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2z05ek | Why don't they fill my drinks up all the way at drive-throughs? | Speed. It takes minute sometimes for the suds to subside in your Coke. A minute that people sit and fuss about and corporate takes notice | 8f04f507-86eb-4071-9923-183dcdc0b959 |
3yt6q6 | Why a group of people sounds loud even if every single person is speaking at a normal volume? | Because it is louder. At least some of the sounds create "constructive interference" resulting in the actual sound wave to your ear being louder than each individual voice. | 0bebb82f-17a5-42be-bf8b-294affc40708 |
kf5t3 | Why is Barack Obama going to vote against any Palestinian move towards statehood? | America has an influential Jewish/Israel lobby that can hurt any politician, including a President, who goes against Israel. More recently the pro-Israel base has expanded to include Christians who support Israel (people like Palin are very vocal about this). Added to this is 9/11 and the war on terror, which has made anti-arab sentiment easy to produce and capitalise on. | 5f5a1dd1-82f7-4ddc-85bc-15dc5953bcbc |
5ouf5b | Why are babies seemingly unfazed by vomiting as compared to someone older? | Babys do not yet possess the mental capacity to "save all data". They forget things that aren't to bad pretty fast. The same with little children. They stumble, fall, cry and 20 seconds later have forgotten they fell in the first place. For a baby its *puke, wonder what was that, forget what happened, drool* | 1fda40e4-c0ed-47d4-8348-96a33b966dc2 |
7ac6mx | What makes rejection cause the brain to desire a person more? In what ways can you combat this responsive behavior? | It may help to be conscious of the fact that the brain is not a passive recipient of emotion. In fact, the brain doesn’t react to stimuli based on emotion at all, it is in a mode of constant prediction and then compares its prediction to the stimuli and adjusts or filters from there. It’s powerful to know that the brain is actively creating emotion on the go, and that this creation of emotion is largely influenced by affect, the bodies general sense of being. If you are interested in understanding the contemporary science behind emotion development I highly recommend “How emotions are made” by Lisa Barrett | 026381ee-1678-4532-b6f3-d9d748531a72 |
2tnav6 | Why is seeing others having sex arousing? Is there some sort of evolutionary basis behind it? (NSFW) | Yes. Group sex does different things for each gender. Group sex for males means they have a chance to pass their genes along when they otherwise wouldn't. For females it means their off-spring won't get killed. If an offspring isn't a males, then that male is likely to kill the offspring allowing more time for a female to raise *his* offspring. With group sex, nobody is sure whose offspring is whose, so we can't take the chance of kill babies that might be our own. Now, I should clarify these behaviors have been observed in certain primates which we are closely related to. | d1c9ac11-9e2c-4b21-84d3-216283624859 |
4j5ar6 | How common are traumatic 'triggers' in the general population? Are they really dangerous? | basically a trigger can be anything that reminds you of some traumatic event. we'll ignore the entitled tossers who misapply the term to mean "things that make them a little upset" and stick to the actual psychology.
basically when you experience a really traumatic event it changes your brain, not in a permanent way per se there is therapy and such to change it back but the trauma is part of your memory and when the fear centre of your brain encounters that memory it freaks the fuck out and you are back in that life or death situation beating the shit outta a waitress who just dropped a tray behind you.
reasonably though a trigger can be anything, a color, a song, a smell, a sudden noise and part of therapy is getting past this, usually through immersion therapy (introducing them to the trigger in a controlled environment so the brain stops associating that thing with imminent death or getting raped and starts associating it with nice things, so when it comes up your brain doesn't go straight to red alert.) | f461f8f8-64a0-475f-aff8-0107922c0d42 |
5k3e1z | Why do we like to bother our siblings much more than other human beings around us ? | * familiarity - you know your sibling, what to expect from them in a way you don't with others
* family bond - you are stuck with your siblings for the most part...friends might drift away, but you almost always will maintain a connection to close family
* trust - you can "fight" with your siblings, knowing there isn't ill intent and there won't be lasting consequences...usually
* culture - society is based on family unit acting together for their mutual interest...this notion has being impressed upon you from an early age.
* genetics - children are not the only way to pass on your genes...your siblings share many of your genes, so helping them help you fulfill your genetic destiny | 9ff71c43-d997-4b88-acbe-fe970a0e2c8a |
16o853 | Why did Lance Armstrong confess? | From what I gather doing so may enable him to return to competition in other events that he cannot do with the ban. He's become a triathlon athlete and to go pro in it he needs the ban lifted. | ab0328dd-3049-4a43-bdb3-ac2582b7befa |
477cd2 | How does the government of Eritrea work, and the current situation there? | Eritrea is a one party state. Nominally their constitution allows for other political parties and elections, but since gaining their independence from Ethiopia in 1993, they've never had an election.
The government claims that because of their ongoing border disputes with Ethiopia, that there are extraordinary circumstances preventing them from holding elections.
Eritrea has mandatory military service for anyone under the age of 50, and people serve for years. They get put to work "securing the borders," building roads, stuff like that.
There isn't much freedom - freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to leave the country or to refuse to join the military are all pretty heavily restricted. | 07212c74-6db7-44b6-8b57-7c3cda10152b |
3loqki | what really happens in court cases where the evidence is illegally obtained? | Just because something was obtained illegally, doesn't mean it is automatically thrown out of court.
Judges can consider factors like, "would it have been found anyways?" and "what where the conditions of the search?" when deciding to allow evidence. | 27e3e007-30ca-4130-bc69-d3a24a97e3e7 |
46qxpx | When you get hit hard, why does the pain take a few seconds to be felt? | Think about it like this, our body is full of nerve ends that transmit signals from where they are being touched, like if we are holding something hot, they transmit the feeling to our brain which receives the signal, processes it and then sends the information it processed back to its respective area.
So when you get hit hard, while you are still in the moments after the effect, your body is still registering the damage done.
Have you ever had the moment where you were cut bleeding something of that sort, and you didn't realize you were in any pain until you saw it with your own eyes?
It hadn't been fully processed in your mind that you were hurt, that is why it takes a few seconds to recognize and interpret the pain. | 82c41ea1-5c83-44c4-bcd4-148169f6f8f1 |
1f3o6e | How is it that sites that offer paying with Bitcoin (like The Silkroad) can operate if the worth of Bitcoin can drop or jump tens of dollars in a matter of hours | They don't. People who do business in Bitcoin almost always set the price according to the current conversion rate, and convert the money to dollars quickly. | cb6a3078-a477-4d84-9ded-8d59dbfe5930 |
2r62vv | How were wheel alignments performed on automobiles before the modern wheel alignment computer machines came out? | You measure the space between the fronts of both tires and you measure the space between the backs and you adjust things until the two measurements line up | f937a7a5-f72d-4502-a1f6-13cab80c92da |
636h9k | How do 24/7 music livestreams work? | They just create a list with all the musics they want to play and the program just reads them 1 by 1.
Also, when they need or feel like to, they can add new songs to "Play Next".
They don't need a dedicated PC for doing that. They can program a server to play music and stream it (it's not that complicated to do that). | 3faac7ef-389b-4e40-b4d3-599f90c9ebcd |
2ojclp | Why aren't the crazy cult pastors, who claim they've talked to god or are some sort of messias, placed in mental hospitals? | because they are not considered, or have produced a credible threat they are a danger to themselves or others. you are allowed to be crazy and not be hospitalized as long as you are safe | 6f71d615-1da8-40d7-9787-f090e93c80cf |
wg4yz | Viacom vs. Directv | Yeah, this is really pretty simple. Viacom wants more money from DirecTV for letting them carry their stuff. DirecTV doesn't want to pay more.
Viacom puts the screws to them by pulling their stuff, pissing off DirecTV customers, and then says, "hey, we feel your pain. It's all DirecTV's fault. Why don't you call up and yell at them and threaten to cancel your subscription?"
And meanwhile DirecTV is going, "hey, we feel your pain. It's all Viacom's fault, and we're hurting just like you."
This kind of game of chicken actually goes on between content providers and distribution networks all the time. Whenever the contracts come up for renewal basically. Viacom has a bit of an advantage here since it's not like the upset viewers who can't watch SpongeBob anymore are paying Viacom. It's DirecTV that has to deal with pissed off customers. | efe1cdfd-8a37-4306-aa9c-36ae319a7030 |
2mxq2k | Uniform circular motion in highschool physics | Would you like to be more specific? It's easier to help when there is a question. I don't have a lecture written up | 4bb3f391-0c3a-4f66-ad4f-58cecde0e49f |
kyzxt | Housing prices have dropped like a lead balloon but property taxes have not been lowered accordingly. Why? | > Is there something I'm missing?
Yeah, the government uses the *appraised* value of the house. Until someone pays to have an appraisal done on the house, the house's new lower value isn't "official", and the government continues to pretend like the old value is the correct one. The taxes stay high.
> I ask because buying a comparatively cheap house for me is becoming unaffordable because of the exorbitant tax rates.
If $4500 a year will make or break you, then you should not be getting into a mortgage. Period.
Furthermore, why are they even letting 5 year olds sign mortgages anyway? ;] | f3558e12-2cb3-41d2-b2b1-f28859b8147f |
4plymn | For a country that's emphasized education for so long, why is the majority of India still mired in poverty? | because education only matters if you actually have a place to work where you can utilize what you learned.
india simply has WAY too many people, there is just not enough work for everyone.
beside that from my personal experiences in india people below your "wealth level" are treated poorly and its made extra hard for them to get out of their demise.
also its shocking how fast you get used to the poor people and dirt around you, on the 2nd day it was already completely normal for me to see children collect plastic of the street to make a fire to warm up.
Toxic fumes you say? doesn't matter better toxic fumes then freezing. | ff1db52e-8f39-4b3c-8b0b-314b085874e5 |
1v0qv2 | Why can women experience multiple orgasms, but men just go limp after one? | Evolutionarily, it is beneficial for a male to have a refractory period.the penis is shaped ina way that scoops out semen that is already in the vagina. if a man ejaculates and then immediately resumes intercourse, he will be removing his own semen from the _URL_0_ forcing the male to wait, the odds of this happening are decreased. | cf90bf14-6ccb-4468-9cb7-7ca42e511a5d |
8mdw4u | Amish are famous for barn-raising, but how often do they actually need to raise one? | Not often, it's just an interesting sight to see a hundred men build a barn in a day instead of the usual three men taking thirty days.
Since they're not paying for the labor, they can pull of the brute force build that a typical construction firm cant. | aa23fc62-a1a9-4ad4-9e10-b876c6939dcf |
2ly2rl | Why don't we have animal organ donor clinics? | I actually don't know but I would assume that it is because no healthy dog's owner would give up the dog's organs. If a dog is being put down, there is a reason. Thus, organs not salvageable. Also, who would pay for the storage? Vet bills are expensive and I doubt they would spend money on storing organs in hopes another owner would pay for it.
The only option I could think of, which is extremely inhumane, would be that a pet owner with the money to pay for it, would pay for a healthy dogs organ to save their own dog. The healthy dog ultimately dying instead. Very sad. | c5bf6e8c-251c-4d04-a72b-767419a5504a |
2166q5 | What is the typical economic model of an American police department? | Get tax money from government. Spend it on people and equipment. | e805caae-fc2b-4cff-a1d0-816e75e45d90 |
2dzl5n | why do animals poop so fast, but some humans take forever? | Try the squatting position. It just falls right out | 3307410f-bde1-499c-bfec-ab5f8cc96998 |
3ky3vh | Why is "100" the number we use for complete percentages? | Because Per-cent means "per hundred".
You used to occasionally see the percent symbol with two zeros underneath instead of one - meaning per thousand, but it's rare. | b262ff37-2875-414c-b051-e816ec40984f |
1vssge | Can someone please explain how options in stock trading work? | Stock options aren't actual stocks, they are a promise to be able to buy a stock in the future at a price set when the options are issued, or according to a set schedule. They are often given to employees of a company when it is new and private, in the hopes that the company will later go public or be bought, and the stock will then be worth a lot more money than the original price (the "strike price"). There are at least a couple of different kinds of stock options that have different tax implications (ISO vs Non-Qualified, but I'm not going to go into that).
For example, XYZ company can offer you the option to buy 100 shares of its stock at $1.00/share....but you can't do it for another 4 years (the "vesting period"). When the 4 years have passed and the stock option has vested, if XYZ stock is now trading at $2.00/share, you can spend $100 to buy 100 shares, and then turn around and sell them all for $200 (since that is what they are now selling for on the open market). You spend $100 and get $200, for a net profit of $100. Except you also have to pay taxes on that "capital gain", so you actually get less than $100 profit.
If you choose, after the 4 years is up you can just buy and hold those 100 shares. You spend $100 to buy 100 shares, but you don't sell them. You hope that they hold their value, or go up even more. Eventually you sell them and reap the profit. If you hold onto the shares for at least one year, the capital gains tax you pay will be lower than the previous scenario where you sold them right away. But you took a risk...the stock could tank while you are still holding them, and you could lose part or all of your $100 investment.
Or you can choose to never exercise your options. If, for example, after 4 years is up the XYZ company is now trading at $0.30/share, it would be silly to buy the shares at $1.00/share and sell them....you'd be losing money. You could buy the shares cheaper on the open market, so why would you use the options? In that case, you'd hold the options, hoping that the stock price would again go above $1.00/share. Normally stock options can only be held for a certain number of years after they vest; 10 years is typical in my experience. | 9515489f-7afd-4797-b67d-4a9d30c0cea1 |
4eo4th | Why can't our normal speech be assigned musical pitch, e.g. C, C# and D? | Normal speech does have pitch. Speaking with a single pitch throughout would sound very strange, so assigning a single pitch wouldn't work (monotone is a way to describe someone's speech for a reason), instead speech happens as a series of pitches. [Radiolab](_URL_0_) did a fun segment about how the spoken phrase "sometimes behaves so strangely" became obviously a song when looped. r/zappafied is all about taking speech and making the pitch obvious. | dfd90094-5300-4750-879e-468184c26483 |
1964qs | Why does Star Wars transcend typical Sci-Fi fandom and hit home for so many people. | Well it was first (sort of).
Before Star Wars, Scifi in movies was very pulpy and bad.
It was proof that it could be done well.
It also has a lot of cultural significance beyond that. Since the success of Star Wars really was the moment when the 'summer blockbuster' aimed at the 15-20 male market became a thing.
Also it just has a very traditional fantasy arch. Which many people find appealing, especially when looking for an 'escape' in media. | 34fbd332-1263-4447-92cd-04580b69cc8f |
1v6efh | What is Nest and why did Google buy it? | It is a company that makes a high end smart thermostat and also a smoke detector.
Google | ab8c7a69-f6ee-482d-ae7b-e62a050fdd43 |
2z7wcx | Can you permanently lose feeling in your arm after sleeping on it? | The circulation doesn't stop unless your heart isn't beating or you have something clogging the pipes.
If you put enough pressure on your arm then yes there would no longer be circulation, this is seen in the use of tourniquets to stop blood flow in emergencies.
Lack of blood flow to part of your body can cause gangrene so I would suggest reducing the chance of sleeping on your arms if you have a history of blood pressure related diseases or do anything that could cause severe damage to your arteries. | 8e963453-63f3-443e-b43f-7e21f66e12a3 |
3c8ph4 | In the US, why is it legal to brew beer and wine, but not legal to distill harder spirits? | Distilled spirits are heavily taxed & always have been. In the oldest days of the country, whiskey was seen as an efficient way for remote farmers to concentrate their grain & move it to market. It can easily take 5-10 pounds of grain to make a single bottle of whiskey.
The other thing is that, unlike homebrewing, home distillation is not a terribly safe thing. From exploding stills to toxic booze, there's plenty of things that can go wrong with it. For safety reasons, the government prohibits it. | 119023e1-040b-4942-933a-3d16b49581ea |
62wiui | Why does sudden temperature change make us feel ill? | Your body needs to be at a fairly consistent temperature of 37C
Your body has various mechanisms to control this temperature (such as restricting the size of blood vessels near the skin, increasing heart rate, sweating etc), as a result humans can survive in quite a range of temperatures, but your body will be behaving differently if it's 0C compared to if it's 40C
These mechanisms in the body don't always adjust quickly, so if you've been somewhere hot and your body is trying to cool down, if you then step into somewhere cold your body will take time to shift this process, and your temperature will drop. On the other hand if the temperate change is more gradual your body will adjust more naturally and you'll be quite OK | cfe80b68-9b5e-4436-8ea3-a8ee53004c9a |
29w6qz | What's the problem with kids lifting weights? | _URL_0_
> With both direct and indirect evidence suggesting that weightlifting may increase bone length and density, it seems as though this myth is untrue. Rather than stunt your growth, weightlifting when you are young may allow you to grow taller than you would without such exercise. | ebe11ed5-1e20-409b-b243-141bf800a9b4 |
3h7tmp | Why is it that our eyes cannot repair their vision? so we don't have to wear glasses or contacts etc... | This isn't a complete answer but they can, some people when they get glasses say their natural vision improves after a while. That may only apply to minor eyesight issues though. | 2c59bd50-95fd-4045-92e8-9ddf962118db |
37ixzd | How does vesting in company shares/stocks work? | They were given to you over the stated schedule. They are gradually becoming yours. If they were options, then you would have the opportunity to buy them at a set price, called a strike price, which hopefully would be much lower than the price available to the general public at the same moment in time. | b1803a5a-9b69-44f0-af7b-fa2449508e8a |
6z5qa7 | Piercing | The studs you would normally would get at a retail like Claire's or Wal-Mart would be a size 22 gauge. Which is a lot smaller. Ear piercing guns do not remove any part of the ear.
While the size 14 gauge is bigger so it takes a larger chunk of skin and flesh out. Which in turn causes more bleeding and pain. The smaller the number for the gauge, the bigger in width for the piercing.
From there you can either slowly gauge larger. Or put in something smaller and it will heal down to that size. Or take it out completely and let it heal down completely before going to someplace that does ear piercings. | 29a1e984-cbd3-456e-94db-aca5672d49b5 |
7vf4dg | what actually happens when you die from the flu? | Depends. Probably the simplest thing is viral pneumonia leading to severe respiratory failure leading to death. If you have other long term illnesses these can also be triggered (e.g. someone with coronary heart disease might possibly have a heart attack due to the various stresses of being very unwell).
Source: ITU doctor. | e97ad9b1-70a3-4b3f-bb2a-671ab4330b8f |
73g3lz | How can photochromic glasses change colour with the sunlight? | from wikipedia:
> In one sort of technology, molecules of silver chloride or another silver halide are embedded in photochromatic lenses. They are transparent to visible light without significant ultraviolet component, which is normal for artificial lighting. In another sort of technology, organic photochromic molecules, when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) rays as in direct sunlight, undergo a chemical process that causes them to change shape and absorb a significant percentage of the visible light, i.e., they darken. These processes are reversible; once the lens is removed from strong sources of UV rays the photochromic compounds return to their transparent state
_URL_0_ | 494fbc6b-7546-4c31-a067-c36ae3f3bb2d |
5oqmss | Does climate change lead to an increase in extreme cold weather as well as extreme warm weather? If so, why is the average yearly temperature continuing to get warmer? | That's a little backwards.
Global warming means all storm systems are larger, in addition to the obvious that average temperatures are very slightly higher. However, larger storm systems means that cold fronts that used to die out as they head south will go much farther, bringing freezing weather to places that infrequently freeze.
Thus, a little warming can produce more extremes, including extremes of cold. | 455007f6-a4c5-4cb0-915a-00812a07bc1f |
3ppgr4 | Difference between RAM and Cache Memory | Cache is your fridge/pantry - it stores things you've recently used or intend to use soon, and has a relatively low amount of storage. You can grab things in nearly real-time while trying to cook.
RAM is the grocery store that's a mile away. Lots of storage for things you may or may not use frequently, but it takes orders of magnitude more time to go get something from the store than it does to grab it out of the fridge. | a418945f-eba8-4721-aa38-150c445a873a |
2eqzr3 | Women's excessive grunting in tennis | Vocalizing while hitting the ball can help a player focus, and it can throw off their opponent's timing. Also, opponents can get clues about how the ball was hit based on the sound the racquet makes...grunting is supposed to obscure it. When there was no rule against it, tennis players have been gradually getting louder and louder.
Men grunt too, but with their lower pitched voices, it doesn't travel as well.
There is a rule against it, but right now it is at the umpires descretion, and rarely used. It remains a controversial topic in tennis. | b815de09-a209-405e-8869-6235778efb62 |
1ywyqi | What is happening when we hit our funny bone? | You have the [ulnar nerve](_URL_0_) (in yellow) passing just below the skin at the elbow with bone under and when you hit a nerve that exposed it hurts. | b7d9c67f-4c7c-482c-b924-4856dbbc4993 |
682ajp | What is a memory leak in the context of poorly optimized games? | ELI5:
Memory Leak:
"You go to a bar and ask for a glass of water, you drink the water but you never give up the glass, then you ask for another glass of water and so on until the bar runs out of glasses."
Glasses = Block of memory
Water = Whatever is in it.
Accepted Behaviour:
"You go to a bar and ask for a glass of water, barman go gets you a glass fills you with water and gives it to you. After that you don't ask the barman for another glass, you just fill the one you have unless you need a new one for w/e reasons.".
Bad Behaviour but not a memory leak but a garbage collector problem:
"You go to a bar and ask for a glass of water, you drink the water and give the glass back asking for another glass of water. At the end of the day if there are 1000 of customers and all customers drank 2 glasses of water, barman needed to wash 2000 glasses instead of 1000".
This is very very crude and very very simple. | ffcdfda9-2a7f-4b5c-a4fc-ce31a9618ffc |
5imyay | Why are some things invented (touchscreens for example, 40 years ago) but it takes so long for consumers to accept them? Price? | Well the touch screen is kind of a bad example here. While it was invented in the 70s, there was nothing for it to be controlled with. Computers were mostly text based until 1992 when windows 3.1 was published. And even then the computers were mostly to slow to have a real benefit from touchscreens. Even today apart from tablets and smartphones touchscreens are more toy than of real use. And tablets and smartphones were simply not possible so long ago due to non existing miniaturization processes.
There are a lot of things developed "ahead of their time". Mostly it simply is a matter of cost/effect ratio thats missing in the end. | 577ee6dd-54f2-42e1-9383-5d5c40359812 |
5tleao | Why do we get tired when we oversleep? | There is some bad science around here.
It's true that waking up in the middle of your sleep cycle will make you feel groggy, but that really isn't the whole story, and as someone has already pointed out, doesn't explain grogginess at the end of the sleep cycle. And it happens every time you are woken up from deep sleep, not just when you've overslept.
What's going on when you oversleep: throwing in an extra sleep cycle or two messes up your circadian rhythm, so your body has to spend a lot of resources trying to sync everything up again. That can make you feel kind of out of sorts or grumpy. There is also evidence that oversleeping messes up hormones and neurotransmitters, which also makes you feel groggy, as they also follow your circadian rhythm and are now out of sorts.
Also: going without food or water for an extra hour doesn't explain what happens. If you are dehydrated to the point of confusion, that is a medical emergency. Humans aren't delicate flowers. There is evidence that not drinking coffee as early as your body expects it can throw you off. It's part of a phenomenon called "weekend headache." | c726bb7a-750b-4ab6-8e54-955d61aa7735 |
qa4v2 | I literally live in the other side of the American continent, explain me briefly about what's currently happening on America's politic. | A fellow that quite a lot of people dislike is surprisingly in a position to upset a fellow that a lot of people dislike a bit less.
You know sports movies? How there's always an underdog team, full of likable kids who band together to beat the odds and defeat the team full of jerks? In this case, the jerk is both the underdog and poised to win.
This is just a primary, where the guys running are all pretty similar in how they think. In the fall the last guy standing will get to go up against the current winner, who has a slightly different mentality.
But in the end, to quote South Park, it's still a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. | cd26f1a0-aacf-467f-9e92-2b3420d9b414 |
3o2pnb | How do memories work? They are "stored" in a certain part of the brain but when you access memories what are you really accessing? The brain and body are just made up of atoms. Is there a physical or chemical explanation for it? | A lot of this stuff is bull so lemme break it down for ya (neuroscience student researching memory).
Our body is made up of a bunch of neurons (80,000,000 of these guys) and glia (around 100,000,000). While glia is important, neurons are the main actors in memory. The central neural doctrine is this: neurons that fire together wire together. See, your brain as a gigantic city highway with super powers: the roads that get used more often can be expanded so that way they're easier to access in the future. This is called plasticity and its important to know how our brain retains information.
Another part of your question is where memories are 'stored'. There's lots of different types of memory. Some is non-declarative (things you can't say such as how to actually swing a bat) and declarative (things you can say such as what year was the constitution written).
Declarative memory is what it seems most people are interested in so I'll expand on that (for pragmatics sake, it's a lot more complicated than this but this is the main gist). This thing called your hippocampus is your primary short-term memory center in the brain. When you learn a new fact, those neurons start firing here. Those neurons will connect to many different regions of the brain depending on the specifics of the memory. That's where those city roads we were talking about earlier come into play. When you went to recall (remember) that memory, the same neural tracts are used to bring the memory from 'storage' back to conscious thought (back to the hippocampus). The more you repeat this with similar tracts, the faster and easier it is for the memory to be recalled later on due to molecular processes that are not ELI5. | 468448f1-73f7-4056-b2de-de7e7ffdd141 |
65ybuy | What is causing the current rise of authoritarian regimes in richer countries around the world? | This is often attributed to *populism,* which basically means that average people believe the system is being rigged against them by the elites, so they want to create a super-elite (a powerful central government) that in theory shares their values and can stand up for their interests. | ed797e42-29cb-4003-90fc-2b14ba593225 |
2t978u | Why is alcohol and tobacco regulated by the same agency as firearms? Why aren't liquor and cigarettes regulated by the FDA? | The ATF was formed to deal with gun running & smuggling of alcohol & tobacco. They were originally part of the Department of the Treasury and concerned with securing tax revenue, not safety or purity of the product. | dadc6955-6e41-4e6b-8e53-63370f578929 |
30x56i | How would a radio transmission from a planet with a significant gravitational field work? | I haven't seen the movie. Was the planet the other crew was on in motion relative to the Earth to cause time dilation, or was it a difference in gravity?
Either way, what they'd experience is some sort of "redshift" or "blueshift." The radio message would not be lost, but its frequency would either be lower (planet moving away/in a stronger gravitational field) or higher (planet moving towards Earth).
This is something we have to deal with when we use GPS satellites, though the effect is much less drastic. Basically, though, you just calculate how much the frequency of the original message will have shifted by the time it reaches you, and tune your receiver accordingly. No information would be lost.
edit: Realized from context that it's a gravitational field. The way to think about it is that if the radio signal oscillates once an hour to the crew out on the planet, it'll oscillate once every 20 years to someone on Earth receiving it. Hence, lower frequency. | 50cb83ee-d17e-4489-858e-4b208dc31d1c |
5ln91u | Why in a room with 24 people do two people probably share the same birthday? | First off there is 1 in 365 chance that two people share a birthday. That means there is a 364 in 365 chance they do not share a birthday. If you have a third man then the chance of him also having a different birthday then the two men is 363 in 365 so the combined chance is (364*363)/(365^2). You then continue adding more people until you get to 24 people. At this point you have a less then 50% chance that none of the people in the room shares a birthday. Flip that around and that means that there is over 50% chance that at least two people share birthdays. | 70cc0f42-9ff2-4197-94a9-f1f1263da8cc |
2yckki | Why do some people seem to retain "useless information" without effort, yet recalling someone's phone number can be so difficult while exerting effort to memorize it? | We don't really live in the environment we evolved for. The things we find easy to memorize are the things we find 'cool'. Something like a phone number doesn't trip our primate senses into thinking it's information worth storing, but the destructive power of a photon torpedo? That's kind of like remembering how strong a warrior is, which is definitely primal-level information. | b34363b2-c523-4d23-b8e2-2ee89f3e3d25 |
2sox1e | With virtually infinite time, could we use selective breeding to bring out crazy traits in animals? | Provided that those traits appeared at some point, yes.
We couldn't breed dogs to have horns unless at some point there was a dog who had the mutation to have horns. The same way that we can't breed humans to have gills, gills have to come around on their own, we can breed humans to all have gills once the mutation presents itself, but not until then. | 8804eb76-e3fc-4c65-a802-be16eb29361a |
3vf19e | what are once removed, and twice removed cousins | The "level" of cousin (first cousin, second cousin, etc.) is dependent upon how many generations you are from your nearest common ancestor.
So "first cousins" have 1 generation between them and their nearest common ancestor, that ancestor being their grandparents (cousins - parents - grandparents).
"Second cousins" have 2 generations between them and their nearest common ancestor, that ancestor being their great grandparents (cousins - parents - grandparents - great grandparents).
The once, twice "removed" is when the cousins aren't both at the same "level." And you remove 1 for each "level" further back one cousin is.
So go back to "first cousins." Your first cousin has a kid. Your grandparent is still the most common ancestor, so you are still first cousins, but that kid is another generation removed from that ancestor (your grandparent is his great grandparent) so he is your first cousin, once removed. | 98560048-641f-417f-b2ee-4310652f7a19 |
26oblm | bi-racial labels and how the media identifies us | Reddit default subs are a shitty place to ask about racial issues. You might want to find somewhere better to ask if you want quality answers. | 17552e36-9471-49bb-b512-bf63e860a6a8 |
1yfbvs | Why does it take at least 15 minutes to fill a prescription? What's going on back there? | The pharmacist is ensuring that the prescribed medication is appropriate and safe before it is handed to you. Is it the right drug for the condition? Is the strength and regimen appropriate? Are there interactions with the patient's other medications to be aware of?
Physicians also do make prescribing errors from time to time (they are humans too), and a large part of a pharmacist's role is to catch those mistakes before it reaches the patient.
Also note that while your particular prescription may be relatively straight forward to check, it is likely that there are others which aren't, causing a wait time of 15-20 minutes. | 4d236eba-3423-428a-9575-11ecdf7b5bfa |
5rnjb9 | Why is it harder to breathe when walking into a strong wind? | 1) Breathing is a matter of lowering the pressure in your lungs so the higher pressure outside of your body pushes air into your lungs. The greater the difference in air pressure between two compartments (in this case, the atmosphere and your lungs) the faster the air flow.
2) The faster the wind blows, the less pressure there is.
3) When there the external air pressure is lower, the difference in air pressure is reduced and it's thus harder to breathe. | 183035af-05d4-4909-a810-7bb4ae0789d7 |
5nyn57 | How come that when you go to bed at 11PM you have a hard time to leave your bed at 7AM, but when you go to bed at 3AM you dont have any problems waking up at 11AM while you had the same hours of sleep? | Might be a number of things.
1) You aren't used to waking up early, so your body isn't ready for it. If you don't usually wake up at 7am and then suddenly do, it'll be hard.
2) It's often colder in the morning, especially in the winter. Getting out of bed in the cold is hard.
3) It's much brighter at 11am than 7am and our body responds to sunlight. This is why we get tired at night, because your body release melatonin to help get ready for sleep. | 63fe6204-6294-4ae9-a427-3aca2e112269 |
1jjl3k | You know how car windshield glass doesn't shatter, it just cracks? And even then, you have to put a lot of force into it? Why not make kitchenware out of that type of glass? | Kitchen glassware used to be almost indestructible (ie, FireKing, Pyrex). It was the same stuff they use in labs.
They stopped selling it so durable, because people were using to cook meth. | becdb5f4-3339-41b3-a63c-aefd349ae2fc |
1ylal9 | What is happening with AZ SB1062 and HB2153 (relating to the free exercise of religion)? | So basically, Free Exercise of Religion is the issue here.
At it's simplest form, Free Exercise of Religion means that for example, I can't make a law that says "You can't worship Jesus Christ."
That's a CLEAR violation of Free Exercise.
However, there is a concept called a "Neutral Law of General Applicability"
There's a US Supreme Court case (Employment Division vs. Smith) that addressed the issue. Basically, the state in question had laws banning a certain psychoactive drug called Peyote. A Native American man was fired for using Peyote and he argued that his religion required the use of Peyote in a religious ritual.
The court basically said that if the law doesn't target a religion specifically, but is instead applicable to the general population equally, it's ok that it otherwise burdens the religious freedoms of people.
And this is a GOOD thing. If you could just ignore any law because it infringed on your religion, you become, as Scalia wrote, "A law unto [yourself]"
Lets say I want to make my own religion. As a part of my religion, I MUST murder one person who annoys me each day. You can't do anything about it, if you do, you're infringing on my religious beliefs.
Does that sound like a world you want to live in? It's a hyperbolic example for humor's effect, but basically this prevents people from using their religion as an excuse to break the law. If the law doesn't single out your religion, then you can't use religious freedom to get around it.
What SB1062 does is specifically state that people are protected from even laws of general applicability if the law violates a sincerely held religious belief.
The caveat is that the state may restrict their religious belief if the government can prove two things:
1: There is a compelling government interest in restricting the religious freedom
2: The methods used are the least restrictive of furthering that compelling interest.
For this reason, the Arizona bill doesn't suddenly legalize the situation I described above, where I get to make my "I get to murder anyone I dislike religion" and get away with it. Preventing murder is a compelling government interest and stopping me from murdering people I don't like is the least restrictive means to do so.
But what if my religious belief isn't murder...but something else.
You see, the problem with the compelling state interest test is that it's incredibly difficult (read: Nearly Impossible) to pass that test.
It's the test lawmakers and courts use when they want the government to lose. It's INCREDIBLY hard to prove that a law is a compelling government interest and that you are using the least restrictive means to accomplish that goal. | f3a466ef-cc62-4bfe-a32f-fb4ac61b0f54 |
qww1n | The relevant differences between totalitarian and an authoritarian regimes. | Authoritarian regimes want to consolidate and centralize power so that governments have all of it. They avoid checks and balances or anything to maintain the government's control.
Totalitarianism goes further than that. In an totalitarian regime, checks and balances don't even exist. The state is all that really matters. It seeks to penetrate and control every layer and aspect of society. | b33fbb40-c31e-4559-99aa-aa091472bc79 |
3ds5pk | How do music artists split the profit when featuring each other on a single track? | Sometimes they don't. Smaller artists often want to be featured on larger artists tracks and are paid a flat fee.
Other times, it is an exchange. (1 for 1)
Nicki Minaj: "50k for a verse, no album out" implies that Kanye paid her $50,000 for her verse on Monster. | e94ddbb9-cec0-4443-83f0-579707cdf54d |
2l59xk | If Google's spent so much on anticopyright measures on YouTube how come movies with over 1 million hits exist? | Videos are taken down for copyright infringement if one of the following things happens:
1. The copyright owner registers the original with YouTube's automated Content ID system, sets it to block videos it matches, and the system actually identifes a match. This can be harder than it seems, because the copyright owner is supposed to adjust the settings to ensure that the system correctly identifies actual infringement without producing a bunch of false matches.
2. The copyright owner manually searches for possibly infringing material, and then files DMCA complaints against any it finds.
If neither of those two things happen, the video stays live. It's actually not YouTube's decision whether an infringing video is taken down: if the copyright owner doesn't file a complaint against it, the video stays. The DMCA specifically states that content hosts are not liable for their users' infringing activities, as long as the host takes prompt action if/when the copyright owner does file a complaint. | a63846ef-aeef-4734-86ed-a2b8247ff43a |
26plkx | How does propulsion work in a vacuum. For instance, how would a space craft propel itself when there's nothing to push against? | Rocket engines in a vacuum operate based on conservation of momentum. The total momentum of any system must remain the same. So if you expel something with momentum in one direction, the rest of the mass *must* move in the other direction (or else the momentum of the ship-plus-exhaust will have changed).
As a simple example, imagine sitting in a sled on very slick ice, and throwing a heavy bowling ball forward. You will slide backward, and not because the bowling ball is pushing off the air, but because *you're pushing off the bowling ball*. This causes the total momentum of bowling-ball-plus-sled to remain unchanged. Likewise, the rocket is essentially pushing off its own exhaust. | 25195e3f-8580-41ac-b5ce-571428d1e65b |
49x1rs | What makes Cape Horn so treacherous? | High winds, strong currents, and large storms all combine to make for especially treacherous sailing. Keep in mind that treacherous seas were usually named when people forecast by *red in the morning sailor take warning red in the evenin' sailor a pleasin'* Imagine sailing through [seas like this](_URL_0_). | f6af5bea-5bd9-445a-9a16-e7bb32a37e06 |
1j88bw | What is the purpose of water towers? | To get water to flow up out of the pipes below the ground into your house it needs to be pushed. Now this could be done by using a big pump at the water treatment plant, but the big pump would have to pump harder when more people had water running and pump less when less people had water running. The problem then becomes how does the big pump detect all the faucets turning on and off to increase/decrease output?
What water towers achieve is a constant pressure in the pipes. The water pushing down out of the tower pushes all the way through the pipes finally pushing water up and then out of the faucet. So the big pump just has to pump it into the water tower, and then gravity does the rest of the work in a controlled and constant manner.
Here is a video on [siphoning](_URL_0_) which demonstrates the principle. | eeffb2a7-cf2f-4ee6-b922-72866d2932c4 |
3akroi | When I was 5, those who were 10 looks old and mature. However, once I was 11, those who were 10 looks young and immature. Why? | i have always wondered this i remember being like 5 or 6 and my brother who was 13 or 14 seemed like a grown ass man. and now a days 13 or 14 year olds look lile babies. | 7a1d6f44-4b70-43ab-b833-e5b03607c07b |
3rvqqw | Why are there so many third world countries in Africa when the continent is considered the cradle of civilization? | Bad climate, terrible leaders, heavily sought after resources, cultural barriers, foreign invaders taking sought after resources, constant border wars, lack of industrialization, anyone got any other reasons? | 419657c3-ff86-46a8-b45a-13f678a00f8a |
8zoegq | why can my heaters easily keep my house at a nice 75 when its 15 degrees outside, but my AC struggles to dip below 70 when its 100 outside? | Your heaters are a hell of a lot more powerful than your Air Conditioners
An AC unit can move 4-10 watts of heat per watt of power used, but it'll only use a few hundred watts. A big window AC unit might be rated at 10,000 BTU/hour or about 2.9 kW of heat removal which sounds pretty good, until you consider that a 6 foot electric baseboard can be a 1.5 kW heater and you'll likely have significantly more of them than you will air conditioners
Your house likely has the ability to add 10 kW of heat to the space but is only able to remove 2-4 kW | e3b55553-787b-4208-bf44-6d8d2f0c60ba |
y9b57 | How quad core (multi core?) works. | It's like having more than one cook in a kitchen, instead of one really, really fast cook.
Well, the problem is actually a little more complex: for years and years, they were training cooks just to work faster, but realized that they were getting towards the top of how fast one cook could work, so they decided they'd start working on having multiple cooks at a time, even if they didn't work quite as fast.
It should be noted that you get the usual problems associated with this: one cook will have something another cook needs, and time is taken up handing it from one to the other; it doesn't make any particular dish get cooked faster unless you teach the cooks how to work on different parts of it at the same time; no particular task goes any faster, since it only takes one cook to make a steak; etc.
However, if you have many dishes that all need to get cooked at roughly the same time, having more than one cook is a big help. | 6300b68d-2a11-494f-9afc-ef53e1ba7f7d |
68hanc | Why do some restaurants charge a service fee for larger groups? | Generally because big groups are poor tippers, and are more work for the servers, bussers, and kitchen.
It's easier to take and prepare 20 orders from 10 tables spread out over 15 minutes than it is to deal with 20 orders from the same table all at the same time. | ad5a9aa7-29af-4349-8040-4f92c1b089d3 |
1lbpeu | Why do females on average, live longer than men? | There's a few reasons.
First men tend to do more risky jobs then women. I can't quote a source right now but I recall something like 98% of all workplace deaths being men.
Secondly there seems to be an evolutionary aspect. It's related to the first reason. Men hunted and did dangerous things which got them killed.
Women stayed 'at home' and raised the next generation. Their own children and grandchildren. And having those extra hands around to help raise these kids turned out to be advantageous. So the offspring of women that lived longer where more likely to grow up and make baby humans of their own allowing the trait to be passed on. | a0fca8a7-06f9-418c-9434-3a7c4d0a061e |
k464s | First grade math | This is a good question, one that many mathematicians have dedicated their lives to studying.
I'll try to keep the explanation simple, but since you are asking for a higher level of rigor, the explanation may be a little heavy.
What you are looking for are the [Peano axioms](_URL_0_). These are a collection of statements which are assumed to be true for the natural numbers (the numbers 0,1,2,3, etc...). One thing that you'll have to get used to is the fact mathematics is all built upon assumptions like this, with no proof. The challenge comes from the requirement that you only use a certain set of axioms, and no more. Thus, any *other* statements must be shown to logically follow from these axioms.
Anyway, the Peano axioms are:
1. 0 is a natural number.
2. For every natural number n, S(n) is also a natural number. (S(n) is called the successor function, it just gives you the next natural number.)
3. There are no natural numbers n such that S(n)=0.
4. For any two natural numbers n & m, if S(n)=S(m), then n=m.
(If you compare with the Wikipedia page, you'll notice that there are more, but I have skipped those in order to keep the explanation more clear.)
Now, we have to say what the numbers are: we define 1 to be S(0), 2 := S(1), 3 := S(2), and so on. (The := sign means we are defining something.)
Now we have to say what addition is. First, for a natural number n, we say that n+0=n. Then, for natural number n & m, we say that n+S(m)=S(n+m). This is enough, as we will see later.
We now have enough assumptions and definitions to prove that 2+2=4, and additionally, that 2+2 is not 5.
Theorem: 2+2=4.
Proof: Remember how we defined the numbers, 2=S(1)=S(S(0)), and 4=S(3)=S(S(2))=S(S(S(S(0)))).
So, 2+2=2+S(1)=S(2+1).
Now, 2+1=2+S(0)=S(2+0), and 2+0=2. So, S(2+0)=S(2)=3, so S(2+1)=S(S(2+0))=S(S(2))=4, so since 2+2=S(2+1), we have that 2+2=4.
Theorem: 2+2 is not 5.
Proof: Remember that 2+2=4. So the problem is the same as showing that 4 != 5. (!= means 'not equal to'). Well, what if they *were* the same? That would mean that 4=5, or S(3)=S(4). By axiom 4, this means that 3=4. From this, we see that S(2)=S(3), so 2=3, so S(1)=S(2), so 1=2, so S(0)=S(1), so 0=1, so S(0)=0. This last one contradicts axiom 3, only one of them can be right.
Since we are assuming the Peano axioms are right, S(0)=0 must be wrong! But that means that 0=1 is wrong, as is 1=2, etc... all the way up to 4=5. So 4=5 is wrong, which means that 2+2=5 is also wrong, so 2+2 != 5. | 17055425-78db-4a49-aa72-836dff05692b |
71emk5 | Why is fruit better for you than candy in terms of sugar (if it really is)? | Sugar is sugar. However, a fruit has many other things: lots of water, some fiber, some vitamins, etc. These things fill you up and generally take a lot longer to eat. Candy is not filling, and basically pure sugar so if someone is pigging out on apples vs. candy, they can likely eat a TON more sugar eating candy. | 6ea965b4-6ec9-403e-a604-09b74c58e572 |
2ubu41 | What would happen if the earth slowly began to rotate the other direction? | Assuming the transition were slow enough to not throw everybody down (which would be pretty slow), the biggest difference I could see would be weather. All the prevailing winds would flip direction, rain shadows would move to the other side of mountains, and so on. You can see the effect [in South America](_URL_0_), where the reversal of the trade winds causes jungle and desert to swap places. | e6368e28-b471-4906-a436-9e543491e787 |
858bp1 | How is the average lifespan decided for newborns? | Basically it's a best case scenario of statistical projection. So if people are easily living to their 80s/90s now and medicine is improving and other factors like access to food, water, hygiene are improving you can make a projection based off of that. The problem is they don't account for things like the emergence of superevolved diseases we can't treat yet or breakdown of society or our pending inevitable nuclear war or psychological fall out and things you just can't predict.
Ultimately it's statistics that you should take with a grain of salt, but understand are still likely accurate without cataclysmic events. | 09f1f262-ab75-4952-9f07-315e094ebbdf |
1fkm24 | Why do donuts have holes in them? | Well, the first thing to note is that not all donuts have holes. There are "filled donuts" which are essentially donuts without the hole (as well as some filling).
As for why donuts with holes have holes, there are a number of explanations, but as far as I'm aware, noone actually knows for sure.
One explanation that's commonly brought up is that before they were made with a hole, the center would end up undercooked and doughy, so the hole was made to ensure that it got baked properly. | 007c0ec9-3d59-44e5-86b2-73db1c54ecbe |
22vo37 | Why are house pets not bothered by audio noises? | Phage is right that they're used to the sounds. Think of it like a single crazy person who's on the street every day in the same spot - eventually you just tune them out.
Also, the audio that is produced around them isn't natural. It undergoes what's called "dynamic range compression", which flattens the natural loud and soft so that everything appears to be a similar volume level. (Plus countless other destructive effects.) Then it's delivered to you on speakers that may be delivering between 40-70% of the original sound, especially if you're playing it through cheap speakers, laptop speakers, television speakers, iphones, etc. So they can tell pretty immediately that it's fake. | aedfe27d-24ec-4225-ab2b-d4d5acf2a53e |
2yh9m9 | Why does my mouth feel cleaner the morning after eating something garlic heavy the night before? | I think it's a coincidence.
I'm a dentist. If you brushed properly before you slept you probably shouldn't have had much plaque in your mouth overnight which would 'grow'. It could be the fact your breath was very garlic strong, so you noticed you didn't have plaque when you investigated why. | 7aa973ec-84eb-47cb-806c-4dc1ab239656 |
170xi1 | Vitamins. How do we know they're there, how do we know what they all separately do? | We *don't* know what ALL vitamins and minerals are in food. Human nutrition is actually a lot murkier than people realize because there is a lot we still don't know. This is also why you get contradictory diet advice everywhere. But what we have figured out is through looking at the chemicals in food, either by how food reacts with other chemicals or looking at that food under a microscope.
We know what vitamins DO because some people have poor diets. When we encounter a person who only eats certain kinds of food, and we know what vitamins are and are not in those foods, we attribute their poor health and the bad things that happen to their bodies to a lack of whatever vitamins we know they are not getting. When we keep track of a lot of people, we can see that all the people who aren't getting B vitamins get nerve damage, and we conclude that B vitamins must help prevent that damage. And the same goes for people who don't eat calcium all getting porous bones, and concluding that calcium must prevent bone loss. And so on. | 944519d5-e87b-431d-8749-0d0f68f4aa26 |
55orly | Wikipedia says that the ISS orbits the Earth "at an altitude of between 330 and 435 km". Why is the altitude not fixed? | At that altitude, there is actually still a little atmosphere and so the orbit will slowly degrade (get closer to the ground). Every once in a while they use boosters to raise it back into a higher orbit. The range of altitudes given are the range of altitudes that are considered okay.
Plus, orbits are not perfect circles. They are a little bit elliptical so there is a high point and low point in every orbit. | 66af819e-d734-42c4-b3a5-e1da73516251 |
4u0srk | Terminal Servers/RDS, their function and use in large organizations. (Crosspost from /r/sysadmin) | > The terminal server communicates with one or more remote clients, (which could also be servers?)
You're sort of right. The TS actually is 'waiting to accept' connections from others, be it a workstation or server.
Not as big as a bank or uni, but I can give you an example of how a company with multiple branches across the country can make use of a TS. Say you have a company with 5 branches. You have an ERP server sitting in HQ. Now all the staff in HQ and the 5 branches nationwide need to access this ERP software, to key in sales order, prepare invoices, check inventory those kinda stuff. So you set up a Terminal Server in HQ, and all these staff from all over will connect to this terminal server. They will log in, key in their username/password, and a shortcut link to the ERP software will be sitting nicely on the desktop waiting for them to use. So this Terminal Server will essentially be serving all the staff from the branches, if there are 100 staffs, there will be 100 user accounts in the TS. Each will have their own desktops, and they will be accessing the ERP software as though they are on a local network.
Now imagine if they do not have a TS set up. They can access the ERP software directly from their branches (through VPN), but imagine if the software is like 500MB in size and every little transaction they do need to be transmitted over the internet. It's a very inefficient way of accomplishing the task.
> Or even perhaps online training with one teacher, and multiple students being able to follow along and interact with the teacher's desktop/application
If you are referring to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection, you can't do the above. It is not like TeamViewer or AnyDesk. Once you log in to the remote PC, the other side's monitor will only display the login page, they cannot see what tasks you are performing on the desktop.
Hope this helps a little. | 1ba634a6-3b6d-49be-bc32-2af003011d11 |
13fi5v | How do 3-D glasses work? | Light tends to "point" in a direction. When we make projectors for 3d, we make two movies, one made out of light pointing in one direction, and the other pointing in a direction at a right angle to it. Think of two pieces of light, one has his hand pointing up while he is running, then the other has his hand pointing out to his right. The two "lens" part of the 3d glasses act like the wall in this video: _URL_0_
If the piece of light pointing up tries to go in the hole meant for light pointing to the right, then it doesn't fit through the hole in the wall and cant get through to your eye.
So when we make the two pictures out of the two different kinds of light, we make them a little bit different so that one eye sees one thing, and the other sees a slightly different one. This is how you see things normally, because your eyes are in two different places. So we make the two pictures from two different cameras that are apart just like your two eyes are apart. In the theatre, this ends up with the camera on the left making a movie that is projected with "up" light that your left eyeball sees because the 3d glasses have the "up lens" on the left. The right camera makes a movie that is projected with "right" light that your right eyeball sees because the 3d glasses have the "right" lens on the right.
Sometimes, instead of up light and right light, they have light that moves in circles. So we have clockwise (same direction of moving as a clock) and counterclockwise (opposite direction than a clock) light. This works better because when you tilt your head, up light can look like right light, but clockwise light always looks like clockwise light even when you tilt your head all the way over. | 1d5d06f8-c00c-43ec-9595-b24ae546150f |
66zz10 | Why are some mathematical abstractions so much harder than others for humans to grasp? | There are levels of abstraction, because certain abstract concepts rely on others, and thus must be presented later in schools. Can't do calculus without understanding numbers, operators, and algebra, basically.
When you first learn an abstract concept, you translate. First few multiplications are indeed consecutive additions. But after a while you stop translating and use the concept itself, and at that point you're ready for the next level of abstraction that uses the previous abstraction as its building blocks.
The difficulty between daily activities (decisions = logic, perception and reflexes = geometry) and the various formal sciences (actual logic, geometry) is in being able to accept and work with the abstract basic blocks of each science. I'd expect an (art) painter to be better than average at geometry, but that doesn't always hold true. | 958d669e-3ae4-4b1c-bbb4-a5299142fa9c |
7kmvl3 | How did Jeff Bezos become a billionaire in the ‘90s, when Amazon literally wasn’t even turning a profit? | profit potential.
same reason companies like uber, tesla, facebook, ect have massive market value despite little to no profit. Often times its just about getting users/eyeballs/customers, with the presumption that scale/efficiency will eventually produce a profit. | 537396b2-1df4-406f-bf73-774160e602f5 |
63td1j | What differences are there between male and female brains? Of those which (so far) have been tested to always been the case and which vary depending on the subjects? | Here is a page describing some of the difference between male and female brains, specifically an very interesting brain structure call the anterior hypothalamus.
_URL_0_
I think the differences are pretty well established,.. I recall this being discussed during my undergrad back in the 90's.
The article explains pretty well the 'severity' of the differences, how it related to hormonal development, sexual orientation. etc. | 57aa81de-777a-4871-9ae0-3b7e52b2617b |
3i0apc | Bug people, what exactly is going on here? | Dragonflies are predators. It looks like that one caught a fly and is feasting on its tasty inner goo. | 6f5211af-2868-42c5-8bef-ed68cdfcd2a1 |
2av39h | Does ABS shorten stopping distance of a car? | yes and no, you have to understand how ABS works. Generally you have an ABS sensor that detects how fast each wheel is moving. If the wheel is locked it will release brake pressure for a thousandths of a second and you will feel a slight "kick" in the brake pedal.
The reason this is helpful is because when your wheels lock up, you have lower friction and thus stopping power, than if you had a wheel that was not locked but in constant contact with the road. By preventing them from locking up, ABS, limits the amount of time skidding and maximizes the amount of time spent near maximum breaking power.
to answer your question about whether or not it will shorten the braking distance of the car, you have to consider the next best alternative. This is called threshold braking whereby the driver exerts just the right amount of brake pressure that the wheels don't lock but are at constant max braking.
Threshold braking is extremely difficult to master and even harder to figure out on the fly in different road surfaces, especially low traction conditions like ice or snow.
So to answer your question, in a predictable road surface, with a skilled driver who knows the car very well, and a slight bit of luck. ABS may not be the best because there are a few thousandths of a second where the wheels ARE locked, thus reducing maximal braking
in 99.9% of other cases, ABS will shorten stopping distance no question. | f927cbfe-ef64-4e81-9418-10b61c16fca6 |
1m8pq5 | why do some people have curly hair while others don't. | It's just a gene trait, along with many others as far as skin tone, texture, facial composition, height, etc. | dce50ce0-b269-476a-ae56-c64cd6eb9544 |
3y5vq4 | Why doesn't air separate into layers of each of its individual components based on density? | It would but air is far to volatile to stay separated. The sun heats the earth as the earth rotates on an axis as it orbits the sun. Everything is constantly changing as warm air rises creating winds that constantly mix the atmosphere. | cbb8df67-aced-4368-9c89-91a37ae13fd5 |
5wiytl | What is true socialism, and why do people think it will save America? | Literally nobody thinks it will save America. But certain socialist policies have proven highly effective in the past and in other first-world countries.
First, socialism is not a form of government in and of itself. Socialism is an economic model in which the government controls industries and exerts significant control over how revenues are shared. Practically no one, save perhaps North Korea, is 100% socialist. Every modern country has a mix of socialist and capitalist policies.
Second, it is entirely possible for a country to implement socialism and still fall into ruin through incompetence and mismanagement (see: Venezuela). When people talk about socialism in America, they normally mean socialized medicine and increased welfare (such as a minimum guaranteed income). The goal is to alleviate poverty and prevent wealth from accumulating in the hands of the very few.
That ends the unbiased explanation. My *personal assessment* is that the only rational course of action is to implement at least some socialist policies. Ruthless, cut-throat capitalism as the GOP supports it is untenable. It never has worked and it never will. The market will always require government intervention in order to make it function properly and safely. Certain functions, like medical care and education, have completely failed as capitalist institutions and need to be entirely recast as government-controlled operations. Social welfare programs, especially for the sick and the elderly, are vital to alleviating poverty. And as our planet runs out of fossil fuels and suffers the burdens of overpopulation, we will increasingly require rational government control over how resources are allocated. Again, I must insist: Not saying that all capitalism is evil, but certain functions will inevitably require significant government interventions that would qualify as "socialist." | 2b57c5df-037d-4a60-8e6b-f3bb27663814 |
79ire6 | How can the one dimensional form of Fourier's Law of Cooling and the thermal heat equation be used to model cooling | I expanded the mathematical procedure for the solution here:
_URL_0_
I also just realised that I called it Fourier's equation instead of Fourier's Law (ops).
Anyway, at the start I used a more complete form of Fourier's Law, though I kept it to the 1D version to not confuse you. A few lines down it gets to the form that your link started with, in case you don't care about it.
I also tagged on the separation of variables method in case you wanted, but used my preferred method of solving the ODE.
Any questions, feel free to ask. And if I made any mistakes, feel free to behead me.
Hope this helps < 3 | 2218da38-c5c1-4a3f-95bc-9e5ba3dccb48 |
28jp8h | Why can some people sing well, but others can't hit a note to save their life? | I would like to know why people always sound much better to themselves. I can *think* I'm singing along perfectly to a song, then hear a recording and it sounds like someone fisting a bull. | 741cb398-374e-4fea-bddf-5e410d803ea3 |
srsfg | Why my head gets foggy/buzzy for a few seconds after I have a really good stretch. | Sounds like you're talking about head rush (orthostatic hypotension). Basically, if you've been sitting in one location for a while and then move, the blood pressure in your head drops because gravity pulls a lot of blood into your legs and feet when you stand. This takes a moment to correct itself, and during this time you can lose your vision and balance. | 358c365c-e903-48c7-a751-43f3d7d44e3a |
2olnm3 | Why does it "smell" like winter or rain | Because the particles in the air change. spring smells like pollen. Winter cold will suppress a lot of lighter smells but you get smoke from chimneys. | f6bbbc8b-8bdd-4582-abca-5d621a58fb08 |
1n7u6q | Why is it harder and harder to get a full night sleep the older you get? | The cumulative effect of a life-time of alcohol, stimulants, sedentary life-style, overeating, rumination, rejection, heart break, loss, regret, humilation, meaninglessness, sadness, rage and the creeping fear of impending death. | f88331aa-526d-4e4a-8684-1022b7a7651c |
3dlmjh | Why don't we just use a different drug for lethal injection? | What ever drug you pick has to come from somewhere, and has to be medical grade. Interestingly enough most drug manufactures don't want the reputation as the company that makes the drugs that kill people. So what ever you pick is going to be stigmatized and therefor hard to get. Ok, so pick something else, well now you're back to square one, and repeat. | 24e0de59-7655-40f9-bf3d-38d785d5e561 |
41ehhm | What's currently happening with Michigan's water and why? | In Flint, MI (not the entire state) almost 2 years ago, the powers that be decided to stop using Lake Huron (via Detroit) as its water source and switch to using the Flint River, which to those who grew up in or around Flint is utterly laughable because it's a notoriously brown, murky, polluted mess, but I digress. The switch was done in order to cut budget costs, so to save a little money basically.
Soon after the switch, residents noticed their water looking and smelling funny and dirty, apparently due to the high amount of iron in water from the Flint River which makes this water 19 times more corrosive than the clean, clear miraculous inland ocean of tasty wonder that is Lake Huron's water. The State Department of Water Equality didn't add anti-corrosive agents to the water, so the water was eroding the pipes carrying the water to everyone. The lead poisoning experienced is a result of that, lead in the piping infrastructure being corroded by the shitty water. Basically, Flint city water will not be safe again until they complete replace the infrastructure that's been irreparably damaged.
Now, people are trying to get as much bottled water to Flint as possible, with grocery stores all over the state taking donations from cool people who buy extra packs of bottles to be sent to the city. But it's really only a drop in the bucket. People need/use an astonishing amount of water on a daily basis. Meanwhile, officials are telling people the water is safe, though to what degree I'm not 100%. (In other words, I'm not sure if the water has been OK-ed to drink or if they say it's just okay for bathing and washing dishes, etc.) I'm sure someone living in Flint now could elaborate more about their personal experiences.
[source with more info](_URL_0_) | 85f28679-c0c9-4f7c-8c3e-76bc57f00f46 |
2h6kal | How are vitamins and supplements, that the body makes naturally, man-made? | Firstly, your body doesn't naturally make vitamins, that's why you need to eat them.
Secondly, most of them are just extracted. Most of the things we grow or produce for food, of necessity, have those vitamins in. Sometimes it's easier to just take them out.
Thirdly, you can make almost all of them artificially, but its a different process for each of them. It's usually a complicated process requiring multiple steps and a deep knowledge of organic chemistry. | d36cfe46-5911-4d8e-946a-80f2a6a1921f |
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