unfortunately you have probably suffered from less-than-perfect teaching. | 9b7b6376-a257-463e-9421-90a63c565ca3 |
jwpot | Ethics | First, I want to say that this is all 'soft' science, so there will be exceptions.
Let's say you gave your friend some advice, and that advice ended up making things worse. You didn't mean them to, they just did. There are two different ways most philosophers and such determine whether that was a good thing to do or not.
Deontological ethics (a big word basically meaning 'the logic of duty') says that because you wanted to help your friend, it was the right thing to do, even if the advice didn't turn out like you hoped. It was your good will that was important.
Consequentialist ethics say that while what you were trying to do was good, because it didn't turn out well, you should be scolded for giving bad advice. Consequentialists think that it's good outcomes that are important.
It's never really that black and white in the real world, but those are the two main ways of going about it, at the moment. | bc49f36e-333e-421c-9c13-a38883f952b9 |
15wu8f | why do I feel sick when I read in a car? | In order for a person to estimate his location, the brain combines information from a variety of sources, including sight, touch, joint position, the inner ear and its own expectations. The inner ear is particularly important because it contains sensors for both angular motion (the semicircular canals) and linear motion (the otoliths). These sensors are called the vestibular system. Under most circumstances, the senses and expectations all agree. When they disagree, however, conflict arises and motion sickness can occur.
Consider the situation when one is reading in the back seat of a car. Your eyes, fixed on the book with the peripheral vision seeing the interior of the car, say that you are still. But as the car goes over bumps, turns, or changes its velocity, your ears disagree. This is why motion sickness is common in this situation.
TL;DR : The reason you get carsick is because your brain is confused. You don't feel like you're moving, and yet all your senses are telling you that you are. In response, you feel disoriented and sick. | efc541a6-aa68-4dc6-b3e4-1add1733d789 |
35bpo0 | When in flight why does the propeller of an airplane look like its moving really slowly? | This is called aliasing. Basically your eye cannot sample light fast enough to follow the actual speed of the propeller. Instead it samples at a rate, then pieces together the images to produce movement. If the properller spins 1.1 times between images, your brain makes the assumption the propeller moved 0.1 revolutions, and thus sees the propeller moving at 1/11th it's actual speed. If the propeller moves 0.99 revolutions in the sample time, your brain will assume it is spinning backwards at 1/99th the actual speed. | 5c57dec9-678f-4e0a-bbd7-ae7bf8d32abb |
7zgx1a | Why does vegetable oil work as a substitute for traditional fuel in a diesel engine? | Diesel engines work by compression ignition; you add a small amount of hydrocarbon fuel during compression, it eventually combusts and the energy of combustion raises the pressure and drives the piston downwards, producing power. However, this autoignition isn't a magical property unique to diesel fuel; **every** hydrocarbon will autoignite at some temperature, and it just so happens that vegetable oils have similar energy contents, viscosities, and autoignition temperatures to standard ultra-low sulfur diesel.
That being said, you typically want to run the vegetable oil through what's known as a transesterification process to lower the viscosity and make the fuel a little more stable, and help with cold-starting the engine. You add either ethanol or methanol to the oil, along with bases like soda ash or lye to keep the acidity down, and then mix it to produce fatty-acid ethyl/methyl esters (so, FAEE or FAME), along with glycerol that must be removed during processing. The FAEE and FAME products are known more popularly as biodiesel. | 6c72fc24-9591-4caa-b72f-4a33fde83674 |
2nmq1h | Is there any merit to the idea that exposing yourself to germs strengthens your immune system? | Your immune system, every time it beats off an infection, stores information about that infection in it's "memory B-cells." That way, if you get reinfected, your immune system can say "aha it's you again! I remember your secret weakness from last time!" instead of having to figure it out all over again.
It doesn't have to be a big infection for it to work; even a small infection will trigger and immune response. So yes, the more germs you are exposed to, the bigger your memory banks will be, and the less likely you are to get a serious infection from any of those germs.
Edit: yes, I did say "beats off" | 65c047f6-6430-4f1e-8992-bd66f4a093b5 |
2civ7k | Why does my skin itch when i've been sweating and touch grass? | Grass makes very small (near microscopic) cuts on the skin, and when those cuts are contacted with liquid (in your case, sweat) it itches. It's like salt in a wound, but much smaller. | 40778de4-e4ba-4e60-8b6f-ad237bf56c9d |
2cizcg | How does my fingerprint scanner on my iPhone work through a plastic bag? | Because it's not a fingerprint scanner, it's just a camera. Advanced fingerprint scanners use high resolution CMOS sensors, pressure and temperature sensors, and a myriad of other tricks to detect an actual finger against a simple printout of your print. The scanner on phones and laptops, and other cheap consumer scanners are barely more than a cheap CMOS and a cheap lenses, with some software to do the processing. If the plastic bag is clear, it should work as well. A printout of your fingerprint will most likely work as well. | 1c3ec672-fc6c-40f1-bf09-4ea5c687face |
551dvc | The reason why NSAIDS are ineffective at reducing symptoms of diseases like Psoriasis? | Not 100% sure, but I would say that's because Psoriasis is caused when your immune system ins't working properly and the chemicals involved in psoriasis are not affected by NSAIDS (they generally affect the COX enzymes that promote inflammation) | 2e412f95-d216-4940-8f16-2ef16bfc77bc |
16o608 | why it always seems like people wake up before the best part or climax of their dreams. | Until a better answer shows up, I believe I've read on this very forum, that it has to do with the fact that the "best part" just so happens to excite you so much, that your brain activity increases and you therefore begin to awaken.
Another aspect may be that you don't remember dreams in which you didn't wake up during the middle of them. However when you do wake up during a dream you are more likely to remember it. So you don't always wake up before the best part, you just don't remember the dream at all. | f77aaf34-bdc5-4582-8ae5-1b713bf9e2d7 |
5b6nfd | How does bracing reduce the impact during a crash? | It doesn't reduce the impact, but it gives you some warning that an impact is coming and allows you to protect your vital parts (neck, head, etc.). While there have been cases where asleep/unconscious people have survived impacts that have killed others, there is often more to those stories than initially presented. Case in point: old coworker of mine had a daughter that was curled up in the passenger seat. The boyfriend fell asleep at the wheel and survived the crash while the girlfriend/daughter was killed. What gives? Well, the driver was still wearing his seat belt and the girl wasn't. He was protected by the airbag and other safety features, and she was ejected into a rock face.
Additionally, we often see stories where drunk drivers survive horrific crashes that kill families, but if you read into the cases you discover that perhaps the drunk driver t-boned the victims, which would maximize his protection (seat belt, airbags, head rest, etc.), and minimize their protection (no side airbags, seat belts are mostly designed for front/back collisions, so side-on collisions can cause more next damage, etc. | d2701304-c8c1-4521-96f2-97ef4db0637d |
3tiswk | How can someone be immune to the laws of a country simply because they have diplomatic immunity? | Because the country that they represent have been extended that courtesy for their diplomats by the host country. It's a common arrangement so that diplomats don't get blackmailed by local police or politicians.
The host country can always expel a diplomat if they don't want them there. And the diplomats country can waive immunity if they think the diplomat should be tried for a crime.
But it really doesn't cause many problems. It's a popular movie trope, but in the real world it's mostly used to get out of parking tickets. | 800c94d0-b590-401c-8fb7-08a3e6eb62d2 |
3lx33q | Why do the creatures at the deepest parts of the ocean look so different from that species we normally see? | A huge pressure. For anything to be able to withstand it you need either incredible skeletal structure, or massive skin and muscle mass. The former is almost non-existent, if it exist it's mostly in small organisms such as crabs, etc..., the latter is more common. Remember [this](_URL_0_) guy this is how he looks when he is not under extreme atmospheric pressure. [This](_URL_1_) is how he looks in his natural habitat
Furthermore deep sea is dark and cold. Creature who live there doesn't need eyes, or really any other sensory abilities. They need better to regulate body temperatuer, they need a structure that works under extreme pressure. Coincidentaly that looks extremly alien to us. | 47f2c459-8efc-4842-a1bd-fa918af86960 |
6ttsbw | Why laptops still use differrent chargers, and why they dont follow the example of the mobile phones? | $$$$$$$$$$$
Same reason apple uses its own cords. You have to buy them from the company that makes the laptop. | 5f167f65-0a07-48ce-9433-553309b58a57 |
556rhg | How does Google Maps know when there's little, medium or high traffic on roads? | I don't know if you noticed, but Google figures out pretty quickly where you live and where you work: that's because it activates the GPS on your phone in the background and registers your location quite frequently.
If you are driving, Google can interpret the GPS location of your phone as an indication of no traffic (phone moves at speed close or past the speed limit for that road), light traffic (phone moves at reduced speed) or high traffic (phone doesn't move at all for prolonged periods of time). Using the data from many phones, the results are pretty reliable.
The algorithm uses traffic status when selecting a route to try to reroute the incoming cars to other roads in which the traffic situation is better, both to help you get to where you're going faster and to help clear the traffic jam by not feeding it with other cars. | 7cdf2785-ff7b-4f02-97d1-7269c766edca |
2t3ekv | Why do my devices need an IP address if they all have a unique MAC-address? | Because a MAC address says *who* you are, but not *where* you are.
When I say "who" I don't literally mean it identifies you of course, it identifies a particular piece of equipment. But the IP address really does identify where that piece of equipment is located in a sort of physical sense.
IP addresses are structured so that routers know which connection they need to pass the message through so it gets closer to its intended recipient.
A MAC address doesn't tell you that until you are close enough that it can simply store a mapping between IP address and MAC address. Which is what a network switch does (your home router is really a very simple router and a switch built into one).
MAC addresses aren't transmitted across the wider internet. They're only known by your local network. This means that not everything connected to the Internet needs to have a MAC address of the same form. Not every network uses ethernet or related standards, so they don't necessarily have a compatible addressing scheme. But that's fine, because IP works on top of ethernet, wifi, cellular networks, etc. You can send IP messages to any network connected to the Internet regardless of what networking technology it uses internally. | d06b8334-d16d-4c5f-b3f4-3b443d9f320b |
599bhs | Why and how are power plants designed so they can't power themselves? | The plant isn’t technically incapable of powering itself—it’s incapable of running without a grid connection.
That might sound like a distinction without a difference, but the plant requires a connection to the grid not to *receive* power from the grid, but to *dispose* of power on the grid.
The nuclear plant requires a fraction of a percent of its own power to run. It simply cannot throttle down that low. Without a million kettles eating 99% of its output, it must shut down. If it kept running, the excess electrical power has to go *somewhere*, and without the grid as a safe outlet, the generators would destroy themselves.
Shutting down the reactors and turbines is generally generally okay, because it has back‐up diesel generators to power the cooling systems and whatnot, but then the generator room floods and you’re in trouble. | 30bb83b8-10ce-4c7a-9e5d-0453cea1999f |
37m7kg | If Physics states that we don't actually touch anything, how can we taste and smell? | We don't really touch things, but that doesn't mean they don't interact. Magnets, gravity, electrical charges all do not physically touch things, but they interact because of the force emanating from them. | 54b4cec2-333a-47f4-9b0a-a223027e8a31 |
896ujl | How did people figure out precisely which direction to build a railway in before GPS and modern technology? | You'd be surprised how accurate tools like sextants are. They were around for a while before we started building railroads. | 24cab810-7ead-4d6d-98a7-a6457643d624 |
3eiu91 | What allows our brain to "focus"? | The brain has a subconscious filtering system that decides which things are unimportant and which should be passed on to our conscious mind. | 7717ba78-d9df-495b-92df-c53fcb25e709 |
2kj88l | why does resting my hand between my thighs warm me up? | You have a lot of nerve endings that control your hands. Perhaps warming them *tricks* your brain into thinking you are more warm than before.
Check out this [homunculus](_URL_0_) to see the brain proportion that is dedicated to controlling certain body parts. As you can see, lips and hands require a lot of nerves and brain to control them (and to feel sensation from them). | 607f0818-4b9b-4e41-b5e2-a160715a4f86 |
2rg9tp | How come some vitamins (like D3) are sold in amounts that provide much more than the decided daily value (500% for example)? Isn't this unnecessary because excess nutrients are removed in urine? Wouldn't this be a disadvantage to the consumer and result in a higher cost? | Often times, vitamin supplements are sold in much larger doses than necessary because consumers falsely believe that more is better. They purchase the higher dose of water soluble vitamins because they don't realize that the excess just gets peed out. | d203968b-bdb7-4148-9779-cf3130f99fbc |
5zfv89 | What makes a substance nutritious? | A subtstance is nutricious when we can extract energy from it. That substance can be carbohydrates (sugars), fats, and amino acids from proteins. The body modifies these substances into one of the products that can be used in the so-called Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions that releases stored energy from those substances in the cells. The end product is CO2 (a waste product that you exhale) and adenosine *triphoshate* (ATP), an adenosine molecule with three phosphate groups attached to it. ATP is the transporter of energy in the human body. When ATP breaks down in an adenosine molecule with two phosphate groups (ADP) and a free phosphate group, energy is released which can be used for metabolic processes in the body such as muscle contraction. | 88e7b84d-7d96-420d-b4d8-c2480f5f70ad |
4tejig | what is the difference between vague, ambiguous (semantic), ambiguous (syntactic), ambiguous (grouping), overgeneral, or both vague and overgeneral. | Kind of confused about what you're asking for. Is it assignment-specific jargon?
The difference between 'vague' and 'ambiguous':
Vague - Lacking detail but has specific meaning.
e.g. Joe is tall.
How tall? Joe is tall compared to what?
Ambiguous - Several meanings or open to interpretation.
e.g. The concert was cool.
Does the speaker mean that the concert was enjoyable or do they mean something to do with the temperature? | d26856ca-4c09-4bbe-99eb-68f041ca0051 |
24lr2d | what is magnetic flux? | Say you have 100 water hoses stacked in a square and pointed at a house. The window is open. On the hoses hit the window go in the house, the rest just hit the wall.
Magnetic flux is when you take the magnetic field and multiply it by the area of a given thing, say a hoop. The magnetic field is like the water hoses. The area is like the open window. The magnetic flux is like the bit of water that gets into the house through the window.
Now pretend that you are shooting the water at the house at an angle. Or you lifted the house and turned it at an angle. Less water will get into the house because the open area of the window that can be shot at by the hose is smaller. If you turn the house completely sideways, the water can't go into the house at all because you are shooting at the wrong side now.
In the same way, if you turn a hoop on it's side, less open area is available for the magnetic field to go through. If you turn it comepletely sideways to the magnetic field, none of the magnetic field can get through.
The equation is BAcos(angle)=magnetic flux. B is the magnetic field. A is the area. The angle is how turned the hoop or house is (0 degrees means it's head on, and 90 degrees means its turned completely sideways, and the numbers in between mean that it is partially turned.) Cos(angle) is what percentage of the water gets into the house from the hoses that would normally shoot water in if the house was head on. | 7ce5f059-599d-4cde-8669-e0855302784f |
8nw0t1 | why isn't single serve coffee sold in tea bags? | Didn’t Folgers used to make “coffee singles” in the past? I’m not sure if it was instant or supposed to act like a brew, but I’m almost positive I’ve seen something like it. | 02ec6316-86df-4db2-bf24-93cfd3cf24f8 |
652ejr | Why can we build 1TB SSD's but not 1TB of RAM and cut out the storage? | We can make a terabyte of RAM but it would be really expensive and couldn't store data when the computer was off. Also we really don't need the incredibly fast access for the vast majority of that data. | 3e92587b-0b90-41e1-80f5-b74eb1ee7b61 |
1kxcc4 | Does a gas giant actually have a solid surface? | The "surface" of Jupiter is gaseous hydrogen.
_URL_0_
What would happen if you went "on" the top of Earth's gaseous atmosphere? You'd fall, right?
Jupiter is much more massive than Earth though, so you'd fall even faster, and probably burn up from friction with the atmosphere before anything more interesting happened (like getting to the level of metallic liquid hydrogen below). | 36d2827a-b2a1-4fb5-8085-d877cb423204 |
1snyqn | Where do birds keep their bone marrow? | According to our friends over at /r/askscience:
> Birds have bone marrow it just doesn't intersperse through the central region of bones like in humans. Avian bones aren't hollow in the sense that they're like straws with absolutely nothing inside them. There are networks of structural fibers that help give their bones strength. Bone marrow is likewise interspersed and around the hollow cavities in a bird's bones.
They also linked to [this image](_URL_1_) showing a cross-section of a bird's bone.
[Source](_URL_0_) | b8945a81-874d-4c04-b045-f17748e5961b |
2ue3ne | How does evolution explain an animal developing the ability of venom attacks? Like a Platypus? | As [this](_URL_0_) link will tell you, many venom systems started out as something entirely different whether they be digestive enzymes, proteins to help fight bacteria, etc. A mutation occurs and suddenly that enzyme/protein/etc is present in the mouth/claws/etc, and it gives them an edge to catch prey and just generally survive. Each instance of venom in an animal seems to have developed on its own, so you aren't going to find two for the exact same reason. We are still learning about the subject though. | c076f04a-ceab-441b-82a2-17c71e6b5010 |
4kqcpw | Why are games being exclusive to a particular console "bad" and why is this exclusivity deal Netflix has secured "good" ? | You're currently comparing two things in different ways. I understand the confusion but you're just getting it a little bit twisted. I'm not a gamer, but here goes my attempt at an explanation.
1. A game being only available on ONE platform is bad for the game due to the fact by only being on one console, the potential market share is now cut in half. A show/movie being only on one platform is bad for the show/movie because anyone who doesn't have that medium of streaming is now unable to enjoy that content.
2. A game like HALO is GREAT for a console. If Halo hadn't of come out when it did I don't think the original XBOX would have survived. People who are loyal to a game franchise will probably buy that console just to continue playing those games. A company like Disney signing an exclusivity deal with Netflix is GREAT for Netflix. People who love disney/star wars will go with Netflix as their main streaming provider for the ability to view that specific content. | 1a116b8d-2c3c-4ddc-a8c3-482e85c2d46a |
92pjkf | Why is there a large build up of dust on fan and air vent covers when there is air being blown over them often to displace dust from settling? | So lets start off with two things that may not be obvious:
1) Although the air looks clear and clean, its not. The air you're breathing is actually filled with water and dust, you just can't see it because there is substantially more air than water/dust, and the water/dust particles are extremely tiny.
2) Although your fan blade appears to smooth, its actually not - at least not at a microscopic level. If you looked at most fan blades under a microscope you'd see that at that scale they are actually pretty rough - it would look somewhat like a sponge with tons of small pits and holes.
So with that out of the way, lets talk about how a fan pushes air.
As the fan spins, the blades get forced against the air, compressing it. But air doesn't like to be compressed, so it tries to expand back to its original size. The fan blade is designed so that the only way that this compressed air can expand is to move away from the blade, creating a breeze of air moving away from the fan.
But like I said earlier, the air itself is filled with water and dust. When the fan compresses the air, it squeezes some of that water and dust out. The water and dust that has been squeezed out of the air form a type of cement, which then impacts the fan blade and cements itself into those microscopic pits and holes that the surface of the blade is covered with. This newly cemented dust on the blade creates a new surface for even more dust to cement to, steadily growing over time.
Because all of this dust is microscopic, you can't see the process happening. All you can see is the visible mass of dust, which is the result of that microscopic dust slowly accumulating over a very long period of time.
But you are correct in that the movement of the fan does cause some of that dust to break off. As those dust particles break off, they get flung at high speed into the case of the fan, causing dust to form there as well.
The ratio of dust on the blades to dust on the case that you end up with depends on how fast the fan is spinning and how smooth the fan blade is. Faster, smoother fans will produce more dust on the case while slower, coarser fans will produce more dust on the blades. | b6310fa1-8b89-4f0b-a9f1-531ac13bfa50 |
16utv4 | Why is gold valuable? For how long will it continue to be valuable? | Gold is valuable primarily because people believe that it is valuable. (It does have some practical uses in jewelry and electronics, but these things aren't nearly enough to support its current price).
It will probably continue to be valuable, because gold being valuable is a significant part of our cultural identity. The question is whether or not gold will continue to be *as* valuable as it currently is. This is unlikely; eventually, the price is going to stop rising. Investing in gold is just betting that the price will rise enough before you cash in.
e: I didn't answer "would it be smart to invest", and there's a good reason for that; any advice would necessarily be wrong. Remember, the price of gold is entirely dependent on what everyone thinks the price of gold ought to be. So if everyone knew that the price would drop when X, they would start trying to leave the market before X, and that itself would make the price drop. | 56fbcf00-4d09-4fd1-b90f-eca994c98897 |
8p7sdv | What gives massless particles a 'speed limit'? What stops them from traveling faster than 299,792,458 m / s? | Simply put, we don't know. It's a very well documented and solid physical constant, but why that happens to be the universal speed limit isn't clear. There's some speculation and models that attempt to describe it, but nothing verifiable as of yet. | 2f1547a1-fb13-4b0a-a3ea-b7021d9c67d7 |
2ufjh2 | Why can I remember the conventions of a new programming language or the methods of a new library with ease but spend hours memorizing facts in biology class to no avail? | As a fellow student learning programming with ease and dying in biology, I feel your pain.
I can't possibly explain for you without speculating, but for me it's because of the style. Biology is a very fact-oriented thing. You either know what allopatric means, or you don't. And you never get to actually use it, because you can't "use" biology terms. It's a field of science, not of engineering.
For CS, you already know what these words mean, you're just learning new ways to apply them. It's about learning processes, not facts. And you use these processes constantly. Computer Science is a field of engineering, not science.
Also, like RandomReddithead said, interest is incredibly important. And the method of learning is a pretty big deal. | 5cac8a88-61e6-4ead-a713-29b047244332 |
4y0qt0 | Why is the DEA so concerned about narcotics, barbiturates etc? | > But why does the DEA care in the first place if people die from narcotics?
Because they are the agency put in charge of regulating and controlling such things. It is like asking why the Department of Transportation is so enthusiastic about roads and stuff, like they are some sort of weirdos.
So why does the government in general care about drug abuse and deaths? One reason is because it has significant social impacts to have drug abuse in a community. Drug addicts are often poor workers and generally unstable, along with being a source of crime not directly connected to the drugs themselves. For example if someone is addicted to crack they probably aren't able to hold a steady job for long, and once they lose that income they will often turn to crime to fund their habit.
Another issue is that drugs which have dangerous side effects can tax public health services. If the hospitals are spending a bunch of money helping people ODing on heroin that they never get back, they aren't as effective as they might otherwise be.
And of course there is the initial Puritanical opposition to drugs or anything that alters conciousness which creates a prejudice against drug use. | 8d7dd110-4958-47fc-a7a8-2e8befbd76d5 |
17yca7 | Allergies; and why the body develops them. | Your body's immune system often causes your body to do less-than-desirable things. For example, when it's fighting a cold, it's your immune system, not the cold virus, which causes you to have a runny nose and sneeze lots.
When something gets into your body which doesn't belong there, your body's immune system recognises that and gets rid of it. This doesn't just apply to viruses and other nasties. It can apply to things like pollen, or dog hair.
When you have an allergy, what that means is that there are certain types of foreign bodies which your immune system over-reacts to - it doesn't just get rid of them, but it causes you to display some symptoms, such as sneezing, developing a rash, or being short of breath. | 091d8093-ad02-459f-bd5a-b5b53a076770 |
5izz5i | how did they have an apartheid in south africa since most the people living there are black? (sorry if dumb question) | Apartheid was run by the white minority to keep control of the black majority. The laws were phrased as though it was some kind of "separate but equal" system but in reality it was incredibly discriminatory and frequently brutal (not too dissimilar to segregation in the American south).
In theory, the system was meant to create various kingdoms where each tribe/racial group would have their own autonomy. In reality all the bits that were useful or valuable were kept under white control and the "autonomous" tribal kingdoms were puppet states and used as a tool to remove political rights from black people.
The whites were able to impose this system because they were by far the wealthiest group and they inherited political control from the previous British rulers.
Also they weren't a tiny minority. White South Africans make up a significant group in the diverse society of South Africa. Plus it wasn't just "whites vs blacks" but a much more complex system where the black population identified as being part of various tribes, and also with a large population of other races (there were/are a large number of South Africans of Indian descent who were a kind of second rung under the whites in the system).
This allowed the white minority to rule through a "divide and conquer" methodology for a while until the opposition forces managed to organize. | 9206da65-b154-469a-8f3e-fbbe618d7da2 |
4plxso | Humans mated with Neanderthals and have some Neanderthal DNA.What prevented their mating with other archaic human types? | It may have happened. It is hard to prove. DNA degrades with time. Only in special circumstances, cold dry caves, does some DNA survive for thousands of years.
To prove it you must have DNA from the different humans to have lasted since then. It is extremely unlikely to find DNA much older than what has been found. Jurassic Park was only a movie with a slightly plausible story line.
There has been a lot of study of the human genome with a lot of fascinating, (to some) deductions about the past. | c0af025e-2741-4f70-84f6-e03851bb6f8d |
3hsgqi | why does Adobe Flash Player need to update so much? | Adobe (Originally, Macromedia) Flash is, by Internet standards, a very old format. It comes from the days where every byte and every CPU cycle was very important. This meant that it used various tricks to save space and computer effort.
The programming to work with these tricks is complex, and complex programs have places for bugs to hide, and hide they do. There are bugs that have always been there, waiting for someone to send the program a strange flash file and make it do something wrong. There are bugs caused when modern programmers forget they are working with old code, and are not 'defensive' enough, assuming that the code will do checks that were too (computer-effort wise) expensive decades ago.
There really is only one solution for this - flash has got to go. There is no longer a need for it, as javascript and HTML5 can do everything that Flash does. We just need everyone who makes websites to delete all their flash garbage. | 0bde060e-6664-4214-b1d5-52e443464de9 |
1vrdcq | Is it better to brace your body or stay loose in an accident/fall? | Obviously every crash is different and some things will work better in one situation than they would in another, but the brace position in an aircraft crash, or bracing against a car seat have a very specific purpose.
In any collision there are multiple impacts. In an aircraft crash there is the impact of the plane hitting the ground, you hitting the inside of the plane (seat, floor, controls, whatever the object is), and your internal organs (biggest concern being the brain) hitting the inside of your body.
The brace position is an attempt to remove, or at least lessen, the second of those impacts: you hitting the inside of the plane. By placing your body against the seat in front of you, or against your legs (depending on the position used) you are already against the object you are likely to hit and will therefore push against it instead of impacting it. | b210d075-fa1d-41e3-8f27-7c6952fed431 |
1cnsi3 | Why can e-cigarette companies advertise on TV while traditional cigarette companies can't? | E-cigarettes don't have tobacco in them, they're a smoking accessory. It's like advertising a cigarette lighter | 5da9cebf-f431-4396-b2cf-87c354cbfa0e |
q8s6d | Why I can't look in different directions with my eyes. | You can.
Back in 2006 while doing "How to [cross](_URL_1_) just One Eye" and "Speak with an Echo," I got ambitious and tried inducing [MartyFeldman-o-vision](_URL_0_). I had some fresnel prisms left from a failed toy design[1] which only deflect a couple degrees. Mount on eyeglass frames to bend light inward. They gave double vision, but I couldn't fuse stereo images. So I took one out. Success! After a few minutes (w/pain) my eyes compensated.
I wore these glasses for about half an hour, then whipped them off while in front of a mirror. I could barely see the "walleye" effect. And my eyes returned to normal within seconds.
Now try to teach yourself to aim one eye upwards, other one down. Or dilate just one pupil while contracting the other. Use it to fake brain damage.
.
[1]failed toy design: fresnel-prism glasses which make you feel tall by bending light vertically. They sorta work. More like, make gravity tilt backwards. | b8a0fa52-a727-41d9-9396-04b140b26da0 |
3zd6uj | Why does western society treat sex as something taboo? | This isn't really a concept question. Europe and America both "western societies" have different views on sex and display of it. US views on sex is still largely influenced by our Quaker and Puritan heritage.
Your question needs some clarification and best for perhaps r/askhistorians | 1c113f30-3175-4a85-a93d-e6086cfef2a4 |
3js9wj | what actually is that feeling when you're falling in a dream and you wake up? | The falling feeling is from a hypnic jerk. Your muscles may twitch or spasm and your mind is trying to make sense of it. You think that you're falling. I believe the heart beating and the shortness of breath is an emotional response. It's kinda not really clear why this happens.
Even though you are sleeping, there is a part of you that is monitoring your situation. It's like sometimes hearing your alarm clock radio in your dreams.
On wiki: _URL_0_
It says that a possible explanation is that it is a reflex we developed when humans slept in trees. | 4eac4d5a-aff4-46b4-b9d8-cbe4dfc7b218 |
2wigg4 | Why is it more quiet when it's snowing? | Many things at once make this happen:
1) Snow on the ground absorbs the noise around us, where as the hard surface of the roads bounce it off. Just like a room with carpet and curtains does not echo, but an empty room with floorboards does echo. Absorbing the noise makes it quieter.
2) Snow is soft and makes sounds quieter - walking in soft snow is quieter than shoe heels clipping on pavement.
3) More people stay inside and less people drive, so less traffic noise.
4) People that do drive, drive slower and more carefully, meaning less engine noise.
5) Birds and other animals come out less and make less noise. | 4809f8e4-60cd-41ae-bd99-e7da10427a06 |
28zpik | what exactly is the purpose of dreaming? | No one's entirely sure. Some popular theories:
--it helps us sort through the events of the day and create memories accordingly
--it helps us work through the emotions of the day and reach equilibrium
--dreams don't serve any purpose; they're just a consequence of some other process
These aren't necessarily contradictory theories; for example, maybe dreams don't serve any point, they're just how our sleeping brain interprets the neural activity of our brain sorting through memories. | 80c05b36-65a3-4090-86d9-633453e88dd6 |
2vlyfg | Why does water feel much colder in your mouth when chewing mint gum? | The ingredient in mint gum that gives that cooling sensation is called Menthol.
The tongue can not tell the difference between Menthol and actual cold temperatures so that's why they feel the same.
As a side note, capsaicin (the active ingredient in spicy food) is why our mouths feel hot. Again, because this chemical tricks our tongue into thinking, it's on fire. | 8f803a41-fa97-4e38-ac8a-235afbe235b4 |
7vbi1h | NFL followers, why are there so many people on the sideline while the game is being played? What is their role? Novice at NFL here. | Media people, cameramen, sound people, the other 80odd players not on the field, the coaching staff, the athletic trainer staff, the medical team, NFL officiating crew, security...
Add it all up and you usually have several hundred people on the sideline of a typical NFL game.
It takes a lot of people to make that kind of televised spectacle happen. | 5cdfda58-28f9-4dc9-b8ce-80d9c1057a51 |
1snkh3 | Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.? | Because Obama doesn't really care about libertarian neckbeards over the internet getting butthurt. | dc7f37ec-c9eb-41eb-9aec-da78cbf182f6 |
30skku | What's the significance and possible implications of all these nations joining this new China-led bank? (akin to the World Bank) | It means, in a basic sense, that nations will be able to go to an Eastern-led development bank instead of Western banks such as the World Bank and IMF (as you mentioned). Since countries usually agree to certain development terms when they receive loans from these places, the issuer of the loan gains control over the development process to a certain extent. Furthermore, since these banks are Western the development parameters will be much more Western-friendly, such as free trade with the US and EU, or growth in a market that would benefit the West.
A Chinese/Eastern development bank would give an alternative to the Western approach. Whether it would be good or bad for developing countries is yet to be seen, but I believe competition usually breeds a positive outcome (lower interest rates, less strict requirements on loans). In either case, it would take away some power the West holds over certain developing countries. Also, it gives countries shunned by the West access to large development banks granted the Chinese/East are willing to put up with them (Iran, Venezuela). | db459267-3adf-409a-84c0-1300bc521087 |
21dzt1 | Is it possible to become ambidextrous? | I highly suggest posting this over at /r/askscience to avoid hundreds a meaningless anecdotes being your answer. | fd3d02b6-45ba-4629-a2bc-5afcd9555749 |
38obff | how does people you may know function on facebook work? Do people who have visited my profile pop up there? | Do you have their phone numbers or email addresses and have ever used the feature that allows Facebook to search your contacts for potential friends? If you've done that they will show up in your recommended friends. Sometimes it seems to be so sensitive as to suggest someone who I have only contacted once. | c297c5d5-7747-4d05-802c-f158b0479370 |
40zzgf | How did some animals (lizards etc.) get an ability to regenerate limbs evolutionary? | All species have the capacity for regeneration, some to a higher extent than others.
What you are referring to is called autonomy (self amputation) and in most cases it was developed as a defence mechanism that allowed an animal to escape by sacrificing a limb and then regrow a substitute one (albeit imperfect one in most cases, as they can and do regrow differently to the natural ones, e.g. Deformed in some way).
A good example of this are certain lizards that will leave a part of their tail as a decoy (it will continue moving after becoming detached) to flee from a predator. The tail will grow back, however it will not have the same bone structure as the original one as it will be mostly replaced by cartilage.
Edit: a very good example of this in humans is liver regeneration. A human liver will regenerate back to its original size even if 80% of it is removed. | 10728a65-bcdb-405c-ae65-43fba35ddbd9 |
2589mx | The difference between Whiskey, Scotch and Bourbon. | Whisky is a type of alcohol, made of fermented grain mash (more on that in a second). It's distilled and aged in casks for years, usually it's made very clear how many years it's been aged and the difference between a bottle of 7-year and 10-year can be quite pronounced, as can the price. It's important to note the two different ways of spelling it if we're talking about the differences.
"Whisky" is the preferred spelling of much of the world (including Scotland).
"Whiskey" is the Irish and American spelling of the word.
The reason that's important is because there are three main markets for the production of whisky: Scotland, Ireland and America. Japan is a new contender too but a very good one, and the latest whisky of the year winner was an unheard of New Zealand distillery, but they're the big three still.
Possibly the biggest difference in the taste is due to what's used in the mash. Barley, rye, and corn are the common grains used.
Whisky produced in Scotland is called scotch, if not simply "whisky." The mash they use is usually malted barley. Legally it has to be if they call it "single malt," but that's not a law in other countries (for the record, a "blended malt" is just several single malts from different distilleries mixed together essentially). Scotch distilleries often use peat during the process which gives it a strong, rough, earthy taste (which is why pop culture has it as a very manly drink for manly men). There are massive numbers of scottish distilleries with long histories, it's treated as a real artform.
Whisky produced in much of America is called bourbon, though sometimes it's simply called whiskey. There are specific legal requirements it must meet to be allowed to be called bourbon, including that the mash has to be made largely from corn, giving it a rather distinct taste compared to other whiskeys.
Whisky produced in Ireland is called whiskey. It's usually distilled three times and tends to be much smoother than scotch as they don't use any peat. It used to be the most popular type of alcohol in the world, though it's now a tiny market share, but the remaining distilleries have a hell of a lot of lineage and experience behind them.
Edited to add: /r/scotch is full of smartypants who will be able to take any further questions you have to the next level too! | 07d6614d-1743-4a18-800c-f8e99c8dcd15 |
567dg5 | Why is ridesharing, like Uber and Lyft, illegal in some places (specifically Philadelphia). | Taxi services have a number of regulations that they have to abide by, and this causes them to charge more for the same service of getting you from point A to point B. These greater costs and increased operational rigidity lead to poorer service. However, they could absolutely offer better services, and should have to in order to stay competitive. More on this later.
In comes ride sharing services like Uber or Lyft. While they operate differently, and work under different names they are at heart a taxi service. They exist to allow you to hire a car to get you from point A to point B.
To put this in terms of your grocery store analogy; the old local grocery store is following all the health codes passed in your city, while the new store is calling itself a "trading ground," and intentionally ignoring all of those health regulations because it's not a "grocery store."
Many ride sharing services operate under the assumption that they aren't taxi services, and as such, they don't have to follow the same rules that Taxi services do. Because they assume that they don't have to follow these laws, they just don't follow them, allowing for better, cheaper services. I'd be happy to expand on these rules if you want.
So now we come to the crux of the issue. Lawmakers in each city, or each state, have to come to a decision. If Uber or Lyft are Taxi services, they are effectively operating illegally, and the laws need updated to include them going forward. If they aren't Taxi services, then new laws need to be written to encompass them. They cannot go unregulated, one way or another.
Each city is tackling this differently. Austin, TX passed new laws governing just ride sharing companies, and Uber pulled out of the city, refusing to do bus there. It sounds like the city of Philadelphia took a "wait and see" approach. They allowed the services to operate temporarily while they come up with new regulations to govern ride sharing, either as a Taxi service or as a new service all together.
Side note. The insurance thing is about the driver and his/her vehicle, not you. Most people's car insurance does not cover commercial activities. Delivery drivers, company cars, and Taxis all require commercial vehicle insurance, which is more expensive.
If you drive for Uber, and don't have this insurance, you might be in violation of the terms of your regular insurance policy. If you get into a wreck, especially while driving a customer around, your insurance can drop you and refuse to cover the damage caused in the wreck. Uber has, in the past, neglected to mention this to their drivers, meaning that they've got a bunch of effectively uninsured drivers working for them. | 0cc84601-03e3-4854-b2eb-de0b43567342 |
7vk7h2 | Why, for some stereo speakers, does one stereo cut out before the other one when adjusting the volume to a very low setting? | Because the device is probably using a stereo potentiometer. One of the quality differences between cheap and non-cheap multi-channel potentiometers is how accurate the tracking is on the two channels. | 39fc58bd-41cf-4eb2-8c52-f280337cc12f |
7mmaiw | Why do marathon runners tape their nipples? | They chafe against your shirt, they can even bleed. I didnt really take that seriously until I ran my first half marathon. It is a thing. | 0877ed1b-fb0b-43fa-bb19-c5cbc7de3ee5 |
6aaxnc | Why do our voices sound robotic when we speak into the fan? | Because the fan blades reflect the sound back at you, like any hard surface will. The difference is the fan has gaps in it that are are whizzing past. So you're getting hard surface, gap, hard surface, gap and so on many times a second, and your voice gets reflected back with a similar on/off/on/off pattern. Your voice as a result gains a weird sort of metallic trill to it. | 79dc020e-c454-4d96-ac76-87f62484fadf |
6iz5cx | Minneapolis and St. Paul are two major cities of small land areas in the same state that border each other. Is there any good reason they can't combine like the New York Boroughs did in 1898? | No. There is no practical reason why they cannot combine. If you watch "Gangs of New York," you can see practical reasons why combining police forces and having uniform laws are a plus. Then again many urban areas have separate governments separated by bodies of water.
State government has a lot to do with the decision to do this. State laws regulate a lot of things. A state legislature can make combining an advantage or a disadvantage. | 971664d6-0108-4775-b0fe-863c0dac7d84 |
896nlc | What actually prevents something from continuing to grow once matured and does any species max growth increase over the generations? | Genes usually stop growth when a pre-determined structure has completely formed. That is called determinate growth.
Indeterminate growth means that the animal will grow all throughout its life, this is common with fish, mollusks (squids) and reptiles. | 3a10317d-0761-4d83-8dee-bbf91d1f185a |
qgrw5 | Why did Walgreens end its partnership with Express Scripts? | Because they wanted to raise prices, while Express Scripts said no. | cb17da04-7112-4553-a1d8-58606775f9ef |
1j0xd4 | Why is Broadway and musical theater in general associated with homosexuals? | I think that a lot of the aspects of theater in general (the elaborate costumes, the makeup, the dancing) are socially viewed as feminine, adding a sort of femininity to male actors/ theater professionals. Also, it may have been influenced by Castratos (eunuchs _URL_0_) in classical opera/other classical performance settings but that's 100% speculation. | 5f7ecb2a-a3e0-4d4e-8782-cfa9a5272e28 |
1k48p9 | In America, why are most street signs green while others are blue? | It depends on the type of sign, and, in some cases, the specific sign. [Here](_URL_0_) is an overview of the different colors, while [here](_URL_1_) has specific signs that make for good examples. Specifically, green is "used as background color for guide and information signs, and for legend on permissive regulation and parking signs" and blue is "used as background color for traveler services information signs, emergency evacuation route signs, and as part of interstate and some state route markers". | 3bc5ed8c-cfed-4953-9149-b5b8ee102476 |
2v2aps | Why are ambulances at least in the US part of an outside company rather than owned by the hospital? | It is often more efficient that way.
It costs money for hospitals to maintain a fleet of ambulances, and since their priority is running the hospital, the might not be very good at it.
Let a single company specialize in ambulance service, and letting it serve all the surrounding hospitals eliminates redundancy and can save money for everyone. | 1cf96032-2518-4e60-ae88-22fc5b6efe2b |
80qng7 | What constitutes a "side effect" in contrast to the effect in drugs? | A side effect is simply something outside the intended purpose of the drug. Even if it happened 100% of the time, it can be considered a side effect. For example, a common allergy drug (diphenhydramine) also has a side effect of making one drowsy. You're buying it to be relieved of allergy symptoms, so the drowsiness is a side effect. But the side effect here is strong enough that the same drug is repackaged and sold as a sleep aid, in which case allergy relief is a side effect. | f11e872b-ff9d-4867-84d3-c31abb26dc2b |
18qvnu | What is goodwill, and what role does it play in partnership businesses in Accountancy? | In accounting, we predominantly use something called the double-entry method (Michael Scott contain yourself).
That means that when we spend money developing something, and incur cost, we also want to see it appear as an "asset", something we own - writing down both the cost and the asset are a sense check as we account.
Some things we can pick up or touch - physical assets: property, plant and machinery / equipment. But some we can't: brand value, or perhaps the value of software. These are called intangible assets.
Were we to acquire a company with lots of intangible assets, there would clearly be value in those assets - it's just that we can't really sell them or value them that readily. So we make a new category up, called Goodwill.
Within a partnership, there is a fair amount of that intangible value: the value of what each of the guys brings to the partnership. Consequently, we need to find a way of representing that in the accounts. Generally, we take what we believe to be "sustainable" turnover, i.e. what the business makes in money, and multiply it by a given amount - this is the value of what the partners "bring to the table". As this doesn't really exist, it is classified as goodwill - just like the value of that software etc. | 6894b3a7-6b6c-44cc-ac21-4c51af3ef680 |
5hdnuu | Why are video game prices dropping quickly this year | It's christmas, and those two games are on everyone's list. Grandma WILL buy Titanfall for Timmy between now and Dec. 25th, and she only will buy it ONCE. The only question is from where.
That means whoever can offer the best price on Titanfall to Grandma WILL get her in the door for at least one purchase. And while she's there maybe she'll pick up a Bing Crosby Christmas album for the third time. Or buy the hardware protection plan for those gold-plated Monster HDMI cables.
Alternatively, it could be good strategically if she buys the game from ME instead of my competitors. Me & Blockbuster both bought 1000 copies of the game for $30/ea. If I sell it for $35 while my competitor is selling it for $50, I deny them the sale that they were banking on. Sure I only made $5/unit, but they are still sitting on $30,000 of inventory that won't sell 10% as much for the next several months.
That means I have $30,000 to spend on Titanfall DLC to sell Timmy in January, while they're still stuck trying sell Timmy a base game he already owns.
That DLC will make me $15/unit, which means in total I've made $30/customer, which is a net gain over what blockbuster made trying to sell the game at full(ish) price. | cb263d99-4b21-4e6d-8039-404edf96c726 |
1z6vf8 | Mt. Gox | This question concerns one of the most frequently asked topics on ELI5, so it has been removed. Try the searchbar!
It's okay to re-post questions, but please indicate that you did a search and that previous questions/answers didn't help you understand. | 64f5c6b4-d57c-4d31-a00c-bab945cd08e0 |
7rjwqg | Why does sand stick to everything even though it doesn't feel sticky? | Sand sticks to things in many ways just like flour does. Flour particles aren't sticky at all (while dry), but small enough to be caught in tangles of fabric fibers, attracted by even the slightest charges, or "grabbed" by microscopic droplets of water or oil (and the human body is literally covered with oil-drop and water-drop emitting organelles: sweat glands and sebaceous glands). Flour is many times smaller, so more sticks of course, but at the size level of a grain of sand a human body is covered in a rough shag of fibers, and sticky oil and water films.
None of these hold on very tightly, but tight enough to resist gravity and most movement, so the sand doesn't just fall off when you stand up. Brushing the area is more forceful, and tends to knock off every grain of sand hit - but again, sand is so small it can "hide" in the fabric or get missed by a rough hand brushing. | f745c342-e394-416e-b938-59b97d1549d1 |
5xyhih | What is the reason for "ancestor worship" in East Asia, and how did this cultural practice come about? | It's not so much worship, but remembrance, and being thankful for giving birth, and remembering their achievements.
It's just kind of like say, if your mother died, you would go to her grave (or memorial) and kind of have a moment, remembering the person she was, and in the case of East Asians, laying out a table full of their favorite foods and pouring them a drink (akin to 'pouring one out for the lost homies') so that the ancestors can 'come to eat and receive bows' from his descendants.
Dunno, I guess East Asians just make the whole remembering the past into a ritual/ceremony of sorts, that involve most of the family on major national holidays. And yes, we do eat the food that we 'serve' to our ancestors, and yes, it's usually really dank stuff we only get to eat on occasion (fall fruits that are delicious, expensive ribs, korean pancakes, ect.).
The difference is, in the west, maybe a family or two come to graves/memorials and just lay down some flowers, shed a tear or pour out a drink, but in East Asia, we have a ceremony of sorts of remembrance, laying out their portraits indoors, or going to their graves and setting up really good food, offering them drink and bows, and having fun with close family that all gathered (uncles, aunts, cousins). | 880aba0a-c859-45ff-9b9b-77302a13bcc1 |
5kq70i | How does swallowing SSRIs or any medication get the chemicals into your brain or other body part where it's required? | It is the same way food is processed. It is broken down and absorbed by the digestive tract, then distributed throughout your body via your bloodstream. Medications do not target a specific region. | 0d7a09a7-e389-498c-9666-9225ecdd78c4 |
64cah2 | Why do so many celebrities become enamored by/join Scientiology? | Well, for those people it IS like a celebrity club; it's a relatively exclusive organization, it has vast contacts in the entertainment biz and associated businesses (because they have cultured members and allies and contacts for this purpose) so they also provide **networking** between different kinds of high profile people. It also makes for a handy tax deduction when making donations from their otherwise large salaries. These benefits allow them to attract yet more high profile, wealthy clientele from which to elicit donations.
I'm probably on a list now. | 6ee519c2-54de-4507-8069-0b17907dcedc |
6mvxes | If internet can so easily be overlorded by megacorps, it means the implementation of it was broken from the start. Couldn't we just start a whole new internet that runs on entirely new and open source infrastructure and setup rules that keep it safe or human consumption? | It's because it's using phone and cable lines that are already attached to peoples' homes.
You need to be a company that has the resources to get data directly to peoples' homes. And not only that, all of the servers that hold internet content would need to be off of the old system as well, so the millions of servers would have to be connected to this new system.
It's like moving away from gasoline for cars. Gasoline's big advantage that it has over electric or other resources is that we have an infrastructure already in place on every other street corner to get your fuel.
Imagine if every gas station in the world went away, how long would it take to rebuild all of that infrastructure?
To be an entity that had the resources to do all of that would make the megacorporations look tiny by comparison.
So in the meantime, the easy way was to declare the internet a common carrier, and make it government regulated. | c571db12-32d2-4787-beb2-296eb698454f |
1ssm51 | The Obamacare birth control mandate. | Put in place by the US government to force health insurance providers/employers to include different methods of birth control on their employees plans at no cost to the employee. It stated that the mandate required all health plans to cover all contraceptives approved by the FDA. It covers pretty well anything you can come up with | 207bf045-545c-490b-aa64-75c21eaa5ac6 |
5z726n | When cars are towed, how does the owner know that it was towed rather than stolen? | Cop here:
A lot of times there will be a sign that tells you what tow company tows from that area.
We do still get a lot of calls about stolen cars that end up being towed, though.
In my state, tow companies are required to submit every car they tow into a database that's searchable by police.
9 times out of 10 when you call 911 to report your car stolen and give the operator your license plate, they'll be able to tell you where your car was towed to.
I've had a handful of cases where a car was towed and didn't get put in the tow file (usually repossessions). In those cases we'll do a report, the car will be entered into NCIC, and then we'll find out later it was towed and just have to close the case.
Again, this is my state, I can't speak for states that don't have this system. | 7342b6d8-d436-450a-8f69-ed8753aa4c5a |
7a3pxs | What is Unraid? | It’s an operating system you can buy for a computer. Like windows or Mac. But it’s intended for storing files and making them available to other computers on a network at home or in an office. It’s in the category of things we call “NAS” or Network Attached Storage. Unlike your computer, it’s typical for NAS servers to have more than one hard drive.
It’s called Unraid because most NAS or file serving computers rely on a concept called RAID to prepare for and recover from the failure of one of the hard drives. The goal for most NAS systems is for it to be possible for one drive to fail without causing the server itself to fail. When a drive fails, it can simply be replaced and no data is ever lost in the process.
As I mentioned, RAID is the way most systems do this. Some people feel that RAID is too complicated a technology and prefer a simpler approach. Those people worry that in a RAID system, if one drive fails you can’t simply read the data from the surviving drives: you have to replace the failed drive and allow the RAID technology to rebuild your data from the surviving drives. (These people are reminded that one must back up all file servers, whether they are protected by RAID or not.)
Unraid also provides protection from a scenario when one hard drive fails, but one important difference is that after a drive has failed, whatever data is on the remaining drives can still be read, even if those drives are removed from the system and installed in another computer.
I use Unraid at home to store video files and make them available on my TV, among other things. AMA. | 3d526854-77de-45bf-ae77-71f39ef0020a |
8hpxjd | How come steak can be rare but ground beef must be fully cooked | Steak is relatively dense, so bacteria tend to be on the surface, which you will be subjecting to a lot of direct heat. If you grind the meat up, then you potentially allow any present bacteria to spread throughout the material. | 3457819d-d846-4929-b082-486457a67a1f |
465vud | Why is it called the great recession, and not the 2nd great depression? What exactly is the difference? | It's called the "Great Recession" because although there was a strong recession, meaning a decrease in size of the economy, there was no depression, which is a longer period of stagnation following a recession. What characterized the Great Depression was that it took a long time for conditions to improve, whereas we recovered from the Great Recession quite quickly in America (in an aggregate economic sense--not necessarily every industry or place). | 68ef215c-d94a-4a4a-aef0-532c984e9c81 |
2me19u | How do unions work? and what do they do? | Unions work through collective bargaining.
One of the unstated facts about capitalism is what you are worth. You are NOT worth the value of your labor. You are worth what you can NEGOTIATE for your labor. If a company were to pay you for the VALUE of your labor, the company would not make any profit on it, and would soon not be in business. So, your employer needs to pay you LESS than the value you provide.
For the company, the bigger that gap, the better for the company. More profit.
For the worker, the SMALLER that gap, the better. The worker gets more for his labor.
And that's where the negotiation comes in.
In a straight company-worker relationship, the negotiating power is tilted heavily towards the company. The company likely has multiple applicants for a job, so the company can look for the best worker AT THE BEST PRICE (ie, lowest wage for unit of work.)
Some high skill, high demand workers are able to negotiate from a position of strength. They can demand higher wages, better working conditions, and better benefits because THEY are the ones with multiple job offers.
But, for the average worker, they can be replaced. So, while it's not a COMPLETELY powerless position, the worker doesn't have a lot of leverage in negotiations. After all, the company can (most likely) keep running if a few workers quit.
Then there are unions.
Unions are when worker band together to negotiate as ONE GROUP for their labor from the company.
Unions shift the power of the negotiations between a business and labor. Now, the company cannot negotiate on a one-on-one basis with each of the workers. The company negotiates with ALL the (unionized) workers. So, while the company used to be able to pay a few workers more, and threaten other workers with firing, now the workers have the ability to counter. If the workers feel they are getting a bad deal, they will ALL leave.
That's a strike.
It's a bad deal for the company, because the company has to operate with a severely reduced workforce, if they can operate at all. It's also a bad deal for the workers, because they are not getting paid.
But, through negotiations, the workers are (usually) able to leverage that better position to higher wages and better conditions and benefits. This is bad for the company, as their profit margin is reduced.
It is both good and bad for the workers. For high-performing workers, their pay may be reduced, as most union contracts mean people will get paid similar amounts. For the poor workers and for average workers, there is usually a net gain, as their pay is better than it would otherwise be.
But, because there is now a direct animosity between the workers and the company, there are a number of corrosive effects on the relationship between workers and the company. For example,
The union workers may get paid a certain amount, because they may not get bonuses based on performance. They do not have the incentive to do as good a job.
The company can try to retaliate against those workers who are very pro-union.
Many union contracts spell out in very precise terms what the workers are and are not allowed to do. This means that there is an extra level of bureaucracy in the workplace that can slow down production. Asking a certain worker to do something that is not in their job description may not be allowed under the contract.
Businesses find it harder to scale up and scale down their labor force to match work requirements.
Also, because companies are making less profit, they are more susceptible to failing when things go bad.
On the flip side,
Unions set the standard wage expectations in the area.
ALL workers in a heavily unionized community make more money and have better benefits than those in non-unionized areas.
Since those workers are getting paid more, they have more disposable income, meaning they can BUY more stuff. As Henry Ford pointed out in 1916, it makes sense for Ford Motor Company to pay its workers enough to be able to AFFORD to buy a car.
There are LOTS of examples of unions and companies having relationships that are so bad that both suffered.
But there are ALSO examples of unions and companies working TOGETHER to improve the company, and the union. | 549819af-b425-4e6c-a80e-ada4ad65a4c0 |
2iam2m | - In the first Matrix, Neo asks for guns, how would he get to the other rows of guns? | > Are they just for show?
It's a movie, it's all just for show. It looks cooler to have many rows, so that's what they did. | 5f1268f4-7612-4e65-aa3c-4feed3208320 |
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