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Why do people not like Final Fantasy X2?
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Because it was so different to FFX, and that there was absolutely no point in it. FFX was a complete story, and there was absolutely no reason to carry it on. It was a cash grab, and people knew it.
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Lots of people writing code, lots of artists making art, lots of designers thinking of what the game should be like, and lots of people to manage everything and make sure it all works, with tons of overlap.
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Why isn't the Kuiper Belt a shell like the Oort Cloud?
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Because it's affected by the gravity of planets. Orbits that are far out of the ecliptic plane are less stable the closer they are to planets. The real question is why the Oort Cloud *isn't* a ring, and the answer is because it's far enough away that the gravity of planets is irrelevant. Also, the Oort Cloud hasn't been directly observed, it's just inferred from the presence of long-period comets. We don't have a good idea of the distribution of Oort Cloud objects, although it's hypothesized to be more or less spheroidal.
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No, there's very little matter out there and it's *extremely* low density, and the Kuiper Belt can't really create large accumulations of bodies because the gravitational influence of Neptune will perturb orbits too much. The Kuiper Belt has really low density, but it's ultra-crowded compared to the vast empty expanse that is the Oort Cloud. It's never actually been directly observed, but its presence is inferred from the presence of long-period comets. These all have highly elliptical orbits, which prohibits them from ever clumping together. It's possible that there are objects out there with circular orbits, but probably not because there's nothing to circularize the orbits and thus any perturbations would not be easily corrected.
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Why can't terrible teachers be fired?
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Teacher here. Teachers can be "fired". I think there is a big misconception with how evaluations and tenure work in a public school setting. Speaking from my own experience, there has been a huge shift towards data collection and goal setting in a number of areas for educators. This in part is to ensure that students are getting the best education & making growth, but also to train teachers to become reflective in their teaching. That being said, if you are a good teacher chances are this is no problem. I'm sure there are teachers that sneak by, but in time their scores or demeanor will sell them out. So due to this process, it is possible for "terrible" or ineffective teachers to be fired. I believe these evaluation processes have been created in part to support a PS in letting go of teachers. Edit: I should note that my state does not have a strong teacher union.
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In my hometown every teacher is basically fired every year, and most are rehired in the fall. Seems really easy to fire them. Could you explain what you mean? Are you referring to tenure? Which is normally something that professors are given which is more of a long term contract to keep someone good around
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Who controls or designs all these Explain bots?
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The bots such as Joke explain bot are humans. Some, such as XKCD bot are actual bots programmed by an individual redditor. These bots are run and maintained by whoever runs the account.
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A bot is basically a program designed to talk to something, in this case, reddit. Reddit provides an [API](_URL_0_) (short for Application Program Interface) to programmers, who then use this API to write a program that interfaces with the reddit servers. An example would be: bot asks the reddit servers for new posts in a subreddit. The reddit servers respond with the data requested. The bot then does something with this data based upon what the programmers want it to do.
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If banning guns in the U.S. would create a huge black market for guns, why doesn't the UK seem to have this problem?
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The UK didn't have more guns than people when they banned guns. There's too many guns currently owned by private citizens and not registered with the government for a ban to be effective.
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Because there is no actual consensus that increasing gun control would reduce crime. The argument is that even if you restrict someone from being able to buy a gun, there are still ways to get them through the black market (quite easily through Darknet), and all it does is prevent people who might be using them legitimately from doing so.
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Why are steroids such a big problem in the MLB but not in every other professional sports league?
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Steroids are an issue in other sports as well but increased muscle mass isn't exactly favorable in soccer, basketball, and some positions in football. EPO is probably more common in more endurance/cardio based sports (and is definitely more common in the cycling/running world).
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With steroids and performance enhancing drugs there are a couple of concerns. The first is the long term harm caused by these drugs. We know caffeine pretty well and aren't worried about the long term effects. The second is we don't want sports to become an event where the person who makes the best steroids win. Caffeine is plentiful and well known enough so that it wouldn't be a secret weapon giving a team an edge.
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Why does bread harden if I don't cover it up
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The moisture in the bread evaporates into surrounding air if it's not sealed in by covering it. Unless you want a more detailed explanation of evaporation, it's just that. This comment will probably be deleted for not being long enough.
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It just dries out. Fresh bread has lots of moisture in it, but over time that moisture evaporates and the bread dries out. The fibres in the bread are soft and flexible when wet but hard and stiff when dry, so when the bread dries out it gets hard and brittle. It also gets lighter over time, for the same reason.
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how does new money make old money worth less?
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Money is an abstract representation of the value of the economy. The total amount of money in existence represents the total value of the economy. However, printing more more does not make the economy contain more value (there's still the same amount of "stuff"), so now you have a larger amount of money that's worth the same overall value as the old, smaller amount of money. Thus money must now be worth less.
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Inflation. Basically as more and more money is printed the money becomes less valuable. Since the money is less valuable the price of goods goes up. Imagine if I had a LeBron James rookie basketball card and there were only 10 in existence. That would be pretty valuable and you would probably pay a lot for it. Now imagine there were 100 in existence. You'd still probably pay a lot, but maybe not quite so much. Now imagine if there were 100,000,000 of them. Pretty much everyone who wanted one could have it, so you probably wouldn't pay much of anything for it. The same thing happens with money! As the supply of it increases the value of it goes down.
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How did an American plant - potato - became so important to European culture in less than 3 centuries?
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Before potatoes, Europe's caloric backbone was mostly wheat and other grains. However, the potato is relatively easier to plant and grow, requires less effort before it can be made edible and can feed more people. A single potato, cooked properly, can be a single man's lunch, and potato soup can feed many more people. With wheat you need to harvest it. process it and turn it into something edible like bread before it can be nourishing. Plus, if you have a potato field and a wheat field, you can plant more potatoes and feed more people than you would be able to do so with wheat.
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By the way, potatoes were also brought over from America, and so, were not grown in Ireland when whiskey was invented. Irish whiskey was originally ( and the best stuff still is) made from barley.
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Why do you produce a lot of saliva right before throwing up?
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Your body throws up to remove something bad out of your GI tract. Saliva prepares the mouth so that when vomit does come up, it can get the offending stuff out of the mouth with fewer particles getting stuck in there (and thus eventually coming back down).
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It's part of the reflex. The parotid gland squirts a load of watery (serous) saliva into your mouth. This not only lubricates the vomits' path outwards, it also helps to alleviate some of the acidity of your extremely acidic stomach acid to minimise damage. (Dentist answering here btw)
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mass curves space-time. to where does space-time curve into?
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Curves is another word for distort in this context. Imagine an elastic sheet. You can distort this sheet without changing the overall shape of the sheet by bunching it together at some points, for example. This will "curve" lines that were drawn on the sheet before the distortion without any parts of the sheet leaving the plane. The point is, the space-time does not need to curve into anything. It is just changes the local geometry.
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I believe this will answer your question. Another reddit user brilliantly explains space time. _URL_0_
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Why can't little speakers, like desktop computer speakers, reproduce low frequency sounds (20hz to 50hz), when headphones can?
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They can produce those frequencies, but they are very low volume. Maybe if you put them right next to your ear? ^.^
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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.
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What is a band and when does a band go from being a band to being an orchestra?
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Usually, a band does not have stringed instruments. A band would consist of brass instruments, like trumpets and trombones, and woodwind instruments such as flutes, saxophones and clarinets. Orchestras are primarily made up of stringed instruments, such as violin, viola and cello. Brass and woodwinds are also sometimes included in an orchestra.
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Hi! I'm sure there's more to be said on the topic, but I found two previous questions with some good answers: [When did the modern concept of the 'band' begin?](_URL_3_) [How did the "standard" rock ensemble come to include guitar(s), bass guitar, and drums, but not, other common instruments, such as piano/keyboard, brass instruments, or violin?](_URL_3_) There is also an [episode of the podcast](_URL_3_) that sheds some light on this!
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Why do humans grow older and older with each generation but cats and dogs don't even though they have a similar quality of life?
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If you are talking about life expectancies of dogs and cats, they have increased. Cats living out in the wild live 2-5 years on average (less for toms, more for queens). Cats in captivity live 12-16 years. As living conditions for animals and veterinary care have improved, live expectancies have improved as well. Wikipedia tells me the average life expectancy for people before modern medicine was around 30. Its now around 75 in developed countries. Thats an increase of 2.5 times. A feral cat that lives 4ish years in the wild may live 16 years in captivity. Thats an increase of 4x. We're doing a pretty good job with our pets :)
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No. For one, different dog breeds have drastically different lifespans. Also, the rate dogs mature at isn't linearly related to how humans mature. The "one dog year = 7 human years" is basically just an estimate.
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When burning a CD, does a 4x vs a 1x write speed change the quality of the end product? Is there anything different about a 4x vs any other speed other than, speed?
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I always thought this harkened back to the old days of CD burning, where buffer underruns occurred frequently. A buffer was created for the data being burned, and if the buffer emptied before the burning process is complete, it would fail. Burning at a slower speed (1x) meant you didn't empty the buffer and cause problems. However if your PC could handle it, you could attempt to burn at faster speeds (4x).
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Technically vinyl has slightly higher quality sound (more information) than a CD does, _for the first few times that you play it_. After that, the damage inflicted on it by the act of playing it reduces the quality to the same as or worse than a CD. Mostly, though, people who say this are just being pretentious.
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Does the Sun have poles?
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The sun rotates. So yeah the North and South pole are the points where the rotational axis coincides with the surface. Furthermore the sun has a magnetic field that has a significant dipole component. This dipole is aligned with the rotational axis, so the dipole poles are at the North and Southpole as well. The planets orbit roughly on the solar equatorial plane. The orbits are slightly inclined but only a few degrees. (Pluto has a much stronger inclination with ~17°, another factor that makes it different from the other planets.)
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No, because there are large "blobs" of air that are moving around the globe. There are a lot of forces involved in what creates these "blobs" of air but the important thing to understand is that even with constant sunlight the air above the north pole is colder than the air over North America. But that air over the north pole does not stay there, instead it moves, bringing cool air to different areas of the globe.
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How long could Olive oil be stored for in classical times?
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Olive oil, ancient or modern, has a shelf life of up to two years. This makes it an excellent trading good, especially by ship, and it was indeed transported far and wide in antiquity - first along Phoenician trade rutes and later along Greek.
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In ancient Greece very fine olive oil was a common prize. Olive oil is transported in vases and ... cups. The image of the two-handled cup is very similar to the olive oil urn. Everything else is just derived from that idea.
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If 0.1 amps can be lethal to a human, then why don't I die when touching the contacts of a phone battery, which is 3.8 V and 1500-3200 mA?
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When you touch the contacts of a battery, the current that flows through your body is governed by [Ohms law](_URL_0_). Because your body, and in particular your skin, has a high electrical resitance, the current that results from a 3.8 Volt potential difference is in the range of micro Amperes, which typically will not register with your nervous system. The number 1500-3200 that you mention is a measure for how much electrical energy can be stored in the battery, and it is usually expressed in milli Ampere hours (mAh). A capacity of 1500 mAh means that your battery is able to sustain a current of 1500 mA for the duration of one hour before it is depleted. Or 750 mA for a duration of two hours. Or 15 mA for a duration of 100 hours.
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Saying.1 amp will kill is like saying you could drown in 1in of water. Yes it's possible but there's probably more to the story than just the inch of water. I've been shocked and tripped the breaker. So that's around 20 amps passing thru a human. What really matters is the path the current takes through the body. If it misses your hear you'll be ok. And usually if it does get your heart, if you're healthy you'll be ok.
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The $750 billion that Republicans keep saying Obama cut from Medicare
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It's from Medicare Advantage, a private insurance option to Medicare. No money is cut from actual care to seniors, this money is merely the government saying that it's cutting back on how much it pays hospitals and doctors for seniors on Medicare Advantage (leaving them to pick up the difference). This is one of the concessions that doctors and hospitals agreed to during the healthcare debate. Paul Ryan liked the idea so much, he keeps the cuts in his budget proposal.
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Republicans put up a fight the last time the national debt limit had to be raised. It got down to the wire. The agreement said that taxes would go up and spending would go down (mostly hitting the military). With this agreement, the national debt limit was raised. If this agreement goes into effect as planned, it's suggested the proposed tax increases and spending cuts would slow the economy greatly, perhaps pushing it into another recession. But, Democrats don't want to cut spending outside of the military, and Republicans don't want to raise taxes. And nobody wants to touch the big spending items, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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How do we know that the Andromeda galaxy is moving towards us?
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Apparently, for a long time, we did not know. [According to wikipedia](_URL_1_), we tracked Andromeda's position using Hubble over an eight year period, by looking at how many pixels it drifted left or right in pictures looking at the same part of the sky. This gave us a reasonable estimate on its tangential velocity. We don't know it to high precision, but it's much smaller than the line-of-sight velocity, so there's no avoiding the collision. [Here's](_URL_0_) some more info!
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Everything isn't drifting apart. The universe is constantly expanding due to the metric expansion of space, and that does carry most objects further from each other, but that is not the only thing affecting objects. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are gravitationally bound to each other. Basically they're close enough that their mutual attraction due to gravity is pulling them together faster than the expansion of space is spreading them apart.
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Why is it that net neutrality seems to be threatened every year?
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Removing Net Neutrality would be very very profitable to a company like Comcast. Comcast is a business that has a lot of political influence (the current chairman of the FCC was a former lobbyist for the cable TV industry). They persuade politicians to frequently attempt to remove net neutrality.
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Net neutrality is the concept that every internet service provider *(ISP)* treats every piece of data equally. This means that the ISP doesn't slow packages down when they go to websites that aren't in their favor. This means that ISP A transfers the packages of its own customers just as reliably and just as fast as the packages coming from or going to ISP B. In a nutshell. Internet transfer is equal for everybody
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What is the deal with Dubai?
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Oil money. Then they leveraged that oil money for credit to build up Dubai, initiating a huge slew of construction projects (islands, manmade reefs, tallest building, giant indoor skiing mountain). Some of these building projects are so ostentatious and excessive that people took notice. They have been building a Las Vegas in the Middle East (although they'd compare themselves to Singapore -- they want to be the major trading port of the ME). However, with the recession that hit in 2007, they lost a ton of money and have been unable to sell a lot of what they built. They've had to take a huge ($60bil iirc) loan from their neighboring Emirate cities.
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Not everyone in Dubai is rich. There are far more millionaires in London or New York. The average income is high for a developing country but lower than the following countries, for example: * Australia * Austria * Canada * Netherlands * Germany * Sweden * USA Would you say everyone in those countries is "so rich"? I suppose they are on a global scale, if that's what you mean? If you are interested in how Dubai developed from almost nothing to a major city in such a short time, [this article does a good job of summarising it](_URL_0_). Why do you think everyone in Dubai is rich, out of curiosity?
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It's December 7th. Why isn't Google paying homage to the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor?
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Google doodles take a lot of effort to create, even the simplistic ones, and usually hope to serve the interests and audiences of multiple countries. So you have to understand even significant tragedies don't always get doodles (9/11 didn't get one this year either.) However, you're not wrong in that it's a little odd they don't have a footnote at the page bottom talking about it as they did with 9/11.
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Because Google doesn't inspire interesting debates and stupid jokes combined with a feeling of being part of a global community. Also, because of that sweet, sweet karma.
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Why kindle books are so expensive, often costing more than paperbacks?
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Amazon take a large percentage on ebook sales, so publishers charge higher so they make the same profit as they do on a paperback.
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I guess there is a still a huge demand for books. You also have to look at the author as well. They perhaps offer physical copy only hence the price.
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Why do currency values change constantly?
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Like everything else, currency responds to supply and demand.
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Traditional currencies trade based on economic factors about the country they are tied to. The factors to look for are well known and traders have a good idea how new data will affect the price. This is why currency values are relatively stable. Bitcoin's value is based almost entirely on speculation. Speculative asserts are more volatile. The same reason why a deck of playing cards will always cost you the same, but how much a friend wants for a Pokemon card can vary wildly.
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What does https everywhere do?
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The s in Https means secure, that means its encrypted before it goes over the network so that some one listening over the networks can not read it. when ever a password, credit card number, or any other private information you would not want someone to read should only be typed into a website with https
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It's pretty simple. HTTP is unencrypted, HTTPS is encrypted. If you're on an HTTP connection, then anyone who looks at your communication with the webserver can see the entire communication, plaintext. If you're on an HTTPS connection, then anyone who looks at your communication sees gibberish, because it's encrypted with SSL so that only the sender and recipient know what's in it. Most of the time, you shouldn't care. But whenever you're giving usernames or passwords, or performing some kind of transaction, you **must** be on an HTTPS connection, otherwise you're broadcasting your personal information for everyone to see.
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Is it possible that things can exceed the speed of light, but the limitation is our ability to observe these objects?
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> Do we think that the speed of light is a limitation because we simply cannot observe things faster? No. We think the speed of light in a vacuum is the limit because we have derived that result from another one, which is that this speed is a constant. What happens is that when we use that assumption (which is really an experimental result) to find out how relative speeds work, we get something called [Lorentz factor](_URL_0_), which doesn't make any sense at speeds higher than *c* (it becomes imaginary and has no physical interpretation as we currently understand it). This same factor appears in the energy of a body moving at speed *v*, and basically implies its energy becomes infinite as it approaches *c*. It's important to note that all these predictions have been experimentally confirmed, from the increase of energy to time dilation and length contraction, and so we are fairly certain of their validity. EDIT: replaced energy for mass, as per discussion below.
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The universe has been kind enough to inform us that an object with mass CAN handle just under light speed. On 15 October 91, the University of Utah's Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector at the Dugway Proving Ground observed what came to be known as the [Oh-My-God particle](_URL_0_). This particle had a speed of 0.9999999999999999999999951c when it collided with a more sluggish particle in the Earth's upper atmosphere and made its former presence known.
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Are the flakes in Goldschlager dangerous in any way?
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If you can drink enough goldschlager to where the gold becomes a problem you've got bigger problems.
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Well... take your pick. Gold melts at 1948 degrees Fahrenheit (1064 degrees Celsius). That's pretty hot. So it'll just melt your head, overheat your brain and kill you. Oh, also the gold is liquid which means its flowing into your eyeballs, and mouth (because you are screaming) and is going to melt its way through your body. Even more! The gold won't stay hot forever so eventually (assuming you survive the rest) it'll just harden and you'll suffocate. Its a pretty nasty way to die... couldn't have happened to a more deserving a-hole.
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Vonnegut says that the Texas Revolution was based on the idea that Mexico had outlawed slavery, which caused Texas to rebel. Any truth to that?
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Kind of a perfect storm.The Texans wanted slave ownership legal and church attendance voluntary; the Mexican government forbid slave ownership and had mandatory Catholic church membership. Not a few Texans had "absquatulated" from Mississippi and the South, losing their plantations and fleeing their debts when Jackson took down much of the US banking system, so there was an element that would have felt it had no where else to go. And of course General Santa Anna is generally reviled in Mexico today for his ability to make terrible decisions, and many were made in dealing with the Texans.
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[The Supreme Court ruled in 1869 that secession from the US is unconstitutional,](_URL_0_) but there was a phrase implying that a secession occurring though rebellion or with the permission of the other states might be legitimate (*"The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States."*) So basically, the only way that Texas could secede would be if the rest of the US allowed it, or if they went to war with the US and won.
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Why do some banks who provide investment options almost always need at least a $1000 investment?
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They want to profit from it, if they are paying someone $20/hr to setup your account and it takes 15 minutes then its $5 to set it up, all sorts of transactions cost some amount of money, the online stuff is pretty cheap (pennies) but if you talk to a live human it's expensive. Banks want to make money, and if you don't give them enough then they lose money by letting you use their services. $1000 is about where they can get $1-5/yr off your account which will probably cover most of your fees. But if you put in $5, and start depositing $10 checks via a teller they are going to lose money, it's costing them money (maybe $0.50-1) and they lose it if you withdrawal it before they make a return on it (which would be like 100 years).
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Banks invest in a lot of products in order to make money, and the benefit of online banks is that they don't have as many operating costs that normal banks do, which include opening branches, which involves a lot of real estate, utilities, and employee expenses. This allows them to pay depositors more. The online bank then takes your money and makes loans, usually charging ~4.5% for residential loans and even more for commercial loans. They can also buy investments, which can sometimes earn them upwards of 5%, and this requires even less operating costs since it's just the Treasurer buying a security (vs all the underwriters needed to make a loan). Of course, a bank's strategy is not flawless. Loans and investments can go bad, but the general idea is that as long as they're making more on their assets than the 1.5% they're paying you, they'll stay in business. Hope this helps.
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The Tea Party's Economic and Foreign policy
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Pure and simple, the Tea Party wants to reduce the size of the federal government, which they believe to have grown too big. In general, they would like to see taxes go down and spending go down as well. Relatedly, most Tea Partiers would like to see balanced budgets whereby government receipts match outlays (taxes = spending, more or less). Most stick to a strict reading of the Constitution with regards to different government programs. The 10th Amendment stipulates that no law shall be passed that isn't expressly allowed by the Constitution. Programs such as Obamacare, Social Security, etc. are therefore seen as un-Constitutional. This of course does not apply to all Tea Partiers. Apart from what I have mentioned above, there are no binding policies. There are pro-war Tea Partiers, and anti-war Tea Partiers; socially conservative and liberal Tea Partiers. TLDR Reduce Taxes, Reduce Spending, Balance the Budget
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The main position of each is that the other is wrong no mater what. Its like the difference between capitalism and communism. One is dog eat dog and the other is just the opposite. Neither is concerned with the fate of the common man, the USA or mankind in general. Both will lie, cheat and usurp the Constitution to further their own cause. George Washington warned against the two party system. And the Tea Party is only the fundamentalist part of the Republican party so they don't count as a third party. The green party is the same for the Democrats.
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Thomas Edward Lawrence (of Arabia) declined a knighthood offered to him by King George V in 1918 for his services in the Arab Revolt. Why? It is said that it was because Britain, in the end, betrayed the Arabs but is that the real reason or were there other motives?
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Just to follow up. What are the Arab views of T.E. Lawrence (both now and during Lawrence's era)?
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Most knights were either of low noble background, or knighted after making their fortunes. Most also had done governmental or military service to the crown; the modern practice of recognizing the arts with a knighthood simply didn't exist. Francis Drake, for instance, was already a successful privateer in the service of the crown before he became a knight. Walter Raleigh had first been introduced at court as a child, but wasn't knighted until after he helped suppress Irish uprisings against England. As an arbitrary example of a non-military knight made by Elizabeth I, Nicholas Mosley started off his career as a weaver of wool cloth, but was knighted only after serving as Lord Mayor of the City of London. Shakespeare was never in government, never a military officer, and poor. Knighting him wouldn't have made any sense to the monarchs of his day.
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How safe is handling a radioactive fragment of Chernobyl's nuclear fuel with bare hands? (video inside)
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The girl in the video posted a gamma ray spectrum of that very piece of fuel on _URL_0_, an amateur Fusion/radiation discussion board. [The thread and discussion can be found here.](_URL_1_) That individual piece wouldn't cause acute whole body harm, but I wouldn't want to sleep near it nor would I neglect to wash my hands after handling it. In the thread I linked, she shows the surface exposure rate at 82 mSv/hr (8.2 rem/hr), which is extraordinary for such a tiny piece (probably even higher due to the paralyzing effect it would have on the GM tube). The LD50 for radiation exposure is roughly 5 Sv (500 rem) delivered over a few hours. If it were a fist sized chunk, I'd want to be very far away. Edit: updated with more info
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The fuel for a nuclear weapon is not particularly radioactive. If it were, you'd have to replace the fuel every once in a while to be sure that you can still make it go supercritical. The fuel for nuclear weapons is chosen because it has high neutron-induced fission cross sections, which don't necessarily correlate with their activities. So the real radiation risk comes not from handling the fuel, but from being around it when it goes critical or supercritical. Because then, the neutron population multiplies exponentially (neutrons are a particularly nasty kind of radiation), and a lot of energy is released into the surroundings. If the weapons are handled properly, they should be kept subcritical at all times, until they're very rapidly made supercritical, and the explosion happens.
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How much oil is there?
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The other answers are talking mainly from the supply side, assuming that demand is not variable. It's important to remember that oil consumption is not a fixed number. When oil was cheap and plentiful decades ago, people made important decisions accordingly and made oil a major part of the economy. We now know that running an economy on oil can be expensive and harmful in many ways (climate change, spills, geopolitical problems, boom/bust cycle for producers, and the various health-related externalities of car-dependent cities). Consequently, much of the world is now trying to reduce their use of oil through better urban design, electric cars, and different sources of power generation (e.g., oil is basically no longer used for power generation in contiguous US).
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Don't forget that USA is also the world's #1 oil *consumer*, so we are not a big exporter of oil. The middle east nations, Russia, Venusuela, and a few others produce far more than they consume, so they are big oil *exporters*.
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What qualification did Spartan women needed for their name to be put on their grave?
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Spartan women were buried in unmarked graves unless they had died in childbirth. Men were buried in unmarked graves unless they had died in battle. Source: undergraduate Greek class, this book: _URL_0_
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They were, in that women were considered actual human beings, but on the other side of the coin they were trained from childhood that their only purpose in society was to birth male Spartan warriors for Spartan society. However, they were able to compete in sporting events and live in the same housing with/as men, own property, and name children. Another 'however', though, the tradition of Spartan marriage entailed a woman being kidnapped, forcefully married and raped by her husband, which is, to be 'fair', about the norm for the period, if slightly more brutal. Marriage in this way was not legal until the woman was in her 20's, however (many marriages in the period in other locales took place from the ages of 12-14). Women owned their own property and land and even owned their *husband's land and property* (!) when their husband was at war or otherwise predisposed. Additionally, women were taught how to read and perform arithmetic.
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Why it took 4 and a half hours (hyperbole) to get into a multiplayer game of Rainbow 6 Siege, but 4 and a half seconds to get into a Battlefront game, despite having more than 3x the players?
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Without having a large amount of technical developer knowledge, I would assume it has to do with either the servers, matchmaking system, or both
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A game will never see traffic like it does on its first day. Ever. That will always be the max. So it makes no sense for a company to buy a TON of servers for that first day that will then go to utter waste when they never see the traffic ever again. It would be like building a 10 lane highway because 1 day a year traffic will be insane, but for the rest of the year it only needs 2 lanes.
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Why is it that paper cups get mushy and starts to fall apart within an hour when holding cold fluids, but are perfectly okay with holding hot fluids like coffee indefinetly?
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Paper cups are coated with a waterproof layer on the inside, but not on the outside. When they contain hot drinks, the liquid is touching this impermeable barrier, so doesn't get the paper wet. However, a cold drink cools its container, making water vapour from the atmosphere condense on the outside - that's why your ice water glass "sweats" on a hot day: the water forming on the outside is not seeping through the glass, but rather condensing out of the air, just like when you breathe on a mirror and it fogs up. However, the paper cup only has a waterproof barrier on the inside. This condensation on the outside of the cup can soak into the paper and make it go soggy.
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it is because the item does not retain heat long enough. water will retain temperature the longest, followed by ceramic, then metal, then wood, then that really thin plastic they make tupperware out of. So liquid in a ceramic coffee cup will stay hotter than in a metal coffee cup, and both will stay hotter than in a wooden coffee cup. the thin plastic doesnt get hot enough to cause the water to evaporate off of it. (for a more detailed answer, look at the specific heat of materials, and this will give you an idea of how warm they stay. it essentially works the opposite way for cooling, so that is why i used the term temperature.)
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If I was to freeze water that contained a dangerous bacteria, such as a strain that caused dysentery, would it sterilize the water similar to boiling?
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Bacteria can form cysts or endospores to endure unfavourable environments until conditions improve. While the freezing would undoubtedly kill many of the bacteria, it is not guaranteed to. Even autoclave sterilizers that use 121 degree celsius heat to kill bacteria are not 100% efficient in doing so, and while not exactly the same as in the situation you described, bacteria is routinely frozen in glycerin solutions and rethawed in the lab.
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Freezing doesn't sterilize food. You can store bacterial colonies in -80 deg C freezers for years and they come out okay. You can also flash freeze bacteria using LN2 to create something similar to 'dippin dots' which will preserve them. Some sort of media might be used, but I think the general concept holds. Freezing slows them down, but doesn't sterilize. Food can be preserved many ways, by salting it, irradiating it, heating it, exposure to acids or bases (think pickling), or fermenting it to create alcohol. Also if food is super rotten cooking it may not help you at all, if something toxic has already been produced by bacteria. edit: my source is a close friend who works in the bacterial cultures industry. *holy crap, easily my highest rated anything ever!*
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Why doesn't North America have any types of Ape or monkey?
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Technically, Central America is part of North America. They have quite a few monkey species. Additionally, Trinidad, an island of the Caribbean has two types of native monkeys. I have no answer for your question regarding Mexico, U.S.A and Canada.
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It is worth noting that generally speaking, modern primates do not inhabit much of the northern hemisphere (Japanese Macaques are a notable exception), it is generally accepted that early primates were adapted to an arboreal environment, more suited to SA, Africa, and South Asia, and less suited for NA, Europe, and North Asia. _URL_0_ I know this doesn't really answer your question, but climate and habitat play a larger role in primate distribution.
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If there is always a rational number between two real numbers, why is Q countable while R is not?
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I think your confusion arises because you are misinterpreting the statement. There's not just *a* rational number between two real numbers, there's a countably infinite number of rationals between them. Similarly, between any two rational numbers, there's an uncountable infinite number of reals between them. So the statement has really nothing to do with the countability or otherwise of the two sets.
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A set S is dense in R if every real interval with length greater than 0 contains some element of S. A set S is dense in R if given a real number r and e > 0 there is some element s in S so that |s - r| < e A set S is dense in R if between any two real numbers a and b (a < b) there is some element s in S so that a < = s < = b There are many other ways to thing about it, and they are all the same. The rationals are dense in R, and so are the irrationals. Interesting that the rationals are dense even though they are countable. So between every pair of real numbers there is a rational, but there are uncountable reals... seems freaky.
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Why can we clone plants but not humans?
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Plants can undergo vegetative growth, which is a type of asexual reproduction. What you do is take a "cutting" (it's basically a slice from a stem) and plant it, and it will grow a new plant that has the exact same genetic makeup. It's very easy to clone a plant (you can do it in your own home with the right supplies). Humans cannot undergo vegetative growth, so cloning them is significantly more difficult, it requires a lab and specialized lab equipment, along with all the ethical issues that accompany it. If humans could undergo vegetative growth, we would not only be able to regrow our limbs, but you could also cut off part of your skin and grow a new human.
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Can you link anything where people have said that it is since I'm hard pressed to think of a reason on my own? I know some people have issues with how cloning may affect a species' genetic diversity, and hence its ability to survive (or its ability to be eaten safely), but I've never heard anyone say that cloning animals itself is inherently wrong.
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Why does milk go so well with eating baked goods? (Cookies, pie, cake, etc.)
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Because your body LOVES sugars (because survival) and fats (like whats in the milk and the butter used to make the pastry)
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It's to do with the viscosity and flavour. Full fat milk especially is slightly thicker than water and most juices so it tends to linger in the mouth a little longer giving more time for it to unstick your mouth with peanut butter. And secondly because milk is dairy, and in turn goes well with other dairy products!
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Why does it hurt in another, seemingly unrelated location when I scratch/pick at certain parts of my skin?
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I get this as well. Scratch an itch in one place and sometimes get a associated sort of 'pinch' at some other location. I cant reliably reproduce it though.
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scabs are more rigid than the surrounding tissue. in the course of normal movements this causes the scab to irritate the skin nearby. scratching aleviates that sensation. additionally, scabs dont have nerves. picking at them stimulates the nerves underneath which removes the alien sensation of a "dead" spot where the scab is. if you've ever had some part of your body numbed, you'll find yourself poking at it for much the same reason. much to the chagrin to dentists everywhere.
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What is SysKey, and what is it used for?
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Syskey is a program found on version of Windows prior to Windows 10. Its function is to encrypt something called the *SAM* (Security Account Manager) *database.* This database stores hashes of user passwords, and is used to authenticate users when they supply their password. Encrypting the database provides a measure of boot-time security, preventing login unless the syskey password is provided. It was discontinued in Windows 10 due to outdated cryptography. Where you probably heard of it is in connection to tech support scams, which maliciously use syskey to lock users out of their machine unless they pay a ransom.
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It's called a [philtrum](_URL_0_) and it's vestigial, meaning it serves no purpose but used to. Like an appendix. As for what it used to do, I don't know.
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How much (and what type of) weaponry did the US supply to Nazi Germany?
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Why do you believe that the Nazi Germany war machine was at least partially based on weaponry supplied from the US ? As far as I am aware all the main weapons used in WW2 by the germans (ships, airplanes, tanks, guns, small arms) where designed and built by germans in Germany. This equipment was battle tested in the spanish civil war. The main exceptions were the designs and factories that were acquired in Czechoslovakia after the annexion in 38/39, before the start of WW2. The Skoda plants did produce quit a lot of the tanks used by Germany.
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You might be interested in past posts on this topic: * [_How much German equipment was still in use after WW2?_](_URL_1_) ^(29 Jul 2014 | 13 comments) ^(A [deleted] user gives a detailed rundown of the fate of various German weapons after the war.) * [_The availability of surplus weapons immediately following Would War II._](_URL_0_) ^(16 Jan 2013 | 11 comments) ^(/u/vonadler gives a breakdown for all sides, with some notes on Germany.) If you have followup questions, feel free to comment with them directed towards specific users using username mentions.
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With the advent of predictive statisticians like Nate Silver, have we achieved psychohistory?
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No. Psychohistory was about predicting the future. Nate Silver just came up with a way to do better analysis of data for a single election. He didn't actually predict the future in a meaningful sense, like psychohistory, he predicted the results of a single election with polling data. Psychohistory is a fake science that's far more fake than it is science. It made for a good story, but it certainly isn't reality.
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hi! you might find this roundtable discussion from a few weeks ago of interest * [FEATURE Round-Table | Psychology and History](_URL_0_)
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What Is vacuum energy?
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Vacuum energy is a nonzero energy density that is present in the "vacuum state" (aka ground state) of one or more fields. It is so named because typically the vacuum state has zero particles in it, so the nonzero energy density belongs to the field itself and not any particle. Hope that helps.
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In quantum mechanics, "the vacuum" is just a state where no particles are present. For example, for the electromagnetic field, the vacuum is just a state with no photons in it. For the Dirac field, it's the state with no electrons or positrons in it. And so on. Although despite the fact that there are no particles in the vacuum state, there can still be energy in the vacuum state. It's called [zero-point energy](_URL_0_).
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Why do courtrooms still use sketches or paintings to depict someone dealing with a court case instead of an actual picture?
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In the US some states prohibit cameras to protect the dignity of the court. It's out of concern that with cameras/videos, the court will become a media circus and be less effective at delivering justice. In my state it's up to the judge to allow cameras, and generally cameras hide faces of jurors/victims/witnesses.
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No, it is nowhere near as effective as it is in the movies. Any enhancement is little different from digital painting, with a person (or in some cases computer) essentially guessing what should be there. It would in no way be admissible in court.
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When did the First Lady become a position of power/visibility/activism/politics?
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It wasn't a slow transition, Eleanor Roosevelt took it on herself to be active, she campaigned for human rights, gave press conferences, wrote newspaper columns, spoke out when she disagreed with the government, even with her husband... she forged the modern role of 'first lady' for herself and advanced the roles for women in politics in a much greater sense whilst she was at it. Her activities were very controversial during her life time, she was a great promoter of racial and gender equality and wasn't shy in using her position and influence, the previous President's wives had been primarily background figures, but Eleanor walked herself in to the spotlight.
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She doesn't have a direct legal role. But by tradition for about the last century, the First Lady typically takes up some cause of her own, using the publicity and clout of the White House to push whatever agenda she's picked. Usually it's something to do with women or families. Nancy Reagan championed a "just say no" anti-drug campaign. Hillary Clinton (a somewhat unconventional first lady) attempted to pass a healthcare bill. Laura Bush focused on education. Michelle Obama has focused on promoting exercise and diet among kids.
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Where does the sand in deserts come from?
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I'm studying for my finals, so I think I can answer this roughly. Apologies for occasional grammar mistakes, German here. When we are talking about 'hot', 'dry' deserts, like the Sahara, Gobi or Atacama, about 80% of the desert are made of rocks, stones and other bigger grains. (Those kind of deserts are called Hamada, Serir or Reg.) The basic mechanism is as follows: Because of the absence of water, physical erosion is dominant in these regions; mostly aeolian erosion (by wind). The wind carries the smallest, lightest grains of those deserts and those particles land somewhere else on the ground - forming sand deserts (Erg). The sand is formed by other types of erosion, e.g. by splitting bigger stones with the huge temperature differences between day and night. (Yes, you can die of hypothermia in a desert) Hope that I could help you! Edit: Accidentally some words
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The sand comes from bigger stones. The wind and temperature changes, as long as time passes, destroy the big stones and they become sand. What's more, if you stay a night in a desert (you know, temperatures are pretty lower at the night in a desert) you can hear the little stones crushing.
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My understanding is that we can't see any stars older than ~13 billion years because of the speed of light and rate at which our universe expands. Is it possible that a satellite like Voyager 1 can detect older (farther?) stars and then transmit the information back to us?
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Imagine if we sent a space probe 1 light year away. This probe would be able to see things that are one light year further away from us then we could see, because the light from those start would reach it 1 year before it reached us, but the probe can only send signals back at the speed of light, so by the time we get signals from the probe about the more distant stars, the light from those stars would already have reached us, providing no benefit.
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Yes. If you look at stars that are 10 light years away, you see them as they were ten years ago. In everyday life, the effect is less apparent: For every metre that an object is away, it takes about 3 nanoseconds for the light to reach you. However, I would estimate (extremely roughly, based off movies being shown at less than 1000Hz) that human perception is insufficient to notice light-speed time lags below even 1000km (3 light-milliseconds).
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Why is it easy to count backwards, but difficult to say the alphabet backwards?
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It's all about practice. You've practiced saying the alphabet numerous times forwards but rarely if ever backward. And it's only in saying the alphabet that the order typically is thought of. Numbers are easier in that most people practice both addition and subtraction and thus have to learn about the number line and that the direction can go either way. And there are a number of things that have "countdowns" which even kids learn, reinforcing the backwards counting. Also, there are fundamentally only ten digits that you need to remember to count backward with other values simply being extensions of those ten digits compared to 26 letters in the English alphabet. However, with practice, you can say the alphabet backward as easily as forward. I learned to sing it backwards to entertain kids (they think it's exceedingly silly) and now can do it with a lot less thought.
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Because the arrangement of the alphabet is ultimately arbitrary but the arrangement of numbers is not; because of the fact that the arrangement of numbers is meaningful (for example, you probably do subtraction all the time even without noticing) you get good at it; but because you very infrequently need to reverse the (arbitrary) order of the alphabet, you don't get good at it.
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Where is the difference between Animism and Theism?
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Monotheists (mono = 1) believe in 1 god-spirit animating or standing apart from the universe. Examples: Christianity, Islam, Judaism. Polytheists (poly = many) believe in many gods animating the universe's events. Examples: Hinduism, some variants of Christianity where Mary and other saints are venerated as demigods, Old Greek/Norse/Egyptian mythologies, and old Judaism (pre-monotheism) which saw their god Yahweh as a rival to other civilizations' gods. Animists don't have a refined concept of "gods", but believe there are spirits behind anything that can't be simply explained (including: the wind, rivers, mountains, big animals, etcetera). Examples: most native/tribal belief systems The difference between Animism, Polytheism, and Monotheism is basically one of degree and refinement. The more civilized and technologically advanced a society is, the less spirits or gods seem necessary to explain things, and so the fewer them there will be in people's belief systems
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Antisemitism encompasses both hatred for the race AND the religion of the Jewish people. It is both a form of religious intolerance and a form of racism. To my knowledge, it doesn't have any widespread parallels, so it gets its own name.
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If I were to hypothetically remove all the water from the Mariana Trench, would the high pressure still be there if I was standing at the bottom?
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I assume you mean that if all water were gone in the trench and replaced by air? In that case, you would not have a noticeable pressure on you. Air weighs far, far less than water. You would not have a problem being in the bottom with just air above you.
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Water pressure increases roughly 1 atmosphere per 10 metres depth. The Mariana Trench is 10,911 metres deep which would give around 1100 atmospheres. Water compressibility is around 46 x 10^-6 per atmosphere so that would suggest something around 5% volume reduction at that depth. I'm ignoring the fact that the compression will increase the density at depth as will salinity, so that would give a higher pressure increase per metre.
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What causes people to black out(alcohol induced) and why does it typically happen more often after the first occurrence?
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The part of your brain responsible for making and storing short-term memory shuts down with a high enough dose of alcohol. The chemicals your brain uses for its normal functions get bumped out by alcohol (which explains most the good/bad effects of drinking.) Unless or until someone wants to contradict, I would imagine that blackouts become worse because frequent, heavy consumption of alcohol can cause semi or even permanent change in how your brain works. As a recovering alcoholic I can attest to that; whether or not that explains the change in frequency is just my guess.
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Blackouts happens because alcohol affects the hippocampus (the memory part of our brain.) Blackouts usually happens when you consume alcohol very quickly like shots. The hippocampus essentially shuts down during a blackout and no longer creates memories. Think of it like a tivo. Your tv shows still runs as time goes by, but the recording has stopped.
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Why is it hard for me to take a pee when someone is near ?
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Your animal instinct regards urination as a vulnerable situation and is trained not to submit yourself while others are around.
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Because if you do pee your pants, chances are both your "pants" and your "pants" are peed.
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Why is there so much hate for Windows 8?
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A few reasons: * Because it is different. * Because it is made by Microsoft. Even Windows 7 was criticized when it came out (though not as bad as Windows 8 has been) and it turned out to be considered by many the best OS Microsoft has ever made. * Because it highlights the move from desktop to tablet computing. Windows 8 is a transitory product which is attempting to work well in both the desktop and tablet environments. Products that try to do two things at the same time often end up not doing either of them very well. Example: "desktop mode" in Windows 8 is lacking a Start button and instead requires the user to go over to the "metro" tablet interface to select programs to load. edit: spelling
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Windows 8 has a user interface optimized for tablets. For most of the windows users, who are using pcs and not tablets, this is pretty annoying, because they are used to a more windows 7 like user interface.
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In a keynote presentation, a presenter claimed that the Japanese claimed 2 Alaskan Islands during WWII. Is this true? What was the United States' response and the response of the international community? Did any fighting take place in Alaska?
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Yes, the Aleutian Campaign was real... Japanese Forces occupied the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska in June 1942. Kiska was occupied on 6 JUne, and Attu on 7 June. US (and some Canadian) forces began an attempt to dislodge them in May-August 1943. As part of this attack, the Japanese sent a Naval Task Force including two aircraft carriers into the Aleutian Chain and bombed the US Naval Base at Dutch Harbor. The Japanese successfully evacuated Kiska, and were fought to eliminate them from Attu, where one of the largest "Banzai" charges of the war took place. The Aleutian Campaign is little known, and was overshadowed in public and military recognition by the Battle of Guadalcanal, which occurred simultaneously, but it was definitely combat-- in Rugged and miserable terrain, with inadequate equipment and clothing. For more information on this part of WW2, I strongly recommend Brian Garfield's "The Thousand Mile War".
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Logistics. Japan did a very good job planning out its initial stages of attack, but its logistics were very limited. I suggest that you read over the following site. It describes the difficulties that Japan would have had in attempting to take Hawaii, but the arguments work well for Australia also. _URL_6_ If you aren't aware of it, do visit the rest of the site at _URL_7_ . The amount of information there on the IJN is simply mind blowing. For example, you can find the TRoMs (Tabular Records of Movement) of individual ships (even oilers) there, along with much much more information.
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Why are there no common words representing times between a second and a minute?
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For the same reason that although there is a word for "decimeter" it's so rarely used that my phone didn't have it in its dictionary. It's an amount of time that you just don't need to keep track of enough that you need another word for it. Millimeters are pretty important, they're tiny. Centimeters are also important. Meters, yeah. Kilometres, yeah. But one tenth of a meter? Whatever, centimeters are close enough. Ten meter units? Just use meters until you get to a kilometer. Remember also that those prefixes are metric, and time is not. Attaching those prefixes would be awkward. Yes, we could certainly make up others, but would it really save you time to say "three and a half decaseconds" or "five and five-sixths deciminutes" instead of just "thirty five seconds"? It's not efficient, so it isn't used, so it stays out of the language.
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People in the past liked the numbers twelve and sixty. Twelve hours in the day, twelve hours at night, and each hour to be made of sixty minutes and each minute to be made of sixty seconds. Then we spent the next two thousand years trying to make that concept more precise. _URL_0_
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Why are tendons easier to tear after recovery from an injury, rather than harder to tear?
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One reason in addition to those already mentioned is the way that tendons attach muscle to bone. Where the tendons interface with muscle and bone, there is usually not a clear boundary; there is a region where those two tissue types blend with each other in a complex way. If the tendon tears away from the bone during injury, which happens really often when certain types of tendons are injured, this interface can't be healed back to the way it was. The tendon can be re-attached surgically, but that complex interface can't be duplicated. Instead of regrowing the original tendon, scar tissue forms in that area, which is less flexible and weaker than the original tissue. This scar tissue is more likely to snap than to bear the same range of motion and force that the original tissue could stand.
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It prevents muscles from outgrowing other connective tissue. If your muscles grow non-stop, but your tendons don't your muscles will easily tear your tendons. You would constantly be injured. _URL_0_
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What is it about a curing process of meat, drying of fruit etc. that makes the food last longer and allow you to store it unrefrigerated?
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Microbes and fungus rely on the moisture present in their food to survive. Lower that moisture, and you lower then number of rot causing microbes and fungus spores the food can support this extending the shelf life of the food.
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Because they have (if performed correctly) been sterilized and do not contain spoiling bacteria. Due to the impermeable packaging, they also have no risk of being exposed to bacteria. That's not to say chemical degradation of the food isn't possible, but that's mostly just going to make it taste bland and/or nasty, rather than rancid or harm you.
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Insurance FOR the insurance companies
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Insurance companies physical assets (buildings and plant) are insured just like anything else. With an insurer. Insurers products are also insured. (In this case the insurance policies) this is known as "re-insurance" Basically the insurance company will have 10 houses insured in a house for 100k each. If one burns down they're on the hook for 100k. If all of them down, then they are on the hook for 1 million. To avoid having a 1 million liability over there head, they will go to a reinsurer who only insurers other insurers and take out a policy for 1 million dollars (in this case the loss would be having to pay a million dollars in claims) and they will set the deductible at 500k. So if all 10 burn down the insurance company will pay 100k times 10, and then be paid 500k from their reinsurer.
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They profit off of people not needing a payout. Most people pay money and never use the insurance. Only a few people need a payout, and in that case, they often have to pay a fee (a deductible) to get the payout.
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Why are V8 Engines so sought after and quintessential? Are they better in some ways than V10s, etc or is it just popular culture?
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The cylinder configuration has a huge impact on the engine sound. For example, Harley engines would sound completely different without their characteristic V2 engines with a wide angle between the two. Likewise, 3 cylinder motors tend to sound a lot rougher than 4 cylinder motors - you will immediately notice if you know what to listen for. So if you make a V10 or V6 engine, it'll probably sound a lot different than a V8 engine of equal displacement. Another thing is the geometry of the motor. Putting more cylinders in a row makes the engine longer, which makes it more difficult to place neatly in the hood. They also require a longer crank shaft, which makes it more difficult to balance, and therefore more expensive.
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I mean, they would only theoretically need to share a crankshaft. The crankshaft is basically what the pistons "push" against to rotate the flywheel that connects to the transmission. A V8 engine is sometimes thought of as simply 2 inline 4 cylinder engines sharing a crankshaft. Volkswagen once designed a W16 Engine that was basically 2 V8s that shared a crankshaft. You can just use the same principle for more engines. Its not really thought of as using multiple engines basically, just more pistons.
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Can it be said that the Chinese Communist movement actually started in 1850 with Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion instead of with the Chinese Civil War? Making Mao's reign merely a stage of communism in China akin to Khrushchev's tenancy in the USSR was just one stage of many in Communist Russia.
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Completely crazy. Marxism was pretty alien to China until after the Russian Revolution. The CCP wasn't even founded until 1921. The rebellions and revolutions you mentioned have their own, Chinese historical context which can be traced back to at least the 18th century White Lotus Rebellions at the end of the Qianlong reign. That is, needless to say, well before Marx. If you want to understand Chinese 19th century rebellions the place to start is Philip Kuhn's (sadly just died) *Rebellion and its Enemies.* You can also read Jonathan Spence's *The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.*
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Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion in China (1850-1864), believed himself to be the son of God and younger brother of Jesus Christ. Hong began preaching his interpretation of Christianity in the 1840s, and by 1850, had 10,000 to 30,000 followers. In 1851, Hong established a rebel kingdom, which, at its height, contained much of southern China, with about 30 million people. However, the Taiping rebellion drew much more support from widespread social, economic and political unrest among the lower classes than from a devotion to Hong's religion.
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When a stock like BYND has a 600% IPO where exactly does that money go and how can the company use it? What happens when the stock crashes and the value is reversed?
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An IPO is an Initial Public Offering, meaning that this is the first time that shares are being offered to the public on the market. When people buy shares during an IPO, they are buying them from the company and the company is taking the money. They can do whatever they like with the money. That was the point of the IPO, to raise money. After the IPO, all of those shares are now going to be traded between investors, so the money will no longer be going to the company, just between whoever is buying and selling the shares on the market, unless the company releases and sells more shares itself.
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More the the point, corporations are their own legal entity and often some of the stocks are owned by the company itself and not assigned to anyone. So Leroy, who controls the company, can decide to sell some of the stocks owned by the company and put the money back into the company. That's how company make money on IPO. It all makes a lot more sense once Leroy not longer control the company and/or there are more investors owners involved. Then the fact that management can decide to sell some of the stocks owned by the company is pretty straightforward. Hope this helps!
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Does lightning cause a power surge or does re-powering something cause the power surge?
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Where the Lightning hits there may be a spike. At the same time breakers will momentarily open to prevent it from spreading to other parts of the grid then will reclose.
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Most modern power grids have backups, redundancies, and protections to prevent the total loss of power. As long as a power line isn't knocked out completely, or the power station or transformers don't blow, any interruption in power cause by a nearby lightning strike or a shaky pole.will be temporary.
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Do cases of extraordinary animal intelligence such as Alex the Parrot show how intelligent that species is, or are there "geniuses" within the species making them outliers?
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Alex the Parrot, and Koko the Gorilla received specialized training from experts in psychology to reach their unusual performance levels, so it would be a mistake to assume that their prowess is 'ordinary' to the species, but it would also be a mistake to assume that they were radically different in basic intellect. It's an instance of the old 'Nature vs Nurture' debate. I would hold that it's an indication of the existence of native talent. The case if the 'Wolf Boy' demonstrated that without nurture during development, a Human does not develop 'normal' intellectual skills.
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Evolution isn't about being smarter or more "advanced". It doesn't matter how smart a deer is if it can't outrun a wolf. Evolution, pure and simple, is about the propagation of genes (reproduction). Ants are highly successful, but they are almost pure instinct. Dolphins are pretty smart, but they're endangered. So, for most species being smart isn't a huge advantage. It's better for a rabbit to use its energy producing strong leg muscles than to make a big brain. A fox should be smarter than a rabbit, but it's still more important to be faster than the rabbit and have sharp teeth. Humans are the first species to turn high intelligence into a huge advantage. This is mostly because of the way the world was in human evolution. Humans were small and weak compared to most animals, so the ONLY way to kill them was to outsmart them and use tools. If humans had razor-sharp claws and could run 50 mph, you can bet we wouldn't be anywhere near as intelligent as we are now.
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the physics of how a bong works?
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When you breath in, you lower the pressure above the water - just like sucking on a straw. So the water sort of gets sucked up a tiny bit, but, the tube that goes up to the bowl provides a much lighter option to suck up. Instead of picking up the heavy water and moving it up the bong, the vacuum picks up the much lighter smoke and air. So then those smoke bubbles come through the water and fill the chamber. When you take your finger off the carb, you provide another shortcut so that instead of sucking up water or the smoke from the bowl, you suck up the air/smoke in the bong. The smoke and the water don't really mix, it is just air bubbles in the water that happen to be filled with smoke. There is certainly some mixing - otherwise bong water wouldn't be so stinky - but not much I think.
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Because they're not "bongs". They're "tobacco water pipes".
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Why weren't cities built closer to the sea?
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It seems like [Bruges](_URL_1_) was built more inland for the same reason that [Amsterdam] (_URL_0_) was built inland with an impressive canal system. The land there is low lying, and thus more susceptible to flooding. The canals are probably easier to control the water levels further inland.
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Do we know if there was a significant difference between the sea walls and the "land walls" (the walls facing the land, rather than defending against ships)?
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why does spicy food feel like it cleans out our sinuous'?
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"Spicy" is interpreted by your body as "mildly irritating." So your body produces tears and mucus to coat your vulnerable parts (inside you nose and in your eyes) and flush out the irritating stuff. When your body makes more mucus, your nose runs (out, or down your throat) and you might feel your sinuses clear out.
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Spicy foods irritate the mucus membranes in your head and lungs. Your body reacts to this by making you create mucus, to coat and protect you from whatever may be causing the irritation. You also tear to protect your eyes, which drains into your nose, exacerbating your snot nose. You can also sweat because your body thinks it's overheating, and is trying to cool itself down. I always put some hot sauce on my food and over time you gain a sort of resistance. Can be a fun way to win bets.
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Why did mercenaries, which appeared ubiquitous in the Middle Ages and especially the Renaissance seem to disappear in the 1600s and only reappear fairly recently?
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There was an article about the economics of mercenaries that I'll sum up; I wish I could find the thread on here that first linked this article, but it eludes me for now. _URL_0_ The thrust of the article is that mercenaries prosper when skill is more important than mass, and when states aren't developed the economy of scale where it's cheaper to field a larger number of citizen-soldiers than a mercenary company. Furthermore, mercenaries face principal-agent conflict with their employer; they want the war to continue as long as possible with the least danger to themselves, while the employer wants it to be over quickly, with the safety of the mercenaries being unimportant as long as the goal is met.
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There are a lot of questions here, and it will vary by Company and period. However, the companies generally moved around wherever they could get paid. The late middle ages saw endless war between the Italian city-states, France, the HRE, and others. They often lived like an invading army, threatening cities, taking hostages and pillaging the country side. Accordingly local rulers were often hostile to these armies. Some companies were actually excommunicated by the pope and had a **crusade** called against them after they threatened Avignon. I don't have time type out all the details here, but I highly recommend the book "Medieval Mercenaries" By Kenneth Fowler. It gives a chronological account of the life and exploits of the great Medieval Free Companies.
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How iPhones detect if a charger is genuine or not
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I lightning cable is actually fairly advanced for a cable. It has a small microprocessor in it that can detect which was it was inserted and then reassign the pins to their correct function. The iPhone can also communicate with this processor and verify it is genuine.
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There's a very small IC inside the lightning connector that identifies the cable/cord/whatever. You can only get them if you're part of the "Made for iPhone/iPod" hardware developer program. That's why you'll get messages like "This cable isn't certified" if you use cheap Chinese knockoff lightning charging cables.
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What is the Glycemic Index?
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Talking out of my pancreas here but let's say pure refined sugar is 100 on the glycemic index while something like an apple is 20. The apple has fiber that slows the digestion of the carbohydrates (glucose) . That slow down from the fiber let's your body use the glucose without spiking your blood sugar levels. Oh and something about insulin.
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It would go up just like it would when you consume any food item, all be it slightly higher as it has more easily accessed glucose. This part is no different than how a non-diabetic responds. If their medication is properly balanced they should have no major issue processing the sugar from the meal.
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When boiling water how do air bubbles get on the bottom of the pot.
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The water that is hottest at the bottom of the pot turns to water vapor and floats to the surface of the liquid water and releases into the air at the surface. It isn't air at all it's vapor.
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Water molecules are bouncing around with enough energy that they can move past each other. This is why it is liquid. Air molecules are bouncing around with enough energy that they can detach from each other. This is a gas. The air molecules bouncing around on top of the water molecules puts enough pressure on the water molecules that they cant escape the surface. In a vacuum this pressure does not exist, so the water molecules escape the liquid surface. This is boiling. If you want water to boil in air, then you need to add energy (heat) to the water to give the molecules enough bounce to push through the air.
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If my fingerprints (used to identify me with Android pay) get stolen (from my phone memory), does it mean my fingerprints are now compromised forever (can't change them) as a secured authentication method?
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Fingerprint data is stored in a very specific way. It's stored in such a way it cannot be got from the phone in an unencrypted way and as such you can't take it from the phone. This sums it up. Google has made a noteworthy step in the right direction by moving all print data manipulation to the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and providing strict guidelines for fingerprint data storage that manufacturers must follow. 1- All fingerprint data manipulation is performed within TEE 2- All fingerprint data must be secured within sensor hardware or trusted memory so that images of your fingerprint are inaccessible 3- Fingerprint data can be stored on the file system only in encrypted form, regardless of whether the file system itself is encrypted or not 4- Removal of the user must result in removal of the user's existing fingerprint data 5- Root access must not compromise fingerprint data
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It's been a few years since my forensic training so bear with me. The variance between fingerprints appears on a fetus during the second and third month of pregnancy. The exact cause is still up for debate but the most prevalent theory is the movement of embryotic fluid affects how the skin cells in your hands and feet align. An interesting note is that fingerprint shape is completely unaffected by your DNA. For example monozygotic twins will still have different fingerprints.
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why does squinting make your vision better when you’re near-sighted?
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The reason things are blurry is because light is scattering onto your retina when it passes through your lens. Normally your lens is supposed to bend in order to focus the light so you get a clear image. Squinting lets less light into your eye, therefore less light will be scattered, and the resulting image will be less blurry.
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Diffraction. Light gets scattered to the point that it hits your eyes from more directions. When it's clear and sunny most of the light that makes you squint is from the direction of the sun.
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Why has it been so hard for President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay?
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He is the President. He is not Congress. Most of the members of Congress do not want Guantanamo Bay closed. That is the simple answer. But this is ELI5. Lets get broader. Guantanamo Bay is a United States base leased from the Cuban Government for, I believe, 99 years. That government is long since vanished. But the USA maintains it still has the right to the base until the lease expires. I think the present Cuban government would like it back, or has wanted it back. What you are really referring to are the detention facilities. Since Guantanamo Bay is not actually on US soil the legal experts agree that some rules do not apply. So anyone the US wanted detained after 9/11/01 in the custody of US armed forces, (I am leaving out the CIA and its hidden prisons), is moved there. There are some bad folks there, dangerous to us. So going back to what I said. The President cannot do everything he wants to do. The Congress must approve. They do not.
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A lot of it he *can* do. The problem is funding. Only Congress can allocate funding so if the President signs an Executive Order to give everyone a pony but Congress says, "Fuck naw," then no one will get a pony. This is what happened with the closure of Gitmo. Obama signed the executive order to close the prison, but Congress wouldn't give the funding necessary to manage the logistics of doing so. As such, nothing happened.
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Why does scratching an itch temporarily relieve it only to trigger more itchiness afterwards?
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When you scratch at an itch, your nerves transmit pain signals to the brain. This blocks this itching sensation temporarily. It's like you are distracting your brain and causing it to pay attention to something else. The brain responds to pain signals by releasing the neurotransmitter serotonin. A study done at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that serotonin may cause the itching to get worse. The researchers had two strains of mice. One strain was incapable of producing serotonin. Both strains were injected with a chemical which is known to cause itches. The mice which couldn't make serotonin didn't scratch. So, basically: When you scratch, it hurts. Your brain releases serotonin in response, which causes the itch to get worse.
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Interestingly itches are picked up by the same type of nerves as pain. When your brain recieves this very low pain signal, it interprets it as an itch and compells you to scratch it to relieve the "Itchy" feeling. But why does your brain generate this "itchy" feeling when it recieves a tiny ammount of pain? Well, like everything biological, it's an evolved response. Basically very minor pain could be a sign of a tick, jigger or other parisite which could be scratched out. This could have saved your life. Unfortunately the "Itchy" response never evolved to be able to differentiate between a tick which can be scratched off, and eczema which can only be made worse. And here we are today.
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What makes it possible for crustaceans to be larger than bugs?
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Crustaceans use a modified gill as a lung, which allows for larger size than the trachea used by insects,probably since oxygen is actively circulated in the blood rather than passively diffused through a series of tubes.
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Bugs breath through their skin. They need enough oxygen to support all the stuff inside that isn't skin. The bigger they get, their skin does get bigger, but their insides get even bigger than that. Basically the more mass the bug has, the more oxygen it needs to live, and thus the more surface area it needs exposed to the air in order to pull oxygen in. There comes a point in growing where the internal mass is too large for the surface area to supply oxygen, so that's the maximum size it can get. Bugs used to grow a lot bigger when there was more oxygen in the air millions of years ago, but now since there's less oxygen, they can't grow as big.
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If boiling vegetables causes the nutrients to boil out, would rice cooked in that water reabsorb the nutrients?
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There's no magic here. If the vitamins leach out into the cooking water when boiling veggies, and you consume the water in some form, then you'll get the vitamins.
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Given that the food was sterile too and that the only mechanism of degradation you care about is rotting, yes. This is the idea behind the [Pasteur experiment](_URL_0_). Boiling the broth and then letting it cool back to the initial temperature doesn't change the partial pressure of any of the gasses in the chamber, which can conceptually be as large as you want (room size, planet size, whatever). The only change that needs to happen in the chamber to stop rotting is for the bacteria's proteins to be denatured by heating (you can pick a food that is unmodified by the temperature change to prove the point). The food does not rot after sterilization. Food could still go bad, however, probably by dessication or oxidation.
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How do scientists get to know how complex biological systems like the Krebs cycle work on a molecular level?
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How did they do it (back then?) or how do they do it now? By using experiments and logical reasoning. You can't put a cell under a microscope and watch its metabolic functions. Instead you have to extrapolate out based on the inputs/outputs of the cell. In fact, the citric acid cycle was first postulated from experiments carried out on suspensions of minced muscle tissue. Subsequently its details were worked out by study of the highly purified enzymes by use of isotopically labeled metabolites, such as pyruvate or acetate, in which the isotopes 13C or 14C are used to mark a given carbon atom in the molecule. Many stringent experiments with the isotope tracer technique have confirmed that the citric acid cycle. _URL_0_
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Simply, the DNA contains the instructions for all cellular responses, everything from replication to repairing damage to converting air/water/food into useable proteins. I’m not a scientist, but I have taken a couple of biology courses over the years.
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Why police officers not go on strike when they're having cuts like the fire department? Why do police officers also show up at protests to stop ordinary people protesting for police officers not to have a pay cut?
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Same reason doctors don't go on strike. People will get hurt if they do. The first duty is to serve and protect.
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Strength in numbers. If one or two people walked off, that's certainly what would happen. But the whole object of the protest is to get so many people that the company can't fire them all without shutting itself down, at least temporarily until they can hire and train new workers. Fast food isn't exactly complex, but it takes time to hire and train someone who doesn't know your system. Even if you worked at, say, Burger King you can't just walk into a McDonald's and hit the ground running, you need to learn how they do it there. This is basically the same theory behind strikes; if enough people stop working together, it is cheaper for the employer to negotiate than to fire them all and start over with new people.
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Could we actually watch injuries heal if we had the right instruments?
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Well, there's [time lapse photography](_URL_0_) that one could use but you'd have to have your hand in some sort of immobilizing brace or something while the healing process took place. It's certainly theoretically possible but it seems it would be rather uncomfortable. edit: argh_name_in_use has a much better reply and should be up voted to the top
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They cant really. As you say, those injuries would be seconds or minutes apart. I'm studying medicine right now, and I've had to observe a few autopsies last year. They cant tell which came first or what. I mean sure they can differentiate between fresh wounds, earlier wounds, wounds from struggle, previous unrelated injuries etc but they cant determine the exact order in which the death blows were struck. CSI etc tends to add a lot of bullshit.
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How does a popular free app with no ads make money?
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> So when snapchat and tinder and apps like that that had no ads, no subscription and nothing but other people using them how did they make money. They didn't. They *lost* money, and that was a calculated risk. By staying free, they could build up a large user base, which would then allow them to make *more* money later on. That allowed them to get funds from venture capitalists who were willing to invest based on the promise of a revenue stream later down the road.
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Searches are the only way browsers make money. Specifically Firefox has 80% of it's revenue from search referrals Google Chrome doesn't have to make money because Google makes all it's profits from ads. Safari, Internet Explorer and the like make zero dollars.
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Why did the Jews not convert to Christianity like all of the "pagans" in Europe?
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The European nations converted when their kings/emperors converted. Once that happened, conversions to Christianity trickled down through the society. The Jews stayed in their own communities, keeping their social, racial, and religious identities closely entwined. Changes in language, politics, religion, or law were of little consequence to them.
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Pagans, generally speaking, haven't been a group that proselytizes. As for the Christians, it has generally (at least in the past) been very good at adapting to fit its culture. It started as a heretical sect within Judaism, and morphed itself to fit with the largely pagan and Roman world. Most Christian holidays are adaptions from old pagan holidays. There are actually many aspects within Christianity that have pagan origins and would seem foreign to the first Christians. Another, more important, factor is that many European leaders converted to Christianity for political gain. I also don't think I agree that Christians "had an easy time converting." Many tribes held out for generations. Sources: "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola and George Barna "Turning Points: Decisive moments in the history of Christianity" by Mark A. Noll
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Refresh Rate and FPS...?
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Simply put, yes. Refresh rate, measured in hertz (Hz) tells you how many times the screen can completely re-write all of the pixels to create a new image, or "frame". For 48Hz, that means the screen can display a new frame 48 times every second. Of course, that also means it is displaying 48 frames per second. The device providing the image can be faster (say, 60hz from a PC) or slower (29.94Hz from your cable box, the NTSC standard), and some software within the display will ensure it all gets displayed correctly using various processes. It's still refreshing 45 times per second either way.
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I think its because there is a frame rendered just before the screen refresh each time that is much closer to the actual state of the game. At 60 FPS you might get a frame anywhere in between the refreshes: [ | ] Refresh At 200 FPS there are more up to date frames rendered before the refresh: [ | | | ] Refresh Since that last frame was rendered closer to the refresh you should be seeing tighter consistency between what is really happening and what is on your screen at refresh time. This is what my understanding is anyway, I could be 100% wrong.
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What makes using a centrifuge to mix substances together so effective and better than just shaking by hand for a while?
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Centrifuges don't mix stuff together. In fact they do the exact opposite - they separate stuff. In a mixture, over time the heavier stuff will sink to the bottom and the lighter stuff will rise to the top. But this can take a *very* long time in normal Earth gravity, so we speed it up with a centrifuge. By spinning insanely fast, a centrifuge creates a huge g-force outwards. This causes the heavier stuff in the mixture to drift to the outer wall, and the lighter stuff to concentrate near the center. You can then extract the lighter stuff and toss the heavier stuff, or vice versa, whichever you want.
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A centrifuge is typically used to separate a heterogeneous mixture of solid and liquid by spinning it. Salt water is a solution, so if it is even possible, I am sure the energy, time and expense are enormous.
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What are the differences between a Cataphract and a European Knight?
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Disclaimer - I'm no scholar, but I think I can answer your question in a simple manner (and would love to be corrected by some real historians). The shor answer is - one is an unit, the other is a socio-political entity, that happens to be a heavy cavalrymen (and if I recall correctly - a heavy footman) in war times. A Knight was (in theory) much more than just a solder. Cataphracts while no doubt wealthy and maybe of noble birth were more of elite regiments. Now, if you are asking about tactics and the like, I can't give you a distinctive answer. Simply put, the term Cataphract is used for a heavily armored horsemen - both lancers and archers. At the time of knights they were probably both armored and armed in a similar manner with the common analogues of weaponry and armor for each region. The exact way they were used depends heavily on the time-period.
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What do you mean by "cataphract"? Cataphract was a type heavy armored cavalryman, regardless of what he was actually doing. By being a cataphract one could be: 1. An akritai - basically a border guard, involved in watch duty and permanent low intensity warfare consisting of raids and counterraids, increasingly common as the Turkic presence in Anatolia got consolidated, 2. A member of the tagmata - essentially a soldier in a permanent field army stationed somewhere be it a province or the capital itself, however these armies were dwindling as the Comnenian era progressed, so it's likely that there were few of them left by 1182, 3. A pronoiar - an equivalent to Western European knight, granted land and tax exemptions by the Comnenian emperors in exchange for military service. Obviouslty, daily life for any of these types would differ significantly.
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What determines the radius of curvature of a rainbow?
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See [this](_URL_1_) thread for a pretty good description, with diagrams, of what causes rainbows. However, I think it's clearer to think of a rainbow not as a "circle," or a curve at a fixed *distant* position in space, but rather as an entire [*conical surface*](_URL_0_), with the vertex at your eye. It makes sense to talk about the half-angle of that cone (about 42 degrees), but its "radius of curvature," [strictly speaking](_URL_2_), would depend on *which* circular cross section of the cone (i.e., how far away) we're talking about.
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Yes, the curvature of the rainbow is a direct result of the refractive index of water. You would see the same rainbow if you can create the correct water and light conditions in space with no reference planet.
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Are there any evolutionary similarity between the scales of sea creatures and reptiles?
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No, they are fundamentally different kinds of structures. Fish scales grow from the mesoderm inside the skin, and are rather toothlike structures, in some fish (like sharks) containing bone, dentine, and enamel (though your standard fish has thin scales of collagen with a thin layer of harder material on top). Fish style scales were lost at some point during the evolution of tetrapods. Later, reptiles evolved a different kind of scale forming from the epidermis instead of the mesoderm, and made out of keratin.
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The comparison you ask for is a difficult one because it does not reflect how we classify a mammal, fish reptile or bird. Mostly - there are more similarities than differences because cells and cell structures developed in our common ancestors. All are multicellular vertebrates - so all descend from a common ancestor that already had many of these cellular structures in place. Now if you look at it using the modern system of classification (cladistics) which includes a rule that you cannot outgrow your clade - you are at the same time a "fish" a "reptile" and a mammal. Just as birds are still dinosaurs.
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Why is Russia escalating things with the Ukraine regarding the recent developments about the seizure of ships?
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They have been for some time trying to carry out a blockade of the Ukrainian port by dubious legal means. Russia decided to step up the action at this particular time because most of the world was distracted by events elsewhere and the current president of the USA has been shown no interests in standing up for freedom.
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Russia is building a new port on the Black Sea, but Sevastopol is not the only reason Russia is resisting Ukraine's slide towards the West. Russia is trying to build an alternative to the EU, the Eurasian Custom Union, and Ukraine is the cornerstone for that effort. Also, having the Black Sea ringed by nations that are members of NATO, is not something they'd be happy with, and keeping Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence is a way to prevent that. Finally, there are plenty of Russians living in Ukraine who oppose a "fascist" government (as labeled by Russia); they are a majority in Crimea.
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Why is it that extremely cold things can feel hot and vice versa?
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To the molecules in your hands, feeling something cold is like being in a car that's slowing down and feeling something hot is like being in a car that is speeding up. But feeling something really hot is like being hit by a car and feeling something really cold is like hitting parked car. Either way you crash and it feels similar.
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In my experience things that are really hot, feel really hot when I touch them. I know this is not an answer, but I would like to see other responses to this question, please don't remove it!
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Are the divisions of sound frequencies into musical notes arbitrary or do they correspond to something in nature?
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The frequency ratio between notes are what matters, not necessarily the absolute frequency. Specific ratios of frequencies sound nice to our ears, for example, two notes an octave apart have a frequency ratio of 2. A fifth has a frequency ratio of 4/3. Why these particular ratios sound nice has to do with superposition of sound waves and can get into some complex mathematics... so I can't give you a great explanation there, sorry.
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One of the many reasons(I'm not claiming to know them all btw) is that music is made up of fundamental frequencies. What's interesting about this is that our brains naturally resonate with fundamental frequencies and from this we feel something from the music. However this idea isn't just limited to music but it is limited to frequencies below our hearing range. For example say if somebody was to play a sound whose fundamental frequency was 11hz(not entirely sure if this is the right number) and if they did it loud enough, it would hurt the listeners eyeballs because the eyeballs themselves have a fundamental frequency of 11hz. In a nutshell because songs are made up of a number of different ones, utilising different timbres, across different instruments they resonate with our own fundamental frequency. I'm not entirely sure if If I've got all of the science correct(amateur music producer) but it's roughly there.
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Do people with osteoporosis also have sensitive ears?
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The force of sound waves on the bones in your middle ear is not enough to fracture them if that's what you're asking. However, osteoporosis seems to have a correlation with hearing loss, the hypothesis being that lower bone density makes them worse at conducting sound. [Source]( _URL_0_)
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Yes, we do! Our middle ears have a mechanism to transmit air waves carrying sound into mechanical energy. [Here's a pic](_URL_0_). See that muscle called the [Tensor tympani](_URL_2_)? It tenses up and prevents the bones from vibrating as strongly as they could, thereby dampening the sound. It's a reflex, so it's mostly out of our control. Also, some conditions (eg, damage to the nerve that controls that muscle) have super sensitive hearing because they can't control the tensor tympani. It's called "[hyperacusis](_URL_1_)"
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What is that "electric" sensation someone feels in their jaw, when they take a bite of food for the first time?
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Pretty sure this is your body kick-starting saliva production. I don't really know the minute details of mouth anatomy, but you're probably feeling the glands activating, or possibly the saliva squeezing its way through a duct. Your salivary glands are fairly dormant when not eating. They also basically turn off at night, which is why you probably wake up with a dry mouth, and partly why people wake up with bad breath. So, kind of like a head massage, when something sits mostly untouched and inactive, you get that tingling sensation as all the nerves in the area start up once the region is activated.
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I don't know the answer but I know exactly what you're talking about! I experience this if I get up too late for breakfast so I grab a Red Bull on the way to work. The first mouthful, that sharp pain is there, but the very next one, nothing at all! Look forward to seeing if there's anything behind this.
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how do frisbees work?
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2 forces are at work 1) gyroscopic stabilisation -- the fast spinning keeps the frisbee flat and steady. If the frisbees 'lip' was any thinner, there wouldn't be enough material to maintain a spin. 2) aerodynamic lift -- the frisbee has about the same curvature as the top of an airplane wing, so the movement through the air causes lift. If the frisbee was flat on top, it wouldn't fly as well.
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> As far as I know, Frisbees ride on a cushion of air. Am I right in this, or is there a better way to describe it? It's the same as a helicopter rotor or aircraft wing. There's two things that keep it up in the air. The first is a pressure differential between the upper and lower surface, and the second is a reaction (Newton #3) from air being forced downwards. EDIT Yes there is an air cushion but it's larger than the frisbee; aircraft have it too. it's caused by the recirculation of air which is caused by the above 2 factors. > And what would happen if there were no air to 'ride' on? It would no longer generate lift, so it will be affected by gravity and its initial velocity and it would take a curved path similar to that of a thrown ball (i.e. a parabola). It would still wobble about in flight due to gyroscopic precession.
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How come water is white when it is moving, but clear when it is still?
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Air bubbles get trapped in the water and light reflects off them making the water appear white. The same concept is used when making most white hard candies. They pull the sugar on a hook or machine to trap air bubbles in the amber colored sugar making the candy appear white.
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The water cause the light to bounce around inside of the material for a little longer than air does. Every time the light bounces off the material, the material absorbs some of the light (not the color you see) and leaves behind the color you see. Repeating this process make the light darker and more saturated. ELI5 illustrations: _URL_0_ _URL_2_ Taken from ELI-Computer Graphics Professional: _URL_1_
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How did the Soviet military rationalize its necessarily hierarchical structure with Marxism-Leninism?
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This was attempted during the revolutionary period but all too quickly it was discovered that having a democratic meeting about whether certain orders should be followed or disobeyed would not prove useful in a battlefield scenario. Eventually during the early Soviet period officer titles were done away with and a simplified (in some sense) hierarchical structure existed, i.e. there were no officers, battalion commanders were known as KomBat, KomBrig (brigade), KomKor (Corps), and KomArm (army) and everyone addressed each other by the title 'comrade' instead of the superfluous names used previously. Eventually, officer titles would once more be introduced but you're talking about a socialist society, not a Marxist/Communist one. Egalitarian ideals were done away with after Stalin came to power.
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Basically, Leninism is built off Marxism. Marx said that an industrialized country was the type of country communism would work best with. Russia wasn't industrialized, so Lenin came up with the idea that places like Russia, that weren't industrialized, were the weak link and thus could transition easier than an industrialized country.
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How can NASA's rockets fail, or explode?
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They do... but the people in question are... human. Therefore they make mistakes and are imperfect. On top of that let's not forget what we are trying to do. We created what is (more or less) a bomb and are trying to set it off in a very VERY specific sequence. Even the smallest of mistakes can lead to a very big explosion. Hell a fucking bird killed a space shuttle. Rain can destroy rockets. *When you are dancing on the edge of a razor, it doesn't take much to fall off.*
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The fertilizer contains a chemical called ammonium nitrate, which breaks down when heated into nitrous oxide (same stuff that used in cars to give it that extra boost) and water vapor. As it breaks down, more heat is released and sets off a chain reaction. The runaway reaction combined with a small amount of fuel is enough to cause the explosion.
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Are there massive fish deaths whenever there are lightning storms over the ocean?
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The density of fish in the ocean is tiny. [Here is an estimate for the biomass](_URL_0_). The probability that a fish is close enough to a lightning strike to get harmed is tiny.
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Lightning striking the ocean is actually how regular eels are turned into electric eels. & #x200B; But seriously, the fish in the immediate vicinity of the strike have a good chance of dying or being severely injured. Anything past a few meters deep is generally safe since the electricity dissipates relatively quickly from spreading out into the water.
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