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zxcf1 | The technical difference between LCD screens and Plasma screen. | Plasma screens are more prone to burn-in, but that is largely a problem of the past if you are looking for a screen to view TV programs on. (I still would not use one for a computer monitor.)
The two different screens use very different mechanisms to display information. LCDs use a "liquid crystal" that can rapidly be turned between nearly transparent and opaque to let varying amounts of light out. If the LCD is also LED, then that light is coming from LEDs, otherwise it is a more normal light source. Plasma TVs create a small bit of ionized gas (gas where electrons get pulled off of their atoms, which then recombine and liberate light) to generate varying levels of light. That light energizes phosphors, and over time the phosphors can wear out. This is really only a problem if a static image is left on the screen for very long periods of time. Computers often do this; TVs don't.
Plasma TVs used to have worse BI problems than those made today. And this was made worse when showing standard definition 4:3 aspect ration images on high definition screens with a 12:9 aspect ratio. The TVs would put bars on the sides of the screen to display the image with the proper ratio, so the screens would tend to get an image of the bars burned in. Newer plasma TVs use tricks to avoid this problem.
What really should matter to a consumer is the product. Plasmas can have slightly better brightness and better dark levels than LCDs. But they also generally consume a lot more power and thus are thicker and heavier and get hotter (and cost more to operate).
My personal opinion is that the slightly better images you can get with some plasma TVs is not significant compared to an LED TV, and not worth the greater power/heat/weight/thickness. | ade9de98-f927-4955-bf52-cb41c75bf094 |
3e1qm2 | Why are there so many distinct accents within England? | Same goes for the rest of Europe, lots of very distinct accents and dialects on a very small scale (EDIT: eg. from one mountain valley to the next). I think that in the former colonies the language just didn't have time to diversify that much, and now that we have nation-wide broadcasts of "standardized" language there is not so much chance to develop one. | 1268fa1c-50ed-4afe-960d-413a73d1564d |
tmeuo | Why do so many people dislike NATO? | Why do I feel like you asked a question but told everyone they can't disagree with you or something? Maybe it's just me.
Also, this might not belong in this subreddit, I'm not going to start looking for sources for my opinions on an aggressive military coalition for a five year old. | 2ca735d6-abc1-40ff-8b1f-f9e6a85c815a |
85pmez | How do police know if something has happened to a body post mortem? | Bruising, bleeding, clotting, etc occurs differently to a living body than to a dead one, because bruising is dependent on blood flow to the area. | 6d364578-df89-436d-aa35-981f0c443c66 |
406l0q | How do people know what the Milky Way looks like if we are inside it? | We can observe the area around us and construct a pretty decent idea. We can't look in toward the center of the galaxy well, since there's too much dust in the way to see there or across. But the gravity of those stars still has a measurable impact on the ones we can observe, which lets us calculate how they must be arranged.
Pictures you see of our galaxy are either artists' impressions or actually pictures of another spiral galaxy, like nearby Andromeda. | d783beb2-1936-481b-b2f2-800bc59306b3 |
6fqo3l | Why do so many bathrooms have their light switches outside of the room? | Bathrooms have water pipes in them, and it's safer to keep switches and outlets away from water unless they (switches and outlets) are waterproof. | 923ecc56-49a5-4281-b438-8ae5325a0946 |
7r1l00 | Why do certain colors of lights have a second, differently colored ring around the source? | Go get your eyes checked. You seem to be seeing refraction happening within your eyes. It could be from some minor deformity in the eye like the ones that cause near sightedness and far sightedness, to pressure in the optical nerve.
So basically **please go to a doctor as soon as possible.**
Source: had something similar once due to a medicine increasing optical nerve pressure and I have a 3DS and there's no halo around the notification lights. | 79e36190-d6e5-4e14-873e-64eba59d307e |
36i3ap | Why is UK telephone cable 6-core when you only actually hook up two of them? | Because when you are wiring up a building for telephones, almost all of the expense is the labor. It costs the workmen just as much to pull three-pair cabling as it does to pull single-pair cabling, and the cable itself is only very slightly more expensive.
Once that cable is in, it then becomes very easy to install a second or third line, because the cabling is in place. So, if you needed a second line for, say, a fax machine, they don't have to do any new cabling at all. | abc9f278-4a3e-42af-b634-7f9c90386df7 |
69u1s4 | Why are we entertained by fiction, though we are always looking for the truth? | Good fiction contains deeper truths about the human condition. It's not just about the specific events of the plot. | ff12f053-69ec-4640-aecd-667549ea72dd |
31g4jd | Are we the first on our planet to cross "the finish line" as far as evolution? | Well as you said the question doesn't really make sense because intelligence and self-awareness isn't a goal of evolution.
Would other creatures become more intelligent and self-aware if not for us? Maybe. Maybe not. We found a niche and it works for us - if we never were it'd be an open niche for some other creature.
That said evolution relies on chance mutations. It's quite possible the mutations required to fill our niche instead of us would just not have happened. | 58e2f4ef-71cd-4ab2-9164-c3eb954cae85 |
5yx68g | If the human body is only supposed to have about 25g of sugar a day, why do most flavored drinks exceed that? | Or most processed foods.. It's an addiction thing. Your body loves sugar. More the better. So companies load up things with sugar and we all buy them. | d4c6b739-46bb-4ca7-9347-51a308b0bcc0 |
qfus4 | A cup of water with an ice cube in it has the same water level before and after the ice melts; so why are scientists so sure that global warming will cause the sea levels to rise? | The 'ice cubes' are sitting on land, not in the ocean. | 08b52f45-44c0-4050-939d-d8720836d71c |
618v86 | Why does brief lack of oxygen to the brain often feel good? | Ok, this is only a guess (until other, more knowledgable people answer your question), but first to clarify: your vision fading after standing up too quickly is due to low blood pressure, not lack of air.
I think perhaps much of the euphoric feeling is actually just adrenaline in response to your body being worried about what's going on. Same reason people get a rush on roller coasters or watching horror movies, for instance. Our bodies know that if we are losing air, it's likely not because we are dumb and don't know to avoid it, it's because we need more energy and ability to get out of a scary situation, hence adrenaline. Additionally, getting oxygen after being deprived of it can feel incredibly relieving, which might be where the "high" comes from, in addition to the adrenaline. | 961d73ef-2273-484a-be56-735eaf7738d1 |
6lndgd | What about yellow makes it appear lighter than other colors? | Our eyes are most sensitive to green light. About twice as sensitive to it as red or blue. Green therefore is the brightest primary color to our eyes. As you probably know, with light, color is subtractive. If you add all the colors, you get white, if you subtract any color you get the combination of the other two primary colors. So yellow is White minus blue, making it technically the second lightest color (made up of only two primary colors) to our eyes since green is the brightest primary color. This is the same if you keep blue and green subtract red, you get Cyan, which is just as light as yellow because we still have green. But if you keep red and blue and subtract green you get purple which looks darker because we can't perceive red and blue as well as green, so purple looks darker than yellow or cyan.
Of course this is only considering you keep with only two primary colors. If you were to take white light and remove only a tiny bit of red or blue, you would end up with a much brighter color close to white, but slighly resembling yellow or cyan. | 2ffabae3-c6d9-428c-bf88-103243381f9a |
2r8t8t | Why infrared thermometers measure a mirror's surface, and not the surface it is reflected on. | I have a big, shiny aluminum pot and an infrared thermometer. The thermometer _always_ measures the _reflection_ of what's outside the pot, not the pot itself.
Aluminum, and shiny metals, _will_ reflect infrared like a mirror, _but glass absorbs infrared_. It's opaque to it, like a blackboard to visible light. If you use a non-glass mirror, like my pot, it will do precisely what you suppose. | 8e961355-f56f-4302-80f5-f65d5502636f |
3rbxx1 | The differences between Toughness, Strength, and Hardness in material science | They are all pretty similar, but there are some distinct differences.
Hardness is a measure of how much force can be applied to something before it permanently changes shape
Toughness is the maximum amount of energy the object can take without breaking
Strength is a measure of how elastic the object it is | ca4112a2-fca0-4cc9-a677-5aceb86c98fd |
4tzkwk | How/why is someone like Artem Vaulin, the founder of KickAss Torrents, held accountable for copyright infringement, if it's the USERS of the site that are breaking the law? | The law isn't nearly that simple. Torrenting copyrighted content isn't the only thing that's illegal. To oversimplify everything as much as possible, the law also specifically makes what Artem Vaulin was doing illegal, at least according to the FBI and the prosecutors.
So for a silly analogy, if I run an unlicensed underground boxing ring, and someone gets killed during a fight, I can't claim I'm not responsible on the grounds that "I didn't hit him, it's the fighters that are breaking the law against hitting each other", because there's also a law against running underground boxing rings.
edit: oh boy, my most upvotes ever. | 66a757bd-45d8-4414-b02f-9fcdae19eb7b |
4i2loy | Why does the US have a Two Party System? Is it in the Constitution? | The fate of all first past the post electoral systems is the eventuality of two party systems. With few exceptions, two main parties will dominate the political landscape given enough time.
Here is a nice video describing the same:
_URL_0_ | 058a4d1f-af0e-4f08-a5c2-46ed1958b416 |
55ssqv | The U.S./Russian proxy war in Syria and all the major players. | Russia wants ISIS gone.
US wants ISIS gone.
Russia wants assad to stay
US wants him to go.
Kurds want more territory for their own country
Turkey doesn't want that.
The stick of it all is Assad.
The Kurd's and US and all of the western world want him gone. While Russia doesn't want that to happen as it ruins the semi-global reach of their navy. It hasn't gone all full proxy war as in Vietnam or Afghanistan yet because there are still a ton of rebel groups. But Russia bombs indiscriminately so it my seem that way. If ISIS turns to dust and the moderates gather under one banner that the US endorses then it will be a well and true proxy war. But at the moment its actually just a three team match of CS:GO where two teams are beating up on the ISIS teams while occasionally taking pot shots at each other. Obviously there aren't three team matches but use your imagination here.
Doing this on a phone. Be gentle | 0c13972d-04ed-4b1a-8fb5-24cfeaf57d64 |
3vqyih | When zoomed out in pictures, why do buildings appear to have swirls? | _URL_0_
it happens when a computer tries to represent fine patterns with repeating details. The camera is incorrectly capturing and reproducing the image; this is caused by the camera's lack of ability to capture fine enough detail. | ac0a8d2f-44d8-4c20-bd06-1e894878f134 |
2j5gww | Where do the erratic/random "Call of the Void" thoughts/urges come from? | Since I don't think anyone is going to have a conclusive explanation for this, I personally think that they come out as a result of your brain thinking "what if I just did this" and then you think about what the consequences of it would be. It's just the fact that you become aware that you Could do it, and then you get scared that it's a possibility and you dwell on it. | 04a06f74-0f78-49e8-82ee-fa14a4500b6f |
3jmxlx | What exactly does meta mean? | Yarr, ye forgot yer searchin' duties, for ['twas asked by those what came before ye!](_URL_0_) | bfccb7c6-47b8-4638-afdf-bb9704106499 |
8ywi9o | Why do names have meanings but these names aren’t words used in normal conversations? | They're different languages (I believe Philip is Greek). Also words like hope and joy get name-ified, but they still get used in conversation. | 72286ec1-2bbf-4cf0-b31f-0c7d0a06b006 |
2y9jfm | Legally speaking why is someone responsible for their decision to drive while blacked out but still able to claim rape of they willingly (ie perform oral or are on top) consent to sex while blacked out? | Criminal law (student) here.
Basically the matter of consent is one of capacity, and the mens rea required for it is triggered via 'recklessness' on behalf of the person who starts drinking. In theory, you need to prove they made a decision to drive under the influence (mens rea) but they would have the defence of incapacity (cos they're drunk).
Thus for drink driving (or any offence related to drinking) it is said you commit the recklessness at the time you begin drinking. That's why they don't have to prove anything other than you drove under the influence.
With rape, consent is required at the moment and throughout the duration of the act, that's why they can change their mind in the middle, also consent to oral sex =/= consent to penetrative sex - they need to consent twice, once for both acts. When they are blackout drunk it is considered that they lack the capacity to make the decision to give consent at the time of the act. | f024a7d5-b186-4a78-b2e8-449e45d5b7e8 |
s7jyb | Why does crab grass develop in random patches? | Crabgrass seeds need the perfect germination conditions. Something that lets them open when the water and heat are just right. And that 'rightness' is when a patch of regular grass dies. Opening the area for it to shoot out and grow because regular grass isn't blocking the conditions. So it looks like random patches because that's where regular grass has died and crabgrass took its place. Crab grass seeds will wait generations until conditions are right. Your whole lawn is filled with them. But you don't see it until the shoot comes out. And, crabgrass can sprout anytime during spring-fall, unlike other 'weeds' which can only do it during a specific season. | 1d3713eb-825d-4786-8e93-968256493e45 |
6o718q | why does it feel good when someone else massages us but not ourselves? | Massages need to take place when you're relaxed. When your massage person does their work you're relaxed, you don't have to do anything while they work on your body. You can't easily massage your back or shoulders (where people usually massage) with ease or without contorting yourself and creating tension to begin with.
Also, the kinds of people you'd usually find massaging you are professionals or lovers, one of which knows the anatomy of your body and how to make you feel good, and the other who you're comfortable and makes you feel good anyway. ;p | ee1c0728-71a7-4eaf-88f3-46278ea3171b |
5qnv12 | if cocaine and meth release dopamine, why do they feel good? | Dopamine has varying effects in different parts of the brian. It may well induce both pleasure and desire depending on what the rest of the brain is doing at that moment, as well as the place in the brain it gets released. Another factor is the type of dopamine receptors. Receptors can be compared to keyholes which unlock when they meet with the right key, and trigger a signal if unlocked. In this case dopamine is the key which fits into several locks; the dopamine receptors.
For instance, there are at least 5 major classes of dopamine receptors which have different responses to dopamine. The response also depends on other factors in the synaptic cleft. A synaptic cleft is the place where the end of one neuron (the axon) releases neurotransmitters (signal molecules/keys), to excite/trigger the neuron it is connected to. More than one substance may be released into the cleft (for instance ATP), and varying relative amounts of substances can have different effects.
One of the leading hypotheses for the causative mechanism of symptoms of schizophrenia is an increase of a particular type of dopamine receptors in one part of the brain and a decrease in another part, for example.
Don't pin me on this though as I know next to nothing about how the brain works; just a little bit about the physiology at the micro level.
Edit: important notion from u/EverDownward that no single drug is a perfect 'key' and different drugs thus activate multiple receptors to varying degrees. His comment that pleasure can be experienced in multiple ways/dimensions is also a meaningful addition. | e48b5abc-982f-400b-baa9-d02a0b968138 |
3t9id0 | How does the FM radio on phones use the earphones as an aerial? | The answer is that the audio frequencies needed for an audio earth connection for the headphones, and the F.M. radio signal needed for the receiver, are so different. Sound is less than 20 thousand Hz, and radio, around 100 million Hz.
All you need to do is put a small *inductor* between the earphone's earth connection and the device's ground, to prevent the high frequency radio signals being lost while allowing the audio currents to flow through; and use a small *capacitor* to draw off those radio signals to the receiver while blocking the low-frequency sound signals. | 648304a0-7460-416b-9f23-bc4a1494d38d |
5yd31u | Why are popsicles included in the "novelties" section at the grocery store? And what makes them a novelty? | It refers to ice cream novelties. That's anything made of ice cream that isn't just ice cream in a tub. So popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and Klondike bars are all novelties | 7d567cb1-5ee9-4058-9826-25050dc7c38a |
52g32d | When one pours soda into a cup, why does the "head" of Mt Dew dissipate in seconds (almost as fast as one can pour), but the "head" of ones Coke takes minutes to dissipate? | Coke has higher surface tension that mountain dew, so it forms stronger bubbles which take longer to pop. | 1951d3d3-d52d-4901-b74b-5e6178231105 |
3aq8md | When I'm cooking, why does stirring the pot slow the onset of boiling? | Yes, stirring adds kinetic energy, but nowhere near enough to make an appreciable difference in temperature. Water takes a LOT of energy to heat up, more than you would ever be able to achieve with a spoon.
As for why it slows the onset of boiling, it doesn't really, it just makes it look that way. When you have a pot on the stove, the water on the bottom is very hot compared to the water at the top. The water on the bottom will start to heat up and boil, but it immediately cools when it rises up into the higher water. That's why in early boiling you see little bubbles come up off the bottom of the pan and then immediately disappear. When you stir the water, you are equalizing the temperature inside of the pot, so instead of warm water with a very hot bottom, you now have a pot of water that's evenly warmer. You won't see the bottom "boiling" but you're not really changing the time it takes to get the whole pot boiling by all that much. | b9a81521-78e2-49d9-bc30-03c415a0f9bd |
61wsrc | Why do we worry so much if excessive worry is bad for us? | Anxiety is normal. Anxiety is healthy. Anxiety is a good thing...when it is appropriate: in line with whatever situation is a potential problem. Worried about an exam? Not a bad thing.
Excessive or intrusive anxiety is generally a sign of poorly managed anxiety. The way you think and act influences the way you feel. If you spend a lot of time thinking things like, "What if X happens" or, "If X happens I would be screwed" or, "Nothing ever works out for me," you're going to feel like shit.
Anxiety is harmful because it means that your body's stress response is at full alert. It's fine when it's needed, but it's not a viable permanent state. | f228ec4d-1958-4b38-8a9d-27a8d04034f0 |
6l34g3 | How are bridges and oil rigs that are far off of the coast made when the deep water is already there? | Oil rigs are built onshore and then towed to their final location and anchored.
Bridges are generally not built over very deep water. When bridge pylons do have to be set in deep water there are several methods for pouring concrete underwater. | 711462b0-0a4e-4e74-b397-e62255628076 |
1vhiqh | Voter ID? Who does it hurt, and how does it not help with vote fraud? | Voter fraud, by way of voting multiple times, is not an actual problem. A single person might be able to cast 10 extra votes by traveling all over & lying about who they are. To make an impact in elections, you'd need hundreds of people all doing this. They'd all have to keep *completely* quiet about the plan. Considering that the penalty for this is **years in federal prison**, it's just not really practical for anyone to do it.
The real problems come from things like people hacking voting machines, throwing away ballots & lying on vote counts. These things *do* happen. They have the potential to affect election outcomes & something like "voter ID" won't stop them in the first place.
So, if polling fraud isn't really an issue, why make laws requiring ID? We either have to assume that the politicians pushing for it are *completely clueless* about the issue or they have something else to gain from it. Those opposed to voter ID laws claim that it's an attempt to stop poor minorities from voting - considering that poor minorities tend to vote for Democrats & these laws are proposed by Republicans, that seems like a plausible explanation of things... | 88e9b588-8764-4841-9e32-924ec1156ab8 |
23krq0 | Why is primary and secondary education free and considered essential for everyone but not university? | It is free in Denmark.
I guess the reason is that everyone need some basic education but many jobs do not require a university degree. And it is of course a political decision so not a surprise that it isn't free in a country where people don't like to pay tax | dffc0d8d-665a-45d0-97f1-fdf3922347ec |
4x4ih5 | Why/How does a epileptic person get a seizure from something like flashing lights? | /u/i_hate_ms
Epilepsy in general is caused by faulty connections in the brain that make nerve cells hypersensitive. In the case of photosensitive epilepsy, the signals sent by the eyes to the brain trigger mass unsynchronized firing of nerve cells in the region of the brain that handles vision. Imagine if your computer screen showing random static instead of showing your regular desktop. This is the difference between a normal brain and an epileptic brain. | 48ad9f5e-41b0-4f0d-896f-4a737a37c109 |
3qnm1j | How did the US Army's Universal Camouflage Pattern ever got approval? | They did [15 evaluations over several years on various options](_URL_0_), then adopted a 3 color pattern that was similar to one of the lowest scoring patterns (removing one of the 4 colors and pixelating the original pattern from the finalist) that had not been involved in any of the evaluations. | 101d0b8a-c23f-4d4e-9235-e23fc35915dc |
zqzpz | Why do air conditioner units always have to be outside? | ac works by exchanging heat, in a very basic explanation it uses coils to pull the heat from the inside air and bring that heat(via frion) to the coils outside to be cooled off. if that part of the unit was inside you wouldn't be doing anything but moving the heat around. | 8fb80bdf-f41f-48c8-adf0-8e29787f7180 |
4t5yyg | Why is sport such a significant part of our society? | My theory for the prevalence of sport in nearly every culture is that this acts as an outlet for our innate competitive instincts. In terms of an evolutionary advantage, communities that had this outlet perhaps had less internal violence which gave that community a better shot at survival.
In the modern world, the popularity of any one sport over another is largely a matter of how well it can be depicted by the media. A professor of mine, who did some research in this field discussed this phenomenon.
Lastly, in answer to how every football (or any other sport) match is the same, that is only true in the extremely primitive sense that all books are just ink and paper, and all music is simply vibration. While not untrue, the fans presumably find the complexities and intricacies that invariably differ from match to match to be very different. | f1dec096-cc9e-4858-96b2-44633d2e2a54 |
6o9fgm | Body fat can be burned to provide calories. So why do fat people get hungry if they don't eat? Can't the body easily access those calories? | > Can't the body easily access those calories?
Not as easily as the glucose in your bloodstream or the glycogen in your muscles and liver. Your body doesn't want to use the fat unless nothing else is availble.
Remember, we evolved in a world where starvation lurked around every corner. Fat was to get us through when food wasn't available, so your body really wants to keep it around. It doesn't realize we now live in a world where food is cheap and abundant. | 9aa416f6-3527-487c-b709-e764528dee74 |
4i78zi | Why did they use zeppelins in World War 1? | Because they had them and they were desperate to find *anything* that would help break the deadlock of the western front. Keep in mind that all this stuff, zeppelins, aircraft, machine guns, modern artillery, etc., it was all new and untested. Military theorists had of course made tons of predictions of what would happen and what would or wouldn't work, but those turned out to be a crapshoot. So they just tried stuff that seemed to make sense and figured things out as they went along.
"Hey, we have this huge flying machine. We could use it for scouting, maybe? Oh hey, it can carry a lot of cargo. Maybe we could drop bombs from it?" | 5839b031-c4f8-40ac-ad2c-cff63153badf |
70xd7s | Why is it that we can hear more ambient and softer noises while wearing earphones rather than listening to something via a speaker. | I assume you mean "ambient and softer noises" *from the audio source*, not the background, yes?
If not, I have no idea what you're talking about. But if so, it's a question of volume contrast.
Those ambient/softer noises are a lot quieter than the other sounds in the same audio track, right? Like, a *lot* quieter. So quiet that if you're listening on a speaker, with your ears 6+ feet away, you have to turn up the speakers *really loud* in order for those very quiet sounds to have enough energy for you to hear them at all. But if you do that, you also boost all the other, much louder, sounds in the same track. To the point that they wind up completely drowning out the quieter ones.
But with headphones? Those are only an inch or two from your eardrums, yes? So very, very quiet noises can be picked up without having to turn everything up so loud that they get drowned out. | 3c5796f6-e99b-4e2b-8e7c-3a5c953611ca |
1ay6w7 | How does a computer delete data? | Your computer tracks the location of all the data on your hard-drive (technically, it's a table on your harddrive that describes the harddrive contents and locations). It does this so it can track what areas of the harddrive are still free to store new data in. When you delete something, the data isn't actually removed from the hard-drive, instead, the OS tells that table to drop the entry relating to that data.
Say I have a textfile named "word.txt". On this table there's an entry that says something like "the file word.txt is at location < x > on this drive". When word.txt is deleted, that entry is dropped. HOWEVER, the 1's and 0's representing word.txt is still in the same place, and it will stay there until another program comes along and requests hard drive space, and that section of the harddrive that contained word.txt happens to get used.
There are programs you can use which will scan your harddrive for these files and perform a true delete on them (by writing all 0's to the location the file was stored). This truly deletes the file and makes it practically unrecoverable. I say practically because there are some theoretical ways a person could still recover the data, but they're highly scientific and prohibitively expensive, and would never actually be used except in the most extreme circumstances (think multi-billion dollar deals falling through due to lost data or something) | fbaf290c-b262-4648-9a19-9a4b1dfa8508 |
7l352a | How does the US dollar come back to the US when it has been used in other countries? | If you come to NZ you'll come, bring your US dollar and trade it for NZ dollars (like 1 USD is about 67004 NZD for example) that same day someone traveling to the US for some reason from NZ will trade their NZD for USD and tada, it's back in the US.
Money rarely stays put, it's always circulating. Exchanges, either at banks or through exchange companies, ensure that foreign currency stays circulating. | 516396e3-9cb6-44aa-a4e3-ddee0342fcb9 |
6hmjar | Why do bad smells make us throw up? | In case you ate some of it.
It's a biological response to purge toxins from your stomach, if something smells rotten, it probably is rotten and should not have been eaten.
now we don't eat such things, but hundreds of thousands of years ago when the response evolved we might have. | d0d42e69-7576-4c8c-b2bb-66e0314e8035 |
3xzs4p | What is it that allows me to scan things for unknown things and recognize them as what I'm looking for? | Categorization. As you said, if you're looking for a soccer ball, but you've never seen one before, you have a wealth of information available to you.
You know it's a ball shape of some kind, so you can automatically discard anything that isn't even remotely round, like a javelin. You also know it rolls, so it's got to be more spherical than a hockey puck or a[n American] football. You know it's got to be big enough to kick and handle with your feet, so it's going to be bigger than a baseball. You know it's relatively light, so it's not going to be a heavy shot put ball. Finally, if you *have* seen a basketball, you know it's *not* going to look like that. What's left?
Your brain does this all the time, categorizing items as "like this" or "not like this." It's most obvious in children, because they don't have as many categories to put things in (because they don't have the vocabulary and experience). So very often you'll hear kids call a horse "dog" because they've categorized "dog" as "animal with four legs"; or they call anything in the water "fish". The older you get, the more specific your categorization becomes, and the more complex your relationships get, so you can understand that, say, a horse and a dog are both four-legged mammals, but horses aren't housepets like dogs and cats, but cats have pointy ears and pur and dogs have floppy ears and bark...etc.
As you recall memory, your brain is basically tracing that logical path of associations. When you're looking for something, but you don't know what that something is, you still have a list of criteria. You're looking through a text, and you're not really sure what you're looking for, but you *do* know that the subject will be ___ and you remember vaguely that one keyword and it will answer a particular question and it was on page ___ in the top/center/bottom of the page, etc. etc. | d25f7c65-270f-467e-bf77-37c7782afd10 |
2dyxh6 | How does swishing around some mouthwash for a minute actually repair my teeth, let alone do anything more than "freshen breath"? | Mouthwash doesn't regrow enamel, once it's gone it's gone. What it does is kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay. You can repair you enamel by filling in the area where the enamel is gone with another mineral. Some mouthwash has calcium that binds to the area where the enamel is missing effectively repairing it.
Also alcohol based mouthwash dehydrates the inside of your mouth. This leads to bacteria in your mouth producing odorous gas. So if you don't drink enough water after using mouthwash, you'd end up with bad breath anyways. | ce764222-e478-49a8-afc4-a25828b9ffe8 |
5uo4fp | How does the "ping" command on the terminal actually work? | Simpler explanation:
I write you a letter that says "This letter was sent from < my address > on < date > and < time > . Please send me a letter back as soon as you get this, with the exact time and date you received this.
You follow the instruction and send the second letter back to me.
When I get your letter, I know exactly how long it took for the letter to get to you, and how long it took the letter to make the round trip.
If I don't get a letter back in a reasonable amount of time, I know that something has gone with the postal service between my address and yours.
Now imagine that we're two computers, and instead of a letters we're sending data packets. That's basically how 'ping' works. | ef692028-9619-45e3-8752-3b46290dcedd |
1j595z | why heat distorts and image, aka the 'oasis effect' | When something is hot its molecules are actually vibrating more rapidly than they normally do.
Seeing the heat of the object is in-turn heating up the air surrounding it more than the rest of the air. This makes light pass through it differently than the cooler air because the hotter air is transferring away from the object to cool itself to be uniform with the rest of the air. | b8fbf21c-35bf-408c-b81b-9656443dd725 |
6vc1bo | If we know that Absolute Zero is the coldest temperature possible, why is the hottest temperature possible not known? | There are a lot of wrong answers here, claiming that all molecular motion stops at 0K.
*That is not true at all!*
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us, that it is impossible for atoms and molecules to have zero kinetic energy. Every bound system has [zero point energy](_URL_0_).
So, what does absolute zero really mean?
---
Quantum mechanics tells us that bound particles cannot have an arbitrary amount of energy. Instead, they can only hop between energy levels. And the lowest of these energy levels is still not 0J. *The lowest energy level still has kinetic energy - the so called zero point energy.* Thus, a bound particle must always have motion energy.
What absolute zero really means, is that all particles are in this lowest energy state, which is called ground state.
Since there is no way a system can have less energy than all its particles being in the ground state, there can be no colder temperature than absolute zero. In fact, due to the uncertainty principle, even reaching 0K is fundamentally impossible.
What about a hottest temperature?
---
There is no theoretical hard upper limit on temperature. There wouldn't be any mechanism preventing you from adding more and more energy into a system. In some way, of course the total amount of energy in the universe is an upper limit, but that really isn't very descriptive.
Some people claim that the upper limit is posed by particles moving at the speed of light. That is *not true*. Even though the speed at which particles can move is limited, their *kinetic energy* has no upper bound. As temperature scales with energy, not speed, the speed of light does not pose an upper limit to temperature. | af7d6d55-c6e4-484e-8245-e27bc61f3692 |
3aa3bc | if race is a social construct, then why can't people identify as other races? | People absolutely can identify as other races. But since, as you've pointed out, race is a social construct, someone identifying as another race has to navigate the social ramifications of such an identification. | 9e87382b-41cf-4464-90e1-6a91f85f83ea |
1y5xxg | What happens in an Embassy on a day-to-day basis? | A lot of things, though it varies depending on the country.
The "lost passport stuff" refers only to the "Consular" office of the embassy, which deals with lost passports, any citizens who get arrested, etc. as well as issuing visas to any foreigners who want to visit the embassy's country. If it's a big country with lots of business, there can be more than one consulate - so, for example the U.S. in Italy has consulates in Milan and Naples, in addition to the "consulate general" at the embassy in Rome. On the other hand, if there's little or no business for the consulate, they can share between several countries (there is only one consulate among a smattering of small Caribbean countries, for example, and one of the officers travels around, doing one day per week in each of the countries covered).
The actual "Diplomatic stuff" is the non-consular officers, who generally maintain all of their home country's relations with the host. This can vary greatly, depending on the country. If it's an ally, there will be some military personnel monitoring any joint missions and all military cooperation more broadly. There are people who help companies do business in that country (the US department of commerce has a whole diplomatic division, called the Foreign Commercial Service, who are posted overseas to help US companies that import/export to/from the host country). There are treaties and international agreements that need to be negotiated/updated/monitored/maintained/renewed. There are politicians from one country who want to visit the other. Anyone from a visiting university researcher up to the President will pass through the embassy to find out background info, get paperwork help, get in touch with the right people locally, etc. And then the home country wants to be kept updated on what's going on over there, so there are a lot of memos to write back to Washington (and yes, sometimes there are spies).
But again, the scale varies widely depending on the links between the two countries. The largest embassies have hundreds of diplomats and many hundreds more local staff; while I've once met a guy who was stationed at the Irish embassy in Egypt, which had 3 people. | d4b4e11a-c9aa-49f0-b2a0-fa20a79fb2ed |
slw43 | The controversy of Formula 1 in Bahrain | Bahrain is a predominantly Shia country ruled by the Sunni Khalifa dynasty. The dynasty is a dictatorship propped up by Saudi Arabia. Last year, as a part of the Arab Spring, people began to protest the regime and demand more democracy. These protests were violently crushed with Saudi assistance.
Protests continue today. Many people think Formula 1 shouldn't hold races in a country currently suppressing the democratic rights of its people. They consider this similar to playing in South Africa during apartheid. | dff0bc61-b756-4d49-ac1d-2c9ec147dd43 |
5s8o35 | What were the Neanderthals, exactly? | Neanderthals are an extinct species of hominid (homo-neanderthalensis). They went extinct about 40,000 years ago and they were primarily located in Europe. We don't fully know why they went extinct, though there are many theories. For a long time it was thought that homo sapiens (modern humans) wiped them out, though this is falling out of favor in the scientific community. Another theory is that we interbred enough to no longer distinguish between the species. So, we can't tell for certain why they went extinct. There was no war that I know of, though other may know more than I.
We are sequencing the neanderthal genome, and it shares remarkable similarities to our own genome. They are much less diverse than we are, which may have been a part of their extinction. I sequenced a part of my mitochondrial DNA and compared it to the mitochondrial DNA of a neanderthal from Russia. There were 40 nucleotide differences, with a 17.9% overall difference in our genes. That is quite small for mitochondrial DNA.
Here is a great link for further information. _URL_0_ | 3477788a-6269-496d-abcc-43248846359b |
7vnasu | Why don’t cars have normal outlets? | Well infact some high end luxury cars do, and have done for a while, the main reason I think their not the norm is that a regular socket just seems too bulky for inside your average car, and so the 12v adapter is a lot more practical. | fc75e745-7c82-444f-a82a-f5f27d3eb5cb |
1utfg4 | What's the difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree murder? | It varies by state, but generally:
1st degree murder is a preplanned killing, or a killing in the process of committing another serious violent crime (like rape or armed robbery) even if your initial plan for the crime didn't intend for the victim to die.
2nd degree murder is a killing that wasn't preplanned or part of another crime, but that wasn't committed after any real provocation or in self-defense.
The next lower degree is usually called "voluntary manslaughter", not 3rd degree murder. It usually means a killing after being provoked, like someone is punching you in a bar, and instead of running or punching back, you shoot them.
The next lower degree is called "involuntary manslaughter", and it's a death that results from reckless behavior that is likely to cause serious harm to someone, but without any intend to harm any specific person, like shooting a gun in the air, or throwing objects off a building.
The lowest degree is called "criminally negligent homicide". That's usually reserved for deaths caused in car accidents where the driver is at fault. But some car deaths wouldn't be in that category - deliberately running someone over would be 1st or 2nd degree murder, and driving at 100+ mph on a residential street would be involuntary manslaughter.
A killing that is deemed to be in self-defense is called justifiable homicide, and isn't a crime at all. | eafdfe30-5895-4c7e-a106-f763b7610b98 |
2ffhh7 | What exactly can cause an electronic device to become "bricked" (I.e. the hardware is untouched, but the device cannot be fixed) | You can usually brick something by altering the system software, putting it into a state where you can't ask it to go back.
Imagine a computer which only as a keyboard for input. If I accidentally change the software so it ignores the keyboard, the hardware will all function perfectly but the computer will be bricked. There's no way for me to tell the computer to listen to the keyboard again. | 76246e28-3066-46d2-b744-db7cfb6c5923 |
4fft64 | Just what did eBay do to get penalized by Google in their search results and why can't eBay get that fixed? | A large proportion of ebay listings are just a huge wad of terms that the seller thinks people will search for to find their item. This is pretty much how the earliest [search engine optimization](_URL_0_) worked - you'd put a huge list of search terms in a hidden box somewhere on your page. Google caught on quickly and penalizes that kind of site.
Let's use this example: [1989 TMNT "BAXTER STOCKMAN" - Vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles MOC Unopened](_URL_1_). It's a shitty result for the search terms 1989, vintage, [MOC](_URL_2_), and unopened - and it's a pretty shitty result for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and TMNT too. The only time you want that in your search results is if you search "Baxter Stockman action figure". | ee7bb405-ac0c-4527-b19b-6e1d72f75d27 |
7at3ua | If we have pores in our skin, how does liquid collect underneath it, like in blisters? | A couple of ways.
1) Some blisters form *under* the part of the skin with the pores. Some form between the pores.
2) Blisters that form in the dermal sheath contain a lot of activated clotting factors which causes the pores to be clogged up with scar tissue, which allows the body to pump fluids into it without leaking. | c5a0c149-08f5-4916-b7ec-487d1c3b7570 |
obch2 | Why is nostalgia painful or bittersweet? | It is often bittersweet but not always. One reason it is bittersweet is because it clearly articulates the passage of time and inevitability of death. Another reason is that when one recalls a wonderful time past it is also very clear that it can never happen again, and that brings a certain amount of remorse.
Here are two examples. I often recall my boyhood and the memories are usually good. Then I am reminded that decades have passed and seemed to have passed quickly. That causes a bittersweet memory.
I remember things my daughter did when she was two. She will never be two again and that makes me a little sad. | 44fda3cb-27e4-4b11-a05b-2fe1506f1d02 |
5xwthv | What is ACLU's "The Resistance Training" and why does it matter? | Teach potential protestors how to follow the rules so they don't get injured, because injured protestors don't come out for the next scheduled protest. It covers the rules for being arrested, what to say, and when to keep your mouth shut. | ef3a4d80-f098-4269-ae90-13bb4a92e2e3 |
3p3nic | How exactly does Cannabis kill cancer cells? | _URL_0_
Let it be know while it's been observed in a laboratory, we don't know how to apply it yet, and aren't even sure it will work on humans the way it has on mice. So no one can definitively tell you how the process would work in humans. | 942622ac-0029-4efe-9571-69aa566194fb |
545crr | How laughter is "contagious". | Humans have a tendency to replicate behavior. Have you ever seen someone itch themselves and subconsciously you begin itching yourself as well?
This is called *mirroring* and is a result of so called *mirror neurons* firing.
The in-depth explanation is out of my scope, but it probably also is for you unless you have a good understanding of biology and psychology. | 72e50aab-cb6e-491d-9a5a-b13dbf64470f |
ja29w | What does it mean to "re-mortgage" your home? | "re-mortgage" is not a commonly used term. You could be referring to two different things:
** Refinancing**
Years ago I bought a house at 7% interest, with a mortgage from Bank A. Since then, interest rates have gone down, so I went to Bank B and had them loan me enough money to pay off Bank A. So now I owe Bank B, but only at 4% interest. You have to pay fees (~$2000) to get a new loan, but a lower interest rate can make up for that quickly.
**Second Mortgage**
I wanted to pay off my car, but I needed a lot of money to do that. The value of my first house went up a lot since I bought it...this increase in value is called *equity*. I went to Bank C and have them give me a loan, using the equity of my house as collateral. I now have a two loans on my house, the second one at a higher interest rate. | 2418447d-98b0-4e82-b2f8-19660090c4c0 |
3z17vk | Why do glasses suggest intelligence? | Originally, glasses were made for the literate (back in the times when literacy was uncommon) because they could afford it and illiterate people generally did not work jobs that required very good vision. You can be a farmer with bad vision, but cannot take a job that requires you to read if your eyes do not allow reading. | b095432f-5a97-4c91-be86-5c83339958d7 |
38jxcw | What is the Steam Machine that Valve is releasing, and how will it change gaming? | > what is?
The steam machine is just trying bring pc gaming to the living room as most pc gamer are seen as they have big computers and have to play at their desk and its not practical to play with multiple people in a local space. So valve trying to cover that part of the market by making an Operating system that will just boot into steam and you can play games and feel like you are playing on console with the ease of use and making the actual machine being small so its looks like the size of a console.
> As how that will change gaming?
it will make more people buy one if they are reasonable price like a console and the person knows the difference between pc gaming and console gaming (1080p 60fps...) that will make them get steam machine rather than buying console but most likely most of the machines will be people that will build them based on having spare parts. | f9f5c8c4-006b-4a33-97b6-962ba39d7e98 |
4suk22 | Sore-Loser Laws | can they? Yes. States generally have a rule though about a certain amount of signatures needed on a petition to get on the ballot though. | f99f47ac-b59d-4e74-bf64-123862a2e764 |
49sah0 | What is the reason Afghanistan cannot seem to coalesce into a stable, unified government and society? | 1. Afghanistan is not a "unified" country like the US, or a Western European country is. The country's peoples have been tribal in the sense that they lived in almost complete isolation from their neighbors. I recall a thread with a former US-Marine stating that you can go to one village and hear the village's Dari dialect, drive 3km down the road and then hear another dialect of Dari that is based on tones akin to Chinese. Up until the Communist coup in the late 60s (or 70s?) a significant portion of the country's peoples weren't even aware of Afghanistan or anything outside their village. This makes unifying people groups difficult (and led on to cause some faction-related issues in the future).
2. Afghanistan was at one stage, a some-what stable country. However, during the Cold War, communists overthrew the Monarchy and implemented some very radical communist programs (including eradication of religion... In Afghanistan... An almost entirely devout Muslim country). This led to Mujahadeen and guerilla fighters taking up arms against the Afghan Communists which in turn, led to the USSR invading Afghanistan (to stop the in-fighting but also re-establish a new, more sensible Communist party).
3. The USSR-invasion tore the country's "stable" infrastructure down and brought the country to the ground. To counter-act the influence of Communism in Central Asia, the US and NATO funded guerrilla groups (called Mujahadeen) to fight the Soviets (actually, this was one of the contributing factors to the collapse of the USSR. The US had drained the weakening Soviets dry economically by funding Mujahadeen groups). With the tribal life-style and the Soviets and Afghan Communists this relatively peaceful lifestyle, sects of different political groups came to prominence, most notably, the Taliban.
4. The USSR eventually withdrew from Afghanistan after they could no longer continue the invasion, leading to a power-vaccum. This started a Civil War different groups to assume control of the country and its people; the Taliban eventually assumed control of the majority of the country but remaining were the US-Friendly "Northern Alliance" in North Afghanistan. The Taliban, as many know, led an oppressive regime and brought little good to the country and repaired nothing that they or the Soviets had ruined during the USSR invasion and Civil War.
5. 9/11 happens, Al-Queda announce that they were behind the September 11 attacks and Bush demands that the Taliban reveal the location of Al-Queda leader, Osama bin-Laden, who has been hiding in the Afghani-Pakistani border. The Taliban refuse, leading to the US invasion of Afghanistan. During the time of the Taliban rule, many people began to fight to preserve their Talibani Sharia Law led lifestyle which still motivates terrorists in the region today, preventing the country which is now a hundred times more stable than it was 10 years ago, from fully stabilizing.
6. Lack of education and services. Obviously. The Taliban declared education to be haram unless it was for boys and it was Quranic. So there's an entire generation of young Afghani men and women who are relatively uneducated. The older generation too are uneducated as many elderly Afghans lived tribal.
7. There's little money to improve anything. Afghanistan's only profitable field is drug making, a majority of the worlds opium in fact comes from Afghanistan and the money from this industry flows in and out, untaxed and untraceable.
8. Afghanistan is also highly mountainous. There is little percentage of arable land, it's either very hot or freezing cold (the country is in the mountains) and the soil is all-round poor quality.
It seems like a hellhole, but the country is slowly developing. The US-supervised Afghani Army are doing a decent job of eradicating Talibani and dissenting groups, continue to crack down on opium farming and are establishing a democratic, Western friendly country. Progress is coming to the country, it's just the country is in the pits right now. | c84d5211-3f5e-4d7c-af2e-4adeb44a1925 |
5oory7 | How modifying battery in psp allowed to hack it. | A lot of systems have a "service mode". This is built in by the manufacturer to have access to functions that a normal consumer will not have. Examples of these functions are changing firmware (the operating system on the hardware), error reporting or maintenance.
By modifying a battery, the PSP is tricked into starting up in its "service mode", which allows also changing the operating system of the PSP. This mode is what hackers abused to change the operating system, so that it will no longer check if the inserted game is legal. This means you can play pirated games.
edit: typo | 259e7339-c894-4a56-a86d-44731ef145c2 |
4maen6 | Why does sadness or being down occasionally feel like a relief? | Look at it in this scenario, a loved one has been deathly ill for a long time. You've had to sacrifice your time and had to endure a great many inconveniences and financial pressures due to the want and need to help this person. Your income has even been impacted on because of the time you took off from work and the loved one ends up in the last moments of his of her live. The hospital asks whether they should keep trying to save the loved one or let him or her die. Either way the final result is inevitable. Resignation sets in that what will be will be, and in that sadness comes relief in that the struggle is over for both you and your loved one. | e8894469-05c3-4096-8a0e-7bedb91652e9 |
68quet | Why do some people get off on being angry all of the time? What does it do for them? | Sometimes it is a defense mechanism. I've seen angry people use a general anger-filled disposition to hide insecurities and in doing so they become highly irrational. | 75f88fec-43c0-405f-a38f-26c194038d7e |
2r42m6 | Why do TV shows like "House of Cards" have different directors for each episode? | Principal photography (filming the actors etc.) may only take a week or so (depending on the show), but there's always weeks of pre-production (location scouting, script revisions etc.) and post-production (audio re-recording, any special effects) that the director is involved in (they're not doing all the work, but they have creative input.)
Principal filming is a full time, 10+ hr days affair. It would be challenging for a director to handle that, and also handle several hours/day of pre- and post- production for previous or subsequent episodes, so they spread the workload around.
Or, as the producers/show-runners, you may have an episode that calls for a particular skillset. Like the episode deals with a tricky subject matter or has a challenging action sequence and you know that a particular director has the skillset to translate that well into film. | d19c5b4c-a72f-4559-8016-e0ac385c93db |
65inca | Why can men keep producing children in old age but women have the menopause? | We actually don't know. We don't know why human woman experience menopause. It's a somewhat rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom too. While there are a couple of other species that also experience menopause (non-human primates, elephants, whales) it is not a common thing.
Of course we got a couple of hypothesises, but nothing has been satisfactorily proven.
On the non-adaptive front, there is the hypothesis that menopause is not something specifically selected for but rather just a side effect. Biologically, pregnancy requires a lot of high cost investment from females (more than from males) and it is simply harder to keep that up in late age.
On the adaptive front, there are several hypotheses that menopause was something specifically selected for evolutionary.
One of which is the mother hypothesis, which pretty much argues that because of the high cost of pregnancy at later age, and the higher chance of those children having defects, mothers improve the chances of their existing offspring (and thereby their genes being passed on) by being able to focus on them rather than focus on producing more kids.
Another one is the grandmother hypothesis, which is similar in some ways to the mother hypothesis, but argues that menopause in women was selected for because older women can improve the chances of not just their children, but their grandchildren as well, again improving the chances of their genes being carried on. The reason why this results in female infertility (but not male infertility) is because biologically a woman will always know who her child / grandchildren are, while males could not have this certainty. So for males it would continue to be beneficial to try and conceive more children, also at late ages. | 48a8b112-9bd7-4906-aada-6d397c9f7cd0 |
k6nwf | Why does my video buffer even though the bar is fully loaded when I am on a slow connection | If you're really not fully loaded, but just loaded way ahead, the answer is this:
The video and audio are loaded at different speeds. The load-bar indicates how much of the video *and* the audio has loaded, however, the audio might be lagging behind while the video is ahead.
More complex answer:
Most videos are encoded using varying bit-rate. That is, some parts of a video are easy to encode. Imagine a 100 frame black screen. There's not a lot of data needed to store that. Other parts might be harder. Noise is an example of something that's hard to store and requires a lot of data. Audio is the same way. Silence is easy to encode, greatly varying music is harder.
The video player is sending you audio and video at a speed which ensures that both will be fully downloaded at the same time. However, it can happen that the audio requires relatively much data for the first half of the movie, while the video requires relatively little for the fist half. Now, if you have half your (one-minute) movie loaded, you will actually have loaded 40s of the video, while only having loaded 20s of the audio.
The indicator will say that half of your data is loaded, or that 30s have been loaded. But you can't play beyond 20s because you don't have the audio yet. The reverse might happen as well. | 05f6cf1e-2867-489c-a6ad-db8dde973f0b |
2m1krr | Why are my nails only strong if they're short? Why can't they stay strong, like claws? | Thinking of claws, they seem thicker and with a stronger root than our human finger nails which are thin, and broad, and with a different root than claws have. | 4f7a6da5-c422-4211-a9ff-d2ea78661a40 |
46g80r | If a gang of men with automatic weapons robbed a bank in the UK, wouldn't it take much longer than in the States for armed response? | In both the U.S. and U.K., automatic weapons are very very rarely used in crime. It's not really a typical scenario that the police needs to be armed for. But both countries do have heavily armed subdivisions in their police forces, particularly in metropolitan areas. The UK has fewer such units in other parts of the country (although more modestly armed units abound), but the scenario described is even more unlikely there. | c4af914c-d78b-4f34-8e1c-7a903590826c |
59g0ev | Why do women's menstrual cycles sync up? | Apparently its a myth. The study that initially confirmed it was flawed and newer studies failed to find this synchrony. So there you go . . . . | 6ccce752-c3bc-4b09-a947-71b77149bb99 |
1qsrmj | Why do American colleges and universities spend millions of dollars on non-revenue generating athletic teams? | They DO generate revenue. Just not directly. It is advertising for schools.
Schools with great athletic teams have high numbers of applicants regardless of the tuition charged. Great athletic teams also result in generous alumni donations. Every time you watch "your" team play, it renews your sense of loyalty to your school making you more likely to send a donation when that letter or phone call comes. | 7cb85b9a-403a-42a8-bf52-4b24e52ad96c |
4goy9b | If water had no surface tension, would you be able to jump into it from any height and (as long as the water was deep enough) survive? | No, it's not the surface tension which hurts when you hit water.
Water is dense - a tonne per cubic metre, and hitting it when moving fast means you're trying to move a lot of water out of the way very quickly, which exerts considerable force on your feeble human frame.
Compared to that force, surface tension is negligible. | 3b65d803-927f-4780-9575-0c863ec764d4 |
5urz1j | What happens if someone dies and even after selling all their assets, they are still in debt? | No one else owes their debt except the wife or husband. Sometimes not even then. It is part of why interest is charged. When a mortgage is obtained life insurance is also bought for the outstanding principal. | af9b52bf-1e49-41b6-9470-3dcc814581f2 |
1mzaak | Vegas odds for betting on sports (the line, the spread, etc) | I won't go into a lot of details, but i'll help you out for tonight's game, Broncos at Raiders:
The line is at +17 Raiders and -17 Broncos meaning the Raiders are a 17 point underdog. If you bet on the Raiders and the Raiders "cover" (ie, lose by less than 17 or win the game), you will get paid.
The Money Line is betting on a team to win. The Broncos are -1750 and Raiders are +1125.
These + and - are the amounts mean two different things. A negative number refers to how much you would have to bet to win $100. In this case, you would have to wager $1,750 on the Broncos to win $100. This is because the Broncos are a heavy favorite and very likely to win.
The Raiders, on the other hand, would pay out $1,125 if you were to bet $100 on them winning.
It all becomes far more complex with parlays, teasers, etc.
To answer your question:
Safe bet: Broncos Money Line
Medium bet: Either team to cover the spread, or betting the over/under total points scored (pretty simple stuff)
Risky bet: Raiders to win | a1fad655-fa9c-4d70-9604-1755507b50a0 |
1ot3z8 | Why, in documentaries about drug users, do the people using drugs not get arrested once the police see the video? | Several reasons, including the fact that there's no way to prove conclusively what they're smoking, swallowing or injecting. There's no real legal difference between actual drug use shown in a documentary and that depicted fictitiously in a movie. There's no way to tell them apart.
There's also often uncertainty about when or where the use happened. | 763e1843-45d3-443f-a96b-0cf82d7271ac |
3josv8 | Why do people wake up with bad breath in the morning? | Small bits of food have been heavily degraded by the weak digestive enzymes in saliva for hours without being exposed to the outside. Not too surprising, really. | aa36ec63-ce66-4cde-b5ac-e78ca7eb457a |
6j975y | Why do we lose saturation in our colors for several minutes when we are in the sun for a couple hours? | It's been about 2 years since I studied this, but I think I can take a crack at it.
Your cones have the ability to adjust to a wide range of photons/second hitting your eye. For example, a tv screen might have 10^6 TIMES less photons hitting a cone than a bright summer day, but you'll see both just fine. To adjust to this, they have a variety of tools which take anywhere from a second to 15 minutes to take affect. During the intermediary time, you have lessened color vision. | e6b05dd6-3902-42a7-8099-35d5f009ad63 |
6f6488 | Why can perception of time vary so drastically? Like when you're on drugs, or e.g. slow motion car crashes. | Your brain needs to process everything you see, hear, feel, think, etc.
The faster it does this, the slower times goes for you. It's like an assembly line, and the fastest worker is pretty much waiting for the next piece to arrive.
So by that logic, all humans and animals perceive time in a different speed depending on what's going on in their life and how their brain works. | bbf5c413-d924-45bd-9df4-42f31bd2cc11 |
1008lm | What does meters per second per second mean? | If someone says, "I am traveling at three meters per second" it means that each second that goes by, they cover 3 meters of distance on the ground. It's a measure of your speed.
If someone says, "I'm accelerating at three meters per second per second," it means that for each second that goes by, they move 3 meters per second faster than they were moving 1 second ago.
If they start from a speed of 0, after one second, they cover 3 meters over the ground.
But they're accelerating, so during the 2nd second of travel, they will cover more ground than they did during the first second of their travel: During second 2, they will travel six meters over the ground.
Since they're accelerating by 3 meters per second faster for each second that goes by, during the third second of their travel, they will cover 9 meters over the ground.
During the 11th second of their travel, they will cover 33 meters over the ground.
If they keep going 3 meters per second faster for every second that goes by, they just keep going faster and faster - that's acceleration! You can do the math from here on out.
But thats what "meters per second per second" means. You're moving faster this second than you were one second ago. It's a measure of acceleration, not speed.
Now, always keep in mind that when you see "negative acceleration" in physics, something like "-3 m/s/s" that means that the object is slowing down. It covered less ground during this second than it did one second ago. | bf35a569-98fe-4212-b0d5-2628a81d5532 |
7mnc8l | Why is multisyllabic rhyming common in rap but not in poetry? | There’s something “on the nose” about it.
When Eminem says “I have an aspirin capsule trapped in my adam’s apple”, it’s bouncy and fun, but there’s something about it that’s a stretch——it often puts syllable over meaning.
So in a medium where the rhyme is the point, it works well. But in a medium where the emotion is the point, it detracts.
You can see a similar effect within rap itself: take the most lyrically complex songs in one hand, and the most emotionally powerful songs in the other—-there’s barely any overlap.
Sometimes More is less. | 9744d1b3-d11a-4ee4-bb89-f28a4bfd9915 |
78949z | How does a Thermoelectric Generator work? | What is really being asked is how the thermoelectric effect works, so I'll try and explain that. Imagine you had a metal wire that has either end held at a different temperature. The electrons in the metal act similar to a gas, where the electrons at the hotter end are moving faster and spreading out more. This causes a higher concentration of electrons at the cold end, which causes a voltage difference between the two ends of the wire. Note that different materials will generate different voltages, even under identical thermal conditions.
A thermocouple or thermoelectric generator uses two dissimilar materials, with the hot ends attached together. This guarantees that there is a voltage difference between the two cold ends, which can either be used in power production or as a measurement signal. | 850d70c5-f5aa-432c-bd96-c699dc0c505b |
1lh1b6 | When does the president oF the USA need congressional approval to attack? | The Congress "declares war." What presidents have been known to do is to wage undeclared wars, engagements, conflicts, whatever you want to call them. So that's how they get away with it, by not "declaring war". | 0433a198-63a9-4b81-9e8b-72195dababbd |
1kd81g | Why are urinals not private like toilet stalls are? | Urinals don't require you to fully take your pants down. Using a toilet does. | 40cf25ad-0ba1-4c9a-ae13-405791b6a767 |
70fnl6 | "Solar Winter" | Sun outputs certain amount of energy as heat. Earth gets some of that heat. In movie sun isnt as powerfull as it used to be to deliver same amount of heat to earth. Like mow Mars is further away and gets less heat than earth. | ca286bb4-d159-46ba-b54c-7bac706b688b |
370fe6 | Why are some people more prone to mosquito bites than others? | I read online somewhere that mosquitoes bite people with O blood group than other blood groups .
Don't know how true that is.
What's your brother's blood group? | 1d6c8e81-c95b-4d20-9a56-d4ef19092e06 |
4ikvef | why women's life expectancy is higher than men's | It has mostly to do with behavior - social norms or perceived aspects of manlyness. Therefore, men are more likely to engage in dangerous activities, show off, etc.
Also, men (in general and in the manlyness lens) take less care of their health, not going to doctors as regularly as women, disregarding ilness and self medicating more.
(I'm excluding casualties due to war - internal or external) | 74256670-3617-4216-8f0d-a8e248bcba94 |
5wbyl5 | If programs/software is created in such a way that it's not possible for them to be hacked , how do they actually end up being hacked? | It is not possible to make something that cannot be hacked. Just like everything else, if humans can build it then humans can unbuild it. | c1e37854-3fc2-4190-b48c-f73382de527a |
6bmdlb | Saffron's high price stems from how rarely it blooms, how come people don't just extract the saffron from the flower when it isn't blooming? | Saffron is the dried blooms of the plant. They literally do not exist when the plant is not blooming as they have not formed yet. What you are asking is the equivalent of "why don't they extract apples from the tree before they grow". | 9dc937b2-b416-4f8d-a8b6-79c8f29ddd44 |
628cfb | If it only cost 8m to buy out our senators for the ISP deal, why can't we raise that money and lobby ourselves? | Lobbyists don't "buy" politicians. I know that it's the common "I'm angry at Washington" belief, but honestly, lobbyists spend money to convince politicians that the people/organizations that they represent have the correct opinions about some subject.
I'm not saying that there's no corruption in Washington. I'm sure there's a ton. And there's clearly corruption in the lobbying process, too. But not to the degree that most people seem to think. Which is why no one is going to "buy back" politician: they're not bought in the first place. They're just being convinced as to the validity of the lobbyists' opinions. | 3a1c8578-70b4-4f31-b416-9650616196e4 |
3rtwi2 | Why can some people drink more than others without getting sick? | I think it's a resistance thing. An alcoholic can take more than a normal person because they drink so much, their body essentially adapts to handle it. Much like drugs in fact, and its the same reason you become addicted - your body becomes dependent on it. | 65a0b258-2989-4044-9474-01adbb2094a9 |
76idf1 | How come in English we capitalise the word “I” but don’t do so for “a” or other personal pronouns such as “you”? | According to [_URL_0_](http://www._URL_0_/e/whycapitali/) it used to be lowercase. Then, people started writing it a little bigger likely because it looked funny all on its own. Eventually, people started to capitalize it. | 992cab70-3c0a-460f-ad0b-34e4cc2846b1 |
14e548 | What are we smelling when we smell things? | smell a fart? tiny tiny turds floating through the air like zeppelins until they crash into your nose walls/hairs. | 2533e14a-749a-495b-b8b0-ee95b9c2f04c |
1mbn1y | What is happening when a space shuttle, other aircraft, or meteor enters the atmosphere? | It is actually not friction that causes the red glow. It is because the shuttle is basically hitting a concrete wall when it enters the atmosphere going several thousand mph. It is the compression of the atmosphere that superheats the air around the shuttle. | 7baae7c2-f21d-4ab4-aca4-7899d9ac2668 |
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