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Why is incest such a common trope in porn? | It's taboo (which makes it exciting), it's something that could arise out of a real life situation (theoretically it could happen to anyone, even you!), and it strikes the chord of "when sex was still new and exciting" (even if the actors aren't pretending to be underage, there's usually a younger inexperienced character). Even if you're icked out by actual incest, it's kind of the holy trifecta of arousal. |
Why do some salon style shampoos and conditioners have a warning that products purchased from anywhere other than salons could be counterfeited? | The salons get to put a large markup on those products and dont want you buying them elsewhere |
How did punch cards work? Specifically, what is the reading mechanism? | There are eighty columns on a card. Each column can be punched with a single hole, in a location that designates a number 0 through 9. Each column can also be punched with two holes whose locations designate a letter of the alphabet. Modern punch machines (70's modern) both read and punch. They read by shining light at the card that passes through mechanism. The light shines through the punch holes and hits matrix of photo electric cells. If you were working on a critical job you typed in your data, or code to punch the cards and then stick them back in the hopper and type it again and the machine would detect errors if it found them. Punch cards could be used for data entry or for writing code. It was a sad day when you dropped your cards. A sad day indeed. If I had a nickel for every card I used in the 70's I'd be extremely wealthy today. |
why other sects of Christianity generally do not like Catholics. | At one point in time, the Catholic Church was the *only* church...in fact, the word catholic means "universal". Every major branch of Christianity at some point in time broke away from the Catholics. Not only did they disagree on religion, but it lead to centuries of war in Europe, with one king trying to change the religion of his country, and the next trying to change it back. This has led to some hard feelings that endure today. Check out the Reformation and the Counter Reformation for more info. |
What is "Shepard's Tone" | _URL_0_ Explains it better than I ever could. |
Why are dogs affraid of vacuums? | Like people, all dogs personalities are not the same. I have three dogs of varying size (55, 75 & 100 lbs). My bulldog is not scared of thunder or guns, but is afraid of the vacuum & fireworks. My mutt is afraid of absolutely everything (he will stop breathing when it is thundering outside.. he's a weirdo). And my Pit/Whippet mix is not afraid of a damn thing on this earth; if anything she is just curious about it all. She won't bark at the vacuum, she'll follow it around and sniff it. When it's thundering outside, she likes to go out & play while looking at the sky. However, I think a major reason dogs tend not to like the vacuum is because it makes a terrible noise, makes motions that seem unfamiliar & does not smell like it is alive (but acts like it). |
[NSFW maybe] how come when you tickle yourself you don't feel anything but when you masturbate its pleasurable? | When you are tickled your body thinks it's being attacked, thats why you can't tickle yourself (cause what person attacks his/herself?) |
Why can public schools, funded by the government, limit the rights of its students? | It's a legal concept called [in loco parentis](_URL_0_). The school is legally acting in place of your parent while you're a student, and as such are allowed to act in your best interest as they see fit. There are some legal restrictions on this in the interest of upholding civil rights with regard to discrimination, abuse, and things of that nature, but generally speaking the school can legally act exactly as a parent would to enforce the greater good and safety of its students and the educational environment. |
This whole idea of "we make the car, then ship it to independent dealers to charge whatever they want" seems kind of silly. Make the car, ship it to your brand's retail stores, and sell it. Done. What's the deal? | I think it has something to do with preventing monopolies. A lot of laws in business regarding antitrust and monopolies come from Standard Oil? and John D/ Rockefeller's practices back in the early 1900's, where he practiced Vertical Integration, owning each facet of a process, i.e., owning the company that produced drilling equipment, owning the company that drilled the oil, owning the company that refined it. Tesla is doing something similar, owning the manufacturer, owning the distributor, owning the maintenance/repair. I think Im missing a lot, but that's the gist of it. Rockefeller did that, prevented competition, and now we have laws against it. Get a legal guy to correct me and fill in the blanks. |
What is happening inside my console when a game is loading? | Loading from the hard drive to the RAM. In a computer (including consoles), the processors, the GPU and CPU, need to have quick access to the data, and hard drives are far too slow to provide this, even new SSDs are still too slow. So what was the solution to this? RAM, or Random Access Memory. RAM is very very fast, providing the data needed, but they need the data loaded into them first, hence the loading process. Some other processes may occur in preparation, maybe some decompression, but mainly the hard drive is what slows it down. In the last few years though, SSDs, or Solid State Drives, have started to become relevant, and these are good because they are fast, allowing quick access of data. Loading times are basically non existent on them. Loaded data is then reworked by the CPU and GPU to display those characters on the screen, assigning each pixel a different color every time the frame changes. |
Is it possible for new types of sailor's knots to be "discovered"? Or have the common ones been around for hundreds of years? | The common ones have been around for ages. They are the most efficient and easiest to tie. There're four main types of knots: Bend - ties two lines together; Hitch - ties a line to another object; Loop - creates a loop in the rope; and stopper knots, which basically just make the line thicker. The most efficient form of each of these knots has been known for a long long time (Reef knot, clove hitch, bowline, figure-eight, respectively). There's other, more complicated ones for more specialized tasks, but these four are easiest to tie, have been around longest, and are the most often used. Knots used outside of sailing, that have specialized tasks can be considered newer. For example the [Prusik knot](_URL_0_) was "invented" in the 20^th century. TL:DR: New knots can and have been invented recently, but the most often used, best knots have been around forever. |
While digital video is stored as separate frames, how is sound stored digitally? | An analog audio signal is represented as a wave, looking like [this](_URL_0_). If you want to represent this in digital, you just go along this wave and mark the amplitude (the height) of the wave at regular intervals. The result is a long list of numbers, each of them called a "sample". If these intervals are short enough and you use large enough numbers for the samples, you can recreate the analogue waveform close to 100% using the digital signal. Audio CDs for example use 44,100 samples per second with 16bit numbers, which is in most cases far more than sufficient for our ears. |
Why didn't Gandalf use his powerful Eagle friends to transport the fellowship to mordor? Or even use them to take thorin oakenshield's group to the misty mountain? It would have saved many lives including Boromir. | They would have been seen and killed before they got there. Hobbits on foot were the better choice because they could sneak in unnoticed past hordes of orcs. |
What is happening when we are "emotionally exhausted"? | Get married and you will find out. Jokes aside. Emotions are thoughts and feelings that require your body to provide energy to do. if you're having a lot of those, they drain energy and make a person tired. Example might be a wife with a sick husband, she has to look after the kids, go to hospital everyday, cook meals run the house and she is terrified her husband is going to die soon. The emotional stuff the wife is dealing with costs energy, when energy levels are low its because she is emotionally drained |
How do presidents get up to speed on issues? | The President has not just a staff of secretaries but they have appoint a group called the "Cabinet" whose job it is to be an expert on various things. If he wanted more information about small business he could go to Penny Pritzker (Department of Commerce) and ask her to compile a report. |
Why FTL implies backward time travel | it is a sci-fi show cliche for one thing... in theory, the faster you go, the slower time goes for you and it approaches zero as you get closer to the speed of light. So, based on that logic, if you go faster than the speed of light, you go into negative time. Supposedly, matter can't go faster than the speed of light and the energy required to even get close is huge. |
If underage sex is illegal and murder is illegal then why is viewing underage sex illegal but viewing murder is not? | People don't murder other people in order to create videos and profit from people watching them. But some adults do sexual things to children in order to create videos and make money. So when someone watches that underage sex video, they're creating an industry that hurts underage people, who by definition can't consent to sex. |
why aren't faucet pipes straight? | Well, for THAT pipe I would imagine the bend helps slow the waterfall so it doesn't splash too much. But for the ones with the S-bend, like in the USA and other places, it traps water so smells and gas doesn't come back up the pipes. |
Newton's Second Law? | Slap a ball and it'll move in the direction you slapped it. Slap it harder and it'll move faster. |
How can fluids be incompressible? | Fluids aren't completely incompressible; they're generally more compressible than solids, for sure. It's just that, under the kind of conditions normally studied in fluid dynamics, they will only compress a little tiny bit. So we can simplify a *lot* of things if we just say "okay, pretend they can't be compressed". |
When a casino brings in a cooler, what exactly is the cooler doing? | Nothing because it's superstitious nonsense. If someone is counting cards at a blackjack table and the casino doesn't want to/can't kick them out for some reason, a new dealer will burn a card before they start, which makes it closer to time to shuffle and adds an additional unknown card which makes the count less accurate/useful. But this doesn't happen in practice. |
Why is it so difficult for Iran to build nuclear weapons today, if the US could build them in the 40's? | [The Manhattan Project](_URL_2_) was a tremendous project. It [ grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (about $26 billion in 2015[1] dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and producing the fissile materials, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.](_URL_2_) Sanctions have been put in place by other countries to prevent Iran from building atomic bombs. [Enriched uranium](_URL_0_) is needed. Iran has been producing this but not enough yet. Iran has just agreed to [reduce its current stockpile](_URL_1_) of enriched uranium. |
What exactly is happening when we taste food? | Its your taste buds that pick up certain chemicals in your food. Your taste buds then send electric pulses to your brain and tells it this is what this thing tastes like, and this is the sensation you should release. That's why the natural human reaction is to pull away from spicy food. |
Would "station spinning" (the "rotating wheel") really create a sensation of gravity in a space station? | It works, and the best part is that you don't have to rotate the station to see the effect. If you move around a stationary circular station the result is pretty similar; NASA played around with this during Skylab: _URL_0_ |
If everything in the universe disappeared except Earth, our moon, and the Sun, would it be self-sufficient? | In the short term, probably. The loss of the other planets would have a small but non-negligible effect on the orbits of the three remaining bodies, so eventually something would likely start to go wrong there. That aside, the Earth-Moon system is pretty much self-sufficient. There isn't really anything that the Earth receives from celestial bodies that aren't the Moon or Sun that have any significant impact on day to day life. |
What's so great about Chicago Cubs winning the world series? | It's been 108 years since they last won the World Series. Sliced bread had yet to be invented yet. |
Humans have a limited audio and visual range. Do we also have a limited range of taste? | Taste is basically the ability to detect the chemical makeup of a substance. So yeah, pretty much any chemical we can't taste counts. |
Why do so many countries simply have 3 vertical or horizontal stripes as a flag? | For most of history, flags were considerably more complex. Back then, a noble house would make a flag that symbolized their wealth and power, so they would go all out, spending on it like a modern wealthy family spends on cars or gardens. The tricolor comes from the needs of the French Revolution. Before that, nobles had banners, and they could afford to spend considerable money on each. But a peasant revolution needs it's flags on the cheap. Once your nation needs to make a flag for every household, having an ornate crown, some lions, a coat of arms, and a hundred fleur de lis on your flag becomes financially impossible. |
If all dogs are the same species, how can there be so many different and diverse breeds? | We've spent thousands of years breeding dogs for specific purposes, leading to a wide diversity of shapes suited to those purposes. Then in the last hundred years or so we've started "ultra typing" these dogs, picking those traits that we think define a breed and selecting them to the extreme. They are all the same species because they are all still very similar physically and genetically, despite some major external differences. Most importantly they can all still interbreed. |
Why is it that most people write in blue, but we print all books etc. in black? | As a lawyer, I always want my clients to sign documents in blue. It is a carry over from photocopying - photocopy is black & white, so a blue signature is "original". Of course this doesn't really apply as much now that everyone has color copiers but we still maintain the practice. But, because of this practice, all of my writing in done in blue - I don't even have a black pen in my office. |
How do trains stay on their tracks? | Basically because the wheels aren't perfectly cylindrical, they are cone shaped, the outer side is a smaller diameter than the inner side. This means that the weight of the train and the difference in rotation speeds between matched wheels forces continuous position adjustments that keep the train centered between the rails. Also, when a train is coming to a corner the speed is carefully controlled to prevent excessive lateral g-forces that would cause the train to tip and the rails are very carefully banked in curves, just like you see on highway ramps. |
Why do medicine commercials list all the bad/crazy side effects on TV? | They have to. They are required by law (how much they have to say depends on where you live though). |
why my computer speakers go spastic every time i get a call on my phone | Your mobile phone communicates with the phone network using electromagnetic radio waves. One feature of electromagnetic waves is that when they pass through a wire, they create an electric current in the wire. This is what's happening. The phone is generating electromagnetic waves so it can communicate with the phone network. These waves are creating electric currents in the wires that go to your speakers - only small currents, but they are there. Your speakers amplify these currents and convert them into sounds. |
where does the expression "you only use 10% of your brain" come from? | I learned just yesterday that this myth comes from a misunderstanding of a William James quote. Here's a pretty interesting [TedTalk] (_URL_0_) that explains! |
I know penny auctions are a rip but why are they a rip off? | They're a rip-off because most bidders pay money for nothing - they don't even get proof that the item actually exists. [From wikipedia:](_URL_0_) > For example, if an item worth 1,000 currency units (dollars, euros, etc.) sells at a final price of 60, and a bid costing 1 raises the price of the item by 0.01, the auctioneer receives 6,000 for the 6,000 bids and 60 as the final price, a total of 6,060, a profit of 5,060. If the winning bidder used 150 bids in the process, they would have paid 150 for the bids plus 60 for the final price, a total of 210 and a saving of 790. **All the other, losing, bidders collectively paid 5,850 and received nothing.** |
Why haven't animals learnt to stay the fuck away from humans considering how often we kill them? | Those animal populations that are actively hunted do. You can tell this easily by observing deer. Deer who live in an area long enough learn when hunting season is and are much more skittish during that season. Deer also seem know when they are on land that is safe. I have often seen deer run like maniac to get away from hunters, jump a fence into non-hunting land, look back at the hunters and then calmly walk away. Animals are also hunted by other predators all the time. To them humans are just one more predator. |
What is the difference between crystal and glass? | Crystal is a structure where atoms / molecules are ordered in a self-similar repeating structure. Glass is a solid substance when atoms/molecules don't form any ordered repeating structure, and the substance can be heated so it becomes more runny/~~elastic~~ less viscous, and then cooled back into a solid form. The difference in the atom/molecule structure looks [like this](_URL_1_). (EDIT: both quartz and pure glass are the same chemical, but quartz is in crystal form and glass is not.) When it comes to *crystal glass*, it is not actually crystal material, but it is just a variety of glass which has lead added in it so it is more shiny. Crystal glass is widely used in decorative objects [like this](_URL_0_) and in fancy glassware and chandeliers. EDIT: Changed elasticity to viscosity as corrected by u/belortik. |
Explain LI5 what is beyond Internet Service Providers | It's all about *peering agreements.* Basically, two ISPs have an agreement along the lines of "I'll carry your traffic if you carry mine" and connect themselves to each other. Of course, there are two many ISPs for every ISP to have an agreement with every other ISP, but if you just have connections to a few major networks, they will have connections of their own which will eventually lead to anywhere on the internet. Often, there are clearing houses for this sort of thing, like the London Internet Exchange (LINX.) These exchanges act sort of like ISPs for ISPs: in exchange for a service fee, you get a connection to LINX, which means you have a connection to everyone else who is on LINX. For more (above ten year old level) information on how this is accomplished, try looking up *routing tables*. |
Why does the Fukushima plant still leak so much contaminated water into the sea? | The more important questions are what is your concept of "so much"? And does it matter? How much does it matter? [Beta radiation has the weakest penetration power](_URL_0_). |
How can the DEA make the decision to ban Kratom in 30 days with no legislation passed by the US government? | > With no legislation passed by the US government But there was - **in 1970** when Nixon declared his "War on Drugs" and Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act _URL_0_ 3 years later the DEA was established with an amazing amount of unregulated power to decide what people are and are not legally allowed to put in their bodies. And they continue to have such wide ranging powers because in the almost 50 years since the war on drugs was officially started the US has failed to elect a Congress with the courage to end the "war". |
If a movie does well in the box office, who gets all of the money/profit? | The company that produced it (Paramount, Warner Bros., etc). The people involved with making the film are generally paid by this company, and the company gets the profit from the actual output (the movie). I'm sure some actors and such have contracts that state that they'll get part of the profits from the film though. |
why do Muslims take issue with depictions of Prophet Muhammad, but seem okay with movies such as the Passion of the Christ which depict other major prophets of Islam? | We are not okay with movies such as the passion of Christ. As Muslims, we shouldn't depict any prophets, but we shouldn't get violent over it. |
Why is 0% brightness on smartphones still so bright? | I think the real reason is so that you can't turn the brightness down so low that you can't see the screen to turn it back up. |
How is a piece of software like "Scan/Check Disk" able to fix a piece of hardware being your "Hard Drive"? What is going on behind the scenes here and why can't the OS just fix these errors on-the-fly? | Your hard drive uses an organization system. Think of it like the index of a book, it's page numbers and table of contents too. There's way too much data to ever keep track of otherwise. As it's working, it's constantly updating and editing this index to reflect the drive's contents. Pulling the plug before it can finish it's work leaves it potentially inaccurate, which will screw up something down the line when it tries to locate a resource and can't. So when starting up from a hard shutdown, it needs to take the time to figure stuff out and have everything organized and documented again. Fixing those issues on-the-fly is possible in theory, but it means that a lot of applications would probably quit or time-out and throw an error message because the OS is cleaning up the mess before getting the application the data it needs. So it's better to just do it up front. |
Why are American cities so 'Manhattanised'? | In addition to the other answers, I'd also add that the UK has the ["right to light"](_URL_0_) law that can prevent skyscrapers from going up if they'd illegally block someone's light. America doesn't have a similar law in place (so far as I know), or at least, if we do, it would likely have to be on a more local level as that's a bit too granular for a federal law. Assuming that not every state/county/municipality has enacted such a law, things are a bit more freeform here. |
How did North Korea become the dictatorship it is today? | After the fall of Nazi Germany the USSR began a military campaign against Japan (the last remaining Axis power). Soviet military forces seized Pyongyang and Kim Il-sung was installed as the leader of the Communist party. North Korea declared itself a sovereign entity in 1948 and has been a dictatorship ever since. |
Are sweatshop workers better off if their factories close down? | If you're in a third world country, your other options might include: * Farm work: You vs. the elements, back breaking work * Mining: Sometimes in dangerous, unregulated, illegal conditions * Waste management: Possibly dealing with dangerous waste from first-world nations such as electronics which can contain highly toxic substances * Prostitution: STDs, possible abuse, elevated chance of being targeted for severe crime such as murder * Crime: Well, it's illegal Sweatshops are terrible but that's coming from a first world perspective. Many in third world countries wouldn't be able to get by that well without them. You'd rather work in a sweatshop than in the other dangerous, even worse work conditions you could be in. |
Why do most people's faces swell up after crying for a long time or crying hard? | Your body is flooding your system with histamines causing inflamation, congestion, etc. in response to stress. |
How do trees know how long a year is? | Every plant has a time of year when they do the most growing. It's unimaginatively known as the "growing season". We can measure time using tree rings because for each species of tree there's a time of year when they start growing, and their growth is very fast, compared to a time of year when their growth is very slow or halts altogether (like in winter, deciduous trees shed their leaves and reign in energy expenditure). The change in growth speed between seasons (usually spring to winter) results in differences in the colour of the wood, so each "layer" of wood represents a year's growth. |
Why is it that in animated series, objects that can move around are drawn differently than static objects? | Drawn differently? Like the classic Wile E Coyote where you can tell that THAT rock right there is going to squish him because it's a different color? That's because when those were done animation was still printed on cels and those cels were [layered on top of each other](_URL_0_). So you'd have a background static layer that doesn't animate, you'd have a props layer, and you'd have a layer per character. The same color on different layers showed up slightly differently just because that's how it works. In some cartoons you can even see when the object is switched from one layer to another. This effect is substantially reduced in modern fully computer animation. However, props are still often drawn at a different level of detail, because they may have to be redrawn over and over again instead of the really fancy background you only have to draw once. |
Why do people stop and look when there is a traffic accident ? | When we do the same mundane task over and over and over, our brain basically shuts off. We just continue doing the mundane task as a brain "sub routine" and we drift out. Car accidents are exciting and different, it wakes your brain up. Something is happening so now you're active in your involvement in driving. So you look at it. Plus we are social animals and pay attention to humans in extreme situations. Just regular humanity stuff. |
How does swarm intelligence work? How are ants or bees smarter as a group than an individual? | Imagine that you have a number of (bees/participants/sources), each of which has 1% accurate, useful information and 99% random noise. Individually, the noise drowns out the information. However, if you add together all of your (bees/participants/sources) in the right way, the information accumulates while the noise simply cancels out. The result is a collective body of data where the information content is very prominent while the noise content is no greater than it was for a single (bee/participant/source). The classic experiment to demonstrate this principle is the jar-of-pennies experiment. You put a jar of pennies on the desk and ask a class of students to guess how many pennies are in the jar. Presuming your class is of sufficient size, the average of their guesses will almost inevitably be closer to the true count than any individual guess. |
What do people in big corporate legal departments do all day? | It totally depends on the corporation and the lawyer, but activities might include: * Writing or reviewing contracts between one corporation and another * Responding to subpoenas or information requests from the government or law enforcement - for example if the FBI is tracking a criminal, they may ask Google and Facebook for information about the person's communication, FedEx for their shipping history, United Airlines for the flights they searched for, and so on - and the legal department of the corporation may review those * Reviewing new inventions from the corporation and filing patents on them * Responding to cases of trademark infringement to protect the corporation's brand - i.e. by threatening another company with a lawsuit * Defending the company in court when it's been sued |
Is it true that America does not negotiate with terrorists? Why not? | If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. If you negotiate with terrorists, it feeds the cycle that people can manipulate you by being terrorists. Hence you get more terrorists. |
Why do all SUVs have a rear windshield wiper while almost every sedan doesn't? | I think it has to do with the rear window of SUV's/minivans being more vertical compared to a car which usually has a more angled back window. Passing air wont blow the water off the suv back window the same way it would in a car. |
Why are aboriginal boobies not blurred on TV when other boobs in the USA are blurred? | In the United States, the government isn't normally allowed to restrict speech, including what people put on television. There are a number of ways to get around this, but the biggest one is that free speech doesn't cover "obscenity." What this means, though, is that the ability to block someone from, say, putting boobs on TV, is based on an argument that it is obscene. The regulators in charge of this have basically said that showing naked people in certain contexts, like a nature special, isn't the kind of nudity that is rightly considered obscene. It's not done just to thrill the viewers sexual appetites, and it has educational value. It's a case by case thing, though, which is why you don't see networks trying to push the envelope, because the fines can be big. |
How can companies not have nutritional information on their food? | There are a few exceptions to the rules about labeling. If you're buying it from the company that makes it, then it probably falls under the "Delicatessen-type food, bakery products and confections that are sold directly to consumers from the location where prepared" exclusion. There are a few other exclusions, including items that are given away rather than being sold, and items marked "Not labeled for individual sale." [More info here.](_URL_0_) |
Why has Iran so quickly reversed its footing on its nuclear program? | The latest sanctions on the Iranians have effectively crippled the countries economy to a point that is essentially unsustainable and will only get worse if they continue on their current course. The Iranians have come to the table and accepted very large concessions about their nuclear program in order to ease these sanctions temporarily. There also is a growing shift in Iran away from actually creating the bomb and instead just becoming nuclear-latent which means just getting to a point where they could quickly create one if they ever would need to. |
Our body fight diseases by increasing the temperature, why betraying it by cooling ourselves down? | Your body is a house, pathogens are a thousand and thousand of cockroaches ramping on the floor. Fever is basically the house habitant (immune system) being like "Oh fuck it, let's burn the fucking house down". It's super effective but it can be very damaging, when a fever isn't really high, doctors usually advice to let it go and wait for it to decrease, when it raises to 103°F (40°c) and keeps increasing, it's time to stop the fever because it's going to do more harm than good (I think you start getting convulsion around 105 °F or 41°c and risk brain damage if it increases further). |
How does too much salt increase blood pressure? | [It's not entirely clear that it does.](_URL_0_) High levels of sodium consumption (sodium being the half of the table salt molecule, NaCl, that's relevant here) have traditionally been associated with hypertension (i.e., high blood pressure). But recent research indicates that the relationship between sodium intake and hypertension is not nearly so straightforward as once believed. |
Why do people in movies automatically bleed through the mouth when they are injured in the belly area? It's something that happens in real life? | It's possible but not too common. If someone is stabbed or shot in the stomach, most of the blood would drain down, not be coughed up. However, if someone is stabbed in the lungs, it's definitely more possible. There's a lot of blood vessels in your lungs and you could definitely see people coughing up blood in that case |
When and why did humans begin to wear clothing? | When is tricky. Clothing is unlikely to survive as long as other tools, so we can't say with certainty that the earliest tool-users (Australopithecus) didn't wear furs or other clothing. As to why? That's also tricky. There's no historical or archaeological record of early clothing, so your guess is as good as anyone's. Common guesses include for warmth, for religious ceremonies, or to display dominance by wearing furs as trophies. |
Why is it rude to ask people how old they are? | Society seems to have an ideal age to look like (somewhere around 21-25), and everyone is always trying to look as close to that age as possible. Asking someone their age destroys any and all effort they've put into that attempt to appear closer to that ideal age. |
why to we have a divot beneath our noses and above our mouths. | It is a seam left over from when you were formed in your mothers womb. |
ELI5: What are the best explanations of how to visualize an atom? | How about:- A small fuzzy ball that you can't quite see surrounded by a larger fuzzy cloud of stuff that you also can't quite get a fix on. |
- Why do my teeth get a funny feeling when I have to pee really badly? | I definately have experienced this and ive talked to many other people who have as well. Ive even heard it refferred to in a book, i cant remember the book at all unfortunately. I remember character used the phrase "i have to pee so bad my teeth are floating" or something to that effect. Ur def not alone dude |
why the US and many other western countries were not on Bashar al-Assads side, but rather wanted to take him down, when his enemies are apparently ISIS. Shouldn't the west support the enemies of ISIS?! | The Syrian Civil War isn't simply Assad vs. ISIS. There are many other factions involved, including Hezbollah, Kurdish forces, many (small, disorganized) various anti-Assad rebels, and Israel. [This map](_URL_0_) might help. That's why the west struggled with how to handle Syria - none of the opposition groups were organized and moderate enough to choose a side. Unlike Libya, where there was a single moderate/organized resistance army. |
What does "Depraved Heart Murder" mean? | You may be interested in the following thread. There are some bad answers in there, but a few comprehensive ones and discussion following. _URL_0_ |
what is going on in your body when you get paranoid/anxiety attacks/vomitting when you smoke too much weed? | If you were 21 instead of 5, and happened to be visiting a state like mine with legal recreational cannabis, I might recommend you try an indica instead of a sativa. |
Why do children instinctively like cartoons ? | I think it's less that kids 'instinctively' like cartoons, but rather that producers understand what kids will like and cater to that. Cartoons are a big part of that, obviously, but also live action shows like teletubbies, yo gabba gabba, and sesame street, for example. |
What is happening in C# when I call a method? | I'm a little confused by your question, BUT: If you're having problems copy-pasting code from one place to another it's probably a **scope** issue. The "scope" of a variable is the portion of a program in which that variable can be legally referenced. Usually, this leads to compile errors, but if you are using the same name for a variable in multiple places it's possible that the code could be semantically correct, but that the "foo" you are referencing is not the "foo" you think it is. If you want to post a section of code that's giving you problems I'd be happy to take a look. |
what exactly is vibrational and chassis tuning when automakers are testing vehicles and concepts? | Everything has a resonant frequency, the pitch where the whole structure will vibrate and generally cause problems for people in or near the thing. Bridges sometimes collapse (for example) because the wind or the people walking across it match the resonant frequency and amplify it until the structure fails. In cars, there are certain predictable speeds and engine settings and yadda yadda yadda corresponding to city, highway, neighborhood driving conditions. If those conditions produce vibration in the chassis, it will be heard (and disliked) by the people in the car, and in truly bad cases, it could cause bolts or other pieces to shake loose, creating a hazard on the road. |
Why do most drones have four spinning instead of three? | I'm assuming you are talking about the rotors here and not the wheels or anything else, since you haven't stated it. With rotor aircraft the ideal set up is to have an even number of rotors, be that 2 or 4 or 8. The reason for this is gyroscopic torque, the same reason a helicopter (1 rotor, odd number) needs a tail rotor. If you have an even number of rotors, you can set them to rotate in opposite directions and the torque forces will cancel each other out. With an uneven number you need a tailrotor to counteract the uneven torque forces. |
How does someone end up owing thousands in back taxes? | Easy. Your W-2 was't filled out right and didn't automatically withdraw enough taxes. Then come tax time you owe thousands of dollars because you didnt pay enough during the year. However you didnt realize this was happening and don't have the money to pay right away. Boom back taxes. |
why is there a calm before the storm? | There isn't always, but when there is it is because when the warm, dry, stable air rolls in it 'calms down' the rest of the air. Source:[how stuff works](_URL_0_) |
How does our brain create a mind? | This is a question no one knows the answer to, there are plenty of theories about what it could be though. |
Where does deleted data go? | It ceases to exist. Actually, when you first delete something from a hard drive, it remains right where it was. The delete command is the computer telling the drive to disregard that information, and that it's okay to use that data's space for future writing. Then the next time you save something, it might go in that spot. At that point, the old data is gone forever. But until then, it's still there and can be recovered with special techniques. |
How are random product/reward codes generated? | Lets assume for a moment the key is comprised of just uppercase letters. This allows for 26 options for each character of the key, giving a total of 26^25 possible combinations. 26^25 is about 2.3\*10^(35) total, or about 3.2\*10^(25) (that's 32,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible combinations *for every living person on Earth*. So no, we probably won't run out of codes soon. Sometimes the keys follow a certain pattern, that allow the program to validate them (so that not every 25 character combination is valid). For example, the last 5 characters in the key might be created using a function of the first 20, so it's easy to check whether the key is valid by applying this function and comparing the result. This reduces the possible number of combinations, but there's still a lot of them ("just" 26^(20) instead of 26^(25)). The code is produced by a pseudorandom number generator. As to how these work, well that's another question altogether, [which has been asked here many times](_URL_0_). |
Can you get a computer virus if you go to a site but don't click anything? Or stream a video but don't download it? | Yes. A site could have javascript that downloads or installs things, or if it uses flash, you could have an out of date version that's susceptible to an exploit in what you're watching. To stream something, you have to download it. Think of a download like going and buying a book to take home, and a stream as getting pages in the mail, reading them, and throwing them out as soon as they're read. You're still getting the content. If it's a reputable site, you're usually pretty safe, though. |
If my allergy to dust has evolved to make me sneeze/cough/runny nose why should I take drugs to counter that? Does it not serve a similar function of pain or smell in letting me know of something that is harmful? | Allergies occur when the immune system responds to a stimulus which does not require an immune response. It's essentially an error, or, maybe more accurately, an overreaction to something that is not actually harmful. You take the medicine to alleviate the symptoms you are suffering from something that shouldn't occur. |
How is it someone can do 100 squats but can't run but a few miles? | ELI5: bulldozers can lift tons of weight but can't go fast. They are built for one thing and they do other things not as well. Race cars can go fast but can't lift tons. |
What laws prevent the majority stockholder of a corporation from just giving away the corporation's assets? | They're not her property. You can't give away property belonging to someone else. Even if that person is a legal fiction you have majority control over. The majority stockholder *could* push the board to give away assets, but that would likely be a breach of the board's [fiduciary duty](_URL_0_) to the minority stockholders. The board should overrule the majority stockholder on those grounds. To do it legally, the majority stockholder should vote to disband/liquidate the corporation. Assuming the motion passes the net assets will be distributed among the stockholders, and now that some of them are her property the majority owner can give those away at will. |
where does that style of writing that graffiti artists always use come from, and why do so many of them use it? | Grab a can of spray paint and start trying to write. With very thick lines created by the wide spray you are limited in the legibility if you don't write like that. |
What are undeclinable requests like, 'Could you get the door for me?' called and how do they work from a linguistic or sociological standpoint? | The request was phrased in a polite way. That is why you cannot decline it with a simple “no”. To decline without being rude, you must match the tone of the request. Something like “I’m terribly sorry, but dead lizards make me uncomfortable as well” would work. |
How can dogs smell cancer? | The current theory is that cancer cells produce characteristic organic compounds which get into the bloodstream and are then also present in the patient's breath - only in tiny amounts, but enough to be detected by a dog's amazingly keen sense of smell. Which compounds those are exactly is still being researched, in the hope of using the knowledge to produce test kits. |
Why does a multitool spin this funny way in zero gravity? | It's because the rotation about that axis is unstable, and small deviations quickly build until the pliers flip round. You can see the same effect if you throw a tennis racket in the air. _URL_0_ |
What does "force start" while using a torrent client actually accomplish? | In μTorrent at least, it means "Ignore download queue settings and start right now". For instance, if you have it set so no more than X torrents will be downloading at one time, the normal Start will respect that and put lower-priority torrents on hold. Force Start lets you override that setting temporarily for a particular torrent. It doesn't have any particular meaning in the Bittorrent protocol or anything, so it might mean different things from client to client. |
If radiation kills cells, and cancer is uncontrolled cell growth, then why does high-volume radiation cause cancer? | Radiation causes damage to the DNA. At a low enough dose, it will simply damage the DNA but allow the cell to live. In this case, the cell could then develop cancerous properties due to the damaged DNA, and before you know it you have cancer. |
How are serving sizes on nutritional labels determined, and why are they often so much lower than a realistic amount that most people would consume? | They are arbitrary. They are just used so you have a reference for the nutrition label. The smaller the serving, the healthier you food looks to unobservant consumers. |
Goosebumps, what the heck are they? | Goosebumps is a series of children's horror fiction novellas by American author R. L. Stine, published by Scholastic Publishing. The stories follow child characters, who find themselves in scary situations; usually involving monsters and other supernatural elements. From 1992 to 1997, 62 books were published under the Goosebumps umbrella title. Various spin-off series were written by Stine: Goosebumps Series 2000, Give Yourself Goosebumps, Tales to Give You Goosebumps, Goosebumps Triple Header, Goosebumps HorrorLand, and Goosebumps Most Wanted. Another series, Goosebumps Gold, was never released. Goosebumps has spawned a television series and merchandise, as well as a feature film, starring Jack Black. |
Is there a reason why various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked In, etc.) use blue as their theme color? | You may want to take this answer with a pinch of salt because I'm not 100% sure, But I would imagine the reason why is because certain colours can physiologically change your view on things. The colour blue is known to give a more calming, trust worthy view. I recommend reading up on [this](_URL_0_) it goes deeper into the effects of colours on our brains. its a very i interesting read! |
Would there be any way to "improve" the internet if we could start it all over? | Checksums at the end of the packet. Ethernet got it right. 25 years later, IPv6 gets it wrong again. |
when you have x^3, you can "explode" this out into x * x * x. What is happening when you take a root? Is there any way to "explode" that? | Ish. You can view x*x*x as x^1 * x^1 * x^1. Since sqrt(x) is x^0.5, you can do the same thing, as long as all the powers sum to 0.5, like so: x^0.5 = x^0.25 * x^0.25, or x^0.5 = x^1 * x^-0.5 |
why does ice stick to an empty cup when you're trying to get it in your mouth? | When the ice cube melts, some water will stay surrounding the cube, "connecting" it to the cup, sorta like a vaccum. |
Why do DVD menus loop so poorly? | In the DVD menus the DVD players have to move back to the starting point to re-read the video, and so there is a gap where it is moving the disk. sorry about my last comment i didn't quite understand what you were asking. |
Why do we make fun of France so much? | We make fun of them because we can't really control them. Britain will do whatever we say so they're our besties. France is like that cool kid who generally hangs out with you but sometimes makes you look like a complete dick by calling you out just when you think you've got the gang worshipping you. |
What would the US have to do to revert back to a no political party system? | There is no way. Political parties are not part of the government. They are a group of like-minded people who decided the best way to get what they want is to unite behind a single nominee. Political parties are a natural result of our freedom to assemble. Dissolving them would be a violation of the First Amendment. Even if we did dissolve them, people would just make parties again, unless we somehow made it illegal to meet with others, discuss politics, and agree on stuff. If we did that, it's not really the US anymore so no, there's no way. |
Why haven't the USA and Russia ever gone to war? | Generally, a country will only choose to go to war if they believe that the benefits of winning are worth the losses they will take getting that victory. The thing about the Cold War is that there were very few upsides to any potential conflict and a mountain of downsides. |
how life was created, how seemingly inert atoms formed what we are today, these weird organic creatures with sentience | Those atoms aren't inert. They react with other atoms, attaching and detaching from each other, requiring energy, releasing energy, etc. All life depends on chemical actions to function. Life is a natural extension of a chemically reactive environment. |
In this 2012 satellite photo of Berlin, you can distinguish West and East Berlin by the tone of the street lights. Why? | The East and West used different types of lights, and there's no reason to tear down perfectly good lights that are only a few decades old. |
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