query_id
stringlengths 3
6
| question
stringlengths 1
299
| goldenAnswer
stringlengths 3
35k
| doc_id
stringlengths 36
36
|
|---|---|---|---|
1r6wdq | What would happen if, the moment you were arrested for a serious crime, you refused to talk, forever. | You never need to talk, you will be put on trial, the evidence presented and a verdict reached. Though its possible the judge and your lawyers may get pretty fucking pissed at you for refusing to acknowledge the court and authorities asking basic questions like "do you understand the charges" and may declare you unfit for trial or reach some type of plea agreement, probably not in your favor.
You never have to discuss the case, but completely refusing to acknowledge anything or sign anything is pretty much a fuck you to the court and they will hold you in contempt and put you in jail or a mental facility until you are willing to comply with basic instructions of being on trial. | 7bba1d75-1c61-4f8d-ba02-b4f0d531ff46 |
5vyk9h | How does the Monte-Carlo method work? | Let's say you have a white piece of paper and a black marker, and you color some areas of the paper black. You ask me to figure out what fraction of the paper is colored black. Let's say I already know the area of the paper and that this doesn't change.
One way to figure this out would be to precisely measure, using geometric techniques, the area of the black regions. But, this may be very difficult if the shapes you drew aren't nice. For example, if you drew a bunch of perfect circles, that's not too hard to figure out, but if you scribbled a bunch, that's a lot harder to do.
Monte Carlo methods are a family of techniques to estimate unknown quantities using randomness. I can estimate the proportion of the paper you colored by throwing a bunch of darts at it and counting the ratio of darts that landed on black points to the total number I threw. The estimate becomes more precise as I throw more darts, and as long as my darts are hitting points on the paper truly randomly, I can confidently estimate to arbitrary precision by throwing enough darts. | 7eeee137-fc93-4916-8a9d-2d3160a4aaa7 |
60yan9 | In the US, why are alcoholic beverages not required to have the same nutrition fact labeling as other foods and beverages? | Food is under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which does the nutrition labels.
Alcohol is under the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), which does not have a labeling standard. | c7a2b501-d7c7-4202-ad7e-34370901e25a |
3auny0 | Why are some of my dino nuggets ice cold and the others lava hot, even when I place them in a circle? | A microwave produces [standing microwave waves](_URL_0_) inside it to vibrate certain molecules in food to heat it up.
The issue is that the wavelength of the microwave is about 12 cm long. Due to the nature of the standing wave, this means that there are spots where the waves cancel out every 6 cm (nodes).
The cold nuggets are sitting in these nodes so they don't get heated. This is why the turntable in a microwave is very important to rotated the nuggets around so they are evenly heated. | 43cecc73-a868-4e3a-bb41-c57dec40291c |
7wkv7u | why is it that when food is too hot to touch it doesn't necessarily burn your mouth when eating? | Because the inside of your mouth is already around 37C and coated in slimy film, where as your hands are dry and have a surface temperature relative to the air temperature.
If you dipped your hands in say..slime, they could also pick up hotter objects. Your hands and other sensory organs are wired to tell you "this hot, painful" as a protective method, and it may be that hot food your holding wouldn't actually burn you. | d6bffca7-cbc3-4158-8586-389490514233 |
8f74e6 | why are animated gifs substantially larger than mp4 videos? | An animated GIF is a series of images stuck after each other, like an old movie roll. So you have all the data of all the frames: Frame + Frame + Frame + Frame + [....] + Frame.
An MP4 video is a repeat of a full frame image followed by a series of incremental frames which show the differences with the full image. So you have one time the data of a frame and a bunch of data of small updates to it: Frame + Update + Update + [...] + Frame + Update + Update + [....] + Update.
Further an animated GIF frame does have a bad compression algorithm compared with the one used in a video. | 4c3a0282-180c-4c05-acaf-011f8554fe46 |
3cnlrd | Why do people instantly grab/press a body part which just got hit/injured? | I would assume people do this to prevent further damage to that body part. For example, if you are in a fight with someone and they punch you in the left arm, you would cover it to try to block more damage from happening. It could also be for applying pressure on a wound to lessen the bleeding. | a94e58b9-2f3f-4f38-861e-c9afa90b1918 |
44xjnr | Why are some websites updated with "© 2016" at the bottom while others may say "© 2012" or whatever year, when clearly they're still copyrighted? | The copyright date establishes the beginning of the copyright (this is very simplified, but go with it). If I write something in 2012 and never change it, it stays with that copyright and it will eventually come out into public domain. If I continue to update the same site or information, the copyright updates as well and pushes back the date when I (or more specifically my estate) loses copyright. | 9b9f1c9f-ea2d-444c-b4fb-cb2ab01afef6 |
3qwtt3 | Where does the battery "juice" (or charge) in my laptop, phone, etc. go when it runs out? | It is converted into kinetic energy used to spin your hard drive, heat from the various components in your computer operating, light from your monitor and from the various indicator lights on your laptop and the various laser reading heads on different devices you may have, magnetic fields as you write new data to your computer hard drive, radio waves as you use wireless, and many other things. | 5b6072a4-8f31-4617-9792-8e639e4d4778 |
2gv60x | Why do businesses seem to be stingy with ten-dollar bills? | Often they have few if any to give. The thing is, fives are more versatile since they can break tens or twenties, but tens can only break twenties or higher. Higher than twenties the next up is fifty or a hundred, so youre better off breaking with twenties and fives (2 20s and 2 5s = 50. 5 20s = 100). Considering most bills arent going to need flat fifty as change, but say, 47.73 or so (who the fuck buys a large mocha with a 50? Assholes, thats who), stocking tens doesnt really make sense. When the registers are stocked after drawers are counted, those are the bills they get. Most or all tens they get came from customers,. | 4bae055b-7445-4d7f-936c-9cc3357826d2 |
2o44aw | What happens to the animals killed during crop harvesting? | A farmer friend of mine said, yes they do occassionally clog up the works (bigger animals) but for the most part they end up in the harvester, and caught by various filters, and by the sorting devices later. Larger animals, once freed (they are obv dead), are often tossed off to the side for the predators/scavengers.
Animals around farms are often smart, and a 'pecking order' is visible while driving. The combine scares the mice from the swath, the eagles/falcons swoop down for the mice, the cyotes run out to catch the birds once they land OR hunt for the nests these birds have near by. Apparantly the crows will mess with the other animals - they wait for the eagles to do the heavy lifting and catch the mice, then the crows attack the eagles making them drop it. | 50903e0c-f809-462c-bcef-5f0763caadfd |
6pqfr1 | Why is disinfecting wounds painful? | There's two main reasons. First, the wound is sensitive, as that part of the body has been damaged and is screaming at your brain to start taking damage control steps. Putting anything in an open wound is going to hurt some. Second, the things we use to disinfect typically do that by killing biological material, which will include the cells around and in your wound. So basically you're quarantining and nuking the area to make sure the infection doesn't spread. The basic part of your brain that handles pain doesn't understand that, or the reasons for disinfection, it just sees more damage to an already damaged part of the body, and registers it as pain. | 8a7ec2c0-3ac9-48ef-8019-bdf3a219c9ee |
3x9udh | Why not sue the FDA when a product hurts someone? Why is it that the company that made the product is the one to be blamed when they assumed everything was all good and well after approval by the FDA? | Oftentimes, the FDA was also a victim of fraud, specifically of fraudulent submission of bad safety research. Why blame the FDA when the company is 100% at fault? | 99724d7e-5d1d-4567-a594-b07113cc2806 |
69c2h7 | When there is a catastrophic injury to a person's head, why is there a delay before blood starts pouring out? [NSFL] | It isn't just the head but most flesh that reacts this way. An injury usually happens when force is applied to the flesh and this tends to compress it before tearing it, which pushes blood out of it into the surrounding tissues. Imagine if you forced a rod through a sponge; it would tend to squeeze the water out of that portion, right?
Once pressure on the wound is released the blood can start to flow again, but it takes a moment to saturate the tissue it was pushed out of before exiting the wound. | 00200193-5167-4776-9a8b-d0f8025bbf11 |
kqwi4 | How did (western?) musicians decide upon 7 musical notes? | The seven-note scale is called the 'diatonic' scale (which, according to Wikipedia, means '[progressing] through tones' -- TIL). Musical archaeologists have found some evidence that it's been in use for many thousands of years, but nobody's quite sure exactly when it started.
There are all sorts of special reasons why seven notes works well, to do with wavelength ratios (the distance between two side-by-side peaks) in the soundwaves. You can split the intervals (distance between notes) into pleasing sounds, like the fifth and octave, which the ancient Greeks thought sounded 'pure', and thirds and sixths, which have been considered more pleasant to listen to for the past four hundred(ish) years.
There are many cultures that use different scales -- large parts of East Asia use the pentatonic scale, which uses five notes (if you play the black notes on a piano, that's what it sounds like), Indonesia has two different scales of five and seven notes, India has 'rāgs' which contain quarter-steps instead of our half-steps, and in the past hundred years a new one, called the octatonic scale (which has eight notes), has sometimes been used in Western music. The theme to *The Simpsons* is octatonic.
Tl;dr: Nobody knows how or when it started, but it's been that way for thousands of years. Other cultures have different scales: our one was historically centred around Western Europe. | 6e0c10b3-855d-42f9-a2aa-86f007523d84 |
4bxw7b | Why most high caliber Sniper rifles are shown as having low capacity magazines? | Because if you had a 30 round magazine of 50bmg, it would be 2 ft long, weigh 10 pounds. | aac5b68a-c6ec-40ae-85d6-8cd7f3416836 |
2f1j3f | How are exchange rates decided? Who decides the actual numeric value of one currency in another? | In the modern economy, most exchange rates are determined essentially by supply and demand. For example, if you are American you are paid in dollars, but need Euros to buy goods produced in Germany. When you want to buy a German good, you are "demanding" Euros and "supplying" dollars so the value of Euros increases relative to dollars.
Governments and central banks can affect the value of their currencies through monetary policy but it's all based on this principle. | 3415a8be-0476-4a82-ab9e-811abc80da14 |
6860ia | Cold temperatures wake us up while hot make us tired, is this purely a matter of comfortability or is there something happening to our bodies? | [There was a study done](_URL_0_) and it says the optimal sleep temperature is between 60-68 degrees farenheit. Too warm or too cold and you can become restless. It's interesting that warm temperatures make you tired, the opposite rings true for myself. | 8c3c72cb-513f-4552-b85e-8cbd149a74d2 |
61yxaw | Fossil fuel subsidies | I do not know all of them. All companies try to get favorable tax policies so they maximize their profit.
Companies buy equipment which will last for years but eventually become junk. This includes cars, trucks and actually everything else. So the value of the property declines over years. They argue with tax men over what the value is because they are allowed to depreciate this equipment. Every year they decide what their stuff is worth. It is generally worth less than it was the year before so they claim a loss on their tax returns.
This logic is applied to oil wells and to mines. We know the well will become depleted and eventually the mine will become closed. The companies were first allowed to deduct the cost of the well or opening a mine as a cost of doing business. Then each year their accountants are allowed to estimate how much the value of the property has decreased since it is being depleted. That estimated depletion is allowed as a deduction on their income.
You should understand that the company accountants are very good at using this depletion to the advantage of the company. I knew a man who went into contracting. He bought an asphalt paver and paved a few lots making enough to pay for the machine and have a good profit. Then his accountant had him leave the paver sit idle for years depreciating it. Its all legal.
Even though the companies were allowed to deduct the cost of the well construction, they still get to depreciate the value of the well as they extract the oil and sell it. If you think this is a tremendous advantage to them you are right. They sell the oil. They deduct the value of the oil sold as a loss. It is a bonanza and favors drilling a lot of holes for as much oil as possible. | b856572d-8932-4bee-9fca-b1c5bb44ec77 |
3ekqy7 | What do they mean when they say the mass of the atmosphere of Pluto has decreased by a factor of 2 in two years? | Uhhhh, Pluto is heading into it's hundred year 'winter' season. The atmosphere is freezing to the planet as ice. It's a 'dwarf' planet equivalent of a comet (sorta). Everyone saying it's lack of gravity is missing the fact that that process takes eons, not two years. | efa03c18-76fa-4df9-a7bf-f741ac50a974 |
ov8t8 | why wired data transfer is faster than wireless. | I think it's mostly because wireless transfer is more prone to interference - it's very difficult to corrupt data that's being sent over a wire, but it's very easy to corrupt it (even unintentionally) if it's sent through the air. Particularly if there's any sort of obstacle between the transmitter and the receiver.
Sure, any computer worth its salt can detect errors like that and send a "data was corrupted, please resend" message, but that takes time. So it'll take longer to move your data.
As you put it, "you can move more data across a cable than you can through the air". | 7c57197b-a90b-40df-8e1e-eeb196a9789c |
5z2prh | If you were sucked out of a spaceship, how would you die and how long would it take? Would it be the cold to kill you first, the lack of oxygen, or the lack of pressure? | Lack of oxygen would do you in long before anything else.
The pressure differential would cause a lot of pain, but wouldn't be immediately fatal, and the cold would take hours to do any real damage. | 8a047d5c-bdbd-4297-b839-c55cf59b4af6 |
41azzd | Why are search boxes in many websites so seemingly innefective, while googling the same thing almost always gives me what I was looking for? | Google has been optimizing their algorithm for a long time. It uses all of the past searches everyone has ever made using Google in order to learn what results people are most likely to click on, and then offers those results ahead of others. Because Google is popular, a lot of people have used it, and so they have a lot of example searches to learn from.
Think about the other websites. How many people use them? How long have they been around? I bet they don't have as many previous searches to work with as Google...by a long shot. So they aren't going to have the same training data for machine learning, and their performance won't be comparable as a result. | 1fa80fec-341f-48f7-bd4f-06e6fcbccdfa |
3ytqwn | Why are baby animals so cute? Is there a genetic advantage to this? | There is some belief that traits we identify with 'cuteness' are traits possessed by immature animals, and as such there's a protective/friendly hardwiring in the brain. The advantage would presumably be that immature animals are less capable of caring for themselves, and therefore those that are cared for by adults perform better. It may be that the traits we find cute are shared in a general fashion by other nonhuman animals, so we respond similarly to them.
Interestingly, a noted phenomenon in domestication is that domestic animals tend to retain traits common to immature members of their ancestor populations, into adulthood. | 9be96134-b864-48e3-981b-ee3d3a84453d |
8pqetr | What is ASMR? Can anyone describe what it’s like? | It stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Basically, it's a physical/physiological reaction to certain sounds. These trigger a tingly sensation esp on the spine and head. It can also be used as a relaxation technique. Others have a sexual response to it.
So it's kind of the reverse of nails on a chalkboard
Sounds such as whispering, tapping, water running, and so forth can create a pleasurable physical reaction. I'm not sure of the chemical mechanism that causes this, but that's the easy answer. | 93dfea7f-9675-41d7-803e-3d425936205f |
1n294e | how come all my friends' houses and clothes have a distinct, separate smell? | Ah, that "Jeff smell". This has remarkably little to do with showering routine and cleaning products, and almost everything to do with your personal sweat. In addition to water and electrolytes, sweat also contains small amounts of waste products, like urea, and smellier things like mercaptans easily pass through the skin. So diet plays a role, natural bacteria in the gut and on the skin play a role, organ health plays a role, density of apocrine glands, percentage of sugar in sweat (which, in turn, allows for increased growth of yeasts which produce their own smell), degree of keratin production (mostly because this can plug pores), natural hormones, and natural pheromones, among other things. Obviously, frequency of bathing will diminish the scents on people, and perfuming plays some minor role, but if you recognize your friend's scent on their pillow, for example, it's mostly due to what I just wrote.
In addition to this, there is the influence of breath, which people don't normally think about. There are a lot of reactive species that get exhaled that have a scent, many of which will linger in air, including ketones, alcohols, and volatile organic compounds. This isn't even including situations of poor oral hygiene or stomach upset, the latter of which can smell like HCl or sulfur, depending on the nature of the problem. | 32b19a67-2c0d-4c32-9f1e-45016c2fa834 |
352c1t | How is it I can spend 3 hours laying still in bed not sleeping, then doze off repeatedly in the middle of driving the next morning? | Are you saying that you actually doze off while driving? *Repeatedly?*
This is not normal and is a grave concern to me. I have never dozed off while driving. You should not be risking your life and that of other drivers that way. I'm frankly totally shocked. If something like that happened to me, I think I would see a doctor immediately. | 68e072e3-3c95-4fc9-bda9-eda5e7a2f901 |
6tykfb | Why are we charged 9/10th of a penny with gasoline? | In addition to the other posts, another reason is that gasoline profit margins are extremely tight but high volume, and it adds up. In 2014, it ended up being an extra $1.2 billion in revenue. via [source](_URL_0_) (which has a nice history as well, if you're curious) | d145e21a-4f4e-4745-9445-b2479675f5c3 |
1ts924 | If I let two chess engines play each other 100 times, how do they play 100 different games if there must be one optimal game? | There is a field of Computer Science called "Computation Theory", which is adjacent to AI.
With our current computation power, we aren't even able to solve a single chess opening (a game after some set opening moves are played), let alone the game itself, so while working with Computation Theory has advanced our understanding of the game very much (in terms of valid plays), we still don't know and can't compute the "optimal" responses to a certain move.
With that said, different chess engines utilize different methods. Some use AI theory to assign values and evaluate each position. Others use a "backtrack" algorithm to compute possible board states 3-4 moves ahead and see which move results in a more optimal future setting. Others draw from online databases of countless matches, to see which move had more winning chances in an approximately equal board position.
Most modern engines utilize a combination of the above. Depending on configurations, and think time, 2 chess enginges can play very different styles of chess | ea482072-9f8f-4e28-b64f-a163e0ab27af |
820qe5 | How does a cars speedometer know not to increase when a cars tires are spinning? | It does not know. It assumes the tires are in proper contact with the ground, and when they are not, it gives an incorrect reading.
Future speedometers may be corrected using GPS, but that generally is not done today. | 5983f057-065a-437d-a192-573ecc85da3a |
qmnpx | why it takes so many years for a county like Iran to build a nuclear weapon when the technology has been around for over 60 years? | eli5: imagine you are at school and little billy has made a paper crane. his friend johnny also knows how to make a paper crane, and they make lots of paper cranes together. they didn't tell each other how, and they didn't learn from a book - they just kind of figured it out one day, trial and error.
so now you want to make a paper crane. you're all jealous and crap, and paper cranes are awesome. there's just one problem: you don't know how. oh and there's another problem: billy and johnny know how, but if they told everybody how to make paper cranes they wouldn't be so cool anymore.
so you have to figure it out from scratch.
you know what a paper crane should look like when it's done, but you have no idea how any of the folds are done, in what order, or even what kind of paper you need to use.
the only thing you have going for you that billy and johnny didn't is that you can look at their cranes (not very closely) and see kind of what it should look like when you're done with it, but that's not very helpful at all.
replace cranes with nuclear technology, billy and johnny with nuclear powers, and "being cool" with guarding nuclear secrets.
* as an aside, a lot of the reason the nuclear powers don't share their technology with countries like iran is that those regions are incredibly unstable, and all it takes is one rogue officer to hand off some u-235 to a terrorist faction and you've got a dirty bomb unaccounted for. it's bad news bears! honestly! there are really not a lot of scenarios that are worse than the idea of ayman al-zawahiri in possession of a nuclear device. and literally all it takes is one bad decision to go from "iran has a nuclear power program" to "iran doesn't know where some of its uranium went."
* another interesting point is that, although i can only speculate on figures and any cases i could cite would be anecdotal, but a lot of talented nuclear physicists from third world countries end up coming to developed powers and not going back. it'd take you a while to develop nuclear technology too, if all you had was second-string nuclear physicists, amirite? | fd06a56a-7171-4fec-a3e3-64d0f1329ccc |
2gt4e4 | How do burning arrows stay lit after the immense acceleration they experience being shot from a bow? | Depending on the fuel used, it can be almost comically challenging to put it out. If you've ever dealt with a gas fire, you'll know what I mean. I'd wager they were using coal-tar or peat or natural gas of some sort -- though I'm a little out of my depth here. | c46c89d3-fe98-4e76-9918-28592a8cafd7 |
8o2afk | How is the US allowed to just raise tarrifs when laws that have minors effects on trade have to go all the way through the WTO? | The premise of your question is mistaken. The European Union has initiated a WTO case against the US over these tariffs. | 0eae22c2-b5df-461f-80c2-42582d617b3e |
5s0vni | Why do we use the base 10 system, and what are its benefits over other mathematical systems? | no benefit, other than a convenient correlation with the number of fingers.
there are better systems that work better with the base 2 of computers and which have more easily divisable fractions. Base 16 would probably be an ideal candidate for both things. | a1c1b78d-e4fa-4cbc-ac2e-a4904847adf6 |
3olifs | how does hand sanitizer make your hands clean when you don't use anything to wipe the dirt off them? | Hand sanitizer is not the same as hand *cleaner*. Its only function is to kill the micro-organisms on your hands.
There are certain gels called hand cleaners that work like a pencil eraser though. Those ones do actually clean your hands by trapping dirt and then flaking away as you rub them together. | d19f7a74-7b15-48d0-96f5-daaa4bd3d65b |
3jzfk9 | The crucial difference between operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc...) | Windows - > Expensive. Sort of easy interface with many "advanced mode" options. Closed source. Solid ubiquity and compatibility.
Mac - > Very expensive. Easy interface with less "advanced mode" options. Closed source. Poor ubiquity & compatibility with some industry pockets of ubiquity & compatibility.
Unix - > Price varies widely on application. Interface is esoteric and only comes in advanced mode. Closed source. Poor ubiquity & compatibility with some industry pockets of ubiquity & compatibility.
Linux - > Pretty much free. Easy to ultra advanced the NSA is watching me interface. Open source. Poor ubiquity but slightly better compatibility then unix. Some industry pockets of ubiquity & compatibility exist. | 787538bf-4a2f-47f8-984c-09e04104e3a4 |
3i0tgy | If someone gets arrested but is later found innocent, why does their arrest and initial charge remain on the NCIC's database? | if there is no record that it happened then the government might think they forgot to arrest you or something. if you are found innocent you can remove it from your publicly viewable record. | 0c480f7a-bbfb-4007-89cc-c869279100d4 |
7d8ibn | How is it so difficult for video game publishers to detect cheating on PC? | The fundamental problem is that the user has physical control over their own PC and the only information the game manufacturer gets is whatever their PC sends.
> Doesn't their code have digital signatures?
Sure, and those can always be defeated someone with enough time and perseverance. Let's say the code is running on my PC.
The first thing the code does is check to see if it's been modified, and refuse to run if its code doesn't match the signature. No problem, I just modify the code that detects whether it's been modified or not.
The code uses the code's signature to encrypt all messages to the server? No problem, I just modify it so that there's another *unmodified* copy of the game installed and it encrypts messages using that signature instead.
Basically any checks on the client side can be bypassed by a programmer who knows how to disassemble. It's only a matter of how long it will take or how tricky it will be. | 6686f4ca-ff81-42de-affb-27af1c9b1a8c |
6rxohs | why certain surgeries require months of recovery time | Well, it really depends on the part of the body being operated on. Different types of cells in different areas of the body replicate and replace at different rates. A neuron, for example, can take as long as 7 years to replace itself (which is why brain damage is such a nasty injury). Shoulder muscles can take months to repair themselves.
Surgeries are great. They can help speed up the process of repair, and correct for improper repair (such as in the case of broken bones), but they can't actually do the real repairing themselves. They just set all the pieces in place and help the body along in the repair process. | 54550b61-545b-440c-bed0-db49008f1bf2 |
42vw3p | Why do Japanese albums often contain bonus tracks not available elsewhere? | There is complex and lengthy process to be allow to sell albums in Japan.
This leads to the fact that most of the time, album are release in Japan later than in other country.
To make sure people wait for the japanese release and don't just buy stuff abroad through internet, companies put exclusives bonus tracks in these releases | 60f2158f-da81-4298-aaec-1c8dfd69c028 |
zzvls | How are Rocks Formed | When lava comes out of a volcano and cools off, it creates rock and that's called igneous rock (granite, obsidian, pumice).
When igneous rock has been ground down and combined with with other material and water (like at the bottom of a lake or river), it sticks together and dries to make sedimentary rock (Shale, Sandstone, conglomerate, gypsum, limestone).
When igneous or sedimentary rock is put under A LOT of pressure (like a mountain sits on top of it), it changes and becomes metamorphic rock (schist, gneiss). | d6faa214-8fb8-4a77-b278-4b04796d72ac |
49dkhe | Where does the term "the birds and the bees" to explain sex-talk came from? | Birds and bees are good animals to use to discuss sexual reproduction with children without the need to talk about sex itself, using processes that children are likely familiar with.
**Birds** lay eggs, which is similar to female ovulation. **Bees** deposit pollen into flowers, which is similar to male fertilisation.
Hence, the birds and the bees. | 323dcd71-085f-428f-a841-b8c2f21d40d9 |
5xy82f | how do we know when our sun will go supernova? | Our sun will not go supernova, and when our sun begins to die, it will go big and red.
We know this due to calculations that we do and observations. | 10f4a926-09c0-49ff-8a04-ead9858e7bca |
q873b | Why do people give Al Gore credit for inventing the internet? | They really don't. Some people say it as a joke, but that's it. [The snopes article has more information.](_URL_0_) You only need to read the first three paragraphs. | 6bb1eff0-0bc6-4158-b1ce-9196429a3d47 |
2svz3j | What exactly is happening when a black hole 'burps'? | Around some black holes an accretion disk is formed. This is basically just a disk of gas orbiting the black hole, sometimes it comes from a companion star. As this gas orbits and moves towards the black hole, it is superheated, and this is what is causing the xrays.
The xrays are not coming directly from the black hole since nothing can escape the event horizon (since all paths lead back to the center) but rather from the disk of gas surrounding the black hole. If a black hole does not have an accretion disk, then it will not give off any radiation (except for potentially Hawking Radiation) | 27d0976d-c186-4101-90e8-0007b8dfb3b1 |
4fyvqu | How was the Apollo 11 landing different from say the current Space X landing. | If you are referring to it's return to earth, it deployed parachutes and splashed down in the ocean. Here is the video.
_URL_0_
The difference between SpaceX and Apollo 11 is that only the crew re-entry vehicle was recovered. The rest of the ship separated during launch and burned up on reentry. | f19eaf9d-52f9-455c-8ad8-be9cec29c9fe |
154mxu | ELIA5 the "War Z" fiasco, please. | The game has been released and is in really early development.
A lot of the features being advertised are not in the game [yet?].
People think it's false advertising and are unhappy with the end product. | 301aa157-8e79-4f9d-aa90-9491ef785e4a |
krbca | Boost on cars | Turbochargers work by cramming more air and fuel into the engine. The boost is a measure of how much more air and fuel is being crammed in as compared to normal atmospheric pressure.
More fuel and air being burned increases the overall power of the engine. | f6ec6fab-39d7-442a-89e9-503a3fba61eb |
1m208r | what prevents dangerous mold from growing on cheese during the aging process? | During normal aging-for-production, no mold will infect the cheese by itself. Shortly after "creating" what will become a cheese, it is separated from the surroundings by rubbing a special, very salty solution on its surface frequently (depends on the cheese how often). Cheese which isn't treated that way frequently gets bad quite fast. For special mold to grow, it is added from the beginning to the solution which becomes the cheese, or, if it's mold on the surface, it's added with the salt.
Cheese with mold is never very old cheese, it's usually only a few weeks old at the maximum, so it needs less protection against mold, thus allowing special mold to grow because it's added in high doses, but not allowing other mold in the air grow because it's simply not around for a long enough period of time.
Of course that wasn't always the case, and sometimes they got infected, sometimes after being "opened". Some people then discovered that some types of mold are edible. | f66c21c8-1e07-40be-b366-b1b4a1972ee5 |
5mgnr7 | Why did the DEA decide to make CBD a schedule 1 narcotic? | Because there is a long history of pharmaceutical companies lobbying to have anything that might take some of their money made illegal. CBD oil is making headlines and deserves to be researched. By lobbying to have it made schedule I, there will be little to no research done in the U.S. ensuring that we will have to buy pharma products. | d7d1fe19-fc68-4c67-95b6-43605d715fe0 |
2bgzst | Why is Carfax, a commercially owned company, allowed to collect all kinds of information on our cars, and sell it to others for money? | Every bit of information that is on Carfax is either:
1) Not information that qualifies for privacy protection
2) Information that is already public - this includes police records
3) **Information that, somewhere down the line, you agreed to allow another company to sell**, likely in a very long sale contract, online agreement, or other similar instrument.
That's how they do it.
Source: IP attorney. | 2ec15cfe-19a9-4f85-880b-c2b98b0daa4b |
3gj5hi | Why do some belly pains only go away after using the toilet/restroom? | The pain in those cases are caused by pressure. Like a blocked pipe, enough pressure can cause issues(for us, intense pain, for pipes, expanding and potential rupture), and also like the pipe, if we unblock the way and get rid of the stuff causing the pressure, the pain goes away. | dc5a992f-f655-46de-abc2-85c94748070e |
39zbnu | ISIS, sunnis, shias, and why didn't Muhammad leave behind a predecessor? | Sunni Muslim here. I'll try to explain the situation as I best as I can but sorry if I fail to help you understand since this a very deep and old conflict. Allah knows best.
Muhammad(saw) was the leader of our people. In his time there was no Sunni or Shia, his followers were simply Muslims.
The trouble started when Muhammad(saw) passed away and there was a need for a new leader. So the Muslims community chose Abu Bakr(ra) as their leader in a democratic fashion. He was chosen because he was most capable if being the leader. However some Muslims disagree and they believed Ali(ra), cousin of the prophet, deserved to be the successor.
So we Sunnis believe that a successor should be chosen by the Muslim nation. On the other hand Shias believe that the leader should come from the prophets bloodline.
We call the successor of Muhammad(saw) a Khalifa. There are 4 rightful Khalifa accepted by Sunnis. They Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali. May Allah be pleased with them all. And yes that is the same Ali(ra) who didn't make it the first time.
So the successor is known as the Khalifa in Arabic and the nation he leads is the Khilafah. In English you know these terms as caliph and caliphate.
Recently some criminals established a "Khilafah" known as ISIS, the Infidel state of Iraq and Syria. They placed this man named Abu Bakr Al-Bagdadi as the Khalifa without consulting the 1 billion Muslims around the world. How can he call himself the Khalifa if we won't accept him as our leader?
Some insider information from a Muslim. Most of us consider them heretics or people controlled by the west. Some even consider them satanists.
If you have anymore questions please ask. | 705972b5-b62e-4d4e-a967-1bcc2a0f1fd7 |
30szd2 | Who decided that we need exactly 12 years of grade school? Seems like kind of a random number to me. | OP, /u/Teekno has some decent points, but his information is a bit inaccurate. Unfortunately, all the people arguing over his inaccuracies have failed to actually fill in the holes those inaccuracies present in answering your question.
The PRIMARY reason that school ends when you turn 18 is because 18 is the age that US males were required to sign up for the draft. 18 was the age that was determined acceptable for going to war. In the US, until as recently as the 70s, 21 was considered the age of adulthood. You couldn't vote until you were 21 for a very long time in this country, and many other rights were only unlocked at that age. But the right to serve your country in the armed forces has been available to 18 year olds for nearly as long as the country has had a structured education system.
As /u/Teekno mentioned, the ages of 4-6 are when most average children demonstrate the ability to sit still, listen and accurately mimic. So we put them in school as soon as they are capable of learning in a school environment, and we provide an education to them up to the point where they are old enough to serve in the military. | d9246a14-3aed-4c65-8a22-425cac508759 |
1y4m01 | What, exactly is happening when I have diarrhea? Why is liquid falling from my butt? | Whenever you eat food or drink water, your stomach begins to digest it and produces a liquidy substance called "chyme" which is essentially just partially digested food. This is then released into your intestines where eventually the nutrients and water will be absorbed.
So when you eat something that your body recognizes as being really bad (like some sort of bacteria or toxin) your body will try to essentially flush it out. Think of how you get a cut and you wash it under water to get all the nasty stuff out of the wound. The same thing is (sorta) going on except in your intestines.
Your large intestine as well as your kidneys will normally draw out most of the water from whatever you've eaten leaving a nice solid turd for you to poop out. This process usually takes a while and is a big reason as to why your intestines are so long. But when there's an emergency and your body says, "we need to get rid of this stuff, now!", you don't really have time to absorb all that water and so your poop comes out liquid.
This is why drinking water after having diarrhea is very important. You often lose a lot of water which can cause hundreds of problems. | b48291df-32cd-4018-84dc-2e17bc2b7d9c |
4kbru7 | Surviving a freefall into a body of water | Under best conditions, any, up to and including world record edge of space, because terminal velocity and "best conditions". A human being trained to skydive can assume a position that lowers their terminal velocity to somewhere around 150 mph. If they can properly time a flip into a feet-first dive like a water-slide, they'd survive with major trauma (broken bones, probably internal bleeding).
The most important part about "best conditions" is that there would need to be a lifeguard and an ambulance waiting at the landing zone to pull the skydiver out of the water, administer first aid, and immediately rush him/her to a hospital.
If you want an average person to swim away from the impact with the water, that's really a question of percentages - some people hit the water wrong from 40 ft, black out (even momentarily), and drown before they can be saved. | db6b072e-9def-4e80-ab63-196edb930100 |
5x9g4f | How are credit card numbers validated? | The first step in that the first few digits will be checked to correspond to a certain company. For example an Amex card will start with 34 or 37 and will be 15 digits long. Where as a Visa will start with a 4 then the next 3 digits describe the issuer and card type, it will also be 13, 16 or 19 digits long.
If it then passes this then a Luhn algorithm will be checked. You take every second digit(except the very last one) and double them. Any double digit numbers are added together to get a single digit. You then sum these numbers up with the other digits and get one whole number. The modulus 10 of this number should be 0 if it isn't then one or more digits is wrong. So if you have 80 then the modulus 10 is 0 so it works whereas if you had 23 then the modulus 10 is 3 and you know there's an error.
Now that you have an entry that you know is accurate the machine then contacts the bank to verify it with the CVV and expiry date to authorise the purchase. | 4b8e8107-a5a3-4a52-a04f-06c581d15571 |
3e1l3v | How come when I'm driving and I stop at a light the road seems to keep moving? | Tunnel vision.
Perhaps, while you are driving, you should take notice at your surroundings more frequently. Keeping your eyes on the road ahead is good, but it's equally important to be aware of everything else around your vehicle while on the road. | 5a1a3b20-418e-40f3-9cee-38f5e808793a |
5xb9f6 | The U.S. President just said in his Weekly Address that the U.S. Air Force is the smallest it's been since 1947. How is that possible since the AF was established in 1947? | Because the US Army Air Force transferred all assets and personnel to the US Air force upon its creation and in 1947 they had a lot of assets having just finished fighting WW2. More pertinent should be just how stupid that talking point is in terms effectiveness. If you only measure the effectiveness of any branch of the military based on numbers you get the wrong answer. One F22 is equivalent to an entire fighter squadron or more from 1947, and if you were to pit it against a bomber fleet from 1947 then none of the bombers would ever return. More to the point who are the USAF supposed to be fighting? The US Air Force, 2017 version, is the largest air force in the world, the second largest is the US Navy. | 4a1a755e-f629-484d-b7d5-c9a6a15cc53e |
5mjo6l | What are crazy long math equations used for, and what do they solve? | Not everything that is worth doing can be described simply. For example, suppose you want to do something simple, like come up with a mathematical model to figure out how much snow will be on a road a few hours after it has snowed. To be able to decently capture this, at a minimum you will need to include:
* temperature
* wind speeds
* humidity
* precipitation
* cloudiness
* ambient light levels
* latitude
* time of year
And the real kicker is, many of these factors interact with each other, so you also need to capture those interactions. And this is for something as simple as how quickly is the snow gonna melt! Imagine what you may need to describe something more complicated.
I happen to know all of this because I am currently (procrastinating at) writing a paper on this topic... | 90840132-05f3-4ac9-a2ca-d1bb01df989b |
5aj6zb | How much executive power does the PotUS have to launch nuclear weapons? | All of it.
They do not have to get the permission of anyone to launch a nuke as they are the commander in of the military and are the singular authority over them. It is possible for someone in the chain under him to disobey orders, but that is not likely.
During military activities there is not time to call a session of Congress, wait for days for enough to gather to have a quorum, and wait more days for it to be discussed. In a situation where nukes are needed that decision has to be made in minutes. | d8323805-e093-41b6-87f1-cf37e74fb7e1 |
3554jf | Is water truly a renewable resource? I know we have a lot of it, but could we ever run out? | Water is absolutely a renewable resource. That is to say, (very very nearly) the same amount of water is "on" planet earth constantly. (We can talk about water molecules splitting but I'd argue that since the atoms are still there and the cycle from OH < - > H2O is constant we can just act like it is always water)
The issue, and what causes the droughts, is the reallocation of liquid water as well as water moving from one state/phase to another and being trapped there longer than it "naturallly" would. Both of these are largely the result of human activity (e.g. climate change, excessive water use) though the earth does naturally cycle through climates and therefore available fresh water.
As to the second part of your question, technically yes but we needn't worry about it. All of the water on earth could be held as vapor and we would live out that old saying, "water water everywhere but not a drop to drink". However, if the climate were to ever warm enough to evaporate all of our fresh and saltwater, we will have been dead for millenia. | ccd517f5-f8f8-4830-ae06-442025dfaa1d |
6ozybf | Why do names tend to cycle in and out of popularity throughout different generations? | "That's an old person name, I know an old lady at my work who is named that it's so icky"
or
"Haha gross I can't name my kid after my dad"
"Haha gross I can't name my daughter after my gramma"
"Oh man, wouldn't it be great to name my child after a relative I barely know to honor who they are as a person?"
At least, that's how it goes in my family. Everyone gets a first or middle name from someone dead in the family that the parent liked. My middle name is a great great great uncles, my first name is a great grampa. My sister is named after two aunts who were sisters. My brother is named after someone on my dad's side, a cousin or something of my grampa. | 8fd05938-0aab-4ab1-9f8e-6c1ee67b681c |
36u08q | why are old jugs or bottles of liquor commonly shown labeled with three X's? | It's typically a numbering system for jugs of moonshine- the number of Xs is the number of times the mixture was runn through the still before being bottled- XXX indicates it was run through 3 times, which means the moonshine inside is pure alcohol. | 85aa8226-bd9a-4d41-b541-0a55d02fb062 |
34xi6a | What happened to time itself during the earliest stages of the big bang? | "So, isn't the universe older/younger depending on from where you view it? "
Since by definition you are part of the universe, you cannot 'view it' from anywhere else. The idea that you can must therefore be a fiction. Likewise, the idea that there is a detached 'point of view' also has a non-empirical basis and contains a paradox, similar to the statement 'a circle whose centre is everywhere'. | 18bbe608-f8dc-402e-a6fd-3fd3ba59cdbe |
vze89 | Why is Nickelback so hated? | The main thing for me is how ridiculously similar their songs are. I mean, I understand having a signature "sound," and Chad Kroeger definitely has a distinctive voice, but for some reason they can't seem to come up with anything new.
Oh yeah. One example I found is this clip of two of their songs, each playing on one speaker - listen in stereo:
_URL_0_ | ebf21095-027a-4331-8673-263e358ffe49 |
33ewp9 | Does Mary Kay really give their best employees pink Cadillacs, and if so, how can anyone possibly sell enough makeup to pay for a Cadillac and still make the company a profit? | Yes they do actually give you a pink Cadillac CTS ( I saw one just today) they are usually the women at the top of the local pyramid, who have recruited a large amount of members. | 2c3f9161-7f04-4eb0-a48c-4538edb575b9 |
3qrcek | If Reddit is not paying sub-reddit moderators, why are they working on Reddit, unpaid? | You can look at it from the point of view of the mods giving a free service to Reddit, or you can look at it as Reddit giving a free service to the mods.
It's totally possible to run your own message board. But you would have to pay for the webspace, you'd have to learn how to install and maintain the messageboard backend software (which includes registering users). You'd also have to pay for the bandwidth costs of having users access the message board.
And even after you've done all that, you need to find users. Reddit does all of that for you, at no cost to you, and they have a massive user base. It's so much easier to promote a sub on reddit than a stand alone message board.
Of course Reddit gets a benefit from this, or else they wouldn't give you access to all those resources for free. So it works out for both parties. | 92734b2f-170e-4022-95b9-6963373bc374 |
2p7yzv | Why is it called a pair of jeans when there is only one? | Pair of pants (itself short for "pantaloons").
Back in the middle ages, the hoses were kind of put on separately.
The phrase stuck for 500 years after it stopped making sense. Go figure. | 3b1def8f-6628-417d-812b-1dfb2bf901b7 |
2so4qt | why are scientists trying to clone a wooly mammoth using ancient DNA when they could be cloning endangered animal species, such as the white rhino, whose DNA we can still collect? | As has already been said, there are research efforts focused on both. However, tackling the technical challenges of piecing together a genome that hasn't existed for thousands of years would benefit the scientific community more than trying to keep a species alive that nature can no longer support. Sequencing the mammoth genome would represent a major achievement in our ability to study the genetic content of extinct species and could ultimately lead to greater insight into the origins of cellular life. This is the reason it gets more funding and media attention. | d3bcdbb2-fef0-44dd-824c-82b336a18ce0 |
5thigg | How does something like a drill speed up the harder you pull the trigger? | The trigger is attached to something called a variable resistor. As the trigger moves a metal contact plate slides along the resistor. There is a small power supply that sends a voltage through the resistor. The electricity flows through the metal contact into the resistor. As the metal contact moves, the electricity has to flow through more of the resistor. This cause the output voltage to drop.
The circuit that controls the speed of the motor checks the output voltage from the trigger circuit and sets the motor speed based on it. So as the trigger moves in and the voltage drops, the motor circuit makes the motor spin faster. | 0acbea0c-7759-4a67-86b8-6bdd0cf37eee |
29qgf4 | Why do a lot of people love the smell of gasoline? | There are a couple reasons.
1. It gives you a tiny high. Just like huffing, it provides a mild anesthetic effect and gives a slight feeling of euphoria.
2. Associations. Smell is the sense tied closest to memory, so if we have positive connotations with the use of things with gasoline engines, we will get a positive feeling when smelling that again, as the ghost of the memory provides a little hit of dopamine. | d634cedd-6673-4f80-b059-88fd3e1caa11 |
k9vet | Could someone explain to me who Rick Perry is and what he has done/is doing to make him so hated on Reddit? | Rick Perry is the current governor of Texas. He has demonstrated beliefs that are very conservative, though that by itself is not the problem. Rather, Perry is like the guy that always raises his hand in class and says "that's not what my momma said." When faced with scientific evidence he'll bulk claiming that science isnt accurate. However, he's willing to try and get texans to pray for rain during the current drought.
He is also in the pocket so to speak of big business. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but reddit is fairly liberal and does not like big business. Many of the solutions he's offered to the state of Texas have involved gutting benefits and social welfare systems then appealing to the federal government to provide assistance.
In short, he's a hypocrit that is willing to put money before people. Sarah palin 2.0 | 177bf174-8071-4639-9f2a-f8cf8a6c9fcb |
34dhpx | How does Windows estimate file transfer times, and why are they hardly ever accurate? | Simply put it estimates the transfer time by the total size (to estimate the time it takes for the physical moving) and total number of files (to estimate the time it takes to "make" those new files, in newer versions at least) you need to transfer. It's doing a rather poor job at it because a few difficulties come into play here and Microsoft didn't do a particular good job at dealing with these difficulties.
The difficulties are:
1. If you have Windows 8 you can get a graph of the transfer speed over time, if you do this you'll notice it is not constant at all. This is because HDDs don't have a constant read/write speed at all and other programs might be using the hard drive at the same time (especially virus scanners which might be scanning transferred files). This is further enhanced if your drive is very fragmented because then it will need time to look for space to put it. These fluctuations need to be taken into account, this is why usually after a while the time estimations at least became more stable and more reliable, cause you can average over the speed over the time you've been transferring already.
2. The file creation is not constant at all and strongly depend on the file system used. This is why copying a thousand 1MB files will take much longer than copying one 1GB file. This means it will take a while to predict this as well. As far as I remember older versions of Windows were not doing this, but I'm not sure...
All this combined leads to a situation similar to this:
I'm going to count to 100 and your job is to predict how many dots I will have put in that time.
1....2 (ok 4 dots between the numbers so 4x100=400 dots right?)
2.3.4..5 (ok now we have 8 dots for 5 numbers so 8x20=160 dots?)
5......................6......................7.......8.........9..........10
(80 dots for 10 numbers so 80x10=800 dots)
So now in this simple example your guess already went from 400 to 160 to 800 dots (that's 5 times as much)... this is what Windows file transfer is basically doing as well, and that's why it's not very good at predicting
[Relevant xkcd](_URL_0_)
*edit: formatting
*edit2: turns out that even in newer versions [Microsoft is admitting](_URL_1_) it has trouble determining the transfer time accurately so guess that's a thing to stay, must be my new drive that it seems that much more stable now then...
*edit3: fixed a typing/calculating error, thanks /u/Carzon375 ! | debc40a5-49d6-4d2b-a5ea-4868f7173e60 |
2lw76c | When someone gets rushed into the ER like they do in the movies, what do the doctors do to save that life? | This is entirely situational. Arrest blood loss, restore normal rhythm to the heart, take a two-by-four out of someone's rib-cage and lung. It depends on what the nature of the insult to the arriving person is, and the 'everything' is basically 'reasonable measures to repair that insult, or sustain the injured who has it.' | 45359e06-d799-44b9-a110-cb6974988382 |
3jxw5m | If the original patent for the fire hydrant was burned, then...can I patent the fire hydrant? | You run into the problem of prior art. In short, [if it's been done then you can't do it](_URL_0_). | 7b7446b4-de53-40c2-98d7-4dd0ced4b432 |
4fytih | If UBER violating antitrust laws, how come the WWE isn't if it's performers are independent contractors? | Because the antitrust issue with Uber is only indirectly related to the employment status of the drivers.
Yes, both Uber drivers and entertainers are independent contractors. But the problem that Uber faces is that it sets the price for all of the rides, and not the drivers. So, that means that either the drivers are actually employees, or Uber is engaged in price-fixing, which is an antitrust violation.
It's not a good situation for Uber. It's possible their entire business model has painted themselves into a legal corner.
WWE isn't doing the same thing for its contractors, since each of the wrestlers can independently negotiate how much they get paid. | 22373216-d50b-45ee-9b32-e6df4f6ff2e3 |
60kmvz | Why do people hate Margaret Thatcher? | Why do people in the US hate Reagan? | 3e88a501-bea7-4e49-8d7d-94cf668202a8 |
1ofi3c | Ion water/alkaline water recent health fad ? | Water scams go back quite a ways. There are no really new ones, because just about anything you can think of has already been done a thousand times over, including all the various combinations thereof. And they are all pseudoscientific garbage.
Finally I've found a place to link [to this site.](_URL_0_) I knew it would happen eventually:) | ad703a1a-4f4f-4954-b428-95919692d243 |
1z0t6z | Why is network speed measured in bits but storage size in bytes? | Because when information is transmitted over the network, extra bits are added to tell routers where each packet needs to go, and to add coding that will help minimize transmission errors. So it isn't quite right to take the number of bits/second and divide by 8 to get the number of received bytes/second.
Also, Marketing. You get bigger numbers when you talk about bits instead of bytes, so it sounds more impressive.
**TL;DR** - Overhead. | 85e6270a-5a24-4043-9f51-db0a98c6f8d1 |
7l6szc | What Mastering is, when music gets Remastered. | So let's say we have an old recording of something. Like The Beatles (Sgt. Peppers was just remastered for example). In older music the recording methods were not near the levels of perfection that we currently have. Audio samples might have some interference that was undesirable and couldn't be entirely removed. This is easier with digitization. We can also take old samples and boost different frequencies, change the volume, change the dynamic range. You can pretty much change any property of the sound you want. Another example is mono and stereo. Old records (The White Album for example) was mixed for mono, all the audio plays out on channel. This conformed to older system standards. Eventually people bought stereos that were able to have multiple channels so now you can play the guitars out one and the singers out the other so it sounds clearer. Changing from mono to stereo is another form of remastering.
TLDR: You scrub undesired noise from the recording and add effects to create the "perfect" sound. | 13e9462f-90bd-4bd1-bcc6-37f1296b6219 |
2iuuae | Why does breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth work so well during exercise? I know it works well it just seems strange to me that it does. | Am I the only person that can't breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth when I exercise? I go running, and I can do that for the first quarter of a mile, but then I get too out of breath and have to breathe through my mouth constantly.
What am I doing wrong? | ad69dac0-f487-42dd-8e02-581f739229e5 |
1joqjf | Pros and Cons of Verizon entering the Canadian market | Traditionally Canada has been very protective of its own telecommunications companies. For the most part, it is completely illegal for foreign telecoms to operate in Canada.
The fear is that if foreign telecoms (like Verizon) started operating in Canada, they would end-up taking tons of jobs and customers away from Canadian-owned telecoms and that these foreign telecoms would simply funnel all the money they make from Canada to somewhere outside the country (in this case to the United States), ultimately harming the Canadian economy.
The argument in favour of foreign telecoms is that it creates more aggressive competition in the marketplace (which is generally a good thing). Currently there are very few major telecoms in Canada and most of them seem to be colluding to create very similar service plans, fees and usage restrictions -- this harms consumers and limits choice.
The idea is that by adding new foreign telecoms to the mix, it would force Canadian telecoms to actually compete for their place in the market and this would ultimately benefit Canadian consumers. the idea is that existing Canadian telecoms would no longer be able to get away with providing poor service, charging ridiculous fees and introducing heavy usage restrictions since customers would have the choice to simply switch-over to the new competition to avoid such issues. Thus Canadian telecoms would constantly need to improve there services and keep their pricing low in order to remain competitive. | 229ad317-5a4a-46db-8313-1ccd2dd54aa9 |
4l9jqu | How far back in time can a modern English person go and still be able to converse with people before the English sounds foreign? | Probably around Shakespeare's time, so 400 years -- maybe a little further. [This is a reconstruction of how linguists believe Shakespeare would have spoken](_URL_1_). You can probably make out most of the words quite easily, but it's already starting to get tricky. As well as the pronunciation, some words would cause misunderstandings, as they have changed their meanings. The grammar is mostly recognisable, although some verb tenses are missing ("I go" instead of "I am going") and the word order can be a little tricky. But with a bit of effort, you could probably make yourself understood.
Shakespeare happened to be living at around the time that the English language was transitioning from Middle English to Early Modern English. If you read Shakespeare, for example, you may notice that he seems to swap between "thou art" and "you are" more or less at random: the old "thou art" was dying out; you might notice something similar with "he hath" and "he has" -- in fact, by this time, although people were still sometimes writing "he hath", they were already pronouncing it as "he has". Incidentally, this isn't an instant process: the transition took a couple of centuries to complete.
The transition from Middle English to Modern English was driven by the invention of printing, which made the written word more accessible to more people -- in particular the Great Bible of 1539 and the Book of Common Prayer were distributed around the country. This was part of the creation of a Church of England to replace the Catholic Church, and as part of that change worship was to be conducted in English instead of Latin, hence the need for these new books. But at the time, English was being spoken in many very different dialects and varieties: the Bible and Book of Common Prayer had to be printed in a standardized English that could be understood by people speaking many different dialects.
You only have to go back a couple of centuries (a blink of an eye in linguistics) for English to sound very different indeed. [Here is a reading of an extract of Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales* written at the end of the 14th century in Middle English](_URL_0_). | 8d1c898c-e125-43aa-82e1-4f7c503cd921 |
5fep81 | Adding halves of halves forever | No, you won't, not in that situation. You'll have something like, as time approaches infinity, ruler approaches 12 inches. At that point, you'll be increasing the length by infinitesimal - ly small increments.
It's called Xeno's Paradox, and it's fun. | 99770ce6-bbec-469b-a6a7-0e14692e7043 |
lqwie | "The Theory of Life" | Essentially, the current theory is that life started off as simple molecules which found a way to replicate themselves, eventually becoming collections of molecules working together, and then evolving into cells, and then to collections of cells.
This whole process was only really possible due to the unique atmospheric conditions on earth at the time (essentially the right mix of chemicals in the atmosphere). These simple molecules in the atmosphere created a "primordial soup" as it's known, and developed into more complex molecules. These then developed a "pattern" or "behaviour" (without being alive, a process known as self-organization). Over time, this then developed into collections of compounds working together as a cell, which is the beginning of what we would call life. | 48a589ba-f758-435a-bd59-62b405ad64c8 |
7aj6ew | What exactly are PACs and SuperPACs. I know the acronym, but I don’t understand what they do. | You are getting a lot of bad answers. Literally no answer in this thread (at the time I'm writing this) is completely correct, and most are way off target.
First let's separate the concept of a traditional PAC and a SuperPAC. From both a legal and practical standpoint, they are very different things that do things in very different ways.
**Traditional PACs**
Traditional PACs (Political Action Committees) are committees set-up under rules laid out by the IRS. Many are setup to support candidates for federal office and have to also comply with rules laid out by the FEC. Others are setup to support state or local candidates, and may or may not have to abide by FEC rules and/or rules governing local elections.
Focusing just on traditional federal PACs, there are several different varieties. Sometimes they're formed by clubs or organizations with money coming from members. Sometimes they're groups of employees. Other times, they are groups formed by legislators themselves.
In all cases, with all traditional federal PACs donations must come from individuals. A corporation cannot, under any circumstances donate to a federally-qualified PAC.
When people say that "Big-Company-X gave to Mr. Smith for Congress", they actually mean that employees of Big-Company-X gave money to Mr. Smith. Whether it's pooled in an affiliated PAC or individually, all federally qualified donations come from individuals.
**Super PACs**
Super PACs are a relatively new phenomena that started after the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling.
In order to understand how they came about, it's important to look at the background.
Several political funding reform bills were created in the 20th century to crack down on the influence of big money in politics. Campaign finance reform has always been a battle of protecting the right to free speech while also limiting the corrupting potential of money.
Before Citizens United the law of the land essentially said that only individuals had the right to make contributions to candidates, or engage in any political activity that was considered "PASO". PASO activity is anything that **p**romotes, **a**ttacks, **s**upports or **o**pposes a candidate for federal office. Further, there were limits in the amount of money that could be spent to do PASO activity.
The legal support for those rules was based on the idea that at a certain point, money spent on PASO activity would create the potential to corrupt a candidate. If I was spending money to help a candidate, the idea was that they might be corrupted by my support. That potential for corruption created the legal basis by which congress had the authority to limit my first amendment right to support a candidate.
In Citizens United, there was a group of people who spent a lot of money to make a video that attacked Hillary Clinton. They wanted to release their video, but federal law said that they couldn't spend money to do PASO activity within a certain amount of time leading up to an election. They sued the government in order to allow for them to release their video.
They argued that since they were not working directly with any candidate, there was no potential to corrupt. How could they corrupt a candidate (they argued) if the candidate had no say in what they were doing, and they didn't make any asks to the candidate?
In a 5-4 ruling, the SCOTUS agreed with that argument. The opinion of the court essentially said that an independent group not directly tied to a candidate that doesn't give directly to a candidate has a right to speech. Further, the supreme court essentially ruled that since such a group has no corrupting potential on a candidate, congress could not limit the amount of money it could raise or spend, nor could congress limit who gives to such a group.
From that ruling Super PACs were formed. Unlike traditional PACs (which can give directly to candidates and can coordinate with candidates), Super PACs are limited in what they can do. They can't give money to a candidate. They can't coordinate with a candidate. They can't do and say certain specific things about an election, but they can do certain PASO activity.
In exchange for those limits on speech and coordination, Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited money from a much wider variety of donors.
Contrary to popular belief, Super PACs must disclose the money they raise and spend (for the most part). There are other dark money committees that don't have to disclose their finances for certain activity, but they aren't Super PACs. | ed72bba9-1cd7-429f-9015-223b1cdf9603 |
1ae0q6 | How did Helen Keller learn anything when she is missing the two most important senses involved with learning? | She got sick as an infant, IIRC.
It was hard for her, she was eventually able to make the connection between the smooth sweet tasting thing and the hand movments people kept making in her hand. (In my very limited knowledge, I believe the first time she realized what words are was when she was getting water, and her teacher kept signing "w-a-t-e-r") | 63f5aa50-e3e8-4b9b-ac76-3da8c8144904 |
816vdl | Why do things smell stronger when they get wet? | A - Because you reek of smoke all the time but have got used to it so you don't notice.
And
B - the water is evaporating taking the smell into the air with it, combined with the moisture in the air "traps the smell" better than "dry" air. | 8335dd34-586d-4683-9194-702facf0bb5c |
kwmm0 | Why does my phone take longer to charge than the actual time of me using it? | It depends how you use it.
Let's say you make a phone call here or there, check your email a couple times - the battery should last you a day or so, remaining on standby the rest of the time. (Remember that it's still communicating with the cell towers the whole time in case you get a call, etc.)
Now a different case. You start playing Angry Birds, and then shoot a lot of 3D video, playing it back constantly. You're also in an area with poor reception, so the wireless chip has to spend more energy communicating with the cell towers. You also have the screen on full brightness.
In the second case, you're demanding a lot more out of your phone. It takes energy to light and control the screen, to run the processor, to run the camera, etc. That drains the battery at a certain rate. And when you plug it in, the battery can only charge so fast. | 59f9fe56-a18e-4018-ac06-d4d204d676c4 |
2g8l0g | Why are springs safe to drink from? | It's simply that everything in the water that makes it dirty gets caught on trees, roots, plants, moss, dirt, rocks, etc., until it reaches a larger body of water like a river or lake. Not to mention all the water that becomes absorbed into the earth and filtered, as others have mentioned, through many layers of rock and mineral. Anything left over(fine particles) sinks to the bottom over time. I'm sure you drank from the top layers of water and not the bottom when you did as a kid.
To see it first hand, do the experiment yourself. Get a standard 8oz tin can and open BOTH SIDES and dispose of the lids(eat whatever is inside.) Once you're done eating, take the can, fill a jug with tap water, grab a mallet, a 3x3" block of wood, a small garden shovel, a paper cup, a large bowl, a clear glass, and latex gloves if you have them.
Now, go outside and find some ground. This may be harder(pun intended) than it sounds if you want to fill the entire can. Once you've found what you think is penetrable ground, spin the can into the earth vertically about a quarter inch. Place the wood on the top circle of the can and hit it with the mallet gently. You don't want to crumple the can; the wood spreads out the impact, but it is still possible to damage. Once you've hit the can flat with the ground, dig it out with the garden shovel carefully. You have just collected a sample of the earth.
Remember the bowl? Pee, shit, puke, throw dirt in, spit, cum, coffe grounds, crumble bark, fill with grime - anything you can find that is dirty, put into the bowl. Add enough water (from your jug) that your mixture becomes soupy. You want the color to change in the water. A stick should suffice for a mixer. Or your latexed finger. Once your water is nice and brown you're ready to get to the good stuff.
Now you have gross water you'd never drink, and earth in a can to filter it. Take your paper cup and scoop some gross water out(eww) and hold your canned earth over the clear glass and slowly pour that gross into mother nature. Make sure to not spill any into the clear glass and to also get all the contents of the paper cup into the canned earth. You may have to go slow to prevent overflow on top of the canned earth. Compare the water in the clear glass to the water in the bowl, and extrapolate your findings to hundreds of meters of more diverse earth than you currently have in your hand. That is the perpetual beauty of nature. | 1920ceb6-0592-4155-b25b-8ae152845dd7 |
6oxwup | Who gets to decide what to name a newly forming Hurricane? | Nobody does! The names have already been chosen.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has a list of names that they cycle through every 6 years. You can look at it [here.](_URL_0_)
The first tropical storm of the year takes the 'A' name at the top, and later storms just go down the list. The most recent tropical storm was named "Don", so if another one happens in 2017, it'll be named "Emily". At the start of 2018, they'll move to the next list. The lists repeat every 6 years. (the 2017 list will be the 2023 list)
> "But QuirkySquid, why isn't 'Katrina' or 'Sandy' or 'Other big hurricane name' on that list?"
That's because after large hurricanes happen, they retire their names. That way there will never be any confusion over which hurricane is being referred to. If there was a really bad hurricane in 2011 named "Katrina", then conversation could get really confusing. (the 2011 'K' hurricane was 'Katia')
> "But QuirkySquid, what if they run out of names on the list?"
In that rare scenario, they will start using the Greek alphabet. In 2005, there were storms named "Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Delta", "Epsilon", and "Zeta".
> "But QuirkySquid, what if they run out of names on the Greek alphabet?"
Then the end is nigh. There should never be that many hurricanes. If that *does* happen, the NHC will be in charge of naming the rest. | bd8c1ce7-b453-4a43-a308-83637f2715ea |
1vd8ig | How come surgeons can slice you up like a Christmas ham and there's minimal bleeding? | They can either use something called electrocauterisation, which is where they heat the tissue with electricity in order to burn and seal blood vessels, or they can 'tie off' blood vessels using ligation. | 012e12c2-1a9c-4943-bd73-1a027ab05365 |
31ncan | Why does Reddit care so much about privacy? | I think most people are ok with governments having the physical capability of tapping a phone, intercepting email, and other such suveillance. But they want that power to be safeguarded behind court orders for specific cases.
> Am I naive for thinking the government doesn't really care about most of the illegal stuff I do (piracy, drug use, etc.)?
Here in the UK we literally had local councils using anti-terrorism laws to snoop on people putting their wheelie bins out on the wrong day, and people who didn't put their dog's shit in a bag. You bet your bottom dollar that the government would just *love* to nail you for anything it possibly can. | d1efaca5-afc4-4e2c-8d32-030448eb595d |
136dho | - why do I get a headache if I have a nap in the afternoon/ early evening? | You're dehydrated. Drink a glass or two of water before you lie down. | b46fdb0b-0f26-4c05-b96c-e07fc917109b |
2zf2b1 | If a person can't be put on trial twice for the same crime, what prevents people who committed a crime and did not get sentenced, openly talk or discuss the crime? | They can still be sued by the estate of the deceased. Like OJ - wasn't convicted of murder, but had to pay a shitload of money to Nicole and Goldman's family. | 4849ec37-34ba-4fe2-ad66-ed72e37be449 |
388qq4 | -How is life possible? | > Life itself contradicts this goal. In our bodies at every given moment chemical reactions are going on that send these atoms UP the stability gradient. HOW?!
Because of constant energy input from the sun.
You appear to be talking about the concept that entropy always increases. But that only applies to a "closed system", and the earth is not a closed system. The sun is essentially "running down" and it's transferring vast amounts of energy to the earth in the process.
> It isn't until the life leaves our body that our atoms and molecules all stabilize (decomposition).
Decomposing is not "stabilization". The molecules of our body are used as food for bacteria, mold, and fungus. Life continues. | b3786b75-e802-458e-a7e4-60e3fd7119f1 |
86n97z | Why do parts of the world use CDMA and others use GMA | I assume GMA should be GSM, GSM is a TDMA system. CDMA and TDMA is whay to share a radio channel between multiple uses
The simple explanation is that when digital 2G mobile phone system development started in the 1980 different companies had indifferent ideas how it should be done. The Europén GSM become dominant and all 4G system today are descendentens of it. Some handset are compatible with CDMA2000 system because there are large deployment of them primary in the USA and it is expensive and take time to replace the the towers. So to get good coverage som phones can still use CDMA2000
In the US Qalacom developed a CSMA system IS-95 or cdmaOne
Digital AMPS was another north american system the was developed it was a TMDA system like GSM buy Bell Labs
So the US and Canadian government did not intervene to try to have a common system. The lest the markes solve the problem is the US way. The areas was also dominated by a few large companies
In Europe in 1983 the development started as a by the coordinating body of telekommunikation and in 1987 countries signed a agreement that GSM should be the system used for next generation mobile phone system. Europe are multiple small market with the existing cable base phone system operated by governmental agency. There existed private owned cell phone operators. The system also resulted in a system where hand sets was compatible so you could change operators. That is important for a consumer but not what a large telecom company like.
So enforce a single standard resulted in a system developer per county. It is also more important to have compatibility between countries in Europe compared to North America where the countries as the size of states.
South Korea and Japan also had their own standards.
So the North American companies primary started to deploys the locally developed system. The fact that hand set was locked to network was a advantage to the so they could keep customers. The disadvantage is that is a was property system by one developer.
The result is that GSM become the system the the rest of the world primary adapted as there was multiple vendors and you don't get locked in to a single vendor. That was not the same problem for large North American telecom companies as there size resulted in good bargaining position
If you look at _URL_0_ that have a graph of system 2003-2007 you will notice that GSM is the international defacto standard with 80% in 2007 and 2014 is was
When 3G system started to be developed whare was the old GMS that become the 3GPP collaboration was the dominate one wit US, Japanese, Chinese joining. The UMTS standard that was the result used CDMA as one way to share a frequency.
For 4G and later it start to become one system. 4G LTE is the market names that is a global standard
There are still some system that use the cdmaOne base 3G system called CDMA2000 but there is no new incompatible 4G variant and 4G LTE is used.
So phones for the network that started to use CDMA2000 still have compatible cellphones so the legacy part of the network can be used. The operators done have the same coverage with 4G.
Another factor is not only the system but what frequency is used. Different countries give different frequency band to mobile phones. So a cell phone might only be able to use some bands. So a cellphone might not work even if it is the same system. | a02eb665-b43d-4ef4-8919-1c1e390e5e9c |
342pqx | Why is my plate so hot but my food so cold when I use the microwave? | It's possibly because you're using something not meant for the microwave. Use microwave safe plates. This will happen less. | 9c08bf5f-8c7d-407b-83cc-74c7b2295485 |
484h9f | Why cant we just create nerves? | We can grow nerves, just not in a way that's useful, due to the lack of organization.
Say you have a big mass of copper. You could very easily melt it down and pour the molten copper into a rectangular shape to make a solid plate that would probably be a pretty effective barrier (skin). However, if you tried to make wires with it, you may succeed but the wires wouldn't actually do anything; it would just be a tangled mess. For them to be functional, you would need to take each wire individually and carefully lay them out in a systematic way to create a working system.
Nerves are the same way; we can grow nerve cells in a lab, but we don't yet have the technology to tell them how to organize. | 5f0c6ab6-a365-4324-8f4f-abf8ca57c9ba |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.