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257sjl | Why do company's sponsor the PGA when it seems like pro golf doesn't make much money? | Golfers and golf fans are rich, relatively speaking. The value of the eyeball of a golf watcher is more valuable than the eyeball of a nascar watcher or an NFL watcher. Advertising cost is about the value of the audience, not just the size of it.
Even further, people _play_ golf much more than they play, for example, football. They do it, and they do it for year after year after year. | b0047a34-f526-4ef3-9767-5855874a02c5 |
siull | Polynomial Time | As Not_Me_But_A_Friend has said, it's a measure of how long it takes a computer to solve a problem using some specific technique.
Suppose I give you some sheets of paper with a list of words printed on them, in no particular order, and I ask you to find whether the word "economics" appears on the list. How long would it take you?
Well, I haven't told you how many sheets of paper I gave you, nor how many words are in the list, and you probably don't know how many words you can check per second, so you can't give me an exact answer; but it's pretty safe to say that if I give you 20 sheets of paper, it's going to take you twice as long on average as if I gave you 10.
Now suppose that the list of words is in alphabetical order. In that case, there's a way to search it much quicker:
1. Start at the *middle* of the list.
2. If the word there is "economics," the answer is "yes," and you're done.
3. Otherwise, discard every word in the middle half, and search the remaining half starting from its middle.
4. If you run out of words to discard, the answer is *no*.
How long does it take to do this? Well, again, I haven't told you how many words are in the list, but if I give you 20 sheets of paper it's barely going to take you any longer than if I gave you 10. In fact, a little bit of advanced math (logarithms and exponents) tells us that in fact, if I gave you 1000 sheets of paper it would only take you about twice as long as if I gave you 10—even though 1000 pages is 100 times as many as 10 pages!
Searching the unordered list takes **linear time**: twice as many pages takes twice as long. Searching the ordered list takes **logarithmic time**: twice as many pages takes barely any more time, and twice as much time allows you to search 2^n pages. The difference isn't that you're spending less time per word—the different is that with the alphabetical list, each step allows you to discard *half* of the remaining words without even looking at them!
**Polynomial time** problems are harder than linear time; twice as many pages will take more than twice as long. Polynomial time problems however aren't as hard as **exponential time** problems, where 11 pages can take twice as long as 10 pages, and 20 pages takes over a thousand times as long as 10.
**TL;DR:**
* Constant time = it always takes the same amount of time no matter how much data you have
* Logarithmic time = if you have twice as much time you can process 2^n as much data
* Linear time = it takes twice as long to process twice as much data
* Polynomial time = if you have twice as much data, it's going to take more than twice as long, but not more than n^2 or similar
* Exponential time = if you add any more data it's going to take twice as long or worse, even if it's just a little extra data | 13899fc4-09b2-4ca7-86cc-2e68133827f3 |
3cpvfs | Why do cables like earplugs and chargers tangle up so badly and seemingly easily in your pockets? | Basically, there is one state for the wires to be organized but nearly infinite ways for them to be tangled. It's much more likely that they will be tangled with movement than remain organized.
Another way of thinking about it, when you wind your wires into multiple loops, any time a loop or one of ends of the wires goes through one of those loops, a knot is formed. The more loops you have, the higher chance of knots.
Certain types of thicker wire and different textured wires can prevent this from occurring. | a2c593f3-cf44-4b4d-a7f5-5ca5a1221449 |
36pbgc | Why babies/toddlers are more susceptible to ear infections? | It might have something to do with the Eustachian Tube. In children under the age of seven it is shorter and in a more horizontal position than adults. Because of this, mucus might not drain from it as efficiently as it drains from adult ears, thus upping the chance of an ear infection.
Other people feel it has nothing to do with the Eustachian tube, but just has something do with the immune system which is still under developed and not as capable of fighting off these infections.
AKA science ain't 100% sure yet. | 12116293-5d41-49eb-a1ca-82262eb77c8f |
27uxdo | How in cold weather, we are able to see our breath come out white, how come we do not see this when we fart? | This answer is going to sound facetious, but bear with me. We generally don't see our farts in cold weather because our assholes are a lot tighter than our mouths.
Why does this make a difference? Well, because gas that is forced through a small opening expands rapidly, and rapidly expanding gas cools down fast. Want to test this? Find what's called "canned air," then spray it on your arm. Just a quick blast but, wow, that was cold, right?
That's because all that air comes out under pressure through a tiny opening, then expands rapidly and cools down.
Same thing with a fart -- gas, under pressure, through a tiny hole, it expands rapidly and cools down.
Meanwhile, as you exhale through your nose or mouth, you're pushing air, not under a lot of pressure, through openings that aren't all that small. End result? Warm, moist air comes out, doesn't expand rapidly, and hitting cold dry air makes the water vapor in it condense, which makes it visible.
This is the same principal that creates contrails behind airplanes -- hot gas is coming out of the engines, but without being compressed upon exit. Voila -- visible trails behind the plane.
If you pursed your lips really tight and blew, you probably wouldn't be able to see your breath, either. | fafeddb1-1f07-4bba-9360-d1d5f44f84c7 |
2kkq8i | Why in some places people in jail aren't allowed to vote? | There are many people who are affected by a government but can't vote. Including children, non-citizens and even people in other countries. We don't normally grant the right to vote based on who is impacted by government regardless of which country you're talking about. | cb01d6a5-17d3-4c8b-8cce-22edf187e2ea |
53hjjv | Could someone please highlight/summarize why both American Presidential Candidates are so bad? | I will take a stab, as far as unbiased goes im an aussie so i wont be voting or living in a country under the winner. This will be the summariest of summaries.
Trump: Not a politition as has questionable pedigree. Had bren found doing multiple buisness dodgies. Makes seemingly spur of the moment proclaimations on big issues, the largest of which is the wall. In that instance he grossly underestimated how much it would cost and continued to publicly change how much it would cost proving he knew little. He makes bigoted public statements with no remorse. Where it be the blatant lies or flipflops on ideas his mannerisms are of someone with mental health issues. For example, his repetition.
Hillary: She is too politition-y. She is the embodiment of what people dont like about the american political system. She is for herself and her betterment, not that of the USA. People worry about her political credibility, not becuase she lies about transparent stuff like Trump but becuase she has been caught lying about actual political events. In addition she relies on her pedigree with supporters such as her husband who is a vile human being who lied under oath and clearly had backdoor shenanigans everywhere. She is believed for good reasons to be bought the the middle east.
That is, i feel, a summary of the impressions i get from overseas, unapologetically unformatted as im drunk and on a train.
Peace. | 2bf81f8e-615c-4323-9569-4b873b5542de |
77gjud | Apparently moonquakes can be caused by tides, but the moon is tidally locked to earth. What tide causes these to occur? | Tidal forcing from the Earth's gravity keeps the moon tidally locked with the Earth, despite variations in its orbit. This means that the Moon is not allowed to freely rotate and has not "just happened" to sync up its rotation with its orbit around the Earth, but rather that the Earth's gravity has constant effects on the rotation of the Moon, in other words that it is actively exerting torque on the Moon. | 8939085d-74ed-45f3-a097-fb109244620e |
42iedv | Why do hot showers dry out your skin? | Your skin is kept moisturized by oils in and near the surface. A hot shower can strip these oils. That allows the moisture in your skin to dry out. | a0b24b85-cf9e-482c-9917-f2a87f0b8ddf |
42bsqp | How do bullet proof vests work? How do they protect you from bullets? | They spread the force out on a larger area of your body, so you can handle it better.
Think about when you go to the doctor to get a shot. When the nurse sticks the needle in you, she's not using a lot of force. But because the tip of the needle is tiny, it can break your skin easily.
If she pressed against your arm with her palm with the same force, it's not going to make a hole.
The vests work the same way. Instead of all that kinetic energy going into one small bullet-sized point in your body, the vest spreads it out over a much larger area. You will still get all of the kinetic force, just not all in one place. So instead of getting a hole, you get a bruise. | 5976eb63-3ff5-4676-94e1-98d6dcba25a3 |
2i67d2 | Why won't the Queen step down off her monarchy? | Assuming you are talking about Queen Elizabeth II, the simple answer is that there is no pressure for her to do so and she doesn't want to. | 45bfefd2-8a99-47d3-98f1-4de0c9604cb7 |
4s8de8 | The differences between frozen yogurt, frozen custard, ice cream, and gelato | Ice cream is made with cream, milk, sugar, and flavoring (like vanilla or chocolate), sometimes with other ingredients such as eggs. It is churned while it freezes, which mixes air bubbles into it.
Gelato is an Italian style of ice cream, made with more sugar and less cream. It has less air in it than most ice cream.
Frozen yogurt is made with yogurt, which is milk that has been fermented by certain bacteria. It usually doesn't have cream, which makes it less fatty; so it is sometimes thought of as a healthier option (although it still has a lot of sugar).
Frozen custard is like ice cream, but made with more egg. (For sanitation, any ice cream mix that is made with egg should be cooked before it is frozen.)
Sorbet is made with water, sugar, and flavoring, usually fruit juice; it has no milk products in it.
Sherbet (in the American use) is in-between sorbet and ice cream: it is made with some milk, but not a lot of cream, and is often made with fruit flavors. | 5d28cb0a-2851-46bf-a9ff-82591538439e |
6ogvp3 | What would actually happen if the Large Hadron Collider exploded? | There's nothing in the LHC to explode. The major electricity-using components are the giant magnets that circle the ring, while being cooled by liquid helium. In the event of a major failure, the magnets melt and the beam inside disperses into the concrete and dirt surrounding the LHC. | ccb8ae9b-03a3-45f1-81a7-26a169e22ebd |
1qgwuf | What's happening when a TV commercial gets cut off in the middle of it airing? | When a cable company pays a retransmit agreement; they're allowed to insert advertisements over local stuff. These are triggered by IBOC signals; used to be rapid dial-tones you'd hear from time to time back in the 90's before the digital switch over.
Occasionally; an advertisement would get queued up that was longer than the break; since that information wasn't often known. So as soon as the broadcaster sent the tones to discontinue local ads; the local system had to comply; whether it was done airing the ad or not.
Things are largely different; broadcasters are able to slip in the digital stream the start of local-ad allowances along with the length of the break; so the system is able to choose ads that are the appropriate length. It still doesn't work perfectly all the time.
Prime example was two years ago when Comcast inserted local ads over a playoff game that was running long. In that case; the system picked up some automated commands that said it was ad time; when in reality it wasn't.
Screwups like this very rarely happen on the local broadcaster or national level; and are just the result of sloppy cable operators. | acfd1abe-a965-4a2a-8168-ac41000f48cb |
1pgnjz | What is an algorithm and how do they work? | Typically an algorithm is basically a flowchart for equations/operations. If you've ever followed a flowchart then you know how an algorithm works.
A terrible but simple example would be
* 1: How to never divide by zero f(X)=A/B
* 2: Input A, B
* 3: Is B = 0?
* 4: if yes, B+1, go to line 3
* 5: if no, go to line 6
* 6: Divide A/B
That's an algorithm. | adbc0601-dfd0-4b1b-9237-1674854d33e0 |
66cu7z | Why does your mouth "water" when we are about to have yummy food? | Mouth watering helps specially in the digestion of complex carbohydrates splitting them into simple ones. Many yummy foods are principally made of carbohydrates. That's why salad doesn't make you mouth watering,it has no CH, and why a chocolate cake does. | 5b45de24-7006-4f42-b1d6-d2e53bc6fd36 |
53hp5r | How do electronics keep track of the time when they don't have any power? | In a lot of cases, tiny batteries still give them enough power to keep the time. Some devices also reconnect to the internet after a power failure, and update the time that way. | d5eb62ec-8d94-4934-8039-8ec401a72c89 |
3ikk9b | Why does eating under cooked chicken make us sick, but eating under cooked beef is completely normal | Beef has a higher density than chicken meat, and as such bacteria have a harder time penetrating the outer layers of the beef, compared to chicken meat.
This means you just have to take care of the bacteria on the outside of the beef, and you can keep the inside red, if that's what you want.
For the exact same reason, chicken meat has to be cooked all the way through, as it's not dense enough to prevent bacteria from penetrating the surface.
There's also factors with slaughtering of the animal vs. how it's prepared but then we go into specifics. | 1a203031-2265-4159-af64-198aedeedcfb |
8w8cke | What is MLM and pyramid schemes? | People hate them because they hate being bugged by ‘employees’ of these organizations. There’s also a trust factor issue. Are these people really looking out for your best interests or just trying to do whatever they can to make a buck? Also the whole game is sign people up under you to sell products. So people who get involved in these orgs usually start by contacting everyone they know. So you might here from a friend who you haven’t talked to in a while who are very persistent and aggressive about scheduling 30
Minutes with you to discuss your future.
I can try explaining multilevel marketing in an example. Say the company sells vitamins. Now say your friend calls you and convinced you buy vitamins on a subscription base. So now your paying money to this org, every month and that friend is getting a cut every time you pay. However, they’ll say you can also make money by selling vitamins yourself. So now you sign up as a seller, under your friend and start finding your own customers to buy vitamins from you, and then you’ll start getting a cut from what they buy. However your first friend is also getting a cut from everything you sell as well. Now you can recruit that person to sell to other people and you can make money off of everything they sell as well. And your first friend is also making money off of what the people under you sell too. That’s where the pyramid scheme or MLM gets its name.
The whole goal is for you to recruit people who can recruit other people who can recruit other people who can recruit other people and so on, while you take a slice of the pie from everyone under you.
To be fair, I do know a few people involved with MLM companies and they do make money and earn real checks, but they usually devote A LOT of time towards it. I’m talking more than full time. | 479365e8-f1fb-4a09-bf9b-e762d304ebef |
5letsn | Why do newspapers often have random sentences where a l l t h e w o r d s a r e w r i t t e n l i k e t h i s? | Newspaper columns are justified on both the left and right, which means that the left margin and the right margin are both straight (see [this image](_URL_0_) for a visual explanation).
There are a couple of techniques you can use to get both margins straight, and usually you use a combination of both: you can use hyphenation to break up longer words, and you can adjust the spacing between words, or between individual letters.
In most publications you barely notice it, but newspapers typically use very narrow columns. Because they use such narrow columns, it's harder to get the text to justify correctly, and often words or letters are spaced out so far it becomes noticeable.
In the days before computers were used to set type, this was done by hand, and it's a very difficult thing to get exactly right: newspapers had to be printed very quickly, so text justification was often done poorly. With modern technology, the process can be automated, but now the problem is getting the software to understand what looks neat and professional to a human, and what doesn't. | 18c73db7-12fe-4239-a1c8-97c396305e8d |
356yim | if it's electoral votes--not popular--that elect the president of the USA, then what would have to happen for a third-party president to win? | The same thing that a major party candidate has to do -- win a majority of the electoral votes.
Since the voters in each state choose who the electors are, the third party candidate would have to have a lot of support in almost every state. | c7e2eb90-35bd-4f02-87f3-5bfc7c15ad44 |
1ktioi | How does quantum entanglement not imply information traveling faster than light or how was the EPR paradox solved? | Say that we have two balls, a red one and a blue one. I am on earth, you are next to the sun (roughly 8 light minutes away). Before you left, you took one ball and placed it in a bag. You don't know which one however. I have the other ball, also in a bag. At a given time (we're both wearing synchronized watches), we take the balls out of our bags. I see that I have the red ball, you see that you have the blue ball. From simple deduction I know that you must have the blue since I have the red, and you deduce the same thing. Did any information travel in this experiment? No, it was simply reasoned based on the facts. This is a very, very simple explanation of entanglement but you get the idea. | b6f4665a-a341-4d92-85c6-02ab69592079 |
3ulzv1 | If the US was founded based on the principle of the separation of church and state why is this issue and issues surrounding it (abortion, same sex marriage, etc) still contested and debated? | Because those are separate issues, the "Separation of Church and State" just means the government can't favor a religion. The topics of gay marriage and abortion are not directly related, people can be against abortion without believing in a higher power. | 7367c80e-be01-4788-b120-52cf45319169 |
1lozza | Why is glass so fragile? | Well, depending on the thickness and tempering, it can be VERY not fragile.
But I'm assuming for this one the typical glass of a... well, glass. :)
The thinness of the glass is part of it. The structure of the glass is the other.
The structure of glass is a lattice of the glass molecules (actually silica) and that lattice is fairly strong. But, the glass doesn't bend very well, it's fairly rigid.
Think of a dried twig. Easy to snap, right? Now that same twig hydrated fully... you'll bend it a lot, but won't snap it.
Such is the way of a thin piece of glass, it's akin to a dried twig. It won't bend if pressures are subjected to it. So it snaps.
However, that same type of glass about 10x thicker? You'd have to put a large force, and probably very much concentrated in a very narrow way (point or cleave) before it snaps on you.
The other way it breaks is thermal expansion. Putting hot water in an aquarium, say. The glass is trapped such that it wants to expand, can't, and fractures somewhere to relieve the pressure. If it's thick enough, it can't do this as easily. | cb2d91ac-a0eb-491c-b3a3-014d6665e92a |
65mf6c | How do save states work? Why are they so small compared to save ram, yet recall so much information? | In game consoles? The amount of RAM in old consoles is absolutely tiny.
The NES has 2K of RAM, 2K of video RAM, 256 bytes of OAM and 28 bytes of palette RAM. To save an arbitrary state you'd also need to store things like CPU registers which won't amount to much either.
Saved games can be tiny on many games when the amount of stuff to know is just the position, HP and inventory. On some, even less. | d230fe78-616b-4f78-a085-e886fb766a22 |
1mo3kj | Does the USA really not have a measuring system for alcohol in bars? | Here in Spain we do free pour, you can have as much or little as you like, within reason,
but that is true for a lot of Europe,
I think in England, you need an extra license for free pour cocktails | 0a7b3722-79ae-4587-98de-abd0279f6f9d |
6e0216 | Why do we always "cut" a globe down the Pacific Ocean to make a map instead of the Atlantic Ocean? | The Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) runs through the UK and is usually right in the center of a world map. To the right are the eastern longitudes, and to the left are the western longitudes. This matches real life because if you face north, east is to the right and west is to the left.
It also goes back to when the world was Eurocentric, where Europe was the dominant power in the world and therefore in the centre of the map. | 8590e2a3-2039-4cdd-9fa4-c708f64283bc |
3pks66 | Why is it that girls hand writing is generally neater, small and prettier than boys and writing | There are tons of theories on this, from hormones to culture, to development stages of the female brain outpacing boys. The truth is nobody knows for sure, but it something that is documented and studied:
_URL_0_ | 99a46a75-2826-4dc2-84eb-b971ca6aa3a1 |
4di1tu | Why does it take a long time for human babies to stand up/crawl but other mammals can stand almost immediately after birth? | The scientific consensus is that humans are birthed early in development as compared to many other mammals as a consequence of our large heads (large brains). So a human baby is much less able to care for itself as compared to other mammalian babies. | 41540cff-d690-48ab-a8b2-9a62a83e5be7 |
6cefqf | Why do speed limits always ends in either 5 or 0? Why not 2 or a 3? | Not no expert but it's probably because the speedometer shows either 5 or 0. 10, 20,30 mph...easier for the driver to figure out rather than looking at each line. This w0uld be different of all cars had digital speedometer. | f423c8d9-37c6-49ac-8004-b802acf7c3bb |
6a8gm0 | Why isn't the earth's spin visible from a plane? | two different questions. you can see the earth spin from a plane. travel eastwards and the sun will rise earlier due to the earth spinning. travel westwards and sunset is delayed because the earth is spinning in the same direction you are going.
if you want to convince your roommate the earth is not flat however, a better argument is this:-
if the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now. | 7b2c242b-a3d7-46bc-a8b4-8930e950b8f4 |
5kcsl3 | - how does emp work. How long does it's effect last?. Is it practically possible to shut down entire city with emp wave as shown in movies | An EMP is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. There are many different sources for an EMP (including such natural sources as lightning), but the one typically represented in movies is from a nuclear blast. The nuclear blast generates a significant amount of electromagnetic radiation. A strong enough EMP can induce a massive high voltage current in wiring and circuitry.
The strength of the EMP determines how much of an effect it has. Tiny EMPs like open sparks may do nothing or just create minor interference in nearby susceptible circuits. Stronger EMPs can create interference in circuits (an example is the crackling you hear listening to AM radio during a lightning storm), generate currents and voltages in wiring which trips circuit protections like fuzes, burns out electronics, and even damage things due to the heat generated.
A very strong 'movie' EMP could cause permanent damage by destroying electronics, and power grid components like transformers. It could start fires in wiring and other components. If the EMP was targeted to destroy or disable certain components of the power grid, it could easily shut down a city like seen in the movies. | bc5f121f-b220-4f14-9411-8d654f214bca |
36kyoi | Since humans evolved in Africa and have developed an effective thermo-regulation system, why do we still complain about summer's heat and have air conditioner? | Not all of Africa is hit. It's southern most point is a hop away from the Antarctic. There isn't much else to say other then humans have evolved in a wide range of climates as Africa has a wide range of climates. | 98e3473e-326a-41b1-bbbb-c36de1c8036a |
1v4nlu | Why have animals adapted so that members of certain species die upon procreation? | Plus in the case of animals that swarm around a single female, the swarm as a whole is a closer analogy to a single larger animal than are individual bees. The genetics that matter are those of the swarm as a whole. The males exist to service that single individual. So one male dies? It's done its job. There may even be a benefit in getting that particular male out of the way - it's carried out its sole function, and it's no longer using up resources. And until and unless there's an advantage to bees of having the males NOT die in copulation - which has probably been working as a solution for several million years - that's the way it will carry on.
As an analogy, it's more like the individual spermatogenic cells in a human male dying when they've produced a sperm. I have no idea whether that happens, but if it did, so what? Every male has a host more of them. One cell simply doesn't matter. | ef6998de-a005-4d60-b19d-db988e101f00 |
3wlrf2 | If a starter motor turned the opposite way (from normal) would an engine start/run in said opposite direction? | Nope.
If you look at a [4 stroke engine](_URL_0_) (there's an animation you should look at), the opening of the valves to let gas in & exhaust gas out is based on the engine turning in a particular direction. If you were going backwards, you'd be drawing air in through the exhaust & trying to blow it back through the intake valves. | a78d40ad-a7f5-4b15-a8fb-5cea6544b4a3 |
najrd | Professional Wrestling | If you're wanting to become a fan of wrestling, here's some things that help.
1. It's not "fake", it's "scripted". I assure you, everything they do is very real. They do jump off those ladders and they do get hit by chairs. Yes, they know how to do it to minimize the damage, but it's all very real. However, the winner of the match is determined well ahead of time.
2. There are "faces" and there are "heels" A face is somebody that the crowd is suppose to like and cheer for, and a heel is the opposite. "Kayfabe" is the word given to the idea of suspending your belief for the sake of the show. You know it's fake, yet you look past it for the sake of entertainment.
3. Stop looking at it from a standpoint of "these two guys are fighting!" but from a "these two athletes are performing". Start looking to see how well a wrestler performs the maneuver, and if they receiver "sold" the move well. Did it look like it hurt? Did it clearly look fake? I like to watch for those things because it helps you realize just how talented these guys are. You'll start to think "well this guy really looks good in the ring, he should get a title shot".
4. It's hard to tell you what wrestlers to look for because everybody likes something different. I personally like CM Punk and Daniel Bryan because they're technically good and entertaining to watch, but those are just my reasons. You're encouraged to find your own reason.
5. Just have fun. Ultimately, you're not going to like wrestling if you just can't sit back and let yourself have fun watching it. Stop thinking it's for kids or it's fake or whatever reason you can think of. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, that's okay too.
6. There is more to Pro Wrestling than the WWE, and you're encouraged to look them up. The wrestling industry has an incredibly interesting backstory, and really becomes fascinating the more you look into it.
Hope this helps! | cdbe2174-d238-4e26-910b-1c770a4d42e7 |
sbc4o | Could someone explain to me the difference between socialism and liberalism? | This is a really loaded question because the usage of the terms 'liberal' and 'socialist' in the United States aren't representative of what the terms have meant historically. Further complicating this question is that both socialism and liberal theories have different component parts, i.e. economic liberalism, social liberalism, and philosphoical liberalism. To put it *very very very very* simply though: liberalism focuses on personal and private property and a laissez-fair approach to economics and society. Socialism on the other hand, is a rejection of this personal and private property and favours communal ownership of property.
The reason that socialism and liberalism sometimes get confused in the United States is because social liberalism in the United States is connected to social progressivism and social progressivism (its more radical components) are associated with communist and anarchist movements. | 5c796ff4-94e5-4154-a440-5bb0ba59d0ce |
3v55de | Why is it that girls can fangirl over One Direction, 5SOS, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, etc. ,but if guys fanboy over female singers or female-fronted bands they're considered girly, immature or even lecherous? | Perhaps it has something to do with the message. Almost all fabricated boybands appeal to young girls and tell them they're beautiful. Almost all current girl bands tell young girls they're great as they are, and ain't no man good enough for them. Neither party specifically appeals to Boys, and the Girl groups are designed to be sexy, but unattainable.
TL;DR Boy Bands are telling girls they want the V, Girl Bands are telling boys they're not getting the V. Girls can want 'attainable' guys, Guys can't want Unattainable girls. | 611c0fb6-dc4c-47a3-9387-7517c71359bb |
6cnvin | What does our (user) data actually look like when it is tracked, collected, analyzed and sold? | Former ad tech guy here. Your data (cookie or otherwise) is stored and parsed into segments (male, twenties, white) which are used by ad campaign managers to appropriately target you based off of needs and wants for each ad campaign. Campaigns have a target sheet which tells each campaign manager (or computer, now) which segments to associate with that campaign. Your data is sold to numerous vendors, and in the case of ads, typically to an RTB backend who can do something with it. | 19c924e0-4e7f-4fef-a556-f8ee27146dbf |
869xe9 | Tax on savings (UK) | You're not taxed on the savings themselves, but any interest you earn on your savings is treated as income. In practice, most savings are now tax-free for many people. You now pay no tax on the first £500 or £1000 of interest per year.
For pensions, you pay no tax on money that you pay into a pension, then you do pay tax on the money you receive from the pension after you retire. | 422c2a0d-be6d-4f50-b014-76bfb526cb75 |
267ft5 | What is actually happening when we are experiencing a headache? | Not sure about headaches, but migraine is caused by spasms in your blood vessels in the brain. Unfortunately I'm a migraine-sufferer myself. | e7f35d56-d206-49f6-9f95-aea45a2aa649 |
udb84 | How could the US intervene so quickly in Libya but do nothing in response to the declining situation and recent massacres in Syria? | A lot of it has to do with political alliances. It is a horrible truth, but essentially Syria's geographic location, and leadership's connections to Iraq, Turkey, and most importantly Saudi Arabia meant that the US was very hesitant to get involved. At the time of Ghaddafi's (sp.) downfall, he had essentially no legitimate allies left to back him up. In other words, if we just broke many international laws by jumping into Syria like we did in Libya, we would be further opening a can of worms with all of their already angry neighbors... despite the atrocities. | 483bf848-65ff-474c-b324-65210b011356 |
7p6efy | Do clouds muffle the sound of thunder (or other sounds)? | The way sound is muffled when going through some sort of foam material is that the air has to be pushed through the small holes, reducing the speed at which the air moves and turning that energy into heat. Clouds consist of very small droplets of air, kinda like very fine dust - which move with the air rather than rubbing against it. | 4e657b11-664c-4bce-887b-43b460297b39 |
4unbda | Australian Senate Election | In Australia there are two houses of Parliament, the Upper House (Senate) and the Lower House (House of Reps). The house of reps is divided into seats typically based on population groups of about 80000.
These divisions mean that the larger states have more seats in the house of reps, and therefore more influence on policy.
In order to counter this the senate has an equal number of seats for each state and equal numbers for each mainland territory, so that NSW, Vic and Qld don't dominate policy and federal money. Note that each State has 12 Senators and each Territory has 2, unlike your comment.
The NXT has only been successful in SA, which having a smaller population means it requires fewer votes to elect senators to the seats. | cc3b51eb-aa91-407a-9053-0f69caf7833f |
73p55n | Why do we like things we don't have but once we have them they start losing their worth? | Typically, it comes down to your perception of the items value. What can it do for me? You convince yourself that it will benefit you to have it and it will, in some way, make life easier or more enjoyable. Once you have it you realize the item has fewer or less useful functions, it's functions are novel, or it's functions do not work as you believed. Expectation vs reality. I convinced myself I needed a smart watch once. The technology just isn't where it needs to be for a smart watch to be very useful, so I returned it since what I had in my head paled when compared with reality. | d49e2bbf-a73a-4ceb-9be5-4b9a608cf18a |
2ilvms | How do multiple bit streams of audio get combined into one bit stream of audio? | It's probably best to know how soundwaves work to understand this. Every single thing you hear comes as a single "waveform". This is why a single vibrating speaker is capable of producing drums and piano and singing and more drums and guitar through a single motion of a single physical speaker.
So...to combine independent waveforms - one of a singer and one of a piano player - into a new single waveform is to identify the combined waveform. Here is a picture that represents the [combination of two waveforms into a single waveform](_URL_0_).
Since all we're doing when we create a digital representation of a waveform is creating a digital "map" of the wave, you can probably imagine that if we can do it for the images on the left, we can also do it for the images on the right. So...that makes it pretty easy to imagine how we'd create a single waveform in an analog fashion (play them both back and record!).
It just so happens that you can also create a mathmatical model of the waveform and combine them algorithmically - the way a combined waveform looks is entirely determined by it's constituent parts - this is what "digital mixing" does. | 0ccd2862-30d5-4a4a-b8ac-58055bd86c06 |
20fci4 | Why does a finger with a bandaid turn white and wrinkly and other parts of your body with clothing don't? | Clothing tends to breathe. Try wearing thick socks and steel toed work boots in a hot environment for 10-12 hours and see how your feet look afterwards. | a7cdbf49-0575-46c4-a9ff-69abdff67705 |
7nedqc | Why do plants have to get covered up when it gets cold outside? | Same reason you cover up when you go outside. It isn't so much that it keeps them warm, but that it keeps stuff off of them, more like a rain jacket. Some plants don't like snow or frost to be on them, especially fruiting plants. The small layer of covering helps to keep them from being touched directly by things that are too cold. | 14054836-d197-425a-ad33-9c017fcb640f |
3p14ts | Can a planet have two Suns like Tatooine? | Yes. There are plenty of binary star systems in the known universe. However, the planets orbiting them might not be habitable, as temperatures would likely vary greatly due to how the planet orbits the stars. | fab5c100-8c2e-4726-9460-a0bd808d8ebe |
6zkf3r | If honey doesn't spoil, how can it ferment (to make mead and honeyed wines and such)? | Honey doesnt normally spoil because its dry. It has almost no water in it at all, and if any bacteria attach to it, due to osmosis it sucks the water out of it and kills it off. Its also incredibly acidic which kills off lots of bacteria.
If humans add lots of water to it, suddenly the bacteria can feed off of its sugars and then ferment. We can also add things to reduce its acidity. | 3c625794-2455-4454-a2cb-6cd20d7cd556 |
xzbwo | How do you build a website from scratch? | If you want to truly start from scratch, you need to get your hands dirty in a web development framework. You need to program a content management system. Popular frameworks include Python/Django, Ruby on Rails, and .NET. It's going to take a lot of work and knowledge to build a production level content management system so if you don't absolutely need to start from scratch...
You may want to look into a content management system and start building from there. Some popular ones are Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla. You want to research these and more and weigh out their strengths and weaknesses and compare them to the features you want for your website. | 568136ca-b3f2-406c-b07b-4d1ca43bf175 |
7awh13 | Why don't animals react the same way to bad smells like humans do? | Dogs are particularly attracted to very strong smells because they can use it to hide their own smell. It's a form of camouflage: remember that dogs are predators, and anything that makes it harder for their prey to detect them is an advantage.
Humans are repelled by the smell of things like faeces and rotting flesh because those things tend to carry germs or parasites that can damage our health. They could potentially make dogs ill as well, but for dogs the advantage of not being detected outweighs the disadvantage of the risk of disease.
Cats also don't like the smell of rotting flesh. You've probably noticed that your cat will carefully smell food before eating it, just to check it's fresh. Instead of trying to disguise their smell by masking it with a stronger smell, cats will spend a lot of time cleaning themselves. The smell of urine is interesting to a cat, because it gives the cat useful information about what animals and other cats are in the area. | 0929de08-863d-4f71-ada1-6ddfd9181d8c |
8a6n6n | crossbow vs compound bow | The draw weight is only half the equation for the energy of a projectile. The other is the draw distance.
The reason for that is simple: The longer you push against a moving object, the more it's going to speed up. That means that you can calculate the kinetic energy of a linearly accelerated object by multiplying the force with the distance.
So a rough approximation for kinetic energy of bows and crossbows is multiplying the draw weight with the draw distance.
Therefore, a crossbow with a rather small draw distance is not going to have as much kinetic energy as a bow of equal draw weight that can be pulled to the ears. Its projectile might be faster though, since crossbow bolts are usually lighter | db6d5709-e538-4fb3-a407-28f1cd332c55 |
2upen8 | How did the British decide what intelligence from breaking Enigma to act on and what to let go? | Well the good news about breaking Enigma is that they now would know everything that German intelligence knew. The Germans communicated with their troops and generals through the Enigma transmissions, therefore, if you had broken Enigma, and the Germans didn't know you had, they would continue using it as if no one was hearing what they were saying.
Because of this, they could listen in and make statistical decisions on what strategies to use to win the war slowly. Because of the Statistics, they could stop certain attacks and allow others to happen. By doing this, Hitler wouldn't suspect that they had broken Enigma because why would you let your own soldiers die if you knew an attack was coming. It is an ethical nightmare but that's war for ya. | 4e254e9a-cc14-47a7-b815-d0f819fc3be7 |
41em87 | How do genetic traits work if both of them are dominant? | It depends. You could get something like what you described. You could also get something called codominance, where both traits are expressed simultaneously. For example, blood types do this. A type is dominant, and B type is dominant. If you inherit both, your blood type is AB, because your cells express both antigens simultaneously.
There's also a notion of incomplete dominance, where the traits blend together and meet in the middle. I don't know a human example, but in some flowers, red coloration and white coloration are both dominant, so if a progeny inherits both, it becomes pink (this is different from the above example because codominance of red and white coloration would be polka dots of those colors, not an even pink). | 0f384359-1f79-4e00-8bc7-85e9f7e5a4c9 |
5vuzsu | why does the max volume on my device vary so much based on what it is playing? | It is entirely dependent on the volume level used when mastering the video/song/etc. Some use a standard 'volume'. This is why all songs on iTunes are almost identical volume when they play at the same level on your phone. However, YouTube doesn't require this and as such some videos published retain the low 'master' volume used originally in the editing software.
A good example of someone abusing this principle is the obnoxious vines that master the volume of a vine initially low so you turn your device up - then increase the master volume to make it seem extremely loud all the sudden on the device. | 5ecc8e6c-ab56-454d-baee-4093cfe7826b |
5t2hj1 | why does the sun feel so good on your skin when you have a fever? | Because when you have a fever, your body is internally very hot, which means heat is flowing out of your skin rapidly, so you feel cold. When the sun hits your skin, you stop feeling cold because heat is flowing into your skin as well (almost 2 horsepower worth of heat per square meter). | 04f1a5d6-bb40-4f07-abe9-f336eafdfbd4 |
365l0o | how can currencies' price drop and rise? And What are they based on? | Currencies rise and fall based on the value of the goods / services for which they can be redeemed in a given country. Thus the value of a currency can be varied by a variety of factors. Exports and the international market play a role in determining value as do stock markets, etc. Governments or other financial bodies such as reserve banks may also alter the value of a currency by changing rates to increase value or competitive trade. For instance a higher Aussie dollar means that our currency is worth more by comparison and therefore we receive less money for trade overseas (as more of their money equates to less of ours). Whereas a lower Aussie dollar results in the reverse. | dfa56502-8cf4-4430-a3f1-9321eabbe716 |
3idyc5 | How exactly does muscle growth work? | Your muscles are made from bundles of stringy cells that are capable of contracting and relaxing. Exercise and damage to the muscle from overuse will cause your body to adapt and build the muscle up more strongly than it was before (more bundles of cells for more pulling).
Your body creates those new muscle cells from the material you eat. The exact process from food- > muscle tissue is difficult to describe, because the actual material the new muscle cells are made of may have been in your body for a long time and been used for other things. Basically, though, your body breaks down food into it's tiniest building blocks. Since the things we eat are made of the same basic things we are, we can then use those materials to build our own tissues up. | 35039ab8-740f-4754-9bde-40855f026b83 |
899zgf | How did bad vision as a trait/defect survive natural selection? | Avast ye! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: Why didn't bad eyesight get naturally selected out? ](_URL_5_) ^(_24 comments_)
1. [ELI5: Why hasn't eyesight been phased out with natural selection? Wouldn't poor eyesight be detrimental to survival? ](_URL_6_) ^(_12 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How did humans survive before the invention of glasses while so many humans today have such poor eyesight? ](_URL_1_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)
1. [ELI5: If having good eyesight is an evolutionary advantage, how come so many people these days have to wear glasses? Surely natural selection would have favoured those with good eyesight? ](_URL_7_) ^(_16 comments_)
1. [What makes people have bad eye sight? ](_URL_0_) ^(_100 comments_)
1. [Why are our eyes so flawed that so many people need vision correction? ](_URL_3_) ^(_41 comments_)
1. [ELI5: Did we stop natural selection by keeping everyone alive? ](_URL_2_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)
1. [ELI5: Why are human senses so bad compared to most animals? ](_URL_4_) ^(_16 comments_) | aaa577a6-375f-4905-a290-20e18c85ccc3 |
20dfwv | What is happening when I log onto a website and I see a notification saying "establishing a secure connection"? | There are two major components of a secure connection:
1. Identity Verification
2. Encryption of Communications
All websites which support secure connections must have a certificate. This certificate is signed by a trusted Certificate Authority who is willing to put their credibility on the line by vouching for the identity of the website.
In other words, the company who owns the web-server pays a Certificate Authority like Verisign to sign the certificate and verify their identity. The Certificate Authority may, for example, check to verify the company has a valid business license and is really the company it claims to be. If everything checks out, the Certificate Authority will verify the company's identity. The user's web browser will then verify the authenticity of the certificate (based on the Certificate Authority who signed it) and if it checks-out the user will be permitted to browse the website securely.
If the certificate is not signed or there is some other problem with verifying the identity of the website, the user's browser will pop-up a big warning basically saying that it is very dangerous to continue because the connection may be intercepted.
The second component of a secure connection is encryption of communications. As I mentioned, all websites supporting secure connections must have a certificate. This certificate contains a public key which can be used to encrypt data by another party (the user's web browser).
The data encrypted using that public key can only be decrypted by the website/web-server which has the corresponding private key (the public [encryption] key is not the same as the private [decryption] key, yet they are sufficiently related mathematically that data encrypted with the public key can be decrypted using the private key).
The user's browser and website/server then negotiate a symmetric session key for future data communications. Technically they could still communicate using public key encryption (i.e. how the initial negotiation is handled), however public key encryption is rather slow. Primarily for this reason, the browser and the server will negotiate a 128-bit or 256-bit symmetric session key (whereby the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt messages) to use for all future data communications until the end of the session.
A secure connection can fail for many different reasons. Firstly, there may be a problem with the server's certificate (e.g. it may be expired, it may not be signed by a recognized authority, it may have been revoked, etc.). Secondly, there may be a problem negotiating encryption technologies (there are many different encryption algorithms in use on the web and not all web browsers necessarily support all encryption standards used by the web server the user is communicating with).
Lastly, it may be the case that the browser detects that the certificate is fraudulent even though it may be verified by a Certificate Authority. For example, Google Chrome knows exactly what certificates are valid for Google's website and if another website/server claims to be _URL_0_ and presents a seemingly valid certificate which Chrome doesn't recognize as officially from Google, the user will receive a warning. | 74752441-de93-44f7-9e8f-1483dd1362d7 |
662z2t | Why does brushing one's teeth completely RUIN orange juice immediately afterward? | Most toothpaste has a chemical in it called SLS, which is what makes the toothpaste foamy.
SLS temporarily blocks your tastebuds from being able to taste "sweet" well. It also removes fat. Fat normally blocks you from tasting "bitter."
So you taste less "sweet," and more "bitter." Orange juice is a citrus, which is normally a yummy combination of sweet and sour. Get rid of the sweet, add in some bitter, and your OJ tastes nasty. | 053c3505-0557-4277-9560-ac82eabfc8e4 |
67jj0u | are photons (light) impacted by air/wind once the reach earth from the sun? | They are impacted by the air.
Once they hit the atmosphere they scatter, which is why we get a blue sky in the middle of the day, while at sunrise and sunset we get a red sky. As the light passes through the air, more and more of the light scatters.
Light travels far too fast to be impacted by the wind. | 999f11f4-4fff-41c1-adc8-7a716e5dba81 |
6l6u8f | What is a "resort fee" and who decides their price? | To my understanding, a resort fee is a flat rate charge which covers access to the extra ammenities a hotel may offer. Rather than charging for individual services such as the pool, spa, massage, or whatever else (I don't know what those would be because I usually just go to a hotel only to sleep) or other extras they can all be had at a flat rate. It seems to be legal only in the USA and Canada and explicitly illegal in most other places. My issue is that its a semi-hidden cost when you look for a room on an online site like Expedia. To my knowledge there's no way to opt out of the resort fee (and thus resort services) so why not just include it in the advertised price?
As for who determines the price, the hotel itself does. they can vary from 20 to way over 100. | 8f8a7555-f4f1-4f39-985c-792e3d89c68f |
6nyydu | Why do strange bugs show up when you leave cardboard/variants put away for a long time? | Cardboard and is mostly processed wood, an organic material. Which means it's food for some organisms. If you add a humid environment, like that associated with warm weather, and lack of light, bacteria and mold can now grow on your cardboard. Which means that there is now food for slightly larger organisms - > bugs - > spiders.
Long story short: where there is food, life will eventually come along and eat it. | 99bdee87-d745-44ba-9654-bcc166963968 |
l534o | Why can't you use electronic devices on planes right after takeoff? | Takeoff and landing are when most *survivable* air-flight incidents happen. In order to maximize survivability in the event that anything goes wrong, certain rules are made about what you can and can't do during takeoff and landing.
For instance, you can't have a tray-table out during takeoff or landing. Why? Because it would be in your way if you needed to evacuate your seat. You also can't have your seat reclined during takeoff or landing, because it would be in *other* people's way if they needed to evacuate their seats.
Carry-on items are required to be stowed during takeoff and landing because in the event of sudden maneuvering, those items become projectiles. Historically, the dividing line between what is a carry-on item and what isn't has been left to cabin-crew discretion; nobody's going to tell Old Lady Flaherty in 11C to put her rosary away.
But the advent of gadgetry last decade complicated things, because suddenly people started carrying these wee little things which happened to be, as a rule, very dense and very hard. So there was an opportunity to just make a blanket rule: No gadgets may be out during takeoff and landing, period, end of paragraph. | 2b8e2d58-1535-46d6-90fe-0c398892f534 |
2wsw64 | Why are panda bears becoming extinct? | Unfortunately pandas have very long reproductive cycles (the female may only be 'interested' once or twice a year in some cases). This means that their populations are particularly sensitive to disruptions, such as deforestation for palm oil plantations.
To give you an idea; the few western zoos lucky enough to have pandas have been trying to breed them in captivity for years with little success - they can be very 'picky'. | cf450496-5069-4e1a-a029-a61b9d5566fb |
7me3ld | How does salt and/or sand “melt” snow? | Normal rain water freezes at 0°c. Salty water freezes at a lower temperature. As long as it's not cold enough to freeze salty water the ice melts. It's often laid as grit and or sand because salt is soluble, it melts the ice but then it dissolves and runs down the drains with the water. Grit and sand helps hold the salt in place and dissolve more slowly.
Interestingly as the ice melts it ~~looses~~ loses energy and actually gets colder! Thats why it's important to grit before the paths and roads go icy to have the greatest effect
*Edit typos* | ebfe4efa-5f7b-4152-b701-e2d6c9199bee |
72vya9 | What would the world be like if all of our collective debt was wiped out (in a deleted sense, not paid off)? | Well... there probably wouldn't be any world left considering how extreme an event it would be to wipe out *every banking record*. But let's play the game.
It would be REALLY REALLY BAD for a while. Debt makes the world go round and suddenly A LOT of people are out A LOT of money since there is no proof they lent money to someone. Eventually it would all get figured out but it would be extremely bad for the economy, Great Depression ^2 level bad.
Then everyone would get back to lending and debt and soon we'd be where we are today as debt is nothing but a tool to facilitate growth. | a636fcc7-a4cc-4b75-a32c-d755728342e6 |
1qri1t | How do drug makers come up with the names for their drugs? (e.g. how did "Fluoxetine" become "Prozac"?) | [This _URL_1_ entry](_URL_0_) talks about how certain drugs are named:
* Drugs marketed to women have softer letters (Sarafem is fluoxetine, but used to treat PMS)
* Drugs with X/Z sound more futuristic and make people think they're cutting edge
* Some Latin roots are used (Fosamax contains *os* (bone) and *max* (large) - and Fosamax is used for osteoporosis) | eb369148-bed3-4402-b7f7-b9a3948c4269 |
3xao0s | How do clouds stay up? | That weight is spread across a huge volume! Clouds are really massive and you can think of them like fog or mist. The very tiny water droplets that make up a cloud are so small they get carried up into the sky by rising warm air currents. Once up there the tiny droplets combine getting bigger and bigger, until eventually they are too big to be held up by the air currents. So down they come in the form of rain. | fa65a8da-ce9c-482c-acc1-0bc777378d8e |
3fx2rs | Why do we have to pay to see our credit scores? | Because it's not "your" credit score. It's a company's credit score that they created *about* you. In other words, it's their proprietary data that happens to reference you, and not something that belongs to you.
And from a practical standpoint, it prevents you from repeatedly checking your score after every single transaction to try to reverse-engineer the formula and then use that knowledge to game the system. | f3b9973f-160c-4bdf-ab55-16ab6b0a3120 |
46s3m1 | Really, what are the implications of the existence of ring-shaped black holes? | Science doesn't find the truth as much as it gets slowly closer and closer to describing it. We have models that describe features of the universe and those models are tested on how well they can predict new things. For example, the Big Bang Theory predicted there would be a curtain of low-level microwave radiation visible in all directions with powerful enough instruments. That curtain was found, and it lent credence to the big bang model. That doesn't mean the big bang theory as it's currently written is 100% accurate.
For a good example, newtonian mechanics is a model that accurately describes and predicts physics as long as things are sufficiently large and moving slowly. Once things get to the atomic level, or they get past around 15% of the speed of light, Newton's models can no longer predict things and we need a new model.
Ring-shaped black holes are predicted by certain models of how the universe works. If those black holes exist, then one of those models is probably more correct than our current one, but more importantly a lot of our current models based on general relativity are probably wrong.
The scary scenario that pop science is playing up is that once those models are gone, we're left much less certain of the accuracy of our predictions about the character of the universe. It'd be like knowing everything about checkers and finding out you actually signed up to a chess tournament. You're in the dark. All that practice and study you've been doing is of questionable value. | 73c163f7-8cb9-482b-81b8-f56774213deb |
2jixkh | What is exactly going on in my ear before and after it 'pops'? | There are tubes in your ear which are moistened by mucus (ear wax); they can trap air bubbles or even water when you are swimming. When you experience a change in pressure or if you move your muscles in certain ways (like when you swallow), the mucus seals which are trapping that air can be pushed open causing a small popping sensation. | e99764aa-28a4-4fb4-8aab-ea8db1f52541 |
2153f2 | Why is it bad to sleep with contacts on? | They restrict the amount of oxygen your eyes get. Things like sore/red eyes are pretty usual, sometimes it can get so bad that you can't even put them in until they get better. My sister and I seem to be prone to getting conjunctivitis if we keep them in too long, too. | 339c067f-1272-4fd9-bb21-bb0c01d33f69 |
6k8yri | why When a Tv is on and the screen is black why does the TV still emit light in a dark room? Even though the screen is black. | Televisions use back lights to send light through colored pixels to make images. When the TV is on the back light is on, even when no picture is being displayed. | dfabec56-f7d2-4970-8bd9-2a3af480edc4 |
mbkho | 25 ohms vs. 200 ohms | First, if you haven't heard beyerdynamic headphones before and know which of them your ears like, you should get neither of them. No specification online can tell you how something sounds: try them out in store.
Second, which of those you should get if you love both depends on what you're using to listen to music with them. If you're using a regular mp3 player, or even your computer, the 25ohms are probably better. They need less power to get loud. The ones that are 200ohms might be too quiet on a regular mp3 player, and they will only be "worth it" if you use a headphone amp, or dedicated large audio equipment. | 5305268b-8e63-4f2e-b7e0-82ba74b648c0 |
34sjox | Why is it so hard to hold police accountable for their actions? | A couple of things.
1) It is completely part of police jobs to use force to protect themselves or other people, or arrest someone. Force isn't pretty, but that's what they are paid to do. As long as that force is necessary and reasonable, they can use it. Including shooting people. That stuff on their belts is NOT just 'for show'.
This is like the Ferguson incident. Cop went to arrest a criminal who had held up a store at gunpoint. The robber fought with the cop and started to win. The cop was allowed to shoot to save himself. This is called 'justified', and doing what they are supposed to do. We pay cops to win when they go up against the bad guys.
2) Cops are human and sometimes they make mistakes that are job mistakes. Like when you or I make a job mistake, maybe we burn the french fries. But if a cop makes *a mistake*, and uses too much force, people can get hurt. But that's still JUST a job mistake, and it's not a crime. They can get job discipline and retraining. But they don't get arrested, you don't get arrested for burning the french fries.
This is like what happened in Ohio. The cops thought that the toy gun the boy had was a real gun. It was a mistake, not a crime. Sad, and unfortunate.
3) Police brutality is a phrase a lot of people use, but they don't know that only *excessive* force is police brutality, since they are allowed to, and even supposed to, use force. Any time you commit a crime, you bring the cops to you. And when you bring the cops to you, it has the potential to go badly for you. They carry a lot of weapons and training, and they are trained to protect themselves FIRST. They can't NOT do their jobs. If you fight against them, there is HIGH chance you will be hurt.
4) Crime. When cops *intentionally, and with criminal intent*, use force in order to intentionally hurt someone, then that's the only time it's a crime, and the only time cops would get arrested. It happens, but its rare.
So you have cops using force, *which they are supposed to do*, and each and every time that they do, the circumstances get reviewed individually to see if it was *justified* or *a mistake* or *criminal.* Most are justified...that's their jobs after all, to be able to use force. They go on being police, because that's their job...to win against the bad guys.
We don't hear about job discipline for mistakes because the mistakes you make on your job, are protected by labor laws. The world doesn't have a right to know that you burned the french fries and got suspended for one day and sent to french fry re-training. That's your private personnel record. So while the cops are accountable for their 'use of force' mistakes, you and I aren't entitled to hear about the discipline they receive.
If they do commit crimes and intentionally hurt people *knowing its against their training, and they didn't need it to arrest someone or to protect themselves, and they know it was wrong', then they get arrested. We do hear about those.
Cops are accountable, all the time. You just think that every time they injure someone while they are doing their jobs, that they should be punished. But the FACT is, they are allowed to use force. Up to and including their guns. That's a big part of their job. We just don't like it.
And that leads us back to how to solve so much of these injuries when going up against cops.
* don't commit crimes. When you commit crimes, you bring the cops to you and they have to do something about it. That includes force.
* don't fight back. When you are getting arrested, cops are allowed to use force to arrest you, and if you start winning, they are allowed to shoot you.
* don't disobey cop orders. The law says you have to obey their orders or they can use force to MAKE you obey them. You're supposed to obey the orders at the time, then fight them in court. You get your day in court..that's the place to speak your side. And if the cop was wrong, then your 'arrest' gets thrown out. That's how the process works. | 1206c653-1a7e-4bbe-813b-e8b9b993a4d1 |
67ru8s | Why did drive-in restaurants die out in America? | Drive-ins were replaced predominately by drive throughs. The Restaurant can sell the same volume (or more) of food with a fraction of the staff and people get in and out faster. | 5d6ed538-6786-435b-af53-3446ac95c655 |
1jddu9 | Why do we need a paper copy of a car registration? | I got a ticket for not having my paper copy. The cop said he knew it was registered since I gave him my ID number and then proceeded to write me up for not being able to prove I was registered. | 836246cf-d256-4443-bfb9-3555a94c8c5c |
1n7h29 | Why is our Moon perfectly round? | It's not. It just looks that way from down here. | 19fe038c-761d-48ce-a8d6-957c74c65e93 |
2klkqe | How come when I sing while listening to music it sounds perfect to me. But when the music is off I sound horrible? | You have the vocals supporting your voice and "filling in the holes." | 9d33afc2-2796-4f18-8ac6-89e75fa943bc |
25bvbi | Why does microwaving a "dry" bread/muffin makes its texture like almost fresh? | Microwave excites the hydrogen atoms in water and sugar, making them hotter. If the water in it gets hotter, it expands, or even turns into steam, making bread sort of fresh tasting. | adb16d9a-d464-4fc2-896c-5132c70fca9f |
1re01e | how do we absorb things at all from vegetables if we can't break the cellulose wall? | We can break the wall by chewing or cooking as mentioned before, but also bacteria in our gut will break down the cellulose.
It's a mutually beneficial relationship. The bacteria get tasty cellulose, and we get the nutrients from the plant matter. | f660e70d-208a-46ad-9e7a-23e13975e9c3 |
48a6wh | Why is plastic always still wet after going through the dishwasher? | Glass and ceramic hold the heat so moisture will evaporate off. Plastic cools quite quickly so moisture will not have the opportunity to evaporate. | a0ddec46-5b05-451a-95fa-2bdb499e0263 |
6hq7ys | the rips in ripped jeans | Originally jeans would rip, usually in the knees, if you wore them long enough. Some people kept wearing them and eventually it became fashionable to wear them that way. Later, companies started making jeans with the rips in them, to mimic old, worn out jeans, much like you can buy t-shirts now where the design looks like it's been worn out over the years. | d4555086-4afd-4976-aaae-d73032dd5975 |
2m04qe | When people say the fridge is their best friend, isn't it many times not the case, since most of the food they eat are in cupboards? | It's a figure of speech called *metonymy*. Metonymy is when you use a simpler object or name to stand in for something complex. For example, when people talk about "Wall Street", they mean all corporate bankers and investment firms, not just the ones that literally have offices on Wall Street in New York City. When someone says they are a member of "the press", they mean that they are a member of the news media, not a mechanical part in a literal printing press.
In this case the metonymy is that the person is using "the fridge" to indicate their entire eating habits. | 09096de4-83a0-450c-9e88-20706aa7323a |
256evj | If Java is open source, how can Oracle sue Google for making their own version? | Java was originally created by Sun Microsystems, and the reference implementation of the compiler and runtime environment were closed source.
The specification included not just a language and syntax, but a Virtual Machine. The Virtual Machine is basically a description of a computer with a set of instructions it can perform.
It can be implemented in Software (As it usually is) but actually is a description of a device which from the very early days of Java can be implemented as a hardware processor. (In fact, I have a ring on my shelf I obtained at Sun when they were first promoting Java - which ran Java in hardware.)
Java also specified a very large set of standard libraries compared to C or C++ which all comprised this runtime-- and in the end Java's promise to liberate developers from having to write software for every operating system.
This was embodied in the mantra: "Write once, run anywhere."
The second half of this specification was a licensing model that explicitly forbid segmenting of this environment, and while allowing third party implementations, gave Sun the right to prevent implementations that intentionally broke the promise of "Write Once, Run Anywhere."
Java scared the shit out of Microsoft, who saw it as a way for developers to escape their terse and painful programming environment, and move their software to a platform which would no longer need Microsoft.
As a result they implemented the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine, and made Visual J++, to sit along side their Visual C++ development environment.
J++ was, as advertised, not exactly Java. MS basically built an environment that had most of Java's spec implemented--- but then tied in a bunch of Windows specific stuff.
This included Active X controls, links to DirectX, and ties into the Win32 API. It allowed developers to sidestep AWT, and use a native windows UI form.
It basically made it impossible for a developer to actually develop a cross platform Java application without paying careful attention.
Sun sued MS, and after a long court battle which essentially crippled the advancement of Java as a language for browsers for ten years, won. MS abandoned Java, and built .NET as a result.
After Java became hugely popular as a server based programming language, and in many ways became a very standard and cross platform server development language--- Sun decided to open source Java.
It open sourced it with an attached strategy for future development, called the Java Community Process.
_URL_0_
The purpose is to specify the evolution of Java and the implementation of the platform. The platform however is still guarded by the same licensing agreements designed to try to prevent segmentation and promote "Write Once, Run Anywhere."
By this time Sun had realized that mantra was more of philosophical utility than it had ever been a practical reality, and they decided to tolerate segmentations for domain specific purposes for Java, like Android.
This is partially due to their failure to make a truly agreed upon mobile and embedded standard for Java (See the Mobile Information Device Profile, or Java ME).
Android severely segmented Java, making an embedded environment specification that included a robust middleware layer that concisely and elegantly provided a common interface to embedded media hardware ( I spent most of my career programming device drivers for media SOCs, and they are all alien environments from one another. )
Android got rid of the bits of Java that didn't help, and basically took the useful pieces and built an environment that concisely fit a particular class of devices--- and wildly succeeded where the Java mobile profiles had failed.
Sun turned a blind eye because they saw it wasn't an evil use of Java, and it was an appropriate segmentation.
Unfortunately Sun, a great company, was taken over by Oracle, a smelly shit of a log of crap of a company--- and with Android they smelled money.
They saw that the benevolent license model Sun had implemented for a good reason could be used for evil, and monetary gain... And so they did a shitbag move and went after Google despite the history of cooperation between Google and Sun.
In the end, Oracle is probably legally on the right.
Google and Sun were bros working for a better future for developers like me. Android has saved me thousands of man hours.
In summary:
Oracle,
They're right--- but they are still assholes. | 4252b23a-ec38-4702-8294-052250a2f434 |
1ddbyn | Why is water not compressible? | When you are doing things in science and engineering, often calculations can be easier when you make simplifying assumptions. For water, if you increase the pressure to 100 times "normal" pressure (atmospheric pressure) its size will only change a small amount ( < 1%). That means if you ever have to do calculations with water operating under pressure, you can assume it *doesn't change size at all* and your calculations will still be within 1% (fine for most practical applications). Now if you are working with something like a gas (imagine a balloon) it is not so simple. If you increase the pressure, the size changes *a lot*. Doubling the pressure on a balloon, will it shrink to half its size! For these things (compressible things) you have to figure this into your calculations or they will be way off. | 0b1dea9b-f4d2-4210-a037-f54350290571 |
j2xho | Can somebody please explain the theory of relativity to me, like I'm five? | The first part is in the name. "Relativity". That is, everything is relative to the observer.
Imagine yourself on a train zooming along down the tracks. You bounce a ball on the table in front of you. What do you see? A ball bouncing straight up and down.
Now imagine someone is at the side of the tracks and they see you bouncing the ball. What do they see? A ball describing arcs (i.e. it hits the table and as it travels up it moves "forward" to its apex then back down to the table...the person on the side of the tracks, if the plotted its movement, would see it traveling in an arc).
Who is right? Is it going straight up and down or moving in an arc? Actually you are both right at the same time although you are both seeing very different results.
That simple thought experiment is profound when you consider the implications (e.g. two people can disagree on the order of events). Read up on "Frames of Reference" for more.
So, that is where the "relativity" part comes from but you have not specified the General Theory or the Special Theory.
The above is the Special Theory of Relativity (also where E=MC^2 comes from).
The more complex (and published after and separate) is the General Theory of Relativity.
The General Theory relates the geometry of space-time. Powerful stuff. Gave the world a new view on gravity and ushered in the likes of Black Holes.
The General Theory posits that "gravity" is the warping of space itself. Akin to a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline. If you roll a marble past the bowling ball it will be deflected like something would passing the Earth. Of course this is simplified but gives you a good idea to visualize it.
As for FTL travel it is in the E=MC^2 equation. Sorry if it is past a 5 year-old to understand but that is it. Energy and mass are interchangeable. As you increase energy (speed) you increase mass. Mass is multiplied by a really big number (speed of light squared). If you keep pushing it you find you need infinite energy to go the speed of light. Obviously there is not that much in the whole Universe. | 29ea588f-f42f-409c-bfff-ddf51cb05d5a |
3p8jbl | Is it true that the NSA/CIA is able to hack in to almost everything? If so, what enables them to do it compared to other hacking groups that cant get past the so called "unhackable systems". | They certainly can't hack everything. They are a government agency though, so they have tons of resourves, top level mathmaticians and programmers, they also have the ability to get backdoors into programs due to being an official agency. They also have a lot of money so they can have huge supercomputers to crack certain kind of encryptions. Some encryptions are assumed to be secure though(like AES). | b1a57f19-3003-462e-bfee-94acb911ba84 |
jdch5 | what are mortgage backed securities..??...and what role did it played in US 2008 market crash... | Let me show you [the best youtube video you'll see all week](_URL_0_).
I've watched it like 15 times. Not because I still don't get it (I do), but because it's so... nice.
When you get to the CDO's... well, those are mortgage backed securities. | ce1e5ad1-4dcd-4c24-963a-8ba81b1a233c |
5289uc | Why 60fps videos and movies are still not a thing? | Movies would normally be 48fps (HFR). Peter Jackson shot some of the Hobbit stuff at HFR, and there were compalints that "it didn't look like film"
Video can be shot at 60 fps (50 fps Europe) but requires twice the storage and twice the bandwidth to deliver, so is less profitable for makers. | 32607196-f247-42ff-8f5b-0d4cf9d63dd7 |
91jhyy | Why high end brands often hide their prices. | The director David Lynch once said the thing he liked best about being wealthy was going into a bookstore, finding a book he liked, and buying it without every having to look at the price.
The reverse also holds, if you go into a store and buy things without every looking at the price is a sort of confirmation of how wealthy you are. When I was younger, I had to count every penny when I went shopping, and now that I am a moderately successful professional, being about grab what I want without having to worry so much, that can be a good feeling. Whether is it positive reassurance or just a shallow sense of prestige, being able to buy something without worry about the cost can make us feel better.
> I've always found the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" argument to be ridiculous. Almost everyone has a limit to what they can afford, even the ultra rich.
While true, those sorts of things are less likely to be in a clothing store. If you are wealthy enough, a $10K bag is exactly the same to you as a $100 one. What more, if you are used to shopping in a place like that, you should have a sense of what things cost, and that conveys a certain amount of prestige. You are an elite shopper, and you know a high-end designer bag will cost about $10K. If yours happens to be $12K, that no different than a regular person going into a gas station an paying $2 for a soda instead of $1.50. | 0dbd4b60-28c3-4f70-90fa-fa4bf37e6089 |
s5huv | British political system and political parties | Well. I guess the easiest way to explain it to a five year old would be -
Imagine a school yard. There are loads of different groups (Goths, Jocks, Gamers etc) about to play a game. They have a vote, and the people with the most votes get to chose the game that they play. But then after 30mins, everyone gets to vote again, and if they dont like that game, they will pick someone else.
Getting a little more complicated - imagine all the schools in a district, about to meet up for an annual game playing day. Each school picks one person from all the groups that are available, and sends them off to say "Lets play dodgeball", or "Lets play rounders". All the kids that have been picked go into a large hall. With all the rounders players on one side of the hall, the dodgeball choosers on the other, and the random games dotted around the back. The teams pick one person who can best argue the case for each sport, and let them argue it out. Then all the schools in the district get to hear/see what is being said, and then get made to pick the one sport they want to play for the next 4 years. During this time, the representatives still get to meet every day and argue their case either for/against the sport they are playing, and in 4 years time the other schools will be able to pick again.
In the UK there are three main political parties - The Conservatives (Tories), New Labour, and the Liberal Democrates.
In layman terms, the Conservatives, also known as the Tories (who are the dogdeball players in my analogy) are about keeping the rich richer, and the poor poorer. They've implemented major changes to the National Health Service, Civil Servants wages and cut the top rate of tax by 5p, from 50p in every pound to 45p for every pound, once you are earning over £150k. But have messed around with benefits too, so they were sending people out to work for four 40 hour weeks, for £60 odd per week. If you refused, you might even lose your benefits for 2 weeks.
New Labour (Rounders) were supposed to be for the workers, by the workers. But noone trusts them anymore, after the iraq war, and the country falling into a recession.
The Liberal Democrats (Checkers) were meant to be more liberal (suprise) and somewhat of a middle ground between the other two, and said that they wouldnt increase student tuition fees or mess with the NHS.
In the election in 2010, there werent enough rounders or dogdeball players picked for a clear majority in the sports hall, and we had what is called a hung-parliment. This could've made the schools have to vote again, BUT the Dodgeballers asked the Checkers to join their group, on the understanding that the players who werent playing dodgeball at the time would play checkers. This passed, but the dodgeballers were a lot stronger than the checkers players, and mainly ignored them.
Again, like a schoolyard, there are loads of different smaller games to be played, but most of these get ignored in favour of the bigger, more popular games.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Side note : I am actually Scottish. We have a slightly different system, as we can choose some of the rules that we want to play to make a custom game of dodgeball. Most of the important rules are still there, but we can edit some other ones to make it more applicable to scotland.
We also have our own sports hall, which works on the same basis. We also send people from our schools to the large english hall.
There is a political party in Scotland called the Scottish Nationalist Party. They want complete independence from England. If england is playing dodgeball, why should Scotland? The Scottish people dont like getting hit by a ball, so do we have to just because England does? In 2014 the scottish people get to pick whether or not we want to. Should be fun.
Fin | 4f6d7d9b-e983-4bbb-88f9-09859727ddf2 |
6rjty8 | How is it that radiation, which causes cancer, can also help to treat cancer? | Radiation causes damage to the mechanisms of the cell. If you're really unlucky, it causes damage to the mechanisms that regulate the cell growth, and a cell or group of cells begin to replicate out of control.
But radiation still causes damage. So you use a technique where you fire bursts of radiation from different angles, centered on the cancer. This means that the 'non cancer cells' (in between your emitter and the cancer) get small doses (because you keep coming from different directions, and so take different paths), hopefully not enough to cause a problem, but the cancer cells at the center of all the 'beams' get roasted with radiation. Since this causes damage, the hope is that it will break enough of their shizz to kill them. | fc861e8c-8403-4637-8a07-36a444cc27a6 |
2b8wt3 | Why does the sentence "I'm better than you're" not make sense when "you're" is short for "you are?" | Generally, one uses noun-verb contractions for the subject of the sentence. Ex: You're a wonderful person. Ex2: They're the most interesting people I know.
In your sentence, "you're" is not the subject. "I" is. Which is why "I'm" makes sense to you in the sentence, but "you're" at the end looks weird.
**Edit:** Stop upvoting this, please. People more involved in this area disagree and the actual reason appears to be more nuanced. Others are doing a good job at explaining it. Give them your karma. | 6af9e8e8-3672-43ee-929e-348cac0c1d38 |
yba2y | Why do some pens cost hundreds of dollars? | The most expensive *functional* component of a pen is the solid gold fountain pen nib, usually made of 14 or 18 karat gold and tipped with a mixture of elements from the platinum group (osmium, iridium, etc.). A lot of people prefer it for its softer feel or flex.
But money only goes so far with a nib. While more money usually means better materials and craftsmanship, it peaks somewhere around $60-80 for a nib. (And even then, you're getting diminishing returns as you approach that price. The differences are never *that* great, so it's hard to justify going beyond $20-40 for a nib if you don't have money to burn.) The rest of the price you're charged is usually there just to place pens at [various locations in the luxury hierarchy](_URL_1_). It's a form of marketing, really.
There are tricks to justify jacking up the price. Some companies make everything out of rare or expensive materials, even if it's not practical. For example, silver is too heavy to be appropriate for a pen body that gets much use but there are plenty of weighty silver pens out there. Some pens have jewels or intricate engravings or artwork. Others are sold as limited editions, meant to be collected. Mere brand name helps up the price--I can't afford a Mont Blanc ~~ballpoint~~ rollerball made of plastic. (That is, unless I [stick its refill into a Pilot G2](_URL_0_).) | 50e6214f-b205-41f9-9d72-28bb97e66981 |
j2ej3 | How do quantum computers work? | Computers these days store information in bits- each bit representing either a 1 or a 0. Quantum computing makes use of the idea of superposition to give us the qubit- which can be a 1, a 0, ***or*** a superposition of both 1 and 0. What does that mean? It's kind of tough to get your head around but- imagine I have box, and I tell you that said box either contains a rock or it does not. Now, you can open the box and see there is no rock- call that state 0. You can open the box and see there is a rock- call that state 1. You could also just not look and, oddly enough that too is also a state- a "superstate" of 0 and 1. The idea is that that not checking the state of something is a state in itself.
You don't need to understand the underlying mechanics to understand the benefits- each bit is either a 1 or a 0, so 1 bit has two possibilities, 2 bits have 4, 3 bits have 8, and so on- 2^n bits.. With qubits, you get 3, 9, 27- 3^n where n is the number of qubits. The benefits increase exponentially (literally) as you increase the scale- 100 bits have 10^30 possibiliteis, while 100 qubits have 10^47.... 100 million billion times as many!
[A better, but no less confusing, explanation of superpositions can be found here](_URL_0_) | afe7cc24-4fc7-477a-8584-d78291aff1c6 |
2rq65b | Why is it ok to draw Muhammad because of a few radicals. But, it's not ok to put a cross upside down, burn the US flag, and so on? | It isn't illegal to burn a US flag. Not aware of any laws against drawing crosses upside down. | 86ead6e9-90a2-4e5e-87bb-004707ef4286 |
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