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Why do a lot of people cringe at the same sounds? Like fingernails running down on a blackboard
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IIRC, the theory is that certain sounds like nails on chalkboard or the fork on plate thing, is that the shape of our ear canals amplify the frequency of sounds in this range, making them physically painful to listen to. The other theory, and the one I like, is that these sounds are very similar to certain primate warming cries, and when we hear them it taps into a primal part of the brain that provokes a fear response in the body.
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Well the effect is kind of like fingernails on the chalkboard... one explanation is that it is an evolutionary aversion since the sound is actuually similar to primate warning calls. Another explanation is that the sound resonates in the ear canal, making it "sound loud" Source: _URL_0_
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Is there any truth to the idea that using your opposite hand for common tasks creates neural pathways? And if so what sort of effect would it have?
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There is evidence that increasing the use of your off hand can increase the size of the neural network (or create new neural networks?) activated in then brain when you use your off hand. There have been some pretty cool experiments that show that people who use a particular part of their body more have increased representation for that body part in the brain. For example: the [reading fingers of braille readers](_URL_0_) and the [left hand digits of string players](_URL_1_) show disproportionate brain representation. As far as I know, the only observed effects of exercising a particular body part is increased function of that body part (aside from the effects of exercise in general). I know there are popular articles about ways to make you smarter that include using your off hand but to my knowledge, there isn't any scientific support behind this idea.
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We do not have a clear answer for this yet. Some scientists have suggested that for ambidextrous people, neither hemisphere in the brain is dominant. Additionally, please do not confuse **mixed-handed** (when people prefer using their left hand for some tasks and their right for others) with people who are truly ambidextrous. People who are truly ambidextrous can use either hand to carry out all tasks with *equal proficiency* and are very rare.
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What are nerve agents and how exactly do they kill people?
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The most common mechanism of nerve agents is the interference of a single enzyme, acetylcholinesterase (AChE). At the gap between nerve cells, a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine (ACh) is used to transmit signals between the gap. Afterwards, AChE comes along and breaks apart the ACh molecule into a few byproducts for making new ACh molecules. Without AChE breaking apart ACh, it will stay bound to the neurotransmitter site, keeping the nerve in its active state. This is where nerve agents come in. They 'take up' AChE molecules by binding to them, making it so that they cannot break apart ACh neurotransmitters. In essence, this makes it such that your nerves can't reset after sending a signal, which keeps them sending the same signal perpetually. Imagine trying to clench and unclench your fist, but neither muscle groups would let up. Nerve agents cause terrible muscle spasms that can (most commonly at least) result in asphyxiation when your diaphragm is not able to relax.
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From what I understand, they do shock themselves. Since it's distributed over their whole body and only very briefly, they dont get hurt. The shock is just enough to stun small prey or startle a predator. If they do have some mechanism to protect themselves from it, I dont think we know what it is. [This article has a bit more info.](_URL_0_)
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If you only ate the basal metabolic rate in calories for somebody at your target weight, would you eventually weigh that much without any other changes?
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Essentially yes, your body self-adjusts to how many calories are available. One huge factor, however, is where you lose fat or muscle. Your body evolved in conditions where starvation lurked around every corner. Muscle takes up more energy than fat, so your body really wants to drop the muscle unless you show that it is needed. If you are eating a calorie restricted diet and doing little or no exercise, you lose a lot of muscle.
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For the most part yes. [This man](_URL_0_) who started out at 456 pounds went 382 days without food and at the end was 180. Of course in a starvation scenario, you would also miss out on vitamins and necessarily nutrients in which case being fat will not help you, you will still die. The fat is purely an energy source.
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Why do ashes turn white on black things, but black on white things?
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Ashes are a mix of calcium compounds (a white powder) and carbon (a black powder), along with some other stuff. It's generally a bunch of flakes which range from white to black and a full spectrum of gray in between. On a white surface, the darker particles are visible. On a black surface, the lighter particles are visible.
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Black ash is ash that isn't burned up completely. It still contains carbon. On white ash all the carbon has reacted to carbon-oxides.
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How my computer knows the time when it's never been turned on before
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The time is set at the factory where the motherboard is built. A battery on the motherboard keeps the clock running until you plug everything in.
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Electronic devices have a clock they use to keep time, and a battery to keep track of the time. So your PS4 knows what the time was last time it was on and how long it's been since then.
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How in the hell do soldiers in combat not suffer major hearing loss from the constant firing of multiple weapons?
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They do. During drills there is hearing protection, but not during combat. If you have your ears covered, you can't hear anybody talking to you. Hearing loss is a huge problem.
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Absolutely. Lots of personal accounts from the Age of Sail (I focus on the Napoleonic Wars, specifically) mention how calamitous and *loud* working the guns was, and how many men would try to preserve their hearing in the following ways: * Stuffing unraveled oakum into their ears * Pitch and/or beeswax * Cotton fibers * Wrapping a kerchief around their ears and forehead. Even short-term exposure to artillery or gunfire can cause permanent hearing damage. I've spoken to more than a few US Army vets that said they'd stick .45 ACP brass or cigarette butts in their ears on the firing range to help limit damage.
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Is it true that if one takes antibiotics too often, they will lose their effectiveness in the individual the longterm? If so, why?
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If one is taking antibiotics (ABX), we can assume that their immune system is not adequately equipped to deal with the infection in a reasonable (to the patient) timeframe. If mutations occur to the bacteria causing the infection, and these resistant mutant microbes escape detection by the immune system, they will thrive once the internal body environment is cleared of the ABX-sensitive bacteria. In a way similar to how the original infection began and increased to the point that ABX were needed, the body often is underequipped to clear the infection. The result is something like [MRSA](_URL_0_).
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Yes, they make long acting shots of antibiotics that stay in your system for (x)days. It's like taking a regimen of medication for (x) days except you just get the one shot and then you're done. Some people prefer this method as they don't have to worry about remembering to take the medication, sometimes antibiotic pills are large and hard to swallow, it acts faster as the medication is injected straight into your system, etc.
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If polarized lenses block photons that are traveling in a certain direction, would this be possible for sound waves?
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Sound waves are pressure waves meaning they have no polarization. They go more pressure, less pressure rather than up, down or side to side. With that said, you can stop sound from a specific direction e.g. using a simple wall or something. You can also make sound metamaterials that can bend sound waves and so on. Meta materials only work in certain ranges.
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Yes. For example, a sound wave can cause a spatial variation in the refractive index of a material, which will cause light to change its path. This is called the acousto-optic effect. You can use a laser to heat things up so fast that they emit sound, and this is called the photo-acoustic effect. A basic interference pattern of sound waves and light waves won't exist in normal circumstances though.
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Can anyone explain why Asian Tigers are on the CO2 Time Series chart?
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They're referring to the "Asian Tiger" economies. In the ** note at the bottom, this means: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan.
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We're not really sure yet, but there's some reasons to believe that their life cycle is extended due to global climate change, and that some of the species the feed on (like mice) are going through population explosions, also possibly due to global climate change. Here's a [reasonable (if moderately technical) overview](_URL_0_) of what we think might be going on and how complicated this is.
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How does traffic on the freeway happen if we are all going the same speed?
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Sometimes, people slow down to change lanes, enter, or exit, or because there's construction. It can take a little bit for even a minor slowdown to ripple all the way back through traffic. If it's a more major slowdown, more and more cars coming up behind it will be affected and have to slow down, too. This video does a great job of explaining it: _URL_0_
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Traffic congestion moves in waves backward from the source. If traffic stopped a few miles up the road an hour ago, the wave will have moved backward, and when you arrive at it, there will be no visible source for the problem.
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Why isn't Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the internet) world renowned to a similar, if not greater, degree than Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Bill Gates etc.?
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He didn't invent the internet. A team of people at DARPA did.
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Steve Jobs made himself a *very* public figure and the public face of the company. He was constantly present for big product announcements and other public statements of the company, often presenting things as *his* idea. He's not the only founder/CEO of a company to achieve significant fame from his position. Elon Musk, of SpaceX & Tesla, is very prominent and regularly in the news. Bill Gates, when he was still running Microsoft, was also a pretty well known public figure (but probably not as loved). [Lee Iacocca](_URL_0_), head of Chrysler in the 80s, was a well-known public figure in his day. I'm sure there's plenty of others if you think about it a bit more. The founders of Google, OTOH, stayed more in the background - they were academics, not charismatic showmen. The head of McDonald's during their massive growth, Ray Kroc, retired over 40 years ago and died over 30 years ago so he hasn't been in the news for a while.
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; Years ago (like in the nineties) all computers were beige. Was there a reason for it?
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At the time the color (technically called "putty") was intended to blend in with any office decor. Most filing cabinets were also putty, and it was a standard color for other accoutrements. It was meant to be unobtrusive (which is also why the "loud" IBM Selectric Typewriter colors like electric blue and red didn't sell very well).
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When Microsoft released their first version of windows they had to choose between only 8 colours to display stuff against white. Most looked awful (yellow, green etc) Blue looked the best 'non-black' thing on those primative screens. At that time they chose blue as a standard colour for loads of things that would be seen often by the user, including various boxes.
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why it took 42 minutes for a 1.2GB video transfer from my computer to phone. over a remote torrent service.
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cuz thats a bigass movie, and torrent is probably the worst way to transfer a file between two of your own devices. Why didnt you, you know, just *plug in the phone to the computer*?
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The video stream has to be recoded for internet transmission, that takes a little time. The Internet isn't a straight path, that takes more time. The mobile player buffers a bit before starting playback to cope for a little bottlenecking, that takes some time too.
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a few questions on creating/destroying energy.
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The fact that it can't be destroyed doesn't mean it can be "harnessed", for example, if you shine a flashlight into the night sky you're turning chemical energy into light (and some heat) and the light energy is getting sent into space at the speed of light. Human beings from earth will never have access to that energy again, no matter what. Given indefinite time we will eventually not have access to ANY energy, because it will all dissipate into heat and light energy and escape into the outer reaches of the universe. > Where does the thermal energy from my cigarette lighter go? It heats up the air around it, and is turned into photons which carry it as light. > If energy cannot be created, is there a set amount of energy that is simply recycled throughout the universe? Yes, exactly, it's limited and over time gets less and less accessible over time in the entire universe as entropy increases.
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Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: The laws of thermodynamics, especially the last one ](_URL_5_) ^(_6 comments_) 1. [ELI5: the laws of thermodynamics ](_URL_2_) ^(_7 comments_) 1. [ELI5:The Second Law of Thermodynamics ( law of entropy) ](_URL_4_) ^(_45 comments_) 1. [ELI5: The laws of thermodynamics. ](_URL_6_) ^(_9 comments_) 1. [ELI5: According to the Laws of Thermodynamics in Chemistry, Energy Does Not Disappear Nor Appears for Nothing. If This Is The Case How Did All the Energy Came to Exist Since The Creation of the Universe? ](_URL_1_) ^(_9 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Does the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mean that with time our ecosystem with be more chaotic? ](_URL_0_) ^(_16 comments_) 1. [ELI5: need explanation of the 4 laws of thermodynamics ](_URL_3_) ^(_1 comment_)
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Why are some animals' tongues black, red or other colors?
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Normal, non-diseased color of mucous membrane tissues is determined by the genetic makeup of that animal in question. ([link](_URL_0_)) Many species have uniformly colored skin (either pink (not pigmented) or dark/grey/black (pigmented))while others may have areas without pigmentation. Domestic species seem to have a wider variety of oral pigmentation, particularly for animals with spots. In general, animals with dark skin (not necessarily dark hair) will have dark lips and eyelids, with many (but not all) also having dark oral pigmentation. There is some correlation of nocturnal activity and prey status to having dark pigmentation, but this is far from absolute. It is also possible for animals to have both dark and light areas in their mouths.
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In nature, red is often a warning color, indicating a poisonous or venomous animal. Could be related
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Why does expanding gasses become cold?
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> I know that in an adiabatic free expansion gasses expelled into a vacuum lose heat, It doesn't lose heat, because it's adiabatic. It gets colder. Temperature is not heat! > the question is why does it do this? It's easy if you look at the internal energy for a van der Waals gas: U(T,V) = 3/2 NkT - a' N^(2)/V a' is a constant. U stays the same because there is neither work (because it's free expansion) nor heat transfer (adiabatic). V increases, so the N^(2)/V term decreases. Rearranging 3/2 NkT = U + a' N^(2)/V You get that T decreases.
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They compress a gas, making it hot. Then they cool the hot gas by blowing air over the tubes containing it. Then they pump the compressed, but cool, gas inside your house. Then inside the box containing your furnace they allow the gas to quickly expand. The expansion makes the gas very cold (see Joule Cooling in the nearest Physics book). They circulate the air inside your house over pipes containing the now cold gas, cooling the air and warming the gas. Then they send it outside and start over from the top of this paragraph.
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If chameleons can move their eyes independently, and look at two completely different areas at once, what would their vision (theoretically) look like?
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Probably split screen yes. A lot of animals actual have eyes on either side of their head looking in different directions. And they do have some depth by focusing, just like we have if we only have one eye open. But this is no where near as good as the depth perception animals (like us) with overlapping vision have.
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Most "prey" animals have their eyes on the sides of their heads, and therefore already have almost 360 degree vision. For example, here's a [horse's field of vision](_URL_1_). And [here's a rabbit's](_URL_0_).
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Why do TV shows use different directors for different episodes instead of just 1 director for the entire series?
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Because people can't work 33 hours a day. For a television show, being the director means that you're the boss for that episode. For hour-long dramas, this is a lot of work: casting of guest stars, location scouting, and so on. This is a lot of work, even with help. The job for this will start long before the shooting starts, and will end after the filming ends, with editing and so on. So, it's really not practical to have one person be the director for every show. Television shows have an executive producer who is the ultimate boss of the series as a whole. That's the guy responsible for the overall tone of the series, and to make sure the directors follow the vision of the show. The director is a hired gun for that one episode.
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Shows that use multiple directors (which are most) have positions such as producer and showrunner whose jobs entail keeping the themes and feel of the show consistent.
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At altitude, I will suffer the effects from a thinned atmosphere. If the oceans were removed, and I could walk down to the ocean floor, such as the Marianas Trench, what ill effects might I suffer?
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If the oceans were removed, the atmosphere would just sit lower. Therefore, in the marianas trench, you'd have the effects of 1 atm, at current "sea level" you'd have the effects you have now on top of the Everest. I wouldn't encourage you to climb oceanless mt. Everest.
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Well there would be extreme changes in the Earth environment in this scenario. The air pressure at say the Mariana trench with zero water on the planet would be significantly higher than what would be at our current sea level. But the thing is, our air pressure at sea level would also change. Lets just pretend that the water disappeared, but temps remained the same do that its just the mass of water that stop existing. That a tremendous void that must be filled. So air pressure through the globe would drop. Any fluid/gas/solid is going to be effected by gravity. Sea level would not be 11 km higher than what we consider our baseline. For perspective Mount Everest is roughly 8.8 km high and we need oxygen tanks and training to be able to "safely" climb and deal with the air pressure change. So basically everyone would be rushing to the now open sea floor to try and get to lower elevations where the atmospheric pressure is similar to what we currently exist at. It would be a massive environmental change.
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Shanghai's air pollution.
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I'm requesting an addendum because 'how did it get so polluted?' isn't a very interesting question to begin with. 1. Why is TODAY so bad compared to other days? Will it get better with no human intervention, and then suddenly get worse again? Why? 2. Why doesn't the Chinese government intervene? 3. What are the short-term and long term effects of this pollution? 4. Is this the worst non-nuclear pollution the world has ever seen?
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The government and its power plants tend to be a major source of pollution in China, over and above things like cars. Since the Chinese government has more of a blanket authority to do what it wants, there is much less of an incentive to deal with public problems such as pollution. Most energy generation there is via dirty coal plants built bearer population centers to reduce transmission costs. The US and Japan, both significantly more democratic than China, are more inclined toward dealing with this Tragedy of the Commons. Since the big polluters are not government controlled (even if they are favored entities), public pressure has passed pollution laws that have limited the ability of these big players to spew toxins into the environment. Most energy generation in these countries tries to strike a balance between transmission costs and environmental costs because they are forced to by law.
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Are we aware of any linguistic differences between the Korean spoken in North and South Korea that have developed since the end of the Korean War?
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Everybody, please remember that anecdotal evidence isn't appropriate for an answer on /r/askscience, even if you know Korean. [Here is an actual article on the topic](_URL_1_). If you can't access it, try sci-hub.
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I am not a historian and I have never posted here before. I'm not sure if this is helpful and I am not an expert. I do however have first hand knowledge of the answer I will provide in the form of learning the language and living in the country of origin. I believe that the Korean written alphabet (hangul) fits your description. It was created just under 600 years ago (1443) and as far as I can tell was created from scratch using the positions of the mouth. Again, I am not a linguist and I hope anyone who has a greater knowledge of the subject will provide further information. [Here](_URL_0_) is the wikipedia entry on hangul. Again, I am sorry if I don't meet the requirements stated by the subreddit to answer your question, but I thought I might as well throw it out there.
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Why was it so common in the 80s for sitcoms to have "reminisce" episodes, where all they do is show flashback to earlier episodes?
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Yes, clip shows were common. It saves money. Instead of having to write and shoot a whole episode, you only have to do the connecting bits.
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The writers plan out at least the season together before doing any individual writing. Not all the details, but things like the season's overarching plot and the continuity changes that happen. Ideally, potential plot holes and such are identified and dealt with at this stage. Some shows take this to great lengths, such as *Babylon 5* which had IIRC at least 4 seasons outlined before it first went to air. That enabled them to for instance do a time travel plot where [a first season episode](_URL_0_) interacts with [a third season one](_URL_1_).
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Why does Alcohol relieve pain?
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Alcohol is a depressant, meaning that it gives a sensation of relaxation while at the same time lowering the intensity of all sensations, pain included. I assume you are talking about when Alcohol is consumed and not when it is rubbed over a wound or something along those lines.
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Alcohol is a nervous system depressant and getting drunk reduces the impulse to cough. It also reduces sensations of pain.
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Java programming language
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Programming is a skill, perhaps an art. Some say it's a state of mind. It has nothing to do with a particular syntax or language. Syntax and language have a habit of getting in the way of what you are trying to accomplish (until you learn the particulars of the language you are trying to master, then it all fits together). You can pretty much do the same things in C as you can do in Basic or in Java. Some things are more easy to do in one language, other things are more easy in an other language. This being said, all programming languages use the same fundamental concepts: variables, constants, data types, arithmetics, decisions, comparison of values, functions and subroutines, input and output, persistent data (files), and anything else that I've missed. I would point you in the direction of [this wiki article](_URL_0_) which in my opinion as an experienced programmer is a fairly good introduction to the craft.
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If you write in Java, your program will run on any system that is capable of running Java, which is basically every computer. Java certainly has its many flaws, but the ability to write a program that is guaranteed to be able to be run on anything is reason enough to overlook the flaws in many cases.
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why does being wet reduce friction while being damp increases it?
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Friction reduction is due to aqua planning. Basically, you get a layer of liquid in between two surfaces, and a liquid causes a lot less friction than hard on hard material. As for dampness, I'd assume you mean barely wet surfaces. If a surface was perfectly smooth, it would become less frictious from any amount of liquid on it, but most of the surfaces are porous due to nature of material or mechanical damage such as microscopic scratches. As they get filled with liquid you get a bit larger contact area what would increase friction, you might also get some microscopic suction or surface tension due to hydrophility of material. However, all these factors wouldn't be very consequential and would mostly matter if the objects are static.
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When it gets wet it increases the scattering angle of the light. This makes more light go into the material and less gets reflected back at you.
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Why has nobody come close to Tesla's inventions that were created up to 100 years ago?
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Because they weren't real. In his younger days, he unquestionably made major discoveries, but as Tesla got older, [he gradually lost his mind](_URL_0_). Everything he genuinely invented is well-understood (and, indeed, frequently still in use), but the "inventions" that people get excited over were just the product of a decaying mind. It's such a sad story that I can understand why so many people really want to believe otherwise though.
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Same reason you don't get to hear about [Heinrich Göbel](_URL_0_): History classes are about evolutions and people who had an impact on their society and today. By this metric, Tesla simply wasn't important enough to warrant spending time on him during your classes in high school - no matter how much today's geeks love him.
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What would happen if a male started taking birth control?
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One pill? Nothing, there's not enough of the hormone to do anything. Over time? Might be larger breast, less facial hair, lower sex drive ect. It's not safe to do so over long periods of time, high levels of estrogen can cause enlarged prostate and prostate cancer in men.
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Many of the functions that cells account for are structure based and occur without your nervous system. Although you correctly believe male and female brains have fundamentally different compositions, since sperm production is structure dependent, the body in your hypothetical scenario would likely continue to produce sperm. There are two scenarios that may answer your question: A paraplegic man would continue to produce sperm despite the disconnect. Another scenario would be transsexuals without hormone therapies that develop the organs and functions continue as expect.
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What would be required for an AI to be considered mentally "alive" or sentient?
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A common phrase is that a program is considered AI until the problem becomes easy, at which point it becomes an algorithm. For instance, when computer programmers first started programming computers to play chess it was considered AI, now that a computer program can consistently beat everyone except the top of the top people, it isn't considered AI anymore. And this isn't really a scientific question, it seems. For instance, one of the things that makes humans "alive" is that we have a sense of self-preservation. Now, some people will say that has to do with our "mind" or "soul" and some people will say that is simply evolutionary. Well, if it is nothing but evolution, then we could program a robot that would make decisions that maximized its chance of not getting broken/shut down. There are hundreds of examples like these, and it is not in the realm of science to answer.
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Right now, artificial intelligence has basically nothing to do with brains, human or otherwise. We can produce an AI to do a very specific task. People do research on AIs that can move a robot from one place to another without hitting anything, or AIs that play chess, etc. Those AIs are just computer programs that take a bunch of information as input and produce some output in response. Typically that output is an attempt to meet some goal, or an attempt to get closer to meeting some goal. People can take in information and learn how to do new things. People can identify something they want to do, that they have never done before, and figure out how to do it. Right now, in a general sense, no AI can do that and we have no idea how to make an AI that can do that.
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Torrenting. How do small files come from big files, and what is seeding and leeching?
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The idea of the bittorrent protocol is that a large file, or collection of files, is split into many parts, each of which has a known checksum. Individual users with a complete "part" can share that part with other users, and the original person with the complete file[s] only needs to transmit as little as one complete copy of the file before many other users can have a complete copy. In addition, the protocol allows parts to be downloaded out of sequence. In this respect, a "seeder" is a term for a user with a complete copy of the file/files, and is sharing them with others. A leech is someone downloading the torrent, but that person can share already completed parts
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Imagine you're standing at a soft serve ice cream machine. You're holding a huge bucket. Now, you can turn on the bucket and just let it keep filling up, or you can turn the ice cream machine on and off and let it fill up in smaller chunks. This is basically it. Files get broken up into whatever size the internet connection will allow, once it starts, it knows what it needs and it just keeps coming. Small files, that might only be a few chunks total (based on your speed) have to write, then request a new file. It gets a little more in depth than this but this is the Crayola 8 pack definition.
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Why are the mods on this sub so damned strict? I get shut down by the auto mod every time I try to ask a question.
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> Why is this so? Because nobody reads the rules and like 90% of what gets posted isn't ELI5 it's "Im too lazy to Google"
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Because people who subscribe to ELI5 have the posts peppered into the rest of their front page and feed, so seeing "Why does a high gear produce less power than a low gear?" in your feed along with r/askreddit and r/askscience might cause someone to give a very advanced answer without realizing that the post is an ELI5 question.
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Is there any turbulence in space that affects the Earth, like turbulence that affects planes?
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Now, no. In the past there was an influence through turbulent effects. Protoplanetary discs are thought to be turbulent and, although much of the migration of the disc and planet is through resonances, the turbulent nature of the disc would play a role in the orbital evolution of the Earth and all other planets that formed in the disc. I think though this turbulence acts more at a distance than directly in contact though. But still turbulence exists in many areas of space.
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Wind is caused by forces being applied to the atmosphere. There are pressure-gradient forces, gravity, friction, buoyancy, and local rotational forces like Coriolis and centrifugal force. Any planet with an atmosphere and is subject to these forces will have wind.
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how do certain animals know to look us in the eye?
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The eyes are extremely commonly used in body language across most land vertebrates. Focusing on the eyes tells you what an animal is paying attention to and gives you some insight in to its emotional/arousal state, because the biochemical changes inherent in arousal lead to different changes in the eyes. From there, animals that use body language to communicate will tend to build upon pre-existing foundations, which is why facial expressions/movements are common in mammals and, to a lesser extent, birds.
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[This article](_URL_0_) should answer your questions; the "See also" links are also good reads. Basically each animal watches other animals around it and makes a decision based on what they do. So they work as a collective organism.
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Why do beaches have all that sand,Where does it come from and why sand?
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> Why do beaches have all that sand It ran downhill carried by wind and water. > Where does it come from and why sand? It came from rocks. Sand is broken up rock, created by a process called "weathering" which is a giant hint to its cause. Things like rain, wind, and temperature shifts will gradually break large rocks down into the tiny bits of stone we call "sand".
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Going backwards: Your comment that sand is "nowhere to be seen" once you get far from the ocean is false. Sand is created by the actions of water and wind on rocks and minerals. Water and wind and the movement of the rocks themselves grind small particles off of larger particles. At the beach on an ocean, it's largely the action of the sea that wears rocks down into tiny particles of sand. But there is sand in the desert, worn by rain and wind and the motion of rocks on rocks. There is sand in and along river beds, worn by the water of the river and other elements. Some sand is blown around by wind and gathers in places that it wouldn't otherwise be created by local natural action. This is also why sand is different colors in different areas - it depends on the rocks and the minerals in that area that are slowly ground into powdery sand by the elements.
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How do recessive disorders like congenital adrenal hyperplasia work?
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Yes, the question makes sense. Recessive genetic disorders are silent because the other protein can function normally (in many cases), as you said. Having a normal gene means that you can produce a normally functioniong protein. Often, there are multiple control mechanisms for an important protein's abundance and activity level. So even with one defective protein, the other can be induced to produce the needed amount of products. In this case the products are steroid hormones. If there were no other control mechanisms, you would have half the protein activity as normal and this could be problematic.
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Both dwarf parents have "Dd", where "D" is dominant-dwarfism, and "d" is recessive-normal height. The kid has a chance to receive "dd" from his/her parents, resulting in double recessive genes with no dwarfism. The kid has normal height.
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Does shifting quickly up in manual car REALLY save gas?
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A really really good driver can save gas with good shifting, but 99.999% of drivers are not that good. I think the average driver would be hard-pressed to beat a modern automatic transmission.
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There used to be good reasons to drive a manual shift car (regarding getting good gas mileage), but that's really not an issue these days. The margin is so small that people would rather not have to deal with it. So if you are given a choice of manual or automatic, it becomes "why not automatic?" And the only legit answer to that question is price (it adds about $1500 to the price on most cars). Most automatic cars made in the last 10 years can also still manually shift, without the use of a clutch.
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The difference between function and physiology? My lecturer says I am confusing them...
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* Anatomy is the structure of the human body. * Function is what the human body does. * Physiology is what a normal, healthy human body does. * Pathology is what an unhealthy human body does. So physiology means healthy function, and pathology means unhealthy function.
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Physiology and Psychology are two *models* to explain one reality. This means both scientific fields can explain an important part of the same action. Both fields have very significant and distinct things to say about negative reactions to stimuli. To answer you, it's both. But I'll go on to say how it's both. Physiology is a biological science, which can use the model of biological evolution to understand how negative or antagonistic behavior can result from certain stimuli. Molecular genetics and brain physiology can shed more light on what genes, molecules, neurotransmitters, and many proteins are involved in the reaction. It's psychological, too, if we want to consider such a reaction in such a way, through such a model. This model is more contextual, while the biological model tends to be more mechanistic. Both are highly significant in understanding that one reaction you're interested in. Both are *tools* in understanding that reaction.
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How does our body control the speed of our heartbeat?
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Paramedic here, so I'm sure you'll get more details from some of the MD's but I'll give it a shot. This is an incredibly vague question. But overall the heart rate is controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System. There are two parts to the ANS, the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic nervous systems. Think of them as the gas peddle and brake peddle respectively. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for our fight or flight reflexes. It increases our blood pressure, increases our heart rate and respirations, and in general gets the body ready to rock and roll. The body does this by releasing catacholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine). The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for more mundane tasks like digestion. If the sympathetic is the "fight or flight" system, the parasympathetic system is the "sit and shit" system. By releasing acetylcholine it slows heart rate, lowers blood pressure, etc. So that's kind of a boiled down explanation, but I hope it answered your question!
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The heart generates its own rhythm. It doesn't need the brain or anything else in order to keep beating. That's why if you get knocked unconscious, your heart still pumps. As to how it works, there is a cluster of cells called the "sinoatrial node", that specializes in generating a regular rhythm, kind of like a drum beat setting the pace for a song.
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Why do you need a Master's Degree to become a librarian, especially when the median salary is barely above $50,000?
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an actual librarian - someone with an MLIS, are not the people you see at libraries that check you out, or the people shelving books. those are just regular staff. like, not everyone that works in a library is a "librarian." similar to how not everyone that works in a hospital has an M.D. and is a doctor. librarians can be rather specialized in an assortment of topics - business/management, archival work, research methodology, etc. And often when in grad school you choose if you want to be a public librarian or a academic librarian (work in a university library). For the latter, it is actually not uncommon to be required to have two masters - an MLIS and one in a specialized field (history, business, art, etc). basically librarians are experts in conducting research and managing/preserving shitloads of information and documents.
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because no ones mandating that a degree have relevance to a career. If you are independently wealthy and want to learn these things, thats your prerogative.
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So what's the real difference between an archaeologist, historical geographer and a historian?
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Easy, one digs up old maps, one redraws old maps, whilst the other debates old maps until the ends of time. But no seriously, I think that is it at a fundamental level. Archeology seems a lot more hands on though, and therefore the most rewarding I think. I know a dutch specialist in Meso-America. He gets to spend every Summer digging in the Atacama for old burial sites, and has quite a gourd collection!
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As an art historian, I think cross-disciplinary research is becoming more and more common, and that the traditional dividing "lines" between disciplines aren't all that relevant anymore. For instance, my current area of research is a certain subset of 18th & 19th century Spanish genre paintings, and how they might relate to the development of a national identity. So whilst my main focus is the art, I also research and use cultural, social, and political history to put that art in context and to help me understand its meaning. Similarly, someone studying the political history of Spain might look to official portraiture to understand how a certain figure was seen, or to narrative painting to understand certain customs or traditions. Visual history informs written history, and written history informs visual history. I can't really speak to how "good" one is at being the other, although I think the basic tenets of the disciplines are the same.
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why can you only use your thumb/ finger on the iphone's screen? as opposed to your nails or a more traditional stylus?
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iPhones and all modern smartphones use Capacitive touch screens. Rather then detect touch by pressure they use electricity, there is an electric field on the screen of your phone and when you touch it the electricity runs up your hand, through your body, and back down. The phone can detect this and determine the location of your finger(s). Since your nails and most styluses do not conduct this small charge they are not detected.
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Most modern phones use a technology called a *capacitive touchscreen*, which measures slight disruptions of an electrical field in a grid of conductive material on the surface of the glass. Other objects besides human fingers can be used as long as they have the correct electrical properties (a stylus for example).
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Why do so many symbols in physics have more than one meaning?
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There aren't enough symbols! We have greek symbols and letters from our alphabet and that's not enough for all the different things we need to represent with symbols. It's really not difficult though, for example 'I' can mean moment of inertia, which is only relevant to equations to do with rotational motion, and any of the other uses of 'I' such as sound intensity or electric current don't have anything to do with rotational motion so there's never any mix up. Every equation has a context and the context will make it obvious which meaning each symbol has.
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1. all math is symbols. numbers are just symbols that you're more familiar with. 2. many symbols are conventions. You know "e=mc2". You'd be foolish to create a new symbolic reference for the speed of light than is used here because you'd be a lousy communicator if you did. So...there are a set of conventions established either within a field, or sometimes within a team, or sometimes just within a paper, to provide shorthand references to concepts, to entire other equations and so on. So...what you lack is the meaning of the symbols. You know what the very, very complex and abstract concept represented by "0" (zero) means, so you don't spend time addressing that concept and thinking about it when you see it. The advanced physicist has a similar relationship with a much larger set of symbols, as well as a practiced mind at creating and using symbolic references much like a programmer can keep track of their own variable names.
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How can someone sleep on their arm and cut off the blood supply for 8+ hours without any injuries?
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When your arm goes numb you're not cutting off the blood supply, you're only pinching a nerve and stopping the impulses from getting through. Your arm isnt dead in the morning from sleeping on it all night in the same way a paraplegic's legs aren't dead from not feeling them.
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Your body is actually prepared to handle this situation, surprisingly enough. If your arm is amputated (by some trauma, for example) then your veins and arteries will sort of constrict and pull back, blood vessels will try to shut down. Combined with blood coagulation this can potentially save a person from bleeding out (even without surgery). Over time new blood vessels are formed so that blood can circulate properly, this is part of a process of revascularization that your body goes through normally but that is particularly useful in recovering from severe trauma.
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When humans began spreading out over the planet, where were the continents?
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Pangea broke up 200 million years ago. Human dispersion is thought to have occurred approximately 100,000 years ago. Pange had 199,900,000 years to drift apart. When humans migrated out of Africa, Europe and N. America were 2.0 kilometers closer than they are now. That's it. You'd be hard pressed to notice this difference in two different maps.
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To add to sciencedthatshit's comment, [this](_URL_0_) (Reeves et al., 2010) is considered to be the best representation of the opening of the Atlantic and the break up of Pangea. You can trace the continents to where they were based upon the hot spot tracks, and from the asimuth of the spreading centers and transforms.
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What is the significance of the "hair on the head of John the Baptist"
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John the Baptist was a Nazirite (the other most famous one being Samson). One of the vows of Nazirites was not cutting hair.
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That haircut is called a tonsure. I don't remember for certain, but my memory is that it evolved from earlier religious practices demonstrating piety/spiritual focus that started in Greece and Anatolia. _URL_0_
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If the National Geographic Society is a non-profit organization, from where does it get the funding for different projects, for paying the people involved and its general functioning overall?
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Non-Profit does not mean they do not make money, charge people, or pay staff. It means that money collected beyond the costs of running the company is re-invested into the company rather than going to stock holders or the owners bank account. As for the society, they sell their magazine, sell tv programs, sell photos, and collect donations.
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Nonprofit means that the business entity itself cannot earn money, but they are still allowed to pay their employees salaries, and that includes the CEO/president.
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Why hot water doesn't give thirst satisfaction as the cold water gives?
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Could it be conditioning? In India we often drink don't drink ice water, especially after coming in from outside heat. Cold water would not drench my thirst, I need room temperature water, still water.
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Because it works faster than cold water. However, this definitely does not mean better. Hot water will actually set a lot of stains, particularly protein based stains like meat sauces or blood. Hot water only works faster because the higher energy of the water due to the heat makes dissolving water soluble particles go a lot faster. As an example, hot water will dissolve sugar a lot faster than cold water. tl;dr: Use cold water for stain treatment.
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Does Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Have Any Scientific Basis?
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I think its fair to say the claims made exceed the evidence for those claims. The [scientific reasoning doesn't appear particularly sound](_URL_0_), and what little direct experimentation there has been doesn't seem to support the case for its efficacy. This is not to say there's nothing to the connection of language, thought and behavior and its possible utility in therapy. It just looks like whatever that utility was happened to be exploited unscrupulously very early after its discovery, leading to discrediting of the theory. I would seriously doubt any practitioner's claims, and I would highly doubt that any course you would take for "certification" would be scientifically grounded.
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Some have been proven to partially understand human language. [Alex](_URL_0_) is one of the most famous examples, who learned to distinguish several kinds of objects, materials and colours, count and answer several types of question about these things. So the best answer you're likely to get is "partially" - we can test for understanding of some concrete types of speech and with training birds can pass them. More abstract discussions may be beyond them.
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What actually happens when you eat sour candy and it feels like each side of your jaw shocked?
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That's where some of your main saliva glands are located. They go into maximum power when you eat something very sour, and some people can really feel it.
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Sour candy is mildly acidic (the acid is what gives it the sour taste). Too much sour candy at once exposes your tongue to more acid than it's use to and gives a mild chemical burn (which is why your tongue hurts after eating too many).
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Why do humans like to travel?
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personally, I hate traveling. It is a pain in the ass. But if there is motivation for me to do so, like a new higher paying job, I will do it. If there is a more fertile land to go to, it might be worth the effort of trying to travel to it.
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You’re more familiar with the trip and can better gauge where you are relative to your destination. You might also be excited for the trip so the anticipation elongates your sense of time whereas you are not as excited to go home
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What are the benefits of salt grinders?
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Aesthetics. It allows the salt and pepper grinder to match more closely since they now have similar mechanisms in them. Also, to some extent, you can choose grind size as others have mentioned, but that relies on the grinder actually having a grind selector. But it's more reliable to simply buy salt with the desired flake size and crystal structure, IMO. Size of crystals isn't really important, though; it's shape that is important. table salt has a dense cube shaped crystal, and kosher salt has a light flake like structure- kosher salt is more preferable to use in cooking because the flakey structure is better able to stick to moist surfaces when sprinkled, such as when seasoning meat) It's also important to know which a recipe is calling for- a teaspoon of table salt will contain more grams of salt than a teaspoon of kosher salt (which, incidentally, is one reason why you really should measure everything by weight, not volume, when baking)
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1. you need it to live 2. it was/is a preservative for food 3. it was used in the production of pottery 4. it was used in some religious practices 5. mined salt requires a lot of work and time 6. brined salt requires a lot of work and time The world's oceans have salt in them, but also a lot of other unwelcome stuff.
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Why is it hard to pee after ejaculating?
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Because the urethra is used for both urination and ejaculation, muscles at the base of your bladder contract to prevent urine from passing through during ejaculation. It can take a short time for the muscles to fully relax following ejaculation, making it difficult to urinate.
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When you ejaculate, semen travels through the urethra, in the same path urine takes. A bit of this semen will remain in the pathway afterwards. Having some fluid there reminds you of the sensation of peeing, and makes it feel like you're holding some in or need to go. You don't actually have any more urine there or anything, and ejaculation isn't affecting your bladder somehow. The bits of semen leftover will be flushed out when you pee. A lot of things can effect this, like how much semen you produce, the force of the ejaculation, general differences in anatomy, how much attention you pay to small feelings. So it happens more noticeably for some guys than others.
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How do internet companies like Spectrum or ATT provide internet for their clients?
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In addition to paying for upstream, ISPs literally make the internet. The internet is about connectivity and content. While content makers, like yourself in making this post, create the content independently, the ISPs are the ones building and maintaining the physical wires and equipment that make the network connections.
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Money, they can pay politicians money, they practically own the FCC, they drive competitors out of business. It's in no way a free enterprise like other business areas. It needs to change
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When rubbing a wine glass with a finger to produce a tone, why does the finger have to be wet?
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Seems to me it's just because you want to lower the coefficient of static friction. When your finger is dry and you're just about to break static friction and start sliding across, you're forcing with some very large shear. You break static and then you're finger jumps pretty far and you get stuck again. So the forcing looks like delta functions spaced by too long a period. And as we all know, we want to force close to the resonant frequency. So wet your finger lower the coefficient and it will be much easier to break in to sliding at it will happen more often. More importantly I've heard that the glass has to be crystal.
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When liquids evaporate, they carry away heat with them - so it's the same reason why a wet finger is colder than a dry finger. (as long as the relative humidity is < 100% so it can evaporate). Acetone is quite volatile (Boiling point of 56 C, about 10x the vapor pressure of water). So it vaporizes quickly and cools your finger down more. It's the same with any volatile substance, ether for instance.
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Why do hospitals and other medical facilities require expensive and elaborate buildings with detailed architecture and landscaping, wasted interior space, and seemingly energy inefficient exterior glass walls?
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Never underestimate the [placebo effect](_URL_0_). Even being in a place that looks and feels bright and open can affect your psychology and actually improve physical symptoms. Additionally, hospitals (at least in the US) compete with each other and by having pleasantly buildings it may entice patients to return in the future. Finally, I take issue with the inefficient design of buildings. I recognize I am speaking from personal experience (which is not indicative of average behavior) but my dad has been involved in the design of medical care buildings (not full hospitals) in South Carolina for quite some time. At least one building he's had a hand in is LEED certified, despite large windows in the front lobby area. (In fact, properly engineered windows with the right coating can be very efficient by reflecting IR light into or out of the building).
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Building is often done in bulk, dozens of houses at a time, which means you get economies of scale, not just in the materials etc, but in the laying on of services. Building a row of houses needs a trench dug for the sewer connections, for example, but you can do the whole row at one time - likewise the foundations and the concrete pouring etc. Build a single house and someone has to turn up to do each job singly, which is much more expensive. Working on an existing building, the services are already there - gas, water, sewer, electricity, coms, roads etc. Given all that, just adding a bit to the side costs relatively little. Taking out a bathroom and putting in a new one can be done in a week, easily.
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How would the world look now if dinosaurs would never have gone extinct?
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They didn't all go extinct. We just call them birds now. If you're asking about what if all the other dinosaurs that went extinct hadn't, well, first off, that's pretty much impossible, because the vast majority of lineages that have ever existed (something like 99%, I think) have gone extinct, so most of them would have at some point, even if the K-T extinction event had never happened. Secondly, if we were to posit for a moment that representatives of all six sub-orders of dinosaurs did survive to modern day, then we have absolutely no way to describe what the world would look like. The entire course of earth history would have been altered, and we cannot make statements about what it would look like, *and* claim that we are not purely guessing.
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The age of dinosaurs was akin to how the age of Mammals is now. Some species stuck together and some lead a solitary life. They also would have used different behaviors in hunting. Some animals would be regularly visible and and surround themselves with other species and some would ambush so they wouldn’t really be something you would notice.
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Why do people snore when they're sleeping but not while they're awake?
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My uneducated guess would be that it probably has something to do with the relaxation of facial/throat muscles while sleeping, the breathing pattern changing, and the different postures people sleep in as opposed to waking time
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It's actually a psychological sleep disorder - I learned about it in one of my Abnormal Psych classes. [Check it out](_URL_0_)
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What are the pros and cons of having shared currency like Euro?
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Pros: It's much easier to conduct transactions across national borders which lowers prices. It's much easier to write contracts and do lots of legal work which reduces confusion and lowers prices. It may forge a sense of regional accountability that increases civility between cultures and reduces the risk of war. Cons: When a part of the Eurozone gets into financial trouble, it cannot manipulate its currency to help. In other words, it cannot devalue the euro to make exports cheaper and encourage tourism and direct inward investment. Being in the Eurozone means that all countries which take part agree to share one common monetary policy and that reduces sovereign power. The voters of Greece, for example, have virtually no say in what the European Central Bank chooses to do.
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A single currency allows for more efficient trade, but removes monetary policy from the individual nations and gives it to the bank of the entire EuroZone. As everyone is using and borrowing the same currency, when some countries *cough Greece cough* lie about their finances to get in and then do a terrible job on their own economy, it hurts their currency which is also the currency of everyone else in the Eurozone. This makes it harder for other countries to borrow money, which hurts their economies, and makes it even HARDER for the others (and those initial countries) to borrow money, etc. etc.
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Do any animals besides humans find enjoyment in listening to music?
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I think it would be really hard to qualify "enjoyment" in many species but I would imagine you could see changes in behavior linked to the music- start playing it and seeing a head bob in a parrot for example. But even we can't really qualify how we enjoy or choose our musical tastes you know? I know there was a study on dogs for classical music that found when played in the shelter it reduced stress levels. Hard to say if it was drowning out other dogs barking or if the inherent music itself was doing the trick.
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Not what we as humans define as music, no. Our music typically falls into a similar sound range that a human voice is able to replicate, and it's definitely within the human range of hearing (20Hz-20kHz). Animals don't share the same "fondness" for human vocal ranges and definitely don't have the same hearing range. There actually is music out there for animals, but it's more or less specific to each animal. Cats listening to music designed for cats can actually have certain emotions invoked similar to what our music can do to us. A cat listening to music designed for dogs, however, will likely feel indifferent as they do listening to human music.
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How are lab-created gemstones different from naturally formed ones?
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*Not responding as my tag - but because I am a gemstone collector* It depends on the gemstone. Diamonds, topaz, sapphire, etc - can be grown in the lab and create flawless gems. However... there is a big difference between lab grown and natural - which boils down to the impurities (rutilation, inclusions, etc). Natural gemstones can often have their origins determined based on things like rutilation and inclusions (down to which mine they came out of). A good gemologist can often tell the difference between a lab-created stone and a natural stone based on these things.
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A lot of precious gemstones are basically natural versions of this: diamonds are carbon crystals which can be different colors (rose diamonds, blue diamonds - and even chocolate diamonds, the tilapia of diamonds) depending on the impurities present. Same with sapphire/ruby, which are the same mineral, just colored differently depending on what else is scattered throughout the crystalline structure.
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After baby penguins are grown and parent penguins leave, where do parent penguins go?
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The parents go to the ocean to fish. The young of that year later make their way out to the ocean, and then all breeding individuals return to the same colony location next year. I think it takes about 5 years for individuals to mature enough to return to the breeding colony.
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They die, but their eggs or larvae live on to hatch next year.
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Why don't most earphones limit volume to only safe levels?
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This would greatly increase the complexity of earphones. Your basic earphones now are completely unintelligent - the wire carries a signal which vibrates the speaker.
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You know how at the loud volume of your music the music itself has variations in loudness? Some sounds are louder some are softer. So, without changing the volume of your speakers you can encode and change the volume of the music. Advertisers know this and just make their sound super loud. Its illegal in most media in the US. There is a max encoded volume for television commercials, at any rate.
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How close was Vulgar Latin to Classic Latin?
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I've written [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_) about Classical Latin's relationship to its vulgar cousin. The short version is that there is no single "Vulgar Latin." Vulgar Latin is simply the colloquial form of the language, as opposed to the literary form, and since everybody speaks with different personal idioms it's hard to reduce it to clear grammatical rules. Some things, such as the simplification of case structure, elipsis of common verbs, and a few rather bizarre idioms are pretty obvious to us--but while what Cicero writes in many of his letters might be indicative of a form of Vulgar Latin it is certainly not the same sort of Latin that some shmuck in the Subura would be speaking, which itself would not be the same sort of Latin that a provincial would speak
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I think [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) answer of mine should more or less answer your question. The short version is that everyone spoke Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin isn't a monolithic block, it's simply the colloquial form of speech and varies greatly depending on location, period, and social status. "Classical" Latin is a purely literary invention--in much the same way that we don't speak the way we write journal articles, no Latin speaker would speak the affected literary style of writing and oratory. That's not to say that the educated didn't have *better* Latin--an Oxford don doesn't speak the same way as a construction worker, by and large. But that same Oxford don doesn't speak as if he's writing a journal article either
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Joan of Arc and her story seem too fantastic to be true. What to historians think about the validity of her and her exploits?
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The 1400s aren't exactly the misty depths of myth and legend, and Joan of Arc was one of the most written-about people of her time. If our understanding differs from reality it's because hundreds/thousands of people in England and France at all levels of society misunderstood or misrepresented; no serious scholarship that I know of questions her historicity. [This page](_URL_1_) has a portion of her trial transcript including examination of witnesses to all stages of her life; other primary sources such as her letters are also available online.
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What kind of book are you looking for? Are you comfortable reading academic studies or do you require a more accessible style of literature? What kind of study?introduction to her life and times; a more detailed study of a particular aspect, for example as a military leader; a translation of the two chief trials (Condemnation of Rouen Trial, 1431; and Nullification, 1455-56)? Of course, I can't promise that a perfect study exists that will fit all interests (especially as Joan features prominently in dozens of essay collections) and you could identify the books you've picked out already that would be useful, too! A very good introduction to Joan which might help you whittle-down your themes is Craig Taylor's [introduction](_URL_0_) to his sourcebook, *Joan of Arc: La Pucelle*, (Manchester, 2006).
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Would the world be more technologically advanced without Christianity?
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Really, the "Dark Ages" weren't all that dark. Christianity directly led to the blossoming of science, so I would say no. It was the Christian belief in an ordered Creation that led men to science. That belief led men to seek to learn about their Creator through learning about His Creation. Your source is, obviously, incredibly biased. In fact, the whole idea of Christianity being anti-science is one of the biggest lies in the world. right after "Firefly deserved to be cancelled."
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You have to realize that Christianity didn't start in Europe, it started in the Middle East, namely the Levant. Antioch and Alexandria where early centers of Christianity before Western Europe ever was, and various early missionaries spread it as far as trade routes would carry them. The trade routes reaching from the Roman Levant to India where very highly developed, with the Parthains being the only major power in between Rome and India. Christianity was very widespread throughout the East, and given that Israel would have been closer to Persia than Rome, its not hard to imagine that Christianity would have spread there. Indeed, most of the missionaries to China and India (both had ancient Christian populations, neither of which had European roots) originated from the Church of the East that existed in Persia under the Sassanids.
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Why Puerto Rico is still an unincorporated territory of the United States?
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The simple answer is because their government has not requested a change in their status. There was a referendum on the issue which suggested statehood was the most popular option. But so far their government has not acted on it. If they do formally request to become a state, it will then be up to Congress and the existing states to accept them.
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US Territories are not States. They have chosen to not become full members of the Federation and so do not have the rights of full members of the Federation. The primaries are not actually a part of the governmental process. They are internal methods that the parties use to choose who their representative is. Since the parties are not actually a part of the government there is relatively little regulation as to what they choose to use as their criteria for choosing their representative. They do not even have to hold a vote for citizens to vote in (as seen in Colorado). They happen to allow the territories to give their opinions.
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With our current capabilities, would we be able to tell that our own system contained a habitable planet if we were a number of light years away? From how far out would be be able to identify this?
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If you look at [Kepler's orrey](_URL_0_), which shows planets in other systems compared to ours on the top left, you can see that the planets we have found are much bigger and closer in than our own. However, it would be possible to tell if our planets are vaguely close to habitable if outside observers were edge on to our solar system, as they would be able to see the change in light as our planets go between them and our sun, and possibly observe the chemical composition of the atmospheres. I am not certain what range this would be, but under these conditions it would be a long way, possibly 1000 lightyears or more.
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> Could current astronomers detect our own planet? Almost certainly not. Same answer if it's 10 light years away. We could only detect the planet itself with current technology if its orbit happened to be oriented just right so that it transits its sun as seen from Earth, and we happened to be watching that star with a telescope like Kepler. It might also be possible to detect their existence if the inhabitants of that planet directed a powerful radio signal at us using their equivalent of Arecibo, and we happened to be listening in that direction with a similarly huge radio telescope at the moment it arrived. But the chances of either of those things happening by accident are pretty close to zero. > Extra Credit: What's the maximum distance from which we would be able to detect life on our planet? With current technology, much less than a light year. We'd have to be within the same solar system.
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Why does a contraption like Falcon’s in the Marvel Cinematic Universe not work? In other words, why can’t we fly with some sort of metal wings on our backs?
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People *can* fly with wings strapped to their backs - we call them *hang gliders*. The big problem with comic-book flying power suits is the *power*. You'd need a tiny jet/rocket engine with a source of fuel or power that was small enough to fit on your back, light enough that you could still fly and lasted long enough to be of practical use.
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Too heavy and our arms are not strong enough. Note that flying birds have MASSIVE chest muscles relative to their size. These are used to flap the wings. Additionally, they are very light weight, with adaptations such as hollow bones.
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What is the difference between something that is inherently wrong (i.e. murder) as opposed to something that is wrong within the context of a culture or religion (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc)?
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This is a philosophy question with no provable answer. We can't really ELI5 this unless you're asking for answers as to what, philosophically, is the basis of morality.
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In such cultures women are viewed as property, to be bought, sold, or traded. The honor killing is in retribution for the perceived dishonor of allowing themselves to be raped, as it damages or destroys their value to their male owner. It is fucked up.
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What kind of script did the various Persian empires write in?
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The Achaemenid Empire generally used Aramaic for much of its history. This would've been written in Imperial Aramaic Script, which is related most closely to Hebrew script, but is related (sometimes closely, sometimes distantly) to other Semitic scripts. edit: [Here](_URL_0_) is what it looks like--it's on the bottom. Note that Imperial Aramaic was used between different parts of the far-flung empire--it was a standard language, not the language of the majority of people in Persia. And obviously, it wasn't even Persian.
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Other than the Greek and Persian sources, I think the only decent account of the Achaemenid Persians would be in the bible. However, it might be worth checking out "The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period, Vol. 1" by Amélie Kuhrt which would almost certainly answer your question.
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Why is Japan the defacto "source" of such extremely weird pornography (tentacles, etc) yet their regular pornography is always censored?
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You answered your own question without actually thinking about what's being censored. In Japan, it's against the law to show genitalia of either sex (for humans). You can't actually depict sex. So because Japanese law is so strict in that regards, they had to get creative with their porn.
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There's a [Quora post](_URL_0_) that explains a little bit about the laws in Japan regarding censorship. A more in-depth explanation can be found on this [Wikipedia page](_URL_1_). Essentially, it's viewed as okay to accept that porn exists and people watch it so long as the act itself is censored. Both links I provided give an overview of why that is, but suffice to say that its a cultural thing.
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Why is music in bars so loud? Assume local drinking age is 5.
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Loud music means you can't hold a conversation. If you can't hold a conversation there's not much to do other than buy lots of alcohol.
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I can relate. I think it may simply because you're more emotionally in tune with music when listening in a drunken state.
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What is the oldest joke in History that we know of?
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fyi, you'll find the oldest recorded joke (from Sumer) and many more examples of old jokes in the FAQ * [Jokes and humour in history](_URL_0_)
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As far as I am aware, the oldest joke is from 1900 BC Sumer and goes like this: > "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." Another very old joke comes from 1600 BC Egypt, attributed to Pharaoh Snofru: > "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." The study was conducted by students and faculty at the University of Wolverhampton under the auspices of Dr. Paul McDonald, and was commissioned by the TV channel Dave in an attempt to understand the ancient origins of humor. _URL_2_ _URL_1_ _URL_0_
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Did Caesar date his family's origin back to Romulus?
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Who told you Caesar claimed descent from Ancus Marcius? The *gens Julia* was one of the so-called "Trojan Families," the *gentes* claiming descent to the Trojans through Alba Longa. Since the tradition was that the Trojan Families came to Rome from Alba after Ancus Marcius was already king, how could Ancus be an ancestor of the Trojan Families? Moreover, the Trojan Families could claim Trojan descent without also claiming Romulan descent. First of all, there is no tradition surviving from antiquity that Romulus had children. Second of all, since Romulus was supposed to have come to Rome before the Trojan Families moved from Alba the fact that Romulus was descended from Aeneas has no relevance to the *gens Julia*
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There's always room for further contributions, but you might find [this](_URL_0_) recent post, by u/PatrikKlingborg, useful. Essentially, a family couldn't name their son Caesar because it was a family name, not an individual name.
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How are autonomous vehicles supposed to function in large cities (assumed to be where they'll be used most) when any normal gps system can't even function correctly with all the interference from the skyscrapers?
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They don't use JUST GPS. They also use cameras, sensors, and built in maps (and math). They are programmed to read signs, recognize pedestrians, keep an updated version of where they are on a map based on speed and direction, etc, etc...
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The strength of radio signals gets weaker with the square of distance. When you move from 5 to 10 feet away, they get 4 times weaker, 5 to 50, 100 times weaker. In a lot of ways this is a good thing. There could easily be a million wireless signals in a city, if they were strong enough to have a much greater range, they would all interfere with one another.
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Why do Americans call Tuna, "Tuna-fish" instead of just "Tuna"?
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"Tuna" is originally a Spanish word, and you see a lot of redundancy with loanwords like that. Think of the tendency among some to say "Sierra Nevada *mountains*," when Spanish "sierra" already expresses the same thing. "Tuna fish" helps make the foreign word recognizable.
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Tuna is quite common in UK supermarkets. Literally sold anywhere there is salmon on sale. Tastes nothing like the tuna in a can and the texture is quite different too
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Genetically Modified Food - What does it mean and should I be concerned?
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No, there is no reason to be concerned. Practically all the food you eat has been genetically modified in one way or another, everything from [cows](_URL_1_) to [corn](_URL_0_) are completely different from their wild ancestors. The only difference between these everyday foods and the 'GM' counterparts is that we waited for evolution to run its course and selectively bred for the traits we were looking for. With modern GM foods we don't have to wait for mutations, we don't have to spend thousands of years honing the product, we use our scientific knowledge and insert or remove genes to achieve the changes we are looking for.
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Genetically modified foods on the market are considered safe. They have undergone testing to show no adverse effects, and there is no good evidence that there are risks. One of the arguments against genetically modified foods is that they could contaminate the "natural" plants, and then we could discover too late that there is a serious danger with the genetically modified strain.
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Why would an app developer choose to put their app on just one os( ios or Android)? Wouldn't they make more money having it on both types of devices?
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It takes a lot of effort to port the same app to multiple platforms because they don't use the same underlying interfaces. It's like asking why my Canadian tax software doesn't also just magically handle Australian code.
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It's like if you have a black cat and you consider getting an orange cat. You can get an orange cat, but it costs more in terms of money and time to take care of the second cat. If you can't afford to buy food for the second cat, or if the second cat doesn't bring you enough extra joy for it to be worth it, then you may choose not to get that cat. Creating software for two different operating systems costs money. They can't be exactly the same, and creating the software in such a way that you can share as much as possible is costly and time-consuming. Once you've created the software for both, it is then expensive to maintain two things instead of just one. The makers of such software either don't have the resources to create the PC version of the software, or they've deemed it to be cost-ineffective to do so.
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Why does food reheated on a gas stove taste different from food reheated with a microwave?
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This gets asked a lot in a lot of different ways. Basically it's the same reason any food tastes different when cooked in a microwave vs being cooked over actual heat. Microwaves don't heat food, they heat water (mostly) and that water heats the food. As it vaporizes, it can take with it the compounds that are responsible for taste and smell. A heat source like a gas burner on the other hand applies heat to the food primarily (also the water inside it I suppose, but rather than exclusively applying it to the water, it applies it to whatever it's touching) which allows Maillard reactions to occur on the food's surface. (Basically carmelization that gives food a nice crust full of flavor.) Boiled and steamed foods will taste pretty much the same when cooked in a microwave or on a more traditional heat source because they also rely primarily on heated water to cook the food.
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At least part of the answer has to be that, heating food excites odor molecules. Smells better = tastes better. Plus texture.
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Why does poultry make us sick when not completely cooked? How is it different to beef or lamb that can be done "rare" and still not kill us?
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The main disease that happens when it comes to chicken is salmonella and e coli. They thrive in animal intestinal tracts. As part of the slaughtering process, it's necessary to remove the intestines of the animal. Done improperly, even a tiny amount of matter from the intestinal tract spilling onto the meat could contaminate it. As part of processing, chickens are often cleaned using a common process that could create cross contamination. This might be further spread by the manual process of seperating the chicken when workers would touch contaminated chicken and then spread the contamination. It's still possible to get these infections from other animals, but they are gutted a different way and consumed differently. As I am writing this, there is an active beef recall due to salmonella contamination. _URL_0_
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We don't need to cook our meat. We can eat it raw but it's possible to get sick because of the bacteria in the meat. Other animals can also get sick from the bacteria in meat. Aside from the fact that humans are the only animals who are capable of cooking their own meat. Some zoos cook the meat before giving it to animals to reduce the chance of getting sick.
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Is Europe (The EU) basically the same as America in terms of setup?
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There are similarities, but in some ways it's more like the USA was under the articles of the confederation than the USA under its current constitution. The biggest difference is that the members of the EU are still in theory sovereign states. They have their own representation in the UN, they have their own independent armed forces, they can enter into treaties with other sovereign states and they are free to leave the EU if they want. There are also differences in how EU law is applied compared to US federal law. When the U.S. Federal government passes a law, it immediately takes effect in every state and federal agencies can enforce that law (provided the law is constitutional). The EU is different. When the EU passes a law, each member is then meant to pass their own laws to comply with it. The EU is not normally responsible for directly enforcing that law.
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Hiya, I asked a similar question to this a few months ago, you can [read it here](_URL_0_), hopefully it answers your questions. :) It's more US-centered than European or otherwise however it's still a fascinating read.
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How embrions in eggs survive without oxygen?
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Eggs are absolutely not airtight. There are thousands of tiny pores on the surface of the shell that allow gas exchange. Inside the egg, there's a small bubble attached to the bottom of the egg that contains air. As the embryo uses up oxygen from this bubble and releases carbon dioxide, the pores in the egg allow gas exchange with outside air, removing the CO2 and bringing in oxygenated air.
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Directly under the egg's shell are two membranes. When the eggs are laid by the mother they’re very warm, and as they cool the material inside the egg shrinks a little bit. The two membranes pull apart a little and create a small pocket or sack of air. As the developing bird grows, it breathes in oxygen from the air sack and exhales carbon dioxide. Several thousand microscopic pores all over the surface of the egg allow the CO2 to escape and fresh air to get in. Source: _URL_0_
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Why cant batteries charge as fast as they can discharge?
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They can! For example, the 28KWh battery in my Nissan Leaf can charge to full from empty in around 30 minutes at a 440V charging station (though you aren't supposed to charge it above 80% at these stations to go easier on the battery.) That's actually faster than it discharges under normal use. Now if you're really asking "Why is it worse for the battery's lifetime to charge quickly rather than discharge quickly?" that has some complicated chemistry involved that I will leave to a chemist.
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It's largely a tendency for them to overheat when too much current passes through them; this can be managed to a degree, but it's still hard to quickly charge batteries without risking damage or a reduction in its usable life.
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Is it ethical to use placebos in clinical medicine?
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Are you asking whether placebos are used in day to day practice? Family physician here. No, it's not considered ethical now. Nowadays, all treatments are discussed with a patient - the pros and cons, what we're trying to achieve, what to expect as effect, what to expect as side-effects, realistic expectations, and then there is the negotiation - the patient might want to discuss their doubts or concerns, or discuss other options. Using a placebo would necessitate a lie.
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This is not my area of expertise so I won't try to give you any opinions but there is a guy named Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard Medical School who is studying how placebo works, and he seems to be looking for ways to administer placebo without deception. The logic is, as you state, if placebos work for a given condition why can't we use them therapeutically? And the answer is typically, we can't because traditional placebo involves deceiving the patient. Some of his studies suggest that the deception is not necessary. You can google his name for information, there are several articles in the popular science press about him, but here is his webpage with some links to publications: _URL_0_ And here is a skeptical (in the best sense) article about his work: _URL_1_
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Why is Google Maps slower now than five years ago?
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The maps are significantly higher resolution and contain a lot more information that needs to load before it displays. Some of the information can be pretty useful, but as you point out, it might not be worth the extra load time.
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This has two parts: 1. Keeping the maps updated is expensive. 2. If you have the navigation of a certain brand, you are forced to buy for that type of device. Which means they can dictate the prices and you are either forced to pay them or live with an outdated map. In this case are milked for your money, simply because they can. There are companies where you get a livetime free update of new maps. You also need to check what updates cost when making the initial purchase of your device. And finally, you need to decide what you want to live with. Sometimes it is cheaper to get a new device with lifetime-update than updating your existing one.
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Is there something about "Christmas music" that makes it sounds "Christmas-y"?
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A lot of Christmas songs have the sound of bells in them, particularly "sleigh bells". They also tend to be written in major keys which we generally associate with happy feelings.
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Here's my opinion on this, I have no expertise in it though. By the way, this idea is directly plagiarized from [xkcd](_URL_1_). [Baby Boomers](_URL_0_) grew up with those things and there are currently a lot of Baby Boomers. Also , if you look at the current age and buying power of Baby Boomer's, they are really the perfect target demographic if you're trying to decide what music to play during Christmas shopping time at Macy's to get people in a nostalgic, warm-and-fuzzy, Christmas shopping mood.
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If two bullets were fired at high velocity and in rapid succession, could the second bullet catch up to the first bullet due to the effects of drafting/drag? (Vortex surfing)
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If the succession were rapid enough, sure, it's conceivable as a thought experiment. Higher drag on the first bullet could slow it down enough relative to the second so the second one bumped into the back of the first. In reality, you'd have to fire these bullets extremely, extremely quickly. The fastest firing gun I can think of is a minigun, which can fire 6000 rounds per minute and has a muzzle velocity of 2800 ft/s. This means there are (2800 ft/s)*(60 s/min)/(6000 rounds/min) = 28 feet between each successive bullet that comes out of the gun--way too far, relative to the size of the bullet, to get a slipstream effect.
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If you can find a gun that fires both fast and accurate enough for two bullets to have the exact same travel path, then hypothetically yes. The first bullet would leave a vacuum in its wake, pulling in the second bullet a bit more. I wouldn't assume the bullet is large enough to make a considerable difference, but physics state that yes, two bullets would draft.
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How is our economy going to remain sustainable with many jobs at a high risk of automation in the near future?
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Automation of jobs have been happening since the invention of the steam engine - and so far our economy has managed. Remember that this kind of change doesnt happen overnight. It's a slow outphasing allowing the economy to slowly adapt.
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Always Follow The Money. Logic says that workers, ordinary folks, should be the ones fearing automation. But the articles I've seen spreading fear about automation causing massive unemployment seem to originate at media organs that serve the financial industry. And the financial industry serves the wealthy. So why would the wealthiest people in the world be even the slightest bit concerned if the working poor are unemployed in droves? They wouldn't be, we all know that. So what's the end game look like if automation eliminates 90 percent of all jobs? Well, at that point we will probably be a post-scarcity civilization. Meaning money might just go away completely. And that possibility would terrify the wealthy.
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How does one measure things in space, like the distance to the sun for example?
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Here's a real basic article about it: _URL_0_ Here's one from NASA that goes into more detail (including subsections that go further in depth): _URL_1_ The short version... there are a couple of different methods they use, depending on the object they are measuring and its distance from us. The most basic method is parallax. You note where an object's at. Then about 6 months later (when the Earth is on the opposite side of its orbit) you note it again. Then you can do some math to those figures and generate an approximate distance.
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Hold your thumb out at arm's length, close one eye, and focus on a distance object. Now keeping your arm still, switch eyes. Your thumb will jump compared to the object in the distance. You can take the amount your thumb jumped, and the distance between your eyes, and calculation how far away it way. You can do the same with stars, but instead of each eye, you are measuring how far it moves as the earth goes around the sun. Nearby stars make small but measurable jumps (called *parallax*) compared to more distance once, and these can be used to compute their distance.
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What happened in the Tiananmen Square and what is the backstory/context and the consensus on what happened?
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Intellectuals and students were protesting the Chinese communist government and it's policies. Protests against communist regimes were commonplace in the late 80's near the fall of the Soviet Union. The Chinese government responded with a violent crack-down by rolling tanks into the square and putting town the protests with prejudice. A unknown number of people were killed or arrested. The most notable image from the incident is the widely publicized "tank man" a lone man standing in the road in front of the tanks in non-violent protest. Which has become a lasting symbol of anti-communist propaganda. The events of Tiananmen square have been effectively erased from Chinese history by the ruling Communist party. While it is widely discussed in the Western world the Chinese population as a whole have no idea it happened because discussion about the subject is forbidden and the evidence is actively suppressed by the ruling party.
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I would recommend you check out Zhao Ziyang's journal, published in the US as *Prisoner of the State*, which is the only thorough inside account of the political environment around the Tiananmen Incident that I am aware of. Admittedly, it's rather one-sided. But, hey: Deng Xiaoping could have recorded his own secret audio diary, and he didn't, so there!
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why do many stereo receivers display their volume "backwards" (where zero is the loudest)?
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Because the volume knob is not an "increase the sound" knob, it's a "decrease the sound" knob. The zero point is the spot where the amplifier is "normal", believe it or not. Everything below that is called attenuation which is a fancy word for "reduce the signal". Anything above zero will be distorted.
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Think of it as multiplication. If your volume on the source is at 50% and your BT headphones are at 100%, the resulting volume is 50%. If you turn down your headphones to 50% the resulting volume is 25%.
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Why are video game players eligible for athletic Visas when there is no physical activity in playing in the tournaments?
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Because it's a competition. Chess players and poker players and so on can get "athletic" visas as well. It's not really the government's job to start enforcing arbitrary cutoffs on what constitutes "enough physical activity to be a sport." It hardly hurts anyone to let a few Koreans come over and play video games, so why not?
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Actually, the US government does consider League of Legends a sport. League of Legends players (starting in 2013) are eligible for the [P-1A visa](_URL_0_) for "Internationally Recognized Athletes". The first esports player to use this visa was the Canadian League player Shiphtur, of team Dignitas.
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Why do pre-cooked chickens cost less than the raw chickens at the grocery store?
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The rotisserie chicken you see in the front of stores is a loss leader. The store loses money on each chicken sold. However, when you put it in your cart and walk around with it, you smell the chicken and get hungry, thus buying more.
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Poultry/Chicken has a larger risk of parasites. Where I live it's not allowed to serve raw fish that hasn't been frozen to -20C for at least 24 hours first to kill off parasites. This includes fish used in sushi dishes of course.
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Would a blind person who is able to see for the first time view optical illusions the same as the rest of us?
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Well, people who were never able to see before would have severe problems interpreting sight. People who lost their sight at very young ages and later have it restored have had varying degrees of difficulty, from not being able to make sense of complex shapes, or even having the normal understanding of depth perception. It seems that, like many things, there may be a critical period for portions of the brain to develop properly. Some examples: [Michael May](_URL_1_) [Sidney Bradford](_URL_0_)
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To address only 1 and 2 - It is possible and the effects seem to be long lasting. There was a 5 day experiment done on a subject who learned braille while blindfolded. _URL_0_
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Why are so many Ancient Egyptian statues missing noses?
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hi! you may be interested in these earlier posts [Why do many ancient statues or carvings have no nose?](_URL_0_) [Did European conquerers really shoot off the noses of Egyptian statues?](_URL_1_)
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A [drawing from 1738](_URL_2_) depicts it without the nose, so it definitely wasn't Napoleon who did it. Following the trail from [Wikipedia](_URL_0_), [here](_URL_1_) is a quote with source: > Finally, an article by Ulrich Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt," published in the University of London's Bulletin Of The School Of Oriental And African Studies (BSOAS), vol.43 (1980) p.55-66, states that according to Makrizi, Rashidi and other medieval Arab scholars, the face of the Sphinx was vandalized in 1378 A.D. by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a "fanatical sufi of the oldest and most highly respected sufi convent of Cairo." The nose and ears are mentioned specifically as having been damaged at this time. According to one account, Haarmann states, the residents in the neighborhood of the Sphinx were so upset by the destruction that they lynched him and buried him near the great monument he ruined.
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How do navigational systems detect traffic jams with such accuracy?
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Your phone and everybody elses phone is always uploading data to the Google traffic database. So it knows how fast you are moving by tracking you and everybody else via GPS. That information is relayed back down to you. So if everybody is traveling well below the speed limit and there is a large concentration of cars clustered together it is clearly a traffic jam. That will get tagged in the database / query and sent down to you. Google is always watching. /r/privacy
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This is part of Google's anonymous location data they collect on all Android mobile phones (assuming, of course, you have location turned on). On any stretch of road at any time, at least a few dozen people are probably driving with Android phones in their car. They know the phones location, and from that can easily calculate velocity. If the average speed of phones travelling on this stretch of road is 60mph and the speed limit is also 60mph, they can deduce that traffic must be flowing smoothly. If the phones are only averaging about 20mph on this stretch of road and the speed limit is 60mph, they know traffic must be congested.
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How is E-ZPass not considered a monopoly?
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Monopolies are perfectly legal. What's illegal is a monopoly using its monopoly status to make it impossible for other companies to even attempt to compete, or to use their monopoly status in one type of business to try to gain a monopoly status in a different line of business.
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The taxicab monopoly is ancient, extremely well connected, and ruthless. They've had a century to see off endless challenges to their authority. They know how this game is played and they're willing to do whatever it takes to keep their monopoly.
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Why was the Hammer and Anvil tactic developed by Alexander The Great so effective?
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The hammer and anvil wasn't really invented by Alexander nor his father. What was special was that he *perfected* it. And it had to do with his companion cavalry which were superior to the Persians. As to why the tactic is so effective. Hammer and Anvil really has to do with flanking and the concept of local superiority. In Alexander's case, it was really more psychological.
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/u/Iphikrates answered [What really killed Alexander the Great?](_URL_0_) although there's more to be said about your question.
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Chimp Feet versus Human Feet
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The human foot is often described as a rigid lever during human walking and running. This is in contrast to what we see in apes, which is an opposable big toe, which resides on a foot that is much more loose (the foot joints are generally more mobile). A rigid foot is definite a benefit when you're constant walking on flat ground, and no longer need a grasping big toe during movement in the trees. This is because when we propel ourselves during walking or running, you're calf muscles contract and in turn some of that forward force is transmitted through the foot to the ground. A rigid foot resists deformation, and more efficiently transmits that force. One of the other big things that has changed is that the big toe is much more robust compared to the other toes in humans. This is because at the end of each step, the big toe is transmitting a lot of force to the ground, and a big, robust toe is more able to deal with the stress.
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[This chimp was born with an extra chromosome](_URL_0_), but he was not mentaly defective. He had some human-like characteristic, like walking upright and straight face. He also seemed more interested in mating with humans than monkeys. His is not a happy story, but at least he died in pace and quiet.
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How can the internet go through so many devices so incredibly fast like in real time? Ex: PS4 > Router/Modem > Server > Other People?
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It's worth nothing that it's a lot more complicated than that. There are *dozens* of devices between "Modem" and "Server" - and that's just the ones you can see! Same for "Server" and "Other people". ...which makes it even more extraordinary that we're getting data so fast. The bottom line here is that electrical signals travel at the speed of light, slowed down by the medium. Copper slows it down significantly, but it's still very, very fast. Fibre-optics are even *faster*. All the devices in between the long cables slow it down a bit more, but advanced computing power makes that bit faster, too. Basically, the bottleneck here is the speed at which devices can *process* the data more than anything else.
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It's like a traffic jam. You can only squeeze so much data through a connection, and if someone else is using a portion of it, your portion is going to slow.
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